Thanks for the insightful comment. I hadn't considered that particular application of Simpson's paradox. But really, I don't think this is that likely, is it? I mean, you're letting me get one statement I like "qualifications correlate with earnings in general" but give up two statements that I find likely: "qualification correlate with earnings for males (resp. females)".
This paper looks like it says that qualifications are correlated with earnings for each subgroup. See the tables on pages 21 and 22. I say "looks like" since I haven't actually read it and just skipped to the tables. I hope to get a chance to look at it more in depth soon.
But really, I don't think this is that likely, is it?
I think that particular reversal is probably unlikely in general, but I can think of several plausible cases when it would exist.
Suppose that IQ positively impacts both education and income. But education has a negative effect on income, because the more educated someone is, the more they will choose to work on abstract tasks which don't pay as highly. (A salesman earns more than mathematician, say, and the primary function of education is to convince some people that mathematicians are higher status ...
An article by Judea Pearl, available here. It's quick at 8 pages, and worth reading if you enjoy statistics (though I think people who already are familiar with the math of causality1 will get more out of it than others2). I'll talk here about the part that I think is generally interesting:
I've never really liked the name "paradox," because what it seems to mean is "unintuitive phenomenon." (Wikipedia puts it as "something which seems false and yet might be true.") The trouble is that "unintuitive" is a two-place word, and it makes sense to think like reality, so that true things seem true to you, instead of still seeming false. (For example, when I first learned about Zeno's Paradox, I already knew calculus, and so Zeno's position was the one that seemed confusing and false.)
What I like most about Pearl's article is that it explicitly recognizes the importance of fully dissolving the paradox,3 and seems to do so. Simpson's Paradox isn't an unsolvable problem in statistics, it's a straightforward reversal effect--only if you use the language of causality.
1. My review of Causality gives a taste of what it would look like to be familiar with the math, but you'd need to actually read the book to pick it up. The Highly Advanced Epistemology 101 for Beginners sequence is relevant, and contains Eliezer's attempt to explain the basics of causality in Causal Diagrams and Causal Models.
2. Pearl discusses how you would go about using simulations to show that do calculus gives you the right result, but leaves it as an exercise for the reader.
3. How An Algorithm Feels From Inside is probably a better place to start than Dissolving the Question, and I can't help but echo a question from it: "So what kind of math design corresponds to [Simpson's Paradox]?"
See also: bentarm's explanation of Simpson's Paradox.