A Good Read

Education Isn't the Key to a Good Income 

A growing body of research debunks the idea that school quality is the main determinant of economic mobility. 

Rothstein is quick to say that his new findings do not mean that Americans should do away with investments in school improvement, or even that education is unrelated to improving opportunity. Certainly the more that people can read, write, compute, think, and innovate, the better off society and liberal democracy would be. “It will still be good for us if we can figure out how to educate people more and better,” he says. “It might help the labor market, our civic society, our culture.” But Americans should be more clear, he says, about why they are investing in school improvement. His research suggests that doing so in order to boost a child’s chances to outearn their parents is unlikely to be successful. According to Rothstein, education systems just don’t go very far in explaining the differences between high- and low-opportunity areas.

According to Marshall Steinbaum, the research director at the Roosevelt Institute, economists have long believed that differing levels of skills and education (what the field refers to as “human capital”) is the most salient explanation for why individuals achieve such varied economic outcomes. “I think it’s becoming harder and harder to accept explanations like the so-called skills gap,” he says, referencing the popular idea that low-income people merely lack the necessary skills and training to thrive in the modern economy.

(TheAtlantic.com)