
Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015) - apsec112
http://www.demos.org/blog/12/2/15/why-education-does-not-fix-poverty
======
Chinjut
Well, yeah. Education increases individual income primarily through
competitive advantage in the job market, right? But, also, the function of
education in the job market is largely just as a certification arms race,
right? Just a ritual we go through to compete for jobs that don’t actually
make any use of or require our advanced educations, in most cases. So
educating us all doesn’t produce many benefits, because the benefits (so far
as the job market was concerned) were largely relative rather than absolute to
begin with.

(In case it matters, I’ve felt this same way as a student, as a teacher, and
as a member of industry. From every side, it has seemed to me that an awful
lot of time, money, and effort is spent on a process that is not actually
valued in any direct, substantial way, for the most part, but rather is used
only as some competitive signaling filter.)

~~~
Chinjut
(And, yes: education can of course grant skills which are genuinely required
for certain jobs. This being Hacker News, I suppose we'll hear that everyone
should learn to code. I'm all for everyone getting to do whatever they wish to
do, and if that wish is learning to code, so be it. But I suspect, if everyone
did suddenly learn to code, we'd find that coding would, with corresponding
suddenness, cease to be a ticket out of poverty...)

~~~
LordKano
I hate the idea that some people seem to hold that teaching everyone to code
will fix the world's problems. It won't.

People who want to code, should learn to code. Some people should learn to
weld. Some people should learn to drive a commercial truck. Some people should
learn to cook. Some people should learn to landscape. Some people should learn
to fix automobiles and son on and so forth.

We have a society that needs people with many diverse skills. We should be
investing more in tech or trade schools than we are in colleges and
universities.

People need a way to gain the skills they will need to earn a living but
sending everyone to college is a universally bad idea. It'll turn the
Bachelor's degree into the new High School Diploma.

~~~
jhbadger
I'm old enough that I was taught BASIC in middle-school circa 1981. Back then,
it was taken for granted that "computer literacy" involved teaching people to
code.

Am I a "professional programmer" today? Well, I do program as part of my job,
but I'm technically a microbiologist/immunologist. Analyzing data by writing
code is a lot more efficient and repeatable than the fiddling with
spreadsheets that non-coders do.

~~~
LordKano
I was taught basic in middle-school in 1983. At my school, this was only done
for children in the Gifted Program.

I am an IT Professional. I have worked as a developer and two years ago, I
made the leap to security analyst. My programming skills come into play
because some of the security packages I have used require the ability to write
regexes.

------
humanrebar
Family structure is actually huge when talking about poverty.

First, poverty statistics comparing 1950 to today are more complex than they
appear since the marriage rate has dropped a lot. There are more single-income
households, so the average household income looks different though income
might not have changed all that much.

Second there is a very strong correlation between marriage rates in
neighborhoods and poverty levels in the same neighborhoods. Likewise, there is
a very strong correlation between marriages in households with children and
poverty rates in those households. Very few households with two working
partners live in poverty.

It's... complicated to discuss family structure when talking about poverty and
child welfare, but it's possible (I would argue likely) that family structure
is a key contributor here. In my opinion it's rather foolish not to at least
bring it up and consider it.

~~~
kdamken
I would agree that family structure plays a huge part. Kids are expensive and
take a lot of energy. As much as we as a society celebrate single moms, it's a
tough gig to work full time and raise your kids alone. I don't think anyone
would say it's the ideal family situation.

One reason the marriage rate may be is dropping is that it's become fairly
disincentivized for men. A lot of younger men (25-35) I know voice concerns
like the ones listed in this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXQf2f2Yxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXQf2f2Yxo)

Perhaps if they were to make marriage and custody laws more fair it would help
the rates increase.

~~~
randomdata
_> One reason the marriage rate may be is dropping is that it's become fairly
disincentivized for men._

The business relationship is rather pointless, for both sexes, these days.

Marriage once existed so that, traditionally, the woman would stay at home to
care for the household and children allowing the man to focus on his career.
The idea being that the man would do better with help than he could all on his
own, thus the woman sharing in the proceeds she helped create. This is why
divorce defaults to splitting assets 50/50.

