aegyptos

I refer you to my previous post.

Scucca

Another example of the literature into the effects of education on mobility is offered by Checchi (1997, Education and Intergenerational Mobility in Occupations: A Comparative Study, American Journal of Economics & Sociology, Vol 56 Issue 3, pp 331-351):

"The problem of measuring the intergenerational transmission of inequality and its implications for social welfare is studied. A possible decomposition of relevant factors-namely, educational attainments and other factors-is proposed and applied to three individual data sets regarding Germany, Italy, and the United States. The main result is that educational attainment is responsible for almost half of observed immobility"

But how can equality of opportunity be encouraged?

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aegyptos

I refer you to my previous post.

Mach

Should university funding perhaps be toned back in favor of early education and parental involvement/education programs? I think you can make a good argument for that. Was that the primary focus of the thread?

I would buy that based on personal experience. Successfull people are usually those with aptitude and good early education in my experience, and college while almost necessary for some disciplines, and certainly efficient for many, can be window-dressing.

The U.S. does not have a culture that fosters education and intellectualism on the whole. Some sub-cultures actively reject both. Some go so far as to invest energy in fighting these things(!).

Some sub-cultures to place a lot of value on this. Presumably the Jewish culture does, and reaps the rewards, empircally.

It usually takes generations for such changes, while we want results every 5 years, realistically given human emotions it has to filter down through a generation to see significant change, even if it's rationally good and obviously correct.

-Mach

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UtahBill

Well said, and you use an appropriate amount of plain every day english to do it. Scucca reminds me of a book I tried to read that I eventually tossed. The author was a professor, and his book was apparently directed at other professors, using such verbostiy that it was hard to follow his train of thought. He even quotes foreigners in THEIR language, as if the average reader or even college professor can read half a dozen languages. Too bad, as I was sure he had some great information to impart that the general populace could benefit from.
I am sure Scucca has some valid points to make, but he needs to dumb it down a bit if he is to gain an audience within this forum. Only intellectual snobs use a dozen five dollar words to say what can be said with half a dozen one dollar words.

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RightinNYC

One point that hasn't been addressed here - why do you assume that changes in intergenerational social strata are automatically good? What you term social mobility could also be termed social instability.

Situation 1:

A1 is a brilliant wealthy physician who raises his son A2 to be a brilliant wealthy physician. B1 is a scumbag poor drug dealer who raises his son B2 to be a scumbag poor drug dealer.

Situation 2:

A1 is a brilliant wealthy physician who raises his son A2 to be a brilliant wealthy physician. Unfortunately, A2 loses his practice and goes bankrupt when some idiot jury returns a massive malpractice reward against him in a situation that wasn't really his fault. B1 is a scumbag poor drug dealer who raises his son B2 to be a scumbag poor drug dealer. B2 then gets shot 45 times, writes a rap album about it, and becomes a billionaire.

According to your traditional measurement, situation 1 is one of little social mobility and therefore bad, while situation 2 is one with increased social mobility and therefore good. I would argue that 2 is actually an inferior society.

troof.

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Scucca

The clue is in Adam Smith's quote:

"The differences of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. The differences between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom and education."

And what do we have with Britain? Additional investment in education that has actually widened the income divides. That suggests that pishpot middle class divs are more able to pick the peanuts out of certification, rather than the more cunning but wealth-hampered working class sweetpeas (Note I dumbed my language down for Utah!). Mach then is correct in that the solution is pre-tertiary education sector.

RightinNYC

Taking your cues on evolutionary intelligence theory and the nature v. nurture debate from an 18th century philosopher is a pretty horrible idea.

Putting that aside, no, there's actually not much of a clue there. There is a massive difference between people who work hard, educate themselves, and become successful and those who are lazy, intellectually incurious, and unsuccessful. Smith's quote isn't disputing that. My point is that "habit, custom, and education" are pretty ****ing important. Further, nothing in that quote has any relation to my larger point, which is that mobility =/= improvement.

No, it actually doesn't suggest that at all.

I don't really care about the language that you use, but in the future, could you please present your claim in a way that doesn't:

a) quote extensively from someone else's work that is only tangentially related, and
b) consist of overly conclusory arguments?

new coup for you

mobility is a code word for improvement...that's just how it is. in the media, academia and in politics.

downward mobility has its own terms

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And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

Scucca

He's stated the obvious really, but you can see how the fellow supported public education. The problem, however, is that simply increasing tertiary education places (as in the case of Britain) is insufficient to narrow the income distribution.

Come now, you have the required material to point your finger in the air and slightly sigh. This is about changes to social mobility generated by changes in education investment. Instead of it providing a means to enable the more able student to break the class shackles, it has further imprisoned the Brits. At best, this suggests that the education system struggles to meet the human capital goal that the Adam Smith fans hope for. We're not getting the most able student investing such that the return from education is maximised. This partially reflects wealth differences (in simple investment talk, the silver spoon spod can borrow at a lower interest rate given his background). Attempting to remove this problem via university grants has not worked (although to be fair, the student never received a sufficiently high subsidy). Students drop out further down the education system (thus, the preference for 'further education' subsidies)

Feckin ell thats an argument and a half (for Utah!)

Whinge n whine from someone that hasn't got to the first base in the debate. Limp their and then get back to me...