The Inequality Cycle
Achievement gaps in the US education system are an important cause of economic inequality, which is especially unfortunate when you consider that economic inequality is also a leading cause of achievement gaps in the US education system. Chad Alderman writes about the latest TIMSS results:
Despite this progress, the biggest difference in the scores of US students is not between countries, but rather remains within our own. In fourth grade math, the effect size of US students attending high-income versus low-income schools is 1.4 times as large as the difference between US students and the highest performing country. In science, the effect size by income is three times what it is between the US and the leading nation. Income gaps continue to persist at levels higher than all others, and that should be the real story out of these results.
In Finland, by contrast, they’ve happily gotten themselves onto the good equilibrium. Relatively low levels of background inequality and poverty make it relatively easy to deliver fairly egalitarian educational outcomes. Add to that a determination to target in-need students with a degree of extra resources, and this becomes even more the case. And those relatively egalitarian educational outcomes help maintain a relatively egalitarian distribution of wealth and income. Lather, rinse, and repeat. The United States, by contrast, is becoming more-and-more of a class-bound society in which parental SES dominates other factors in determining economic opportunities, helping to reinscribe patterns of inequality over and over again.
49 Responses to “The Inequality Cycle”
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December 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
“The United States, by contrast, is becoming MORE-AND-MORE OF A CLASS-BOUND SOCIETY (emphasis mine) in which parental SES dominates other factors in determining economic opportunities, helping to reinscribe patterns of inequality over and over again.”
History? Anyone? History?
December 12th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Let’s not overstate the differences between the US and Western Europe (I don’t much about Finland) when it comes to inequality. Both are very similar when it comes to inherited wealth and income, or at least they were before the last 8 years.
The US are not the model of meritocracy they claim to be, but they are not particularly aristocratic either (although, again, the last 8 years might have changed that too).
December 12th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
SES of students is the most consistent predictor of students performance on standardized tests. Of the top ten predictors, schools’ impact starts about fourth, don’t have the study in front of me. In Europe, many of the poverty predictors are less of an impact because of the socialism. Again, I don’t have the study in front of me but I would hazard to guess that the suburban and exurban American students perform at similar rates as to Europeans with the inner city outlier, if you will, bring down the curve. The real question in Education will be, how do we get the inner city students to learn?
December 12th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Again, I don’t have the study in front of me but I would hazard to guess that the suburban and exurban American students perform at similar rates as to Europeans with the inner city outlier, if you will, bring down the curve.
Europe has its share of “inner city”-type students, so that doesn’t explain much when it comes to general inequality.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
this is consistent with studies conducted over the last couple of years that upward mobility is greater in europe right now than america. this is unfortunate since upward mobility was precisely what was considered to be the superiority of american society over old, rigid europe.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
A Dalton School and Harvard Alumni says that those following behind him should give up their advantages and be happy with the public schools.
What a hypocrite.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“The United States, by contrast, is becoming more-and-more of a class-bound society ”
That’s the goal of capitalism. Blame that criminal who died without being brought to justice: Milton RETARDED Friedman.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
# superdestroyer Says:
December 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
A Dalton School and Harvard Alumni says that those following behind him should give up their advantages and be happy with the public schools.
What a hypocrite.
Rich people may only behave in a manner that involves them seeking to step on the necks of everyone not born into high society and must seek at all times to enhance all of the benefits already accrued to the most fortunate amongst us.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
“economic inequality is also a leading cause of achievement gaps in the US education system”
Really? Because then you’d expect the kids of black professionals to do better on the SAT than the kids of white auto mechanics – yet they do not.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
This is huge. I used to teach science and math at a low income high school in Chicago. It was an endless source of frustration for me that I had kids that were every bit as bright and capable as I was at their age, but I felt like I just didn’t have the facilities to help them succeed.