Now that men and women are much more apt to work independently – each working
both in and out of the home – there is little need to solidify a legal
partnership to protect the partner not collecting the income.

~~~
arcanus
I largely agree.

> Now that men and women are much more apt to work independently – each
> working both in and out of the home – there is little need to solidify a
> legal partnership to protect the partner not collecting the income.

This is often why (anecdotally speaking) I've seen many engagements occur when
someone has an opportunity (job,grad school, etc.) outside of the present city
they live in. One half of the couple is taking a professional risk (or even,
outright sacrifice) by moving to stay with that person.

------
studentrob
Wow, the author was just recently fired,

> On May 20, the progressive public policy organization, Demos, fired Matt
> Bruenig, a popular writer who covered poverty and inequality. [1]

Best of luck to him and hope he finds another position.

This article, though, is pseudoscience. It is just statistics slapped together
with a desired conclusion drawn at the end.

Measuring the causes and effects of societal issues over the span of 25 years
should be done by sociology PhDs, not political bloggers.

[1] [http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/25/bruenig-
firing-...](http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/25/bruenig-firing-
civility-tool-control-political-dissent)

~~~
randomdata
_> It is just statistics slapped together with a desired conclusion drawn at
the end._

Funnily enough, the same way we concluded that education does fix poverty in
the first place.

~~~
lintiness
we concluded education fixes poverty because it was politically obvious and
popular -- still is.

------
danjayh
One thing the author totally overlooked - when you have a large percentage of
the population that spends an extra 2-6+ years in education, that same large
percentage of the population spends 2-6+ less years producing things for
people to consume. If those same people aren't more productive as a result of
their education, this means that the net productivity of society is lower as a
result of the education, while the number of people in the society is the
same. End result is that the stuff:people ratio goes down, and poverty
naturally increases.

Education has an extremely high cost both in terms of lost productivity and
resources consumed to provide it. Misapplied education will throw additional
people into poverty, every time. Possibly directly, through onerous student
loans, or indirectly by consuming resources that could have been used to
produce basic goods for consumption.

------
pm90
This article compares two graphs and deduces some rather broad realities from
it, which are rather incorrect. It assumes that the state of the economy is
the same today as it was 25 years ago: obviously, this isn't true. The skill
sets in demand have changed drastically which must be accounted for.

That said, it does make the good point that it is rather easy to get misled by
statistics that say that college graduates have lower unemployment rates. Or
to assume that just by graduating high school/college guarantees a job,
automagically.

I will say this though: the exposure to different ideas and the broadening of
the mind that comes from a good education is rather priceless. Of course one
doesn't _have_ to go to college to get that. But it certainly seems like the
most straightforward and fun way to do so (if you manage not to get too
indebted etc.etc.).

~~~
apsec112
"I will say this though: the exposure to different ideas and the broadening of
the mind that comes from a good education is rather priceless."

I think this is what psychologists call a "taboo tradeoff". Education (and
life, health, freedom, etc.) is a sacred value, while money is a secular
value, so it's considered taboo to trade one off against the other.
([http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-of-
tabo...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-of-taboo-
tradeoff/))

Unfortunately, making these tradeoffs is necessary, because there are many
competing values and a limited supply of money. For example, you can show that
a hospital must either a) assign a consistent dollar value to human life, or
b) must be wasting resources, ie. it could be saving more lives with the money
it has. See eg. Peter Singer's essay at
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html).

~~~
tommyman
That seems a very long-winded way of saying that people have values that are
more important than financial gain.

I guess I'm interpreting wrong because that is obvious and there is nothing
taboo about it (cultures will be different re. taboos anyway).

~~~
jdietrich
Think about it in terms of opportunity cost. Money spent on one thing cannot
be spent on something else. Saying "this is always more important than
financial gain" in effect means "this is always more important than everything
else". That's clearly a form of taboo - you're rejecting outright the idea of
trade-offs between competing values.

------
Annatar
The analysis neglects one major point: a lot of people got degrees in the
humanities and arts: dual majors in English literature and history, or
sociology and psychology... what are you going to engineer with that?
Engineering requires physics, mathematics, molecular biology, chemistry,
material science, higher logic and cognitive capacity... English literature
won't help too much with finding a new tensile strength alloy, and sociology
can be only marginally used at best when trying to design a small form factor
pump which must reliably pump inordinate amounts of gas or fluid, or when
attempting to craft a VHDL or Verilog program to reprogram the FPGA, in order
to test a new chip design, or when studying protein folding while trying to
isolate the cause of cancer...

Just going to college and getting a degree in something like sociology or
English literature, because it's the easy way out, isn't enough to end
poverty; no wonder it does not work! Ironically, those very same history
majors did not learn from history: most humanities and arts majors (poets,
writers) were poor.

