Inequality and Education

How Education Drives Inequality Among the 99%, By Brenda Cronin, May 23, 2014, Wall Street Journal: “Recent hand-wringing about income inequality has focused on the gap between the top 1% and everyone else. A new paper argues that the more telling inequities exist among the 99%, primarily driven by education. ‘The single-minded focus on the top 1% can be counterproductive given that the changes to the other 99% have been more economically significant,’ says David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and author of the study. His paper, ‘Skills, Education and the Rise of Earnings Inequality Among the ‘Other 99 Percent’,’ comes as something of riposte to French economist Thomas Piketty, whose bestselling ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ has ignited sales and conversation around the world with its historical look at the fortunes of the top 1%. Mr. Autor estimates that since the early 1980s, the earnings gap between workers with a high school degree and those with a college education has become four times greater than the shift in income. . .”