In "Long-Run Changes in the U.S. Wage Structure: Narrowing, Widening, Polarizing" (PDF), Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin argue that growing inequality in United States is mostly due to skill-differentials but isn't due to the dread skill-biased technological change. Rather, "the growth of the supply of skills slowed considerably after 1980 and the wage structure, in consequence, widened. The slowdown in the relative supply of skills of the working population came about largely from the slowdown in the growth in the educational attainment of U.S. natives for cohorts born since around 1950."
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Hot New Inequality Research
07 Sep 2007 10:13 am
Comments (13)
But I don't see you here in the conference room. Has Brookings released tje paper drafts?
Uh, can one of the bright people around here parse that for me?
Sounds interesting. I'll have to read the paper. But offhand, I'm not sure you're paraphrasing makes sense to me. I would think the real problem is that there are people out there attaining a high level of education and that many more people should be able to reach but aren't for whatever reason.
As someone with a high level of education, I kind of like the privilege my relative uniqueness provides. But you have to imagine our economy would do a whole lot better with smarter workers.
As someone with a high level of education, I kind of like the privilege my relative uniqueness provides.
I don't mean to be a tool... but you can't have relative uniqueness. To be unique means to have a truly singular quality-- something that makes you literally one of a kind.
I don't know what level of education you possess, but I doubt you are the only person to have it.
This is incredible BS.
First of all, growing inequality in the US is largely linked to people who have $10 million and leverage that into $10 billion. Bill Gates came from a millionaire's family and he's now a billionaire. That didn't happen because he got better technical training.
Second, the biggest single cause of education being harder to get is the action by billionaires to attack public education, by funding thinktanks and propagandists.
Out-of-work Americans are not failing to get a better education because they want to sit around and watch tv. The real problems are pretty simple- they can't afford the education that is relevant to possible jobs, and in many areas that education is not available.
The paper referred to is not hot new inequality "research", it's the same old inequality propaganda.
IMO, the problem is not with the educational system, neither its cost nor its content. The problem is due mainly to the fact that bsuinesses do not wish to provide any training, but instead are always looking to hire employees who can do the job in all but the most trivial details right from day one. (And indeed, given the extreme diversity of job skills I don't think it's realistic to expect that people will graduate from college with the exact skills and experience they need for a specific job.) As to why firms do not train: they know full well that anyone they hire is unlikely to be with them long term. Either the employee will fall victim to downsizing at some point or, after several years of frustratingly low raises and benefit cuts, he will leave on his own for greener pastures elsewhere. So training is a waste: why spend money preping an employee for his next job with someone else? By contrast, in countries where lifetime employment is still a reality this is not a problem and employers are willing to invest money in the people they hire.
Freddie, yes you are technically correct. But my impression is that term has come to have a similar meaning as rare, which is what I imagine you knew I was talking about.
Freddie, yes you are technically correct. But my impression is that term has come to have a similar meaning as rare, which is what I imagine you knew I was talking about.
True enough. Like I said, sorry to be pedantic.
My sister informs me that it's "uniquity", BTW.
Thanks for finding that, this is an awesome study.
Freddie - what they seem to be saying is: as the gap between what high school graduates makes and what a college graduates make widens - more people should have decided to go to college. They don't seem to have done that.
I want to raise an unpopular issue here.
The natural way to respond to this (as already seen on some blogs) is to say this is the inevitable result of ever costlier college combined with ever less generous college aid.
I want to raise a different question, however, namely --- just how many people do we think we can raise to a college level of skill?
"the growth of the supply of skills slowed considerably after 1980"
Note --- the supply of skills did not DROP, it just stopped growing very fast. Is it not reasonable to assume that at some point, and a point the US has reached, pretty much everyone who should be in college (and a whole lot more I would wager in the US) are already in college, getting their degrees, working with their superior skill set?
I raise this point because I honestly believe that most of this talk about skill sets is severely misguided. If the honest reality is that 70%, or whatever it is, of the population simply aren't capable of earning a college degree, then pinning our hopes for a future equitable society on more education is a waste of time. As far as I know, even in the most socially progressive places on earth, this is the way things work out --- no more than about 350% of the population earn tertiary degrees.
[Note, this is not an argument about the state of primary and secondary education, nor about the extreme wealth flowing to some tiny segments of the population. Those are important issues, but fixing them will not solve this issue.]
The response of the left to this will, I imagine, be the usual head-in-the-sand unwillingness to accept my claim --- anecdotes about how various plucky individuals earned degrees under conditions of extreme hardship.
Good work guys; and when in thirty years the situation is even worse than it is now, you can pat yourselves on the back for a job well done, to be added to the fsckups created by your previous unwillingness to accept certain facts; Daniel Patrick Moynihan is exhibit A.
Thanks for finding that, this is an awesome study. Mr. Noah
After much arithmetic huffing and statistical puffing Katz and Goldin conclude that smarter people earn more money than dumber people -- always have and apparently, always will.
Awesome! Or were you being sarcastic, Mr. Noah?
Comments closed September 21, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
In other words, TV really does rot your mind. It's a good thing later cohorts don't have any skill-robbing habits.
Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 7, 2007 10:51 AM