It has to be a university degree for the professions in demand, and the
graduate must be ambitious, pay attention to detail, and want to deliver high
quality work, not take shortcuts at every turn and opportunity "because math
is hard".

~~~
LionessLover
So if every "social science" major (and why not add business and law students)
instead studied engineering, they'd all find jobs? I'm not even asking about
well-paid jobs. Is there a shortage of engineers on the market _now_? Would
more engineers magically lead to more jobs (supply-side economics works so
well... oh no!)?

What's the difference between " _anyone_ can be rich" and " _everyone_ can be
rich"? Because this is similar. Yes, _anyone_ can better themselves through
more education in "the right field". What makes you think that "anyone" and
"everyone" is the same problem?

Have a look at science and the problem of Ph.D.s to find jobs in their fields
(chemistry, physics, biology - not "social science" Ph.D.s):
[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-
phd-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-
americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/) (also has a
Part #2 linked at the bottom)

~~~
Annatar
Of course not; hardcore, laissez faire capitalism like there is in the United
States would correct that, and the salaries would go down. However, as it
stands, there is an overabundance of humanities & arts majors, and way too
little engineers and scientists; meanwhile, the industry has been almost
completely off-shored over the last 60 years. The only thing left for those
people to do is work in the service industry, if they are lucky. But when too
many compete for a limited resource, selection kicks in, and overabundance
drops the wages. Education won't help with that, as we see, but it might help
with organizing oneself, or "going at it on one's own" and opening a business.

A good lesson to learn from that would be that hard core, laissez faire
capitalism is just as destructive as a totalitarian communist system. In order
for the population to be able to live comfortably, capitalism must be enhanced
with socialist safeguards and a system of checks and balances built in, like
Sweden, Austria, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland did it. Switzerland for
example has low taxes and respects private property, and especially protects
and fosters enterpreneurship, making it very corporate friendly, but it also
has a very strong welfare safety net. One would think that would make a lot of
Swiss draw on unemployment and disability, but Swiss work 42 hours per week
minimum (compare and contrast to France, where they work 35 to 37), and
unemployment in Switzerland is among the lowest in the world.

~~~
Chinjut
"According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities majors
account for about 12 percent of recent graduates, and art history majors are
so rare they’re lost in the noise. They account for less than 0.2 percent of
working adults with college degrees, a number that is probably about right for
recent graduates, too. Yet somehow art history has become the go-to example
for people bemoaning the state of higher education."

From [http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-06/postrel-
ho...](http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-06/postrel-how-art-
history-majors-power-the-u-s-). See also [https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/stem-
still-no-shortage-c6f6eed505...](https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/stem-still-no-
shortage-c6f6eed505c1).

(Yes, I get that you're not talking about art history majors, per se, but I
still think the sentiment is such that these are apt discussions to link to)

------
jgh
I don't really have the time, energy, or knowledge to create a fully cited
refutation of the author other than to say that this just _seems_ really
wrong.

It might not be technically wrong because the author seems to be citing facts
and I'm sure they're correct. But it seems wrong in the sense that they're
missing the forest for the trees. Between 1991 and 2014 a lot has changed,
particularly in the earning power of the generation being cited as being more
educated. This is probably has very little to do with their education, more
like it's kind of a macroeconomic ... situation ... they were born in to.

And this is for a country that already has the highest GDP in the world.

Maybe a better way to look at it would be to use people who were born into
poverty and see if the rates of escaping it have changed because of more
education....I don't know...this just feels like this author is picking a
weird fight with education.

~~~
Falkon1313
>Between 1991 and 2014 a lot has changed, particularly in the earning power of
the generation being cited as being more educated. This is probably has very
little to do with their education, more like it's kind of a macroeconomic ...
situation ... they were born in to.

I suspect that's the point. That the reasoning "people with degrees aren't
poor, so let's just give everyone a degree" wouldn't result in eliminating
poverty, it would result in a bunch of poor people with degrees.

~~~
jgh
sure, we all ride the ebb and flow of the economy, but if we were talking
about developing countries or even historically impoverished communities in
the US i suspect it would be harder to make the argument that education
doesn't help.

------
jcfrei
Just a side note: The OPM is adjusted for inflation (set at three times the
cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, updated annually for inflation using the
Consumer Price Index, see:
[http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq2.htm#official](http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq2.htm#official)).
So if wages and inflation always increase in sync then there would be no
reason for the number of people living in poverty to change (even if their
living standards are higher in absolute terms) - apart from changes in the
income distribution of the whole population. That being said, I did initially
expect changes in the distributions for poor people with respect to education
(more poverty among people with HS degrees than among people with uni
degrees). But now that I think about it, there's really no reason why the
number of available jobs which require a certain degree should change at all -
ie. more electrical engineers can only create more electronics companies (and
jobs) if the market has a demand for it or otherwise will just decrease the
respective median wage. It seems obvious to me now but I didn't think about it
like this before...

