Economists have a term for the gap that exists between the incomes of college graduates and high school graduates: the college wage premium. When employers want more college graduates, the premium goes up; when there is a surplus of college grads, the premium goes down. In theory, today’s sky-high college wage premium should mean a surge of young people onto college campuses, not the opposite. But as a measure of the true value of higher education, the college wage premium has one important limitation. Unlike the college wage premium, the college wealth premium looks at all your assets and all your debts: what you’ve got in the bank, whether you own a house, your student-loan balance.

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Persons: Bill, Louis, you’ve, Louis — Lowell Ricketts, William Emmons, Ana Hernández Kent — Organizations: Federal Reserve Bank of St Locations: St