Income Inequality In Education

Income inequality in the United States is directly correlated with education decline over the past 40 years. People with lower incomes tend to have less opportunities for a good education than those with higher incomes. American education, when compared to other nations, has dropped dramatically due largely to a rise in income inequality since the 1970s. Not only has economic inequality lead to academic decline and disparity, but academic disparity has also tended to lead to further economic inequality. Because of this, improving the American education system can effectively decrease the income gap. If done correctly, the usage of an alternative school model, specifically the private school model, rather than the usual public school model can reduce economic inequality.

With the growth of income inequality since the 1970s, there has been a growth in education inequality. According to Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane in Growing income inequality threatens American education, before the 1970s American families with low incomes generally had opportunities to work their way to success. However, “computer-driven technological changes favoring highly educated workers… have produced sharply growing income gaps among families”. Education decline has “accompanied the

growth in income inequality” (8). Children in families with greater incomes are able to buy more learning resources, attend better schools, and attain better childcare than those in poorer families. With that information, it is no wonder why increasing income inequality has accompanied an increase in education inequality.
In The Hierarchy: Income Inequality in the United States, Jared Bernstein says that in 1979, “the top 5 percent on average had 11 times the average income of the bottom 20 percent”, but in 2000, “you find that the ratio increased to 19 times” (16). He goes on to explain that minorities in America are generally on the lower end of income disparity. In addition to income differences, minorities suffer more greatly in other areas, namely education, than majorities. Bernstein shows that, “majority populations have better access to higher quality education than minority populations” (16). Furthermore, because people, “with less education tend to have less income”, there is, “definitely a correlation between inequality and education” (17). People, especially minorities, with less income tend to have less access to good education, which leads to further income inequality.
How can this income disparity be fixed, though?

One way, as suggested by Buly Cardak in Ability, Education, and Income Inequality, to decrease income inequality is to switch from the public school model to the private school model of education. Cardak finds, through comparison, that, “private education results in higher incomes and less income inequality than observed in the public education model” (239). While, “Public education equalizes opportunities and may reduce inefficiency” (240), Cardak found that income increased and income inequality decreased with private education (267). A possible remedy for a large portion of the income disparity is further usage of private education rather than public

education.