Recent decades have witnessed a growing discrepancy in the income of workers with dif ferent levels of education. Individuals with high school diplomas or less education saw their earning potential fall throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s compared with those who had more education. Between the years 1979 and 2005, real hourly wages rose for college gradu
ates by 22%; for high school graduates they remained stagnant, and for high school dropouts, wages fell by 16% (Mishel, Bernstein, & Allegretto, 2005). Fewer than 50% of low- income workers, had more than a high school degree in 2003, and about 20% percent of these were high school dropouts (Acs & Nichols, 2007).