"Inequality and Skills"

Agree or disagree: "One of the leading reasons for rising U.S. income inequality over the past three decades is that technological change has affected workers with some skill sets differently than others."

According to a panel of the cream of the U.S. economics profession--Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley--81% either "Agree" or "Strongly Agree".

Comments

[Milton Recht]

Except that since the 1970s when inequality started to increase again after declining since 1920, the high school drop out rate reversed and started to increase for unknown reasons, particularly among males. The causation could be the other way. The higher HS drop out rate (and the consequential lower college enrollment rate), especially among males, led to the need for more technology. The underlining trend of lower male HS graduations and college enrollment continued during the 30 year period.

The adoption and investment in technology could be a response to and not a cause of the lack of needed skills.

One of the less PC reasons given is that the unintended effect of the Civil Rights laws and court interpretations was to find employer skill testing illegal and discriminatory. Since employers could not evaluate entry level employees through tests, the value of a HS education declined, especially for minorities.

[david foster]

Craig...I think you'd mentioned earlier that you were also going to have your grad student look at the part of the Griggs decision that rarely gets mentioned, the part that said it could *also* be discriminatory to require high school diplomas...wondering if any results on that yet?