food security, fooThis paper aims at estimating the impact of education on individual earnings through the econometric modeling of secondary data, for the year 2009 in Romania. The national representative sample used includes 16,570 statistical observations. Surprisingly, the largest impact on Romania’s income is determined by gender. Male income (log) is 26.58% higher than that of females, although data shows, that, on average, women in the sample have more years of education than men. This shows a highly discriminatory phenomenon, which can be solved probably by educational and awareness raising programs, aimed at combating gender-based (wage) discrimination. As regards to the importance of education as a determinant of earnings, we conclude that it is a key determinant of individual income. If in 1995 the coefficient of the variable “years of education” was -0.0019 and in 2000 0.0061, in 2009 it was, according to this study, 0.081652. It shows that in Romania the importance of education has increased, and consequently, the importance of people's knowledge and skills in their wage level, has soared too, which, in turn, may be an indicator of the transformation of Romania into a knowledge based society. d self-sufficiency level, agricultural production stability, Romania