With 40 to 50% of women, and many more in Canada, now going on to tertiary education, claims such as recently by the OECD and IMF that there is problems of access to education as a driver of inequality seem even more doubtful.
Not only do women have to overcome the financing constraint on going onto higher education that so troubles the IMF and the OECD, women of today and yesterday must overcome the dead hand of patriarchy. They have the both the top 1% and all men scheming against them, apparently. Despite this double secret double conspiracy against them, the number of women going on to some form of tertiary education has increased rapidly within a generation from an already high base.
According to the OECD, it is all about the ability to lower middle class and working class families to finance the human capital investments of their children. The OECD theory of inequality and lower growth is there is a financing constraint because of inequality that reduces economic growth because of less human capital accumulation by lower income families.
There are a few common patterns in economic growth. All high-income countries have near-universal K-12 public education to build up human capital, along with encouragement of higher education. All high-income countries have economies where most jobs are interrelated with private and public capital investment, thus leading to higher productivity and wages. All high-income economies are relatively open to foreign trade.
In addition, high-growth economies are societies that are willing to allow and even encourage a reasonable amount of disruption to existing patterns of jobs, consumption, and ownership. After all, economic growth means change.
One of the findings of the Coleman report in the 1960s, which is been pretty much backed up since then such as by top labour economists such as James Heckman, is family background is the key to skills development in children, not the quality of their schools or their access to finance for higher education.
Schools work with what families present to them in terms of innate ability, and personality traits such as to pay attention and work. There is not much difference between an average bad public school and an average good public school when it comes to getting on in life. Going to really bad public school is different from just going to an average bad public school in terms of the chaos imposes on a child’s education and upbringing. What matters is the home environment rather than the ability to access good schools and families of ordinary means to finance higher education for their teenagers.
Most of the skill gaps that are present at the age of 18 – skill gaps which substantially explain gaps in adult earnings and employment in all groups – are also present at the age of five (Cunha and Heckman 2007). There is much evidence to show that disadvantaged children have lower levels of soft skills (non-cognitive skills): motivation, persistence, self-discipline, the ability to work with others, the ability to defer gratification and plan ahead, etc. (Heckman 2008). Most of the skills that are acquired at school build on these soft skills that are moulded and reinforced within the family.
In 2002, with Pedro Carneiro, James Heckman showed that lack of access to credit is not a major constraint on the ability of young Americans to attend college. Short-term factors such as the ability to borrow to fund higher education has been found to be seriously wanting as an explanation for who and who does not go on to higher education.
Only a small percentage of young people are in any way constrained from going on to higher education because of the lack of money. This is not surprising in any society with student loans freely available at low or zero rates without any need to post collateral. Heavily subsidised tuition fees and cheap student loans have been around for several generations.
The biggest problem with the OECD hypothesis linking a lack of skill development within lower income and working class families is it is such an easy problem to solve for the ambitious politician of either the left or the right by throwing money at the problem. Schooling until the age of 16 has been free for a century and universities have been virtually free for at least two generations. Lack of access to a good education does not cut it as the explanation for large disparities in growth rates.
The OECD and more recently the IMF have placed a lot of weight in access to human capital as a driver of inequality because human capital accumulation is hypothesised to be a major driver of economic growth.
The evidence that human capital is a key contributor to higher economic growth is weakening rather than strengthening. If human capital accumulation is not a major driver of productivity growth and productivity disparities, the inequality and growth hypothesis of the OECD and the IMF based on access to finance for human capital accumulation does not get out of the gate. Moreover, as Aghion said:
Economists and others have proposed many channels through which education may affect growth–not merely the private returns to individuals’ greater human capital but also a variety of externalities.
For highly developed countries, the most frequently discussed externality is education investments’ fostering technological innovation, thereby making capital and labour more productive, generating income growth. Despite the enormous interest in the relationship between education and growth, the evidence is fragile at best.
The trend rate of productivity growth did not accelerate over the 20th century despite a massive rise in investments in human capital and R&D because of the rising cost of discovering and adapting new technological knowledge. The number of both R&D workers and highly educated workers increased many-fold over the 20th century in New Zealand and other OECD member countries including the global industrial leaders such as the USA, Japan and major EU member states.
Cross-country differences in total factor productivity are due to differences in the technologies that are actually used by a country and the degree in the efficiency with which these technologies are used. Differences in total factor productivity, rather than differences in the amount of human capital or physical capital per worker explain the majority of cross-country differences in per capita real incomes (Lucas 1990; Caselli 2005; Prescott 1998; Hall and Jones 1999; Jones and Romer 2010).
Differences in the skills of the individual worker or in the total stock of human capital of all workers in a country cannot explain cross national differences in value added per worker at the industry level.
The USA competes with Japan for productivity leadership in many manufacturing industries.
The Japanese services sector productivity can be as little as a one-third of that of the USA.
Japanese labour productivity is almost twice Germany’s in producing automobiles and is better that Germany by a large margin for many other manufactured goods.
The USA is uniformly more productive in services sector labour productivity. For example, British, French and German telecom workers were 38 to 56 per cent as productive as their American counter-parts.
