Claudia Goldin

Lawrence F. Katz

Professor of Economics Claudia Goldin

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. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This boosted income for most people and lowered inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this educational slow-down and what might be done to ameliorate it.

The Race Between Education and Technology

Bryan Alexander

I reread this book as I taught it in my class this semester (Future of Education, Georgetown University). It remains a powerful and very useful text.

Goldin and Katz build a powerful model for understanding the shape of income and wealth inequality in the United States. To summarize their rich discussion far too briefly, if education can keep pace with new technologies, inequality can be kept in check; once education falls behind, inequality roars ahead. The former happened during the 1900-1960 period; the latter's happening now.

There's a lot more to it. The book begins, for example, by building up an economic model that sees investment in capital as complemented by investments in human capital (i.e., training and general education). In the telling, America took the lead in the latter by pushing ahead with greater requirements and support for secondary, then post-secondary education. Intriguingly, the authors offer the thought that this burst of schooling may have averted socialism's taking root in the US (87). 
 By mid-century other countries caught on to the idea, hence the global revolution in education that's happened since.

Golden and Katz also make the case for what they call "skill-biased technological change," the transformation wrought by new tech that requires new skills to work, and therefore new education.

I was also nerdishly delighted in the enthusiasm the authors brought to century-old census forms.

My students were interested in what the book had to recommend to us as we crawl through the 21st century. One conclusion was obvious: more education is needed! The trick is how to expand it, and what to teach. Many of my students were happy to see more tech training, which is understandable. But we ran up against the usual problems: how to reach the hardest-to-reach students (first generation college students, the poorest, the most marginalized), how to make college affordable beyond pushing student debt even higher.

Perhaps the best thing about The Race between Education and Technology is that is throws new light on such conversations, giving us a richer historical understanding of how we reached this point. Strongly recommended.

The Race Between Education and Technology

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