DURING the first 70 years of the 20th century, inequality declined and Americans prospered together. Over the last 30 years, by contrast, the United States developed the most unequal distribution of income and wages of any high-income country.
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Some analysts see the gulf between the rich and the rest as an incentive for strivers, or as just the way things are. Others see it as having a corrosive effect on people’s faith in the markets and democracy. Still others contend that economic polarization is a root cause of America’s political polarization. Could, and should, something be done?
Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, two Harvard economists, think yes. Their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology” (Harvard, $39.95), contains many tables, a few equations and a powerfully told story about how and why the United States became the world’s richest nation — namely, thanks to its schools.
The authors skillfully demonstrate that for more than a century, and at a steady rate, technological breakthroughs — the mass production system, electricity, computers — have been increasing the demand for ever more educated workers. And, they show, America’s school system met this demand, not with a national policy, but in grassroots fashion, as communities taxed themselves and built schools and colleges.
Beginning in the 1970s, however, the education system failed to keep pace, resulting, Ms. Goldin and Mr. Katz contend, in a sharply unequal nation.
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