New Hampshire women are applauding a new study showing single women in their 20s without kids are outpacing their male counterparts when it comes to bringing home a bigger paycheck.

"It’s been, you know, a long time coming," Deb Kilpatrick, 29, said at the Nashua Public Library before the Labor Day weekend kicked off. "I think women these days work hard and they deserve to be paid for it."

The study, by a New York-based research firm focusing on consumer spending, showed single, childless women aged 22 to 30 earned 8 percent more income than men in the same age group in 2008.

"You’re seeing this generation living life differently than past generations," said study co-author James Chung, president of Reach Advisors. "It’s driven by the fundamental restructuring of the American economy."

Women are now 1.5 times more likely than men to graduate from college or earn advanced degrees, boosting their earning potential, Chung said. in the past decade, women have been waiting longer to have children while the number of unmarried women in their 20s increased by 23 percent, according to the study.

The study analyzed the median income for women and men in that demographic group. Median means half earned more and half earned less. the study showed all women in their 20s working full time, including married women, earned close to 90 percent of their male peers.

Meghan Joyce, 20 of Raymond, said she earns "way more tips" than the male waiters at the restaurant she works at in Salisbury, Mass.

"I think girls are harder workers than guys," Joyce said in downtown Manchester. "a lot of girls are more motivated to go to school. more guys take more time to decide what to do."

Barbara Gilmore, a retired teacher from Wilton, said she thinks only a small number of women have made as much money as their male counterparts.

"It’s now a case of ‘Hey, I’m a woman and I can be a go-getter, too. I can go out there and I can go for that big money,’ " Gilmore said while running errands in downtown Nashua.

"It’s the single women who are college-educated and they’ve got a leg up," Gilmore said. "College-educated people earn more than the regular people anyway, and young college-educated women are earning more than ordinary women."

Figures from the Boston metro area, which includes a slice of southern New Hampshire, showed wages for men and women in that specialized twenty-something demographic recorded equal median wages, according to the study.

Chung said areas most likely to have women making more than men are places seeing a large loss of blue-collar jobs or possessing large minority populations, from which women are even more likely to finish college than minority men.

The shifting income trends already are influencing consumer habits, including increased spending on women’s fitness equipment and on healthier, high-margin food items in quick-service restaurants, the study said.

In a separate measurement, New Hampshire ranked 46th in the nation when measuring the ratio of what full-time working women made compared to men, according to an analysis of 2007 earnings data.

For full-time workers age 16 and older, women’s median earnings totaled 72 percent of men’s median earnings, compared to 77 percent nationwide.

Neither the 2007 figures nor last week’s study compared what men and women earned for the same job.

"I think it’s starting to get better, but I feel women get thrown under the bus" sometimes, said Mikhaela Stinson, 20, who’s attending the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester.

Stinson said she had worked together with her brother at the same Vermont restaurant. "I got paid a dollar less just because I was a girl," Stinson said.

Lucy Hodder, a board member of the New Hampshire Women’s Policy Institute, said the study doesn’t answer all the questions on pay inequality.

"at least if newly educated women between the ages 22 and 30 are reaching parity that gives us hope," said Hodder, a Concord attorney with Rath, Young and Pignatelli, P.C. "it does not answer the question of why there exists such a substantial wage gap as women age."

Jennifer Parent, a partner and chair of the employment law practice group at the Manchester law firm of McLean, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton Professional Association, said her firm represents employer in pay-equity cases.

"we are seeing more employers monitoring and evaluating compensation levels to make sure they’re in compliance with all laws," she said.

Portsmouth waitress Alexis Brown said she didn’t see anything that clearly pointed to women making more than men.

"I know there tends to be more women in the service industry and more men in construction and trades," Brown said. she said at the unskilled level, men and women probably make the same, but as men climb the corporate ladder in white-collar jobs, they still have more room to move than women.

Brown said she knows of more men who have lost their jobs in the poor economy than women.

Mike Gavin, 35, said higher pay for women could become more commonplace.

"if she can do the job just as well as a man, why not?" he said.

Sunday News Correspondents Greg Kwasnik and Gretyl Macalaster contributed to this story.