~~~
sten
If you view education as teaching people to learn, then you might have an
argument that education rates enable and empower people. If you're training
robots who don't think for themselves then you'll encounter the situation
you've just described.

~~~
randomdata
Empowerment carries a fairly high risk and if you are already in a poor
economic situation, you a very likely to not be able to tolerate it. Plenty of
people in good economic standing aren't willing to tolerate it. As such, most
people are going to end up choosing the far less risky path of being "robots"
anyway.

------
rayiner
It's worthwhile to consider where the point of diminishing returns is with
education. I'd argue that we are well past it. There is not really that much
work even in the modern economy that requires more than a 10th grade general
education. We know that because in countries like Germany it is quite common
for someone to exit the formal schooling system at 16 and still get a white
collar job.

~~~
onion2k
Isn't there a greater focus on apprentices and in-work training though? It's
not like people leave school at 16 and stop learning, surely?

~~~
snowwrestler
Yes; German workers in some industries are arguably more educated than their
American counterparts because of the training and continuing education
programs in their workplaces.

~~~
wwweston
Sounds like an undue burden on German businesses; how can we expect the
private sector to thrive when businesses might be bearing their own training
costs instead of shrugging them off to labor and a public education system?

------
coldtea
Because education just removes one obstacle -- there are many:

1) parental encouragement for development and time spent with the child
(depending on income too, e.g. single parent working deadly shifts),

2) family atmosphere (economic pressure leads to lots of things, depression,
violence, etc).

3) connections

4) security (if you start studying/working paycheck to paycheck, you might not
get to a point to be able to take more risk because you have no cushion money)

5) actual security (your neighborhood, city district, etc might not be the
most safe/encouraging/etc growing up).

6) lack of role models (close to you, not some people on the media)

------
stalcottsmith
No one seems to be asking what was done to education to produce the higher
graduation rates. Is it really true that everyone is now "smarter" or were
standards changed to achieve the desired outcome? What good is it to have a
college degree that is marginally superior to or in the case of some majors,
no better than a high school diploma of 25 or 40 years ago?

------
gizi
In technology, programming work is about looking up, composing, and debugging
code. I yet have to meet one person who learned it at school.

In the school environment, the emphasis is, has always been, and will always
be, to repeat things from memory.

If the IT teacher were good at looking up, composing, and debugging, and given
the kind of salaries you that get when you are good at that, he would not be
teaching. He would seek to multiply his income often ten times by actually
doing it, instead of teaching it.

In fact, you can only learn from people who are doing it themselves. Everybody
else does not really know how to do it.

Therefore, the teacher is only good at what will give you beautiful
credentials: repeating from memory. That is also what he will seek to
perpetuate with his own students.

Formal education does not only NOT fix poverty. Formal education actively
creates it. Instead of spending your formative years learning the skill that
will make you gain income, you learn to repeat from memory. There is not one
industry where this would be of value.

You need to be able to produce things of value, just to survive. It is
exceedingly dangerous to spend all your time on things that will never produce
any value at all.

------
SFJulie
Education made jobs more competitive.

It was a social lift taking people up. On the other hand, by making workers
more productive it reinforced the competitive advantage of being born wealthy.

Too harsh competitions creates cheating.

And there is no lift taking wealthy/high positioned people down when they are
incompetent, especially when governments gives free money to the stock
exchange (QE).

Well, we are heading full speed to Victorian era and hard social conflict,
because educated poor will eventually understand the game is rigged.

~~~
zeemonkee3
We could only wish to be as socially mobile as the Victorians

[http://ereh.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/1/1.abstract](http://ereh.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/1/1.abstract)

EDIT: from the paper, it appears that mass education in England toward the end
of the Victorian era only made a short-lived dent in social mobility,
presumably because any temporary advantage in being more educated levelled out
after a generation.

In the UK up to the 1960s-1980s, working class people could get a leg up
through grammar schools and fully-funded higher education (tuition and modest
living costs subsidized by the government) - if you could prove you were smart
and hard-working enough, you had a chance to rise up. This ladder was
successfully kicked away by comprehensive education and mass higher education
(with introduction of student loans rather than free grants). The politicians
who introduced these measures of course ensured their own children were
privately educated.

