The Race between Education and Technology

Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-674-03530-0
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 496 Seiten, Format (B × H): 232 mm x 155 mm, Gewicht: 794 g

An incisive history of American education—its great success in creating prosperity and equality during the twentieth century and its relative decline since the 1970s.

“As Goldin and Katz have argued, the 20th century was the American century in large part because it was the human-capital century. Education—knowledge—can help people live better by allowing them to learn from past errors and make new discoveries.” —David Leonhardt, New York Times

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 slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goldin, Claudia

Katz, Lawrence F.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Management Wissensmanagement
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Geschichte der Pädagogik, Richtungen in der Pädagogik

Über Autor(innen)

Katz, Lawrence F.
Lawrence Katz is Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Goldin, Claudia
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University.