Income Inequality In Education

Throughout decades, education inequality is still one of the most deliberate and controversial issues in the United States. Thus far, the privilege or right to receive education has not attained the level of equality throughout the nation. Poor districts obtain less educational funds while rich districts obtain more, which create an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas. In other words, the education gap is the root of inequality in America. Inequality in education is linked to the major problems in the society. The need for studies to be done to find ways of overcoming these inequalities is very inevitable. The means of mitigating these inequalities are important for the entire world. This is something of great interest due to the fact that children need quality education which is a pillar for a guaranteed future. Generally speaking, the distinctions among races, genders, and classes in the society have caused the educational inequality in America.

Everywhere you look at the United States you can find economic stratification. From the kind of vehicle you drive, to the kind of house you live in, to the kind of restaurants you eat at the most you will find economic stratification. Some might ask, does any of that truly matter today? Yes, unfortunately, it does. An important goal for most people is what’s referred to as The American Dream. Whether it is to attend a good college, get a respectable job, purchase the perfect house, and have a small family or maybe just to start your own business; that dream starts with wealth. People with more money will have an easier time with achieving the dream than a lower income person would. With wealth comes power and prestige as well. People with more money have better life chances because they can afford better healthcare, education, healthier food, and safer neighborhoods just to name a few things.

The United States is a country based on equal opportunity; every citizen is to be given the same chance as another to succeed. This includes the government providing the opportunity of equal education to all children. All children are provided schools to attend. However, the quality of one school compared to another is undoubtedly unfair. Former teacher John Kozol, when being transferred to a new school, said, "The shock from going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest cannot be overstated (Kozol 2)." The education gap between higher and lower-income schools is obvious: therefore, the United States is making the effort to provide an equal education with questionable results.

Americans today live in a distinctly unequal society. Inequality is now wider than it used to be in the last century, and the division in income, wages, and wealth are broader than they are in other developed economies of the world. Wealth inequality is the imbalance of wealth or income within a society, and it is one of the most vital economic challenge the US is facing today because the distribution of wealth is more dispersed, making the inequality in wealth distribution at its highest. While the matter has been discussed for many years, the actual income disparity in the U.S. has heightened and is now verging on an extreme gap that portends to impede long-term economic growth. The huge gap between the wealthy and poor is squeezing the U.S. economy, the wealth gap threatens economic growth by diminishing social mobility and producing a less-educated workforce who are not able to compete in the global economy. unrestrained level of income inequality causes political pressures, it discourages trade, investment, and hiring. The present level of income inequality in the U.S. is shrinking GDP growth, and the world's largest economy is struggling to recover from the Great Recession.

The education system in the United States has expanded over the years to prepare individuals for the demanding labor market that constitutes our society. It has shifted from the development of mere intellectual scholars to the development of intellectual scholars competitive enough for a work force that now requires a degree for entrance. As this system of education has expanded throughout the country, so has the reproduction of inequality. To explain the manner in which this system has been structured to achieve a gap of inequity among society’s affluent and disadvantaged members, conflict theorist Karl Marx claims that, “School institutions are intentionally designed to integrate individuals into an unjust society” (Brand lecture, January

Today in America, income and wealth inequality has continued to grow at an unsettling pace. The rich continue to get richer, while the number of people categorized as lower class grows exponentially. As Joseph Stiglitz has explained, many theories that are seen as strongly Republican, such as the trickle-down effect, has caused the rich to take money from the poor, and as a result the lower class grows and the middle class disintegrates. The top 1 percent of America’s households currently holds 30 percent of America’s economy, which is much more than other first-world countries and helps to emphasize the extremity of inequality currently in America today. This increased inequality has in turn caused America to become a much more divided society; those born in poverty typically stay in poverty, with little to no chance of self-improvement due to a lack of education provided in their areas. In contrast, those that are born wealthy typically go to better schools, have better health care, and are all but spoon fed information on how to remain wealthy. These two sides of society almost never cross, and this causes the country to be more divided than ever. In order to limit this inequality, drastic changes must be made, such as large corporations paying their fair share of taxes and giving back to the lower class, and minimum wage should be raised. If everyone in America works together, we can raise social mobility and re-unite what has become an increasingly divided country.

This first lecture gave us a close look into the unequal share of wealth and the factors that determine the wealth of individuals in the American society. One of the first factors that affect immensely the inequality in America is the obsessiveness of wanting to classify people and make them mark a box for their gender, race and class. Where men and whites have more privileges than any other person and are not only paid higher, but would most likely spend less time in prison for committing the same crime as an African American. The United states is so unequal that the top 1% of the population has 38.1% of the wealth and the bottom 40% which is a little less than half of the people living in America only have 0.2% of the wealth. And as if that statistic alone was not scary enough, we learn in this

Income inequality has been a progressively growing issue in the United States, even today. The problem dates back all the way to the Great Depression, although some researchers tend to think that it is older than that. The difference between the wealth of higher-income families and lower-income families has become a great issue. Many people, including our government, think that they know how they can fix it. They have tried time and time again to come up with solutions, yet we are still facing the same obstacle that we were almost one hundred years ago. The effects that this dilemma is setting forth for our United States’ economy, environment, and even our education is repulsing.