~~~
SFJulie
So funny, it reminds me of my banana republic called France: our public
teachers are on strike once a year to complain they don't have enough fund to
support their mission of "social lift" and republican equality, but they are
the first to shortcut and walkaround egalitarian measure to ensure a better
success to their kids and the wealthy one they put in "special classes"...

Sometimes, I lose trust in what people pretend to do when I look at what they
actually do.

Nowadays France (and some European countries) over invest in higher education
that only increase segregation funded by the public taxes, while finland
radical focus on early years and well being of kids have proven way more
cheaper and efficient.

I so wish our elite PhD in ministers could read scientific papers, figures,
and be fucking curious, but well, it would mean more competition for their own
kids. Wouldn't it?

------
frign
So can one assess this is a racial problem after all?

For years, liberals tell us the high poverty of negroes and hispanics was due
to lack of education. If it's not education, what is it then? And why are
Asian-Americans not facing the same issues?

I suspect it's a racial identity issue. The best way to understand this point
is looking at the mainstream media and how the different races are portraied.
Only an idiot would ignore this influence on people, especially because the
USA are by far the biggest TV consumers.

If you start judging me for asking these questions or downvote me without
giving a reason, you should be ashamed of yourself. Reasons for downvoting are
welcome though, so keep them coming! :)

~~~
douche
Nobody wants to admit it, but in broad strokes, intelligence and success is
heritable.

[https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/my-r...](https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/my-
response-to-the-nytimes-article-on-school-districts-test-scores-and-income/)

------
Overtonwindow
I disagree with this article. Education can fix poverty, but only if that
education is responsible. Meaning: avoiding for-profit colleges and getting a
degree in something competitive. So much of college today is debt-loading with
classes students don't need, don't want, and shouldn't have to take. So long
as universities treat students as cash machines, instead of humans seeking
empowerment through education, we will continue a vicious cycle of high debt,
unmarketable degrees, and sustained poverty.

~~~
CWuestefeld
You're not addressing what seems to me to be the most significant part of the
OP's argument. Getting dropouts to get high school diploma's should be the
biggest win - and isn't related to college degree choice or business models.
Yet it looks to have been the biggest loser.

------
mac01021
The statistics would be a lot more informative if they broke out the educated
segments of the population by field or college major.

I don't think many in the 21st century would expect a bachelor's or associates
degree in english or history to provide many opportunities for additional
income.

~~~
apsec112
Forbes: "Six Reasons Why Your College Major Doesn't Matter"
([http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2015/08/12/six-
reaso...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2015/08/12/six-reasons-why-
your-college-major-doesnt-matter/#144427777977))

NY Times: "Does the College Major Matter? Not Really"
([http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/does-the-
colle...](http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/does-the-college-
major-matter-not-really/))

WSJ: "Your College Major Is a Minor Issue, Employers Say"
([http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/04/10/your-college-major-
is...](http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/04/10/your-college-major-is-a-minor-
issue-employers-say/))

~~~
redthrow
Major Premium:

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/major_premium.ht...](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/major_premium.html)

~~~
lotharbot
Interesting data.

Seems to me like there's a top tier of 3 highly technical majors (EE, CS, ME),
and then a big cluster of 9 pretty decent majors (10 of the 12 at this stage
might reasonably be called "STEM"). Communications is in the decent tier for
women but not men. And then there are a bunch of weaker majors.

The only thing that's even remotely surprising to me is that Chemistry isn't a
little higher.

~~~
redthrow
Yeah, I wonder why so many people keep repeating "study STEM" instead of
"study Engineering or Finance or Medicine", considering the fact that "S"
(Biology/Chemistry) and "M" (Math) seem to be pretty weak.

~~~
hrehhf
Are you sure you looked at the table? Chemistry and Mathematics are in the
upper half of the table, i.e. higher earnings.

~~~
redthrow
Right, Math being "pretty weak" was a bit of an overstatement.

I meant that for a major that's generally considered to be hard and lead to a
lucrative career (it's part of "STEM" after all), it's not that different from
Pol Sci or Business (and it does worse than Accounting or Economics, both of
which are non-STEM), which most people probably wouldn't expect.

~~~
lotharbot
I find it shocking that accounting and economics aren't considered STEM.
(Though at least some subsets of economics are on the official DHS list.)

I would expect (but do not have data to support) that those who do
accounting/econ who take a more math-oriented approach do better than those
who take a less math-oriented approach.