The USA, Japan, France, the UK and Germany all have relatively well-educated, experienced and tested labour forces. For example, the 1993 McKinsey’s study inquired into the education and skills levels of Japanese and German steel workers. Comparably skilled German steel workers were half as productive as their Japanese counterparts (Prescott and Parente 2000, 2005).
The ability to finance human capital accumulation and go to good schools is a weak theory of inequality. Human capital accumulation itself is a weak theory of growth unless linked to sophisticated theories of the institutions fostering innovation and technology absorption which it now is.
Whenever there is a crisis in the labour market, the standard policy response is send them on a course. That makes you look like you care and by the time they graduate the problem will probably fixed itself. Most problems do. I found this bureaucratic response to labour market crises to repeat itself over and over again while working in the bureaucracy.
The standard policy response to a normal problem in the labour market is send them on a course. Clever geeks as yourself sitting at your desk as a policy analysis or minister did well at university. You assume others will as well including those who have neither the ability or aptitude to succeed in education. Lowering university tuition fees and easing the terms of student loans simply means that those who do well at university will not have to pay back as much to the government. People who succeed at university already have above average IQs so they already had a good head start in life.
The standard solution to growing inequality is to send people on a course. Trouble is that just make smart people wealthier without helping the not so smart and increases the chance of smart men and women marrying off together. This increases the inequality between power couples and the rest.
Professor Marc Wilson is most upset by David Seymour’s suggestion that students who are under stress should harden up. Seymour was misquoted, but that is not so important for the purpose of today. What Wilson said in a rambling op-ed more about his gripes at student loans than student mental health was:
So, if David Seymour did advise students and, by extension anyone, experiencing the burdens of stress-related mental health issues to “harden up”, I think that’s reprehensible. There might have been a time when university was all about carousing the week long at taxpayers’ expense, and cramming at the end of the year, but that time has long gone.
One of the purposes of undergraduate study is to work out if you have chosen the right vocation. In the very beginning of the first year of medicine, new students are confronted with blood and dead bodies and all sorts of things that are not for the squeamish.
Another thing that is not for any prospective medical student is an inability to cope with stress. Doctors have lives in their hands and have to manage that calmly. New police officers are in the same position. They have to cope with a lot of death and misery. They need to learn quickly whether they can even hope to do so.
Doctors must cope with tremendous stress and still succeed. My father was a doctor. He was a changed man when he retired such was the burden of stress lifted from his shoulders. My brother and sister-in-law are also doctors as is a nephew. My late sister was a nurse. I have a nephew who is a police constable.
Some years ago I saw a program about the sports preferences of doctors. Those doctors that like extreme sports happened to work in emergency departments of hospitals. Those doctors who were somewhat overweight and rather disinterested in sport especially dangerous sports ended up as paediatricians.
I always remember an old flat mate of mine in Canberra whose father was a surgeon. He had no illusions about what was required of surgeons. They had to have tremendous arrogance and someone else to tell them what to do. If you are going to open up someone with a knife you must have tremendous self-confidence and ability to cope with stress. It is helpful if you actually know what you are doing as well but the key thing is a steady hand and cool head.
Many professions are high stress occupations. Anyone choosing to enter a high stress profession must find out soon whether they can cope with the demands of other people’s lives in their hands.
You do students no favours by sheltering him from the fact that they have chosen a higher stress occupation. If a medical student cannot cope with exam stress, you do worry about their ability to cope with someone’s life in their hands. That will be every day when they do their residency in emergency departments in their first year after leaving university. Better find out quickly. New lawyers work long hours too.
In my first year at university, I used to look at the first year medical students and worry that my life will be in some of their hands should I show up at a Tasmanian emergency room in about six years or so.
High Openness is strongly over-represented in creative, theoretical fields such as writing, the arts, and pure science, and under-represented in practical, detail-oriented fields such as business, police work, and manual labour. (Myers and McCaulley 1985, pp.246-8).
High Extraversion is over-represented in people-oriented fields like sales and business, and under-represented in fields like accounting and library work. (Myers and McCaulley 1985, pp.244-6). High Agreeableness is over-represented in “caring” fields like teaching, nursing, religion, and counselling, and under-represented in pure science, engineering, and law. (Briggs Myers and McCaulley 1985, pp.248-50). Individuals studying or working in fields atypical for their personality are also markedly more likely to drop out or switch occupations. (Briggs Myers and Myers 1993)…
Neuroticism indexes the propensity to experience negative emotions like anxiety, anger, and depression. Persons low in Neuroticism rarely experience such feelings, while persons high in Neuroticism experience them frequently. Neuroticism is also associated with hard-to-control cravings for food, drugs, and other forms of consumption with immediate benefits but long-run costs. (Costa and Widiger 1994; Costa and McCrae 1992)
Much of my diabetes management is about quite frankly hardening up. Do not give in to the temptation of sweet things. Moderate your diet; get some more exercise. It is about acquiring skills and inner strength you previously did not have but for the diagnosis of diabetes. I lost 18 kg as a result.
When I was a lad, the poor were thin. Indeed, I can remember the names of my two classmates from high school who were just a little bit chubby. I will not mention names.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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