The gender gap is narrower for blacks with professional degrees: black men with professional degrees earn 24 percent more in lifetime earnings than their female counterparts.
Among full-time, year-round workers, white men with professional degrees make nearly 49 percent more in lifetime earnings than white women with a comparable education level.
"A kid who enrolls in college over the course of his life contributes $300,000 more in federal taxes alone and a million more in lifetime earnings," Mr. Schramm explained.
That means families like Clinton's, Trump's and mine will be getting hundreds of thousands of dollars more in lifetime benefits than they would have when the system was first created, while many future elderly will still be left in poverty.
Millennials know all too well that staying at the same employer for over two years, on average, can cost you 50% or more in lifetime earnings.
This growth, he argues, is due to the broad social recognition of the "college wage premium," and he cites the 2015 Georgetown study showing college graduates averaging a million dollars more in lifetime earnings than high school grads.
The high average return suggests that SSA could conduct more reviews and save more in lifetime benefits, although these savings would outweigh the costs only up to a certain point.
At the University of Virginia, economist Amalia Miller calculated that for every year a woman delays motherhood, she makes about 9% more in lifetime earnings.
