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I'm trying to do a deeper dive into education and its outcomes on children's life success. This is sort of a rehash on a post i made before. However this time the speaker is Matthew Stewart, who documents the same class differences that Charles Murray wrote about. Particular focus on the 9.9%. These people essentially live in gated neighborhoods with zoning that excludes people with less overall wealth. Much of schooling is funded by property taxes, and so as a result of the 9.9%'s houses being expensive, their schools get more and better funding, but when i took a small look, ive come across information stating that poor and rich schools receive the same funding in many instances, bringing the better schools advantage into question. To be fair, these schools may still hold an advantage in other ways, perhaps they have students that are less disruptive for example. Ive noticed here that there are many who debate this issue as one of the chicken and egg. Is it that the people in the lower class simply do bad behaviors, and thus they are in the lower-class with bad schools, and their children have worst outcomes because of it (or the children themselves are bad, which makes the school bad as well since you have many bad children that disrupt well behaved children's ability to learn), (and vice versa - the higher class simply made the right decisions, and thus their children benefit.) or does already being in poverty cause the bad behaviors/poor schooling? It seems very clear that college education effects outcomes such as higher earnings. But Id like more information on K-12. Mainly because id like to give my offspring the best advantage possible, and select the optimal school district and educational system for him/her. Does this simply not matter as much as we thought previously? Or perhaps there is more in the power of parents to help with schooling, with educational activities such as reading and writing at an early age?
This is not so clear. The earning difference between college graduates and non-graduates is clear, but whether it's the college education that's primarily responsible for that difference is questionable.
You linked to an article about Bryan Caplan's book, but Caplan believes that most of the correlation between educational attainment and earnings is causal, but that in most cases it's mediated by signaling rather than by human capital improvements.
Yes, by "college education" I meant the instruction. Though I should have also mentioned that Caplan's case is mostly about societal waste, and there can still be substantial gains to the individual.
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