The United States of Inequality is an article that delves into the harsh realities we face in our country today, with regards to income inequality. Income inequality in the United States is at a rise. And the sobering factor is that so little is being done to address this issue. According to a new study by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute, forces of rising inequality are operating at an all-time high throughout the United States. The study, “which measures income inequality by state, metro area and county, shows that inequality has risen in every state since the 1970s.” It also shows that rising inequality is deep-rooted.  “Recessions in recent decades have temporarily slowed income growth among the top 1 percent, but they have not altered the basic pattern in which the rich have gotten much richer while nearly everyone else has seen income stagnate or decline (Tritch, "The United States of Inequality", 2016).” In all, the top 1 percent in the United States captured 85.1 percent of total income growth from 2009 to 2013. In 2013, the 1.6 million families in the top 1 percent made 25.3 times as much on average as the 161 million families in the bottom 99 percent.

Since the beginning of human history there has always been a power structure; who is to be on top and who is to be in the bottom. So, it comes to no surprise that America has a growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else. The United States is known as a melting pot and a country full of opportunities for all but it is also the place where upper class makes millions in an hour and the lower class only makes minimum wage. United States thrives on promoting everyone is created and treated equally but that happens not to be the case. Polls after polls shows a huge percentage of Americans biggest concern is the income inequality, the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer, that it’s not being tribute equally among race and gender. Wealth and income inequality has grown since 1920s like never before and the question lays what is the cause and how can it be fixed.

Income Inequality is a tough policy issue to tackle and relate to the texts the class has been assigned to read. This particular policy issue is rather difficult to give insight on because income inequality is widespread and immense, yet most of Washington and mainstream America will not address this critical matter in question that is happening all over the country. Beliefs are blinding the majority of America when it comes to how money is distributed throughout the social classes and minorities in this nation. Americans have a distorted view of how unequal the pay gap is between the top 20% and the bottom 40%, according to Nicholas Fitz (2015). For instance, in the first study done by Michael Dorton and Dan Ariely, 5,000 Americans guessed that the richest 20% own 59% of the wealth and the bottom 40% own 9% of the wealth (Fitz. 2015). Consequently, the actual statistics are that the top 20% own more than 84% of the wealth, whereas the bottom 40% own a scarce amount of the wealth of 0.3% (Fitz.2015). Elitist view of power, also, is another term that relates to this issue of income inequality due to how government in this country, with regards to how only a few people with power actually know economically, what is happening in America, leaving the majority of American citizens in the dark about how money flows and how discrimination of minorities is hindering their ability to earn livable wages (Fitz.2015). The Federal Poverty Level which is based on the amount of income

Educational inequality is the difference in the learning results, or efficacy, experienced by students coming from different groups. Access and opportunity for education was not a right equally given to all people in our country. From the beginning of our nation access to public education was reserved for whites only and was forbidden for enslaved and free blacks. After Emancipation, when some public and private schooling was made available to African Americans, black children were segregated into under-resourced schools. Due to circumstances that kept most African American families in abject poverty, the masses of black children encountered structural barriers that prevented them from gaining a complete formal education.

The increase in earnings premium for education has affected the net growth of earning inequality in many developed economies over the last few decades. From 1980 to 2005, the variation of average income from college education and its education premium explains about 65% of income diffusion in the US.

J.D Gregorio and J. Lee published “Education and Income Inequality: New Evidence from Cross-Country Data” in the early 2000s (Gregorio & Lee, 2002). This paper looks at empirical evidence on how educational factors, like higher educational attainment and equal distribution of education, play a significant role in income distribution. The authors Gregorio and Lee state that many other literature pieces emphasize education as one of the major factors affecting the degree of income inequality (Gregorio & Lee, 2002). Gregorio and Lee hypothesize that educational attainment level is important in making income distribution more equal (Gregorio and Lee, 2002). Similarly, the authors Jorn Rattsø and Hildegunn Stokke published “Regional Convergence of Income and Education: Investigation of Distribution Dynamics” (Rattsø & Stokke, 2014). This study looks to challenge the suggested relationship between income inequality and education. This was done with data from Norway in comparison to recent United States studies. Education levels are equalised across the two counties used in the dataset. The authors Rattsø and Stokke hypothesize that there is a relationship between the convergence of income distribution and educational level of attainment (Rattsø & Stokke, 2012).

students who demonstrate a capacity for learning. It is assumed that a student who has developed a learning skill will easily acquire different tasks in the vocational field by this the student will have a better remuneration and the chance of being promoted will be better than those who don’t have such learning skills (Sakura et al, 2009, p. 408). This benefit per say is ambiguous and creates doubts and questions. One of the questions would be if the student has the capacity of learning why he/she has to be channeled to the vocational school?