Once upon a time, education really was the key to opportunity and advancement in America. Although we did not collect comprehensive statistics throughout most of the era in which this was true, we do have some statistics from the tail end of that era, which I've summarized below. As you can see, non-high school graduates gained a small amount of ground from 1967 to 1973, while high school graduates and above gained 10% or more. "All" workers did better by over 10%, too, because the mix of workers was becoming more and more education.
Over the next 17 years, however, only those with a college degree or more showed any improvement (as a group, obviously individuals gaining experience and seniority did better, while some also did worse). High school drop-outs faced a drastic drop in income. Meanwhile, the super-high income groups--the top 0.1% and top 0.01%, who had been in the doldrums from 1967 to 1973, saw their incomes start to skyrocket:
(Note: p90 means 90th income percentile = top 10%. p95, 95th percentile = top 5%, etc.)
These changing trends only intensified in the years 1991 to 2008, although things were relatively good during the 1990s. Altogether, however, people with advanced degrees saw their incomes drop significantly over this time period--83.2% down for those with professional degrees, and 92.2% down for those with doctorates. Meanwhile, those in the top 1% and above showed strong to astronomical income growth:
This first chart shows how incomes started to diverge from around 1973 onward"
And this chart, from 1991 onward, limited to college grads and better, shows how higher education stopped being a key to constantly rising incomes, even as being in the higher income brackets became more and more of lock:
Looking at the 1967-1990 period in terms of percentage changes, it becomes particularly clear why elites looked back on that time as one of near economic disaster--as significant in their thinking as the Great Depression, while most people remember it as simply the beginning of a long stagnation in wage growth that has never really ended, although some periods have shown slight improvements (notably the Clinton years) and some have substantial slumps (the Bush II years.) Just look at how the top two income groups (top 0.1% and top 0.01%) slumped during the 1970s, only to start a meteoric rise as soon as Reagan took over:
Finally, for the post 1991 era, the top 1% can't even appear on this chart without compressing the rest of it too much to be very legibile--forget about the top 0.1% or 0.01%. So we only include the top 10% and top 5%--both of which have continued to rise, despite a downturn in the early part of the decade. None of the education-level lines have recovered, however, while the one on the very bottom, with the sharpest downward trajectory represents those with a doctorate degree:
While it's still much better to have more education, rather than less, these figures clearly show that the income advantages of higher education in the aggregate are decreasing significantly. This absolutely the wrong sort of thing to be happening in an economy that's supposed to be increasingly dependent on knowledge, skills and specialized understanding.
On the bright side, perhaps this trend will mean an increase4d awareness that even if you've got a PhD. after your name, in the end, you're still just basically a glorified worker, who has more in common with a janitor than you do with those who own and run this country.
