pushy parents and the real world

The Race Between Education and Technology by Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz is one of the most important books ever written about U.S. education.

Two Tales of the Twentieth Century: A Summary

The history of inequality during the twentieth century is a tale in two parts. The first was punctuated by episodes of declining inequality, some quite sudden and rapid. Stable or slowly rising inequality marked other parts of the period. On the whole, the first three-quarters of the century were years of greatly diminished inequality and lowered returns to education. Americans grew together as economic growth was shared throughout the income distribution during much of the period.

Everything came to a halt in the 1970s. America started to grow more slowly and Americans began to grow apart. The last quarter of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have been distinguished by exploding inequality, chiefly at the upper end of the income distribution. Returns to education, particularly college, markedly increased. Economic growth slowed or was stagnant until the mid-1990s. Whatever growth occurred was unequally shared. With low or no growth and soaring inequality, the lower end often lost out altogether while the economic elites prospered.

We saw in Chapter 1 that the history of educational attainment in the United States is also a tale in two parts. For a long time cohorts of the American population an workforce increased their educational attainment rapidly relative to previous cohorts. But that trend halted and has remained on hold with the entering labor force cohorts of the late 1970s.

We are left with several questions. What accounts for narrowing inequality trends during the first part of the twentieth century and what could explain the possible failure of these trends during the second part. Did technology change accelerate between the first and the second parts of the twentieth century? Was the culprit the computer revolution? Alternatively, or in conjunction, did the supply of educated and skilled workers change? We turn to these issues in Chapter 3.


Chapter 3 Skill-Biased Technological Change

Economic inequality since 1980 increased greatly, as we have just seen. The earnings of college graduates rose at a far greater clip than did the earnings of those who stopped at high school graduation. The incomes of top managers and professionals increased at a much faster rate than did those of ordinary workers.

The increase in inequality was more all-encompassing than a widening between different education levels or occupational groups. The expanding gap also occurred within groups, even within educational levels. Among college graduates, for example, those with degrees from institutions with higher standards for admissions earned relatively more over time. Those who went to more prestigious law schools did better relative to other law school graduates. The widening occurred within virtually all groups in a manner that is not easily explained by the usual observable factors such as years of schooling. At almost all educational and experience levels, for example, the earnings for those near the top of the distribution increased considerably relative to those near the bottom.

The point that we made in the previous chapter was that widening inequality during the past 25 years has affected practically all Americans. Few groups, by education, occupation, geography, and so forth, have been untouched. Some have gained, relatively, but far more have lost, at times in absolute terms. Widening inequality has been pervasive as well as rapid.

The Race Between Education and Technology by Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz
pp. 87-90

The thesis of the book is that education is the engine. I haven't finished reading, but I assume that the explanation for rising within-group inequality is going to be rising within-group inequality in education.

This is precisely the understanding of the world that drives "pushy parents." At least, it is the understanding of the world that drives me. We parents live in the real world, most of the time; we notice that the returns to education are high. We notice, too, or we suspect, that the returns to a superb education are higher than the returns to a good education, the returns to a good education higher than those to an education that is only so-so. Which is the best our schools of education have to offer these days.

I would profoundly value a superb liberal education regardless of the economic returns.

Nevertheless, given the fact that my lone typical child will have two autistic siblings to look after when he is grown, I want his chances of earning a very good living to be high.


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