GRADUATES IN US NOT IMMUNE TO EARNINGS INEQUALITY

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Earnings of the average US workers with an undergraduate degree have not kept up with gains in productivity in recent decades, according to research by academics at MIT that challenges traditional explanations of why income inequality is rising.

  The findings, which will be presented to the New America Foundation on the 5th June, come amid widespread unease about the sluggish trend in middle class income growth, both in ab- solute terms and relative to the new superstar class of chief executives, hedge fund managers and other financiers.

  While in the short term labour market conditions are now good for most US workers, the state of the “American dream” is already emerging as a big theme in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.
I  n a recent speech, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, complained that “while productivity and corporate profits are up, the fruits of that success just hasn't reached many of our families . . . It's like trickle-down economics but without the trickle.”

Meanwhile, John Edwards, the former senator, has made “eliminating poverty within 30 years” a centrepiece of his left-leaning campaign, which stresses the problems of inequality in the US.

  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists, Frank Levy and Peter Temin, repeat earlier findings that the gap between the earnings of the average university graduate and high school graduate – which was stable for much of the 1960s and 1970s – expanded relentlessly from 1980 to 2000, before slowing a little in recent years.

  This is consistent with the conventional explanation that the rise in inequality is largely due to technology trends that disproportionately benefit skilled workers.

  But Mr Levy and Mr Temin go on to show that, while graduates certainly did better than non-graduates in recent decades, the average graduate also failed to keep up with gains in economy-wide productivity, once those productivity gains are adjusted for the composition of the workforce.

  Male graduates in particular failed to capture a full share of productivity advances, with female graduates keeping pace until the last five years – probably due to increasing opportunities for women in the workplace.

  This casts doubt on the conventional argument that the solution to rising in-equality is to improve the standard of education across the workforce as a whole, and encourage more people to go to university.

“Is the average bachelor's degree still sufficient to catch the rising tide? In the case of men at least, the answer is no,” the authors conclude.

They point out that rising inequality may still be caused by “skill-biased” technical change – but of a kind that disproportionately benefits the very skilled, rather than the merely educated. If so, this creates a huge headache for policymakers because while it is in principle at least possible to greatly expand the number of basic college places, it is not possible to send every US worker to Harvard Business School.

Mr Levy and Mr Temin argue that the failure of workers even with undergraduate degrees to keep up with productivity is due to a change in labour market institutions and norms that reduced the bargaining power of most US workers.

They argue “only a re-orientation of government policy can restore the general prosperity of the postwar boom”.

The paper follows the presentation last week of joint Pew/Brookings Institution research showing that men in their 30s earned on average 12 per cent less in 2004 than their fathers did in 1974 after adjusting for inflation.

Families with men in their 30s were 9 per cent better off, but only because of an increase in the proportion of dual-income families.

The Pew/Brookings findings were criticised by conservative economists for not taking into account non-cash benefits, such as pension and health insurance contributions, and not adjusting for the greater proportion of men in that age group taking time off from work for higher education.

Other economists point out that one reason why household incomes in general are not growing as fast as they used to in the postwar years is that there are more families with fewer people in them, with more young people living independently and many more divorces



麻省理工学院(MIT)师生的研究显示，近几十年来，拥有本科学历的美国普通员工的收入增长，未能跟上生产率发展的步伐。这一研究结果对有关收入不平等正在加剧的传统解释构成了挑战。

这些结果于6月5日提交新美国基金会(New America Foundation)。无论是绝对意义上，还是相对于首席执行官、对冲基金经理和其它金融家等超高收入人群，中产阶层收入增长都十分缓慢，市场对此存在普遍的不安情绪。

  尽管对多数美国员工来说，劳动力市场目前状况较好，但“美国梦”(American dream)的状况已成为2008年总统大选前的一个重大主题。
   民主党(Democratic)领跑者希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)在最近的演讲中抱怨道：“尽管生产率和企业利润实现了增长，但很多家庭却未能享受成功的果实……这就像是没有涓滴的涓滴经济学(trickle-down economics)。”

  同时，前参议员约翰•爱德华兹(John Edwards)已将“30年内消除贫困”作为其左倾竞选活动的核心，这突显出美国不平等问题的严重程度。

  麻省理工学院的经济学家弗兰克•利维(Frank Levy)和彼得•特明再次提出了较早时候的发现，即普通的大学毕业生和高中毕业生之间的收入差距——在60年代和70年代大体保持稳定——在1980年至2000年大幅扩大，之后在最近几年出现小幅回落。

这与传统上对收入差距增长的解释一致，即科技趋势使熟练工人获得了不成比例的益处。

  但利维和特明接下来证明，尽管近几十年，大学毕业生的确比未受高等教育的人表现得更好，一旦生产率增长按照劳动力构成进行调整，普通大学毕业生的收入增长还是未能跟上这一速度。

  特别是男性大学毕业生未能获得生产率提升带来的全部好处，女性大学毕业生也是在过去5年才跟上了这一步伐，这或许是女性大学生的工作机会日益增多造成的。

  这使人对传统观点产生了怀疑：即解决收入不平等日益加剧的方法，是提高劳动力的总体教育水平，并鼓励更多的人读大学。

  作者总结道：“普通的学士学位足够抓住这种增长趋势吗？至少从男性的例子来看，答案是否定的。”
  
   他们指出，收入不平等加剧或许仍然是由存在“技能偏差”的科技变革导致的，但大部分好处被拥有高级技能的人获得，而不仅仅受过教育的人。如果是这样，这将使政策制定者非常头疼，因为尽管至少在原则上有可能增加基本大学教育的场所，但不可能把每个美国工人都送进哈佛大学商学院(Harvard Business School)。

  利维和特明指出，甚至受过大学教育的工人，收入也未能跟上生产率发展的步伐，这是因为劳动力市场的制度和规范发生了改变，使得多数美国工人的谈判力下降。

他们指出，“唯有重新定位政府政策，才能恢复战后快速发展时的总体繁荣。”

  在这份报告之前，佩尤公众与媒体研究中心(Pew Research Center for the People & the Press)与布鲁金斯学会(Brookings Institution)上周共同提出，在核算通胀因素之后，30多岁的男性在2004年的平均收入，比其父辈在1974年的平均收入低12%。

在拥有30来岁男性的家庭，其收入要高9%，但这只是因为双收入家庭的比例有所增长。

  佩尤公众与媒体研究中心与布鲁金斯学会的发现受到了保守派经济学家的批评，称其未将养老金和医疗保险等非现金收入计算在内，而且没有核算那个年龄的男性从工作中抽出了更大比例的时间接受更高的教育。

  其它经济学家指出，家庭收入增长速度总体上没有战后时期那么快的一个原因是，有更多的家庭其成员比以往少，且独立生活的年轻人更多，离婚的家庭也比以往多得多。