a racial wage gap. While an overall wage gap appeared between black and white women, by 1980, the earnings of black women with college degrees surpassed those of white women with college degrees. An understanding of the earnings of black women has recently become recognized as an important area of research due to the role that black women traditionally have in terms of family income: black married couples typically have relied more on women's earnings than other races and the percentage of single-parent, female-maintained families is highest among the black population. Hispanic The Hispanic minority group in the United States, composed of 50.3 million individuals in 2010, consists of much variance within itself with regard to wages, though all groups' wages are lower than those of non-Hispanic whites. In 2007, the largest Hispanic group, consisting of 29.2 million people, were individuals of Mexican origin, followed by 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican origin and 1.6 million people of Cuban origin. By 2009, the median income of Hispanics was lower than that of Whites and Asians, but much higher than the median wages of African-Americans; $38,039, compared to $32,584 for African-Americans and $49,777 for the general population. While their relative wages have fallen since 1979, this has been attributed to a demand for more educated workers and a gap in educational attainment, supported by the fact that college-educated Hispanic men's relative wages have changed little over time. Unlike research findings for the black minority, it has been a converging finding that the largest contributing factor to the wage gap of Hispanics is observable skill characteristics, especially education. Thus, increased education has been seen to contribute to a decreased wage gap. College-educated Hispanic men have wages that are approximately 80 percent of those earned by college-educated white males and are 10 percent higher than wages earned by college-educated black males. College-educated Hispanic women earn approximately 90 percent of what college-educated white women earn, which is slightly more than the earnings of college-educated black women. Despite the improvement in wages made by educational attainment, less educated Hispanic men still have less return to education than non-Hispanic men that are statistically comparable. A study conducted using 1980 census data on income that controlled for age, education, English language ability, nativity, and State/Metro residence, found a wage gap of 10 percent still existed for Hispanics compared to non-Hispanics. Additionally, discrimination against Hispanic men and women