Female ‘A’ Students End Up Making Less Than Male ‘C’ Students

Your performance in high school is key to predicting your future salary. But so is your gender and race.

The higher the grade point average (GPA) you have in high school, the more money you’ll make later in life, according to a new University of Miami study that will be published in the upcoming issue of the Eastern Economic Journal. But high-achieving female students still won’t earn as much as male counterparts who didn’t work quite as hard: a woman who had a 4.0 GPA in high school still makes less on average than a man who had a 2.5 GPA.

The chart below illustrates the earnings differences between men and women. The men are in red, the women in green. Personal earnings are listed on the X-axis, high school GPA on the Y-axis.

The gender pay gap has been hotly debated, with some attributing it to job choice, child rearing issues or just plain discrimination. And the issue has recently become more contentious as disputes over how wide the gap actually is continue to grow.