Useful Stats: 2002 Educational Attainment State Rankings

Comparing the recent release to the same report issued two years ago surfaces an unavoidable danger of relying on trends identified 13 years ago in the 1990 decennial census. The 2002 educational attainment figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau in March reports 26.7 percent of the U.S. population 25 years or older holds at least a Bachelor's degree, about one percentage point higher than the previous year. The range across the states shows the District of Columbia at 44.4 percent with the highest and West Virginia with the lowest at 15.9 percent.

Washington, D.C. held first place in the Census' 2000 estimate for the same statistic, but the percentage was only 38.3 percent. This reflects an apparent 15.9 percent increase in the number of District residents with a Bachelor in just two years. More dramatically, when comparing the 2000 and 2002 reports, South Carolina, Delaware and Indiana respectively posted 22.6 percent, 22.9 percent, and a whopping 38.6 percent jump in college graduates in 24 short months.

Did it really happen that fast? Not likely. One would expect a corresponding surge in average wages and competition for higher-skill jobs.

The problem lies in that the 2000 report relied on trends identified in 1990, the most recent decennial census available at the time. The 2002 statistics are based on trends identified in the 2000 census and were collected in the Annual Demographic Supplement to the March 2002 Current Population Survey (CPS).

SSTI has prepared a table presenting the 2000 and 2002 educational attainment percentages and rankings for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/042503t.htm

The Census survey data are available at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/educ-attn.html