~~~
dagw
Anecdotally, all my friends who sprinkled a few economics and finance courses
onto their math degree, are doing much better than all my friends who
sprinkled a few math courses onto the economics degree.

------
stevetrewick
Author states that if you contemplate the two graphs you'll have an epiphany.
Quite right, it went "Wow, that is _not_ how you analyse data and I'm sure I
heard about an actual investigation with cited sources and actual math and
everything which came to pretty much the opposite conclusions". [0]

[0] [https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-
reports/valueofcollegemajors/](https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-
reports/valueofcollegemajors/)

~~~
_Robbie
The link you cited seems to be answering the question "Does more education for
an individual decrease poverty for that individual?", while the original post
is answering the question "Does more education for a society decrease poverty
for society as a whole?". These are two very different questions, and it is
quite possible that they have opposite answers.

------
tropo
You can classify degrees by the portion of students who end up doing something
directly requiring that degree. Suddenly, it becomes clear what is going on.

Your high school guidance councilor probably told you that the degree wouldn't
matter much, which is correct for somebody like him. For a large portion of
the population, a degree is purely signalling. It shows you are a more upper
class, more able to plan ahead, more willing to show up every day, and more
willing to put up with nonsense. People with these sorts of careers are
fighting to out-signal each other. If we made a bachelor's degree free, they'd
need a master's degree. (actually already happening, even w/o being free) If
the master's degree were standard, they'd need the doctorate. The skills
actually demanded require no such thing, and would've been beneath high school
80 years ago. It's an arms race, pure and simple. Individuals may benefit from
getting to the top, but it does our economy no good to encourage and support
this. Keeping people out of the workforce while diverting money toward funding
the arms race is harmful.

On the other hand, there are degrees for which most students end up in a
career that more-or-less requires the degree. Famously, it's the STEM stuff,
but this also applies to nursing. We know something from the fact that
students end up taking jobs which require their degree: these fields are not
purely an arms race. These fields can still take more people. These fields
have degrees that are of value beyond signaling. Our economy would benefit
from getting more people into these fields.

~~~
mjevans
While I agree that more people in the STEM fields would be a good thing, it's
with a caveat: those people should actually enjoy and do well in those fields.

I would like society to be a little more flexible about basic living so that
overall greed can be less of a problem and following your passion, dreams, and
doing new things can be explored options.

------
scalio
We are told we need knowledge about some things in order to make money and
subsequently not to starve. We are supposed to gain this knowledge in school
and maybe uni, and then head off to a grand career. I mostly agree with this
idea (not so much with its real life implementation).

I get where it's coming from, knowledge is what pushes us forward, after all:
mathematical knowledge allows us to play with abstract and complex systems,
physical knowledge is the application of some of these abstract systems to
physical observation, historical knowledge enables us to reason about our past
or our origin. Then there's a massive body of knowledge about human products:
literature, visual art and music spanning thousands of years, social and
economic systems lasting centuries, the list goes on.

Now that's nice and all, but knowledge needs to be applied to something to be
of any use. Which incidentally is the problem we are seeing currently:
knowledge is pumped into peoples' heads and is expected to magically produce
solutions, while we're not even in agreement over the problems (what are the
common goals we are aiming for, as a race?).

No wonder it doesn't work, knowledge needs physical and mental room to grow.
That makes a safe and comfortable environment a requirement for any supposedly
functional educational system, but also one that is often not satisfied. In
other words, the problem is not that education doesn't fix poverty, it's that
our shitty politics and social non-systems do not give people enough piece and
quiet to explore their knowledge.

 _Edit to add:_ It is much more convenient to blame a malfunction on the most
obviously failing part rather than recognising that the underlying machinery
is not providing the right environment for said part to operate in, wearing it
harder than necessary.

------
pritambarhate
In my observation Education isn't the main/only criteria for getting a job.
Skills get you a job. But education and good academics help you to qualify for
the interview. If in the interview you can prove that you have the skills to
perform the job, most likely you will get the job.

The problem is traditional education is focused on theoretical knowledge and
doesn't stress enough on practical skills. Unfortunately in India there are
many Computer Science engineering students who after 4 years for Computer
Science education, fail to write a simple Frequency Counter in a programming
language of their choice. This shows that something in the education system is
not right. The colleges are producing engineers by hundreds of thousands every
year, but the overall quality of education these guys have received is so poor
that most of them are not employable.

