The amount of real income that an average individual will earn at any point of their life can be reasonably determined from the average distribution of annual earnings by age and educational peer group over a period of years.

Relative Earnings Trajectories by Level of Educational Attainment After Age 18-24We previously explored the relationship between age, education and inflation-adjusted earnings for another project, but we limited that study to just the first 25 years of a typical bachelor degree holder's life after they graduated from college. Today, we're widening our net to examine how the average individual's income changes over time, depending upon whether they have less than a high school education, have graduated from high school, have earned an Associates degree or have earned a Bachelor's degree as they progress in life from Age 18-24 through Age 65-69.

Building on what we did previously, our first step was to calculate the percentage of Age 18-24 earnings to determine the basic trajectory that each educational peer group took from 1997 through 2007 with respect to this "starting" income using data from the U.S. Census' Current Population Survey covering each of those years, for those working full-time year-round. After calculating the earnings trajectory for each of these years, we averaged the basic trajectories to produce our first chart.

Next, we converted the mean earnings of the Age 18-24 educational peer group for each year to be in constant 2007 U.S. dollars, then found the average and standard deviation, which we've presented in our second chart in this post.