Drag inside the chart to scrub through ages · scroll to zoom the cumulative panel
This simulator visualizes the economics of human-capital investment using the Mincer earnings function, the workhorse model economists use to estimate the return on schooling. Two career paths are drawn as a layered 2D dashboard: an animated age-earnings bar chart across a working lifetime (a baseline path that starts earning at 18, and an extended-schooling path that spends extra years in education — paying tuition and forgoing wages — before starting work with permanently higher pay), plus a cumulative-earnings line chart with the break-even crossing and the NPV gap shaded underneath. Adjust the extra years of schooling, the estimated return per year, tuition cost and the discount rate, and watch the net present value, break-even age and approximate internal rate of return update live, exactly as a real cost-benefit analysis of a degree would.