7 ms·

Measuring America's Decline, in Three Charts

38 points by coenhyde 13y ago

Detrus 13y ago
A lot of this feels like measuring the results of education with standardized tests. Do they ultimately correlate to economic output/GDP? How does the US maintain it's current level of economic output if it's so stupid? Maybe it doesn't hurt economically that larger chunks of the population are dumber in the US. Less intellectual competition might allow the best companies/players to rise to the top and multiply their effects. Study but http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argues-us.html http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argu... Where did a large number of our brightest math and physics students end up? Wall St. Their contribution is well known. The US doesn't seem to have enough productive places to stick educated people.
- freyrs3 13y ago
  The private sector has plenty of places to put PhD level people with technical skills, it's just in roles that in which their expertise tends to be directed toward more risk-averse ventures and their skills tend to be underutilized. The number of physics PhDs I see in low-level software development roles sometimes scares me.
- chongli 13y ago
  A lot of this feels like measuring the results of education with standardized tests. Funny you should say this. Finland (right at the top) does not use rote learning or standardized tests in its education system.
clavalle 13y ago
I always wonder when I see charts like this: How would, say, the top 1 or 2% of each of those countries fare against each other?
atlanticus 13y ago
Compare Massachusetts to all of Europe and then Europe looks like it is in decline.
mgirdley 13y ago
People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and more. At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and more. Well, for most of that time, by a number of measures, America -- and particularly the conditions of the middle class -- has been declining. > At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles. Repeatedly saying something is going to happen that doesn't is being a Chicken Little. Repeatedly saying something is happening when it is objectively desmonstrable is not being a Chicken Little. Even when it keeps happening over an extended period of time.
vacri 13y ago
Every set of graphs must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not in that order?
- deleted 13y ago
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- deleted 13y ago
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MaysonL 13y ago
The author's literacy, numeracy and problem-solving ability seem questionable. Decline means descent: going from a higher level to a lower level, of which the article demonstrates exactly none.
- mikeash 13y ago
  There's an implicit assumption that we used to be on top, although it's not supported by data (and I'd hazard that the data would not support it). It's another form of nostalgia, really. People think the US was so great and wonderful in the past and now it's crap. It was crap all along, really. Happened to be some good crap, and still is in many ways, but crap just the same. If the USA wants to return to the global domination it had in the 1950s, the answer is clearly another devastating world war that leaves the USA is the sole advanced nation untouched, since that's how we got to that position previously. Not by education or technology or resources or innovation (although there was plenty of that too), but by having all the competitors tear each other to pieces for years. Now the world is enjoying relative peace, and that means we're not so special anymore!
  - jballanc 13y ago
    I think you're right, but only partially. In addition to being the only industrialized nation in the world left mostly untouched by the war, it was also the prime destination for the world's best and brightest looking for someplace to escape to. Add to that the fact that the US was already in the mindset of trying to prove itself equal to the "traditional" superpowers (England, Germany) and that it found itself immediately after the war in competition with a genuinely scary foe, and the US really had nothing to loose by going all out. Peace is not the US's only enemy. The US also suffers from that most damnable of afflictions: success. Physical isolation means that the US doesn't have to worry about aggressors on its borders, but it also means that the US feels less of a push from its friendly competitors. Why invest in science or education? Why not just enjoy having the world's largest military by a long-shot? Why not enjoy the land? the natural resources? That the US will eventually loose its top spot is certain. The problem is, when the US finds itself no long top dog, will it have the means to kick itself back into gear. That, I think, is the real damning implication of these graphs. Being better educated won't prevent the eventual decline of the US, but it will determine just how far down that decline goes...
nerdo 13y ago
Comparing a heterogeneous group to homogeneous groups, in three charts. Broken out, America doesn't look so bad: http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is-destiny-in-education-too-but-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-k http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is...
- mikeash 13y ago
  And why is that a better way to examine the numbers than the one in the article, exactly?
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Under the assumption that you're interested in knowing the cause of the problem, gaining insight into the factors that lead to or indicate the problem can aid in understanding. To speak in specifics rather than generalities: in this case, we see that White and Asian children do not seem to be having problems compared to their peers in other countries. Thus, we can assign a lower probability estimate to the hypothesis that the problem is the American educational system writ large. It seems to be a problem localized in certain parts of the system and population.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Sure, but does this give any insight? Examining one factor out of the thousands that could potentially affect this does not strike me as in any way useful, especially since it happens to be a factor that's certain to generate lots of emotion and very little rational discussion. For example, it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race directly. I don't buy into the PC idea that everybody is exactly, precisely the same, but the differences simply aren't all that large. What seems much more likely is that it's related to poverty. Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical reasons, and I'd wager that the charts would show just as much, if not more, link between poverty and scores as between race and scores. But we can't say for certain without a proper analysis of all potential confounding factors. Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the wrong way to do it.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
The charts seems a bit strange. What does England/Northern Ireland mean? Is it a combination of the two countries scores? Did they both score equally? Why leave out Scotland and Wales and not plot the UK?
- kroger 13y ago
  This is a good question. The source is the "Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) (2012)." On the report they have a list of "National entities" (UK is not there) and "sub-national entities", where they have Flanders (Belgium), England (UK), Northen Ireland (UK), and England/N. Ireland (UK). I guess they don't have data for Scotland and Wales.
- itchitawa 13y ago
  It doesn't even list all the OECD countries. This gives the false impression that US is at the bottom. Yep, it's worse than everyone better than it!
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    It does clearly include the average value and the USA value - even if it cherrypicks a few examples from the huge list of countries, these two numbers are enough to see that the impression isn't false.
octaveguin 13y ago
Things they actually tested (or at least, a sample): http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_online%20sample%20items.ppt http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli... I was surprised by the quality. These seem like really good tests of general competence. This gives a lot of weight to the results.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  To be fair, we've been getting our butts kicked in primary education for many decades, and it hasn't killed us yet. Betimes everyone was scared that Japan would take us over because their kids were so much "smarter" than ours, and look what happened to that. Which is not to say I wouldn't love for us to do better on these tests, but it's also hard for me to summon terror over them either.
enraged_camel 13y ago
I'm not sure if it is possible to conclude that America is "declining" by looking at three simple charts. Regardless of the fact that American students are lagging in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving, America has a huge landmass with a vast amount of (still) untapped resources. Not only that, it is also geographically isolated from the so-called "Old World," which gives it significant advantages in terms of physical safety and security. Does this mean America will continue to remain the #1 world-power? Not necessarily. In fact, it probably won