The Race between Education and Technology

Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz

How has the race between education and technology shaped American growth and inequality across the twentieth century?

At a glance

You will see why educating the masses in high school, early and widely, helped make America the richest nation of the twentieth century
You will understand why the pay gap between college graduates and everyone else widened when schooling stopped keeping pace with technology
You will test the idea that America has reached a natural limit on schooling, a view the authors reject

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Introduction
I. Economic Growth and Distribution
The Human Capital Century
Inequality across the Twentieth Century
Skill-Biased Technological Change
II Education for the Masses in Three Transformations
Origins of the Virtues
Economic Foundations of the High School Movement
America’s Graduation from High School
Mass Higher Education in the Twentieth Century
III The Race
The Race between Education and Technology
How America Once Led and Can Win the Race for Tomorrow
Appendix A: The 1915 Iowa State Census Sample
Appendix B: Construction of State-Level Secondary School Data
Appendix C: Construction of City-Level Secondary School Data Set
Appendix D: Construction of Wage Bill Shares and Educational Wage Differentials, 1915 to 2005