Combine that with the high stress involved with teaching in that kind of environment and it was hard work. It was a good experience, but I don’t see how people do it for more than a few years. I only lasted two.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
“kids that were every bit as bright and capable as I was at their age”
It’s possible. Standardized test scores of educational majors are, on average, a full standard deviation below those of other college graduates.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
“Really? Because then you’d expect the kids of black professionals to do better on the SAT than the kids of white auto mechanics – yet they do not”
SES=Socio-Economic (more complex than how much money the parents make) Though I will admit to getting beyond my depth past this concerning the causes of the disparity in class.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Sorry, gcochran. I’m not an ed major.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
If the teaching industry attracts dumbasses that we like to sneer at, what can we do to improve the quality of teachers? Do you guys think that lowering pay and benefits might help?
December 12th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Re: The United States, by contrast, is becoming more-and-more of a class-bound society in which parental SES dominates other factors in determining economic opportunities, helping to reinscribe patterns of inequality over and over again.
Mr. Yglesias,
Don’t be dumb. When in history has the U.S. NOT been a class-bound society? America was FOUNDED as a slave society, you can’t get much more class-bound than that.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Scandinavia never had land enclosure and hence is more egalitarian than the UK and Ireland, where the peasantry was degraded and immiserated.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Actually the great education problem is a small part of the problem. Rather, are society has scrubbed away all jobs that would be decent for unskilled workers on the one hand, and has protected and rewarded “skilled” and “deserving” workers ever so more. This is actually what determines inequality and SES rates
The great education myth – as panacea to all that ails America’s working, middle and lower classes – is essentially the case.
Here is a good article debunking the yglesias-education-complex:
“Schools as Scapegoats,” American Prospect:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=schools_as_scapegoats
December 12th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Less education for bankers, perhaps.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
So, all America needs according to Matt to achieve Finland’s level of equality, is Finland’s 99% white population.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Steve Sailer (19) writes:
So, all America needs according to Matt to achieve Finland’s level of equality, is Finland’s 99% white population.
OH, don’t be an ass (I know that’s not easy in your case). But MY for all his faults didn’t say anything like that. You know that, at least you would if you are half as intelligent as you indicate you are.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Finland like the other Scandinavian countries has a small population that is ethnically and culturally uniform and where wealth distribution is quite even. The latter because they never really had much wealth.
Under those circumstances the politics of resentment, which is the life blood of politicians the world over, just never really gets a good grip. Currently it is getting some traction in regard to immigrants. Without political power flowing from resentment, and stoking it in a vicious circle, it’s understandable that more communal policies and institutions thrive.
There is no applicable message for America in all this. The facts are interesting, and that’s it. The non whitening of America guarantees stupendous political srife going forward.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I;m surprised Steve Sailer didnlt ask this, but it is a valid question:
Do these stats on American college attendance include our immigrant population? We are importing an awful lot of low-schooled 20-somethings these days. I suspect that if you filter that population out, the numbers will look a bit better.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
“where wealth distribution is quite even.. . because they never really had much wealth.”
They never had “much wealth” because the powerful never grabbed and enclosed the land as they did in the UK and Ireland from 15-something to about 1830, forcing the majority of the population to become paupers (and or emigrate to America & Australia). It is because of this that they have a tradition of sharing, rather than of letting the poor starve and not because of racial diversity. Don’t forget that before WW2 (and the New Deal) Southern whites scored lower on IQ tests than Northern blacks.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Excellent point. The striking fact about the USA from earlier versions of the study was the extraordinary variance of scores.
Click this link for the gruesome details.
Oddly your wide ranging blog has hit upon one of the very few topics on which I am expert. I have discussed the issue with the heads of the US TIMSS team. They described the experience of discussing their results in Miami. This was not fun, although Miami schools did rank above South African Schools. I would have been irritated discussing them at the self proclaimed “Worlds best School district” which is near Chicago (North Shore or somethind) probably still bragging about TIMSS (plus high school teachers there get paid more than college professors here in Italy).