I know about computer science because I work in this field. However I think
more or less the situation is the same in other fields.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility)
!=
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)

------
jimhefferon
At high schools with high poverty populations (say, large free lunch numbers),
there has in the past twenty years been a big push to increase graduation
numbers.

Now, you can increase graduation rates in two ways (or a combination). Both
involve the students who used to flunk out. (1) You can have them learn more,
provide them with help so they don't need that job to eat, etc. (2) you can
make up ways for them to get high school credit for doing what they would have
done had they simply left.

All too often, what happens is (1). After all, people respond to rewards and
administrators are rewarded for higher grad numbers. But the net-knowledge is
not very much increased by (1).

------
anovikov
To me it sounds obvious, education improves your competitive position. If
everyone improves their competitive position, nobody does. It is the employers
who are better off, not people.

~~~
lotharbot
but people now live in a society which has been made better by more-educated
people who have produced better products more efficiently etc.

~~~
anovikov
But it will not decrease poverty. Rather, will likely increase for people who
will appear to be unable to keep up. Because poverty is a relative term. You
are poor vs majority of population (there is also absolute poverty, but it
almost doesn't exist in developed nations including the USA, and can be only
result of mental condition or heavy substance abuse).

After all, most American poor are well-off from a purely material point of
view even compared to West Europeans (bigger houses, cars, etc.).

------
pythia__
It will more likely be (state subsidized?) embryo selection for the genetic
markers of intelligence (see, e.g.,
[https://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection)),
not work on proxies like education, that will substantially reduce poverty.
While this solution is outside the Overton window in America today, that will
change as the benefits become more visible.

------
sndean
I saw a study recently [0] that suggested that college acceptance alone,
regardless of attendance, was a good predictor of lifetime earnings.

E.g., if you're accepted into Harvard, but decide instead to attend a cheap
state school (or don't goto any college), you'll end up earning just as much
as your identical twin who attended.

[0] I'm looking for it now..

~~~
throwawaykeno
_> (or don't goto any college)_

I don't remember that being part of the conclusions.

Also, it's hard for me to take that study seriously. Good state schools can be
as good as or better than Harvard. Basically I took the conclusion to be
"there's a lot of greatness outside of the ivys"

~~~
sndean
>> (or don't goto any college) > I don't remember that being part of the
conclusions.

That's true, it's possible my brain created that part.

> Basically I took the conclusion to be "there's a lot of greatness outside of
> the ivys"

Yeah. Put that way, it's a lot less interesting. Still, regarding ways to
avoid high student debt, it's useful information.

------
fiatmoney
The only part that matters: "having more education does not necessarily
increase people's productive capacity".

------
nishitsh
Gaining degree makes most of us poor, Isn't that the case. What i was thinking
can we build a infrastructure on top of blockchain technology to make the very
fact of education free and for all as every one knows each others ability or
degree or area of expertise with this infrastructure.

------
joelbrewer01
Hmm, so higher education levels do not fix poverty. But what if the problem is
that we just aren't teaching the right things? Could higher quality education
-- better teachers, more relevant curriculum, less focus on paper degrees,
more focus on creativity -- fix poverty?

------
Pica_soO
Always be suspicious when one solution promises to fix all the problems? It
might not be a true Scotsman.

Now how do i get rid of the piling up remainders of this ugly feeling of
social responsibility? The poor only got to blame themselves for not being
ruthless enough? No, that sounds like encouraging crime.

The poor only got to blame themselves for not reading enough? No.

The poor only go themselves to blame, because they where born to the wrong
parents? Now it sounds heartless.

And that is what all this about. Finding ab-solvent to inhale for a ugly
problem to go away. Everything is allowed as long as it doesn't touch core
dogmas and allows to shirk responsibility.

The poor only got to blame themselves, because they loose so much energy by
thermodynamics. Half there food goes up in heat. Hah, that's it, we should
educate them to wear five layers of sweaters in the summer- and if they don't
do it- they only got to blame themselves. Those unruly holy poor, who put my
own existence to a metric i don't like.

------
known
Education does not fix
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

------
Gravityloss
If we turn this around: if we assume that in the global well connected
economy, you're paid roughly in proportion to the value you provide, can
education increase your ability to provide value?

------
gadders
As someone who grew up on a housing estate in the UK and frequently had free
school meals and uniform grants from the state due to my father's
unemployment, it definitely fixed mine.

------
cro1
This is just a random unqualified observation so take it with a pinch of salt.

When I compare educated Indian and Chinese people to Americans I just see more
willingness to put in hard work on the mundane stuff.

