Earnings of Humanities Ph.D.’s
- In 2015, college graduates with a Ph.D. in the humanities had the lowest median earnings of graduates with doctorates in any of the major academic fields (Indicator III-24a; due to small sample size, Ph.D.’s in the arts are not included). While Ph.D.’s in the humanities reported median earnings of $77,000, the median income for all doctoral degree recipients was $99,000. Doctoral degree recipients in engineering had the highest median earnings, $125,000.
- Male recipients of humanities doctoral degrees had median earnings of $85,000, which is $23,000 above their female counterparts, but both men and women with humanities doctorates had the lowest median earnings for doctoral recipients of their gender in any field.
- The 27% gender gap in earnings among humanities Ph.D.’s was one of the largest among all the fields studied, second only to Ph.D. recipients in life sciences, who had a 30.5% gap. When all fields are considered together, the gap was 30% (Indicator III-24b).
- The range of earnings of humanities Ph.D.’s was relatively narrow in 2015, with a gap of less than $50,000 between the 25th and 75th percentiles (workers at the 25th percentile made 49.5% of what their counterparts at the 75th percentile did; Indictor III-24c). In comparison, among Ph.D.’s from all fields, the difference in earnings between the quartiles was $86,000 (with lower-earning workers making 41.1% of what their higher-earning counterparts did). Nevertheless, the earnings of the top 25% of humanities Ph.D.’s was greater than those of half of doctoral degree recipients from education, business, and the health/medical sciences.
* Full-time workers are those who worked 35 or more hours per week for 50 or more weeks during the previous 12 months. Earnings estimates have been rounded to the nearest $1,000. The analysis excludes holders of the D.D.S., D.V.M., M.D., and other non-research degrees.
Source: National Science Foundation, 2015 National Survey of College Graduates. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
Since the humanities were dropped from the biennial Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) in 1995, the National Science Foundation’s National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) is the only source of nationally representative data on the occupations and earnings of humanities Ph.D.’s. Conducted every two years, the NSCG gathers detailed education, occupation, and earnings information from a sample of individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those identified via the American Community Survey (ACS) as holders of a baccalaureate degree.
Given the size of the NSCG sample, reliable estimates are available only for broad academic fields. For the NSCG disciplinary categories included in each of the field-of-degree categories employed by the Humanities Indicators, see the provided crosswalk. This earnings indicator is based on NSCG data, but similar items included in the Humanities Indicators rely on data from the ACS.
Due to marked differences in how NSCG and the ACS classify academic fields, the contents of the field-of-degree categories used for this indicator are not identical to those used for the ACS-based Indicators III-07a and 07b. (For more information on the contents of the categories used for the ACS analysis, see the pertinent crosswalk.)
Another key difference between these indicators and the ACS-based earnings indicators is that the Ph.D. holders considered here are those whose doctoral degree was in the humanities (irrespective of the field of their undergraduate and any terminal master’s degree). The ACS does not collect data about the field of advanced degrees. The ACS-based indicators thus describe the earnings of undergraduate humanities majors who went on to pursue advanced degrees, regardless of the field of the advanced degree.
* The earnings gender gap is the difference between male and female median annual earnings expressed as a percentage of male median earnings. Full-time workers are those who worked 35 or more hours per week for 50 or more weeks during the previous 12 months. The analysis excludes holders of the D.D.S., D.V.M., M.D., and other non-research degrees.
Source: National Science Foundation, 2015 National Survey of College Graduates. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
Since the humanities were dropped from the biennial Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) in 1995, the National Science Foundation’s National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) is the only source of nationally representative data on the occupations and earnings of humanities Ph.D.’s. Conducted every two years, the NSCG gathers detailed education, occupation, and earnings information from a sample of individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those identified via the American Community Survey (ACS) as holders of a baccalaureate degree.
Given the size of the NSCG sample, reliable estimates are available only for broad academic fields. For the NSCG disciplinary categories included in each of the field-of-degree categories employed by the Humanities Indicators, see the provided crosswalk. This earnings indicator is based on NSCG data, but similar items included in the Humanities Indicators rely on data from the ACS.
Due to marked differences in how NSCG and the ACS classify academic fields, the contents of the field-of-degree categories used for this indicator are not identical to those used for the ACS-based Indicators III-07a and 07b. (For more information on the contents of the categories used for the ACS analysis, see the pertinent crosswalk.)
Another key difference between these indicators and the ACS-based earnings indicators is that the Ph.D. holders considered here are those whose doctoral degree was in the humanities (irrespective of the field of their undergraduate and any terminal master’s degree). The ACS does not collect data about the field of advanced degrees. The ACS-based indicators thus describe the earnings of undergraduate humanities majors who went on to pursue advanced degrees, regardless of the field of the advanced degree.
III-24c: Range of Annual Earnings of Full-Time Workers with a Doctoral Degree, by Field of Degree, 2015*
* Full-time workers are those who worked 35 or more hours per week for 50 or more weeks during the previous 12 months. Earnings estimates have been rounded to the nearest $1,000. The analysis excludes holders of the D.D.S., D.V.M., M.D., and other non-research degrees.
Source: National Science Foundation, 2015 National Survey of College Graduates. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
Since the humanities were dropped from the biennial Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) in 1995, the National Science Foundation’s National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) is the only source of nationally representative data on the occupations and earnings of humanities Ph.D.’s. Conducted every two years, the NSCG gathers detailed education, occupation, and earnings information from a sample of individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those identified via the American Community Survey (ACS) as holders of a baccalaureate degree.
Given the size of the NSCG sample, reliable estimates are available only for broad academic fields. For the NSCG disciplinary categories included in each of the field-of-degree categories employed by the Humanities Indicators, see the provided crosswalk. This earnings indicator is based on NSCG data, but similar items included in the Humanities Indicators rely on data from the ACS.
Due to marked differences in how NSCG and the ACS classify academic fields, the contents of the field-of-degree categories used for this indicator are not identical to those used for the ACS-based Indicators III-07a and 07b. (For more information on the contents of the categories used for the ACS analysis, see the pertinent crosswalk.)
Another key difference between these indicators and the ACS-based earnings indicators is that the Ph.D. holders considered here are those whose doctoral degree was in the humanities (irrespective of the field of their undergraduate and any terminal master’s degree). The ACS does not collect data about the field of advanced degrees. The ACS-based indicators thus describe the earnings of undergraduate humanities majors who went on to pursue advanced degrees, regardless of the field of the advanced degree.
