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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.4737
EAN: 9780674028678
ISBN: 0674028678
Label: Belknap Press
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: June 30, 2008
Publisher: Belknap Press
Studio: Belknap Press

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:


This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century.



The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slow-down was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

(20081113)




Rating: - Misleading Research
This book's thesis is based upon overly simplified and therefore misleading educational and economic concepts and definitions. For instance, the authors' definition of "educational attainment", a critical measure supporting the authors' central argument, is simply the rate of growth in the number of years of schooling experienced by successive "cohorts" (people with the same birth years) throughout the past century. Declining "educational attainment" (which might be expected when a measure has ... Read More

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Rating: - Many unresolved issues
I found this book fascinating and would recommend it although I found it frustratingly flawed, and therefore, without the authors' further comments, will eventually have to reduce my 4 star rating. The book's core thesis is that the rate of technological change in the 20th century has been constant, while the supply of skilled workers has been uneven, leading to expanding and contracting wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers over the course of the century. The variation in supply ... Read More

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