By the way, the acronym TIMSS originally stood for “Third International Math and Science Study” but the acronym took over so they had to decide it stood for “Trends In International Math and Science Study”. Otherwise you would be blogging about FIMSS (notice I don’t have to reveal my ignorance as to whether it is the fourth or fifth except I just did).
Seriously though, it is very clear that to fight inequality in the USA the Obama administration has to equalize at least budgetary differences with federal money. Calling it a measure to improve average performance is the way to sneak it past Southern reactionaries (whose constituents will benefit). Actually, they are showing some rationally egoistic regionalism in standing up for Toyota vs GM, so they *might* accept the cash.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I have an intuition that social stability is highest at the extremes of income equality and inequality. I.e., a highly egalitarian society is fairly stable, and a highly unequal society (ideally with the majority living at or below the subsistence level, with a tiny minority controlling almost all wealth) is also fairly stable, but social instability increases in the middle.
I wonder — where is the U.S. on that curve? Would increasing inequality lead to a more or less stable society at this point?
Then again, it could just be that my initial intuition is bullshit in the first place.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
What’s the educational effect of them all being drunk all the time?
December 12th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Americans are plenty smart, not counting spics and niggers.
December 12th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
“Even at the best and fullest, the idea of social responsibility which grew up in the South remained always a narrow and purely personal one. . . . The Virginians themselves … never got beyond that brutal individualism — and for all the Jeffersonian glorification of the idea, it was brutal as it worked out in the plantation world — which was the heritage of the frontier; that individualism which, while willing enough to ameliorate the specific instance, relentlessly laid down as its basic social postulate the doctrine that every man was completely and wholly responsible for himself. … The individual outlook . . . the whole paternalistic pattern, in fact, the complete otherworldliness of religious feeling . . . all this, combining with their natural unrealism of temperament, bred in [white Southerners] a thoroughgoing satisfaction, the most complete blindness to the true facts of their world. . . Hardly any Southerner of the master class every even slightly apprehended that the general shiftlessness and degradation of the masses was a social product. Hardly one, in truth, ever concerned himself about the systematic raising of the economic and social level of these masses. And if occasional men [would sponsor a school here and there, the same men] . . . would take the lead in indignantly rejecting the Yankee idea of universal free schools maintained at the public charge . . .” W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1941).
December 13th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Re: I have an intuition that social stability is highest at the extremes of income equality and inequality
Why would a grossly unequal society (especially if large numbers of people were in desperate poverty) be stable? Looking around the world it seems like countries fitting that bill– Haiti, Somalia, etc.– are decidedly unstable. Ditto for historical examples lik the late Roman Republic, late 18th century France etc.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
JonF,
Well, some would argue that the late Roman Republic was unstable because they didn’t have well-defined principle of hereditary succession or kingship- i.e. that they suffered because they were not unequal _enough_. Not saying I would agree with that, of course, but no doubt some medieval Christian political philosophers would have argued that; indeed, I’m pretty sure they did point to Rome as an example of why even limited republicanism was inherently unstable.
I think history does teach us that tyranny and slavery can sometimes be rather “stable” systems, particularly if the slaves are so miserable and starved that they can’t even muster the energy to think and reflect on their plight. I can’t really explain Somalia, but I would think that full-blown social revolution or civil war (as distinguished from occasional skirmishes) is much more likely in a place like, say, Peru rather than in a much poorer country like Mali. Some would also argue that no highly unequal country can be stable _today_ becuase of the spread of nationalist, socialist and democratic ideologies around the world, but that that wasn’t true over most of human history.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Cleve Clailer: Americans are plenty smart, not counting [Latinos] and [African-Americans].
What a racist thing to say! I am certain that someone commenting on this blog has statistics that shpow that blacks and Hispanics actually perform on average equally to whites and Asians and that our lower educational performance compared to European countries is actually distributed evenly throughout our population.
For some reason no one is willing to post this data, which certainly must exist. Please, please, whoever has this data post it and end the racism once and for all.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:54 am
I too, am a Nice Polite Racist.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:58 am
The middle ages was really stable. Not.
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