Ivy League Graduates Face a Significantly Wider Gender Pay Gap

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Female Ivy Leaguers make roughly the same as their male counterparts upon graduating. But somewhere between the ages of 24-36, they hit a snag.

That’s when Ivy League men begin to advance their careers and pocket higher salaries in a way their female counterparts do not. Women with Ivy League degrees make, on average, 30 percent less than their male peers—a gap nearly twice as wide as the national average.

This new information comes from the same study by the Equal Opportunity Project that found that Boston’s students in the 1 percent are concentrated at Tufts University and Boston College. Using anonymous tax filings and tuition data, the study offers the clearest, most comprehensive understanding of economic diversity, mobility, and segregation at the nation’s most elite colleges and universities yet.

The median wage for a 34-year-old, male Harvard graduate, for example, is $96,000. Compare that to $70,200 for a female Harvard graduate the same age. As Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin explained to The Atlantic, the inequity can be blamed on the overlap between professions with the most severe gender pay gaps and those most pursued by Ivy League graduates, such as finance and law.