The Race Between Education and Technology
Claudia Goldin. Lawrence F. Katz.
A survey of American education from a unique economic lens, The Race Between Education and Technology is a superb piece of economic and historical scholarship, rendered in accessible prose.
Employing the economist’s usual statistical tools, Goldin and Katz trace the role of education in creating America’s pre-eminent place in the world, starting in the 19th century, and, with data in hand, examine how growing educational attainment led to both a growing of individual income and a narrowing of income distribution between the top and bottom income earners in the 20th century. Goldin and Katz note that the stalling of our educational system in the 1980s resulted in a regression which many economists regard as one of America’s top problems: A shrinking portion of the population is taking a rapidly increasing share of the available income, while most Americans and their children face even less potential economic success than their parents did.
A book of observation and opinion that is backed up by extensive statistical analysis of data, The Race Between Education and Technology is a call to action: to re-assert our historic education features and give greater educational access to those at the middle and bottom of our economic system.