Americans with the same educational qualifications who see a year or two of
grunt/drudge work ahead of them to move up the food chain, will more likely
quit and do whatever is currently hip. Now some small fraction of these people
actually do well and the majority whose startups/youtube channels/gadget
blogs/music bands fail find themselves in those overeducated poverty bins.

From what I have seen in Indian and China, I highly doubt poverty is
increasing in those educated bins.

~~~
KJP191
I live in Beijing and can assure you that there is no shortage of lazy Chinese
people with degrees. If you're American, perhaps what you see is just a result
of the type of people who make it through the immigration process

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer)
will create new jobs

------
mh-cx
The article misses an important point: It does not explain what _definition_
of poverty all this is based on. There are some definitions like "people
having less than 60% of the average real income". But's that's a very
relative: If the average income is rising over the years, people defined now
as "poor" may live at the same standard as the average in 1991. If that's the
case I would not neccessarily consider them "poor".

So I think it would be interesting to do the same statisical breakdown but in
regard to the absolute standard of living.

------
aylmao
I wonder how much technology has to do with this. A lot of jobs that existed a
few years ago don't any more, and the wealth/time saved isn't going back to
the people; work hours are not shorter, and low-end jobs aren't better paid.

I would guess not a trivial amount. Which is sad. Keeping people employed is
much more important in the grand scheme of things than whatever percentage
efficiency gain some of this tech brings.

------
andrewclunn
This article taught me something... which apparently will have no impact on my
ability to avoid poverty.

------
bassislife
If there is a market for the education you received, it should. If the job
market conditions change, it might not unless the person is resourceful.

Also note that the OP is talking about the US but education is often really
the key for developing countries to attain a higher level of prosperity.
Because the market is still quite open there.

------
alivarys
Some say that stats are deceiving. They aren't, but one can make them lie.
Thanks for doing them right.

------
jernfrost
I am surprised by how many people fundamentally misunderstand the authors
point. Surely he knows that a well educated workforce is important for an
economy.

However what the author is addressing is this naive belief that education
almost exclusively can solve poverty problems. This is the idea which has been
thrown around for years. Governments, economists etc have focused far too much
on presenting statistics showing the benefits of education in general without
any concern for what people actually learn or whether there is ever a
potential for just spending too much time on education.

As someone who has believed for years we are over-educating our people in the
west, I've generally felt a complete dismissal of this opinion. Education
helps! End of discussion, is the feeling I sense.

If you care to look it is pretty clear that the education hysteria has gone
off the rails. Jobs people could perfectly well do with high school education,
now requires a bachelor. Suddenly a master is a requirement where usually a
bachelors degree would be sufficient. We have come to believe learning only
happens in school. That is where I think we are going wrong.

My mother is a journalist and never took more than high school education. Yet
she is a very accomplished journalist which knows a lot about her field. Today
it is next to impossible to become a journalist without having lots of
education, often multiple degrees.

A software developer with a Bachlor and two years of work experience doesn't
know less than a student fresh out of a Master program. They just know
different stuff.

What the people need to get out of poverty is relevant skills for the economy,
but that is not a game of making sure your country has ever higher percentages
of college graduates. Switzerland is a case in point. It is a high tech
economy with some of the lowest level of college education. How can this be?
Because in Switzerland almost anything can be learned through vocational
training programs. Massive amounts of learning is happening in a sophisticated
private enterprise. That just doesn't show up on the kind of statistics
politicians obsesses about.

We don't need more education. We need education far better aligned with the
needs of the economy and private enterprise. We also need to make it
accessible people at all rungs of society.

X number of years of education in the US is not going to help when so many
schools in poor areas of America are exceptionally bad. There is no mystery to
this. America is the only advance country where the bulk of education spending
goes to the well of rather than the needy. This is through the American
tradition requiring students to go to their school district and tying funding
to property taxes as well as relying on substantial amounts of fundraising by
parents.

It is a bit late to start handing out scholarships for poor but talented
students when they reach college age. The damage has already been done. You
got to start thinking education from the very first years.

------
argonaut
> Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute claim to have hatched a
> bipartisan consensus plan for reducing poverty. As exciting as that sounds,
> the details of the plan, unfortunately, won't be available until David
> Brooks unveils them at an event on December 3rd.

This is really all you need to read. He's attacking strawmen for the rest of
the article, because the actual Brookings/AEI report is more detailed and
specific. You can find it here: [http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-
mobility-memos/posts/2...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-
memos/posts/2015/12/03-brookings-aei-plan-poverty-opportunity-reeves).

