Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

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.)

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.

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-...

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.

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.).

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".

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.

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). 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...

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.

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)

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?

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.

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.

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! :)

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility != https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

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).

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.

It will more likely be (state subsidized?) embryo selection for the genetic markers of intelligence (see, e.g., 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.

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..

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

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.

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?

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.

Education does not fix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

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?

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.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer will create new jobs

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

> 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....