Education and Income Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics, sci.econ Edward Flaherty wrote: Based on the 1996 CPS data, here is the wage distribution and the associated educational attainment of each group. Pct with Educational Attainment Avg. Wage ----------------------------------- Within Group HS diploma Bachelor's degree 1998$ or less or more ------------- ----------------------------------- Top 5% $46.46 7.7 78.9 Highest 20% 29.99 17.8 60.0 Fourth 20% 17.30 32.4 37.6 Third 20% 12.83 40.9 26.4 Second 20% 9.59 52.5 16.2 Bottom 20% 6.33 64.3 9.9 Gee, I don't suppose there's any link between educational achievement and wage? We all know wages and human capital are tied closely together. That link is strong and should remain that way. The key to reducing poverty substantially without the deleterious effects of massive welfare programs is increasing the human capital stock of the poor. In my view, what society owes the poor is a reasonably good K-12 education and a subsidy for qualified students who wish to pursue higher education. Beyond that, society is off the hook. To the extent some groups do not have access to those things, reform is needed. For those who do have access and choose not to employ it, they can talk to the hand when they start complaining about low wages. No one has a right to a high wage, just like no firm has a right to big profits. My advice to a person is very simple: *if* you value a high income, then get some human capital. If you don't that is okay, but don't complain about being in the bottom 40% of the income distribution. masonc@ix.netcom.com: Ed, could you add to your data the wages of the parents? There is a link *from* education *to* wages -- Ed's point. My question: Is there a link from parent's wages to child's education, hence wages? In other words are high wages "inheritable"? This is what triggers my pet sensitivity. A significant *some* of them have a right to complain. The biggest unemployment and low-wage complaint today is from the black population of the inner cities. There are too many documented examples of lousy schools -- separate and unequal like the *old* days. Individual responsibility is a good thing but the poverty, crumbling surroundings, and bad schools cannot entirely be blamed on the people. Society shares responsibility. They should complain. Also, and subject of another thread, are the migrant Latino (mostly Mexican) farm workers' children. It simply is not true that their life style is necessary. We can afford to pay much more for food but farm-owner free-style capitalism and the unlimited supply of cheap labor (Mexico) without unions keeps them down. They should complain. (incidentally, unionization is almost impossible) Mason oldnasty@mindspring.com (Grinch): No doubt there is a general correlation between the income of parents and academic attainment of children. But is also very clear from the data that the Number #1 influence on children's academic achievement is neither family income nor the quality of the schools that children attend. The top influence *by far* is parental behavior and attitude towards education. The famous Coleman studies of a generation ago concluded that these have substantially more effect (twice the effect, IIRC) than either economic status or the quality of schools, and plenty of studies since then have confirmed it. In NYC the top academic achievers in the public schools have always been the children of poor immigrants, who live in the poor neighborhoods and go to poor schools. In 1911 the graduation rate of immigrant Russian and German children was 50% higher than that of native born Americans. Those were kids from *really* poor families, where the parents usually didn't speak English. Today the city's selective public schools are far overweighted with children of Asian and Caribbean immigrants -- usually poor families too (rich people typically don't become immigrants). The ethnic group whose children very arguably have attained the highest academic achievement of any in the last generation is the Vietnamese boat people -- and no group has come through more hardship and poverty (and poor neighborhood schools) than they did. Studies of how they've done it show that even though the parents often don't speak English and work long hours in menial jobs, and even though families typically are very large (compounding poverty, and usually a negative indicator of academic performance) they clear the table every night for group lessons. 25% of their kids are in the top 10% nationwide, and 50% are in the top 25%. That's with a language handicap on top of poverty. At Ivy League schools over 90% of students are children of intact two-parent families -- biological parents, not divorced and remarried ones. That's a rather striking number in this day and age, as 50% of all children of college age have divorced parents. Studies of this phenonemon show that parental divorce by itself reduces the chance that a child will attend a selective college by 50% -- that's at all economic levels and adjusted for other factors, and it's a bigger effect than that of economic status. Poor kids from strong two-parent families -- like the immigrant families -- are more likely to get into selective schools than middle class children of divorce. Money makes all things easier, but it's clearly possible to choose to get a good education in spite of poverty -- although that choice in practice may be made by your parents for you. If your parents don't care, does "society" owe you some kind of compensating subsidy? Would that be subsidizing bad parenting sowe'll get more of it? If we care about poverty and education and the link between them, should we try to move to higher "societal" standards for parental behavior regarding children's welfare? Is that fundamentally an economic problem? I dunno. Whatever complaints one has about the urban, inner-city public schools, remember they do not reflect any failure of a market economy. Urban public schools are run through dual-monopoly organization, by the government and the unions. It is true that the arrangements these two settle on between themselves often do systematically shift money from poor areas to rich areas of the cities. For example, the schools unions in NYC have city-wide seniority transfer rights, so novice teachers (and other workers) are assigned to the worst high-poverty area schools, while veteran teachers wind up in the best rich-neighborhood and selective-entrance schools. At the same time, the same teacher-student ratio is maintained city-wide. Considering the gap in salaries between novice and senior teachers, you don't need a PhD in economics to see that this results in much more money being spent on instruction in rich neighborhood schools than poor neighborhood schools. Often rich neighborhood schools spend *double or more* on instruction than do poor neighborhood schools. This is within a single city school system that purports to have the same $/student spending ratio city-wide. These spending arrangements are fairly typical of major urban schools systems. At the same time, the dual monopoly also insulates its employees from accountability for performance. Logically enough, since the first duty of a union is to its members, not to anyone else (such as the poor). This past year 99.2% of all teachers and principals in the NYC public school system received "satisfactory" evaluations. (How many organizations can match that? Great job!) Also this year, reading tests show 67% of students are on course to finish high school (*if* they finish high school -- 40% won't) with only grammar-school-level reading skills. These are not symptoms of any market failure -- they are the systemic result of dual-monopoly organization, government and union. I do find it somewhat ironic that so often the same people who correctly decry these schools as "lousy" and "separate but unequal" then turn around and hold up those who provide such schools to the poor -- the goverment and the unions -- as being the only groups that can be counted on to look out for the poor in the face of unfair markets. Sadly, the way that these schools shift resources (and accountability for results) out of poor neighborhoods will hold down the bottom end of the income distribution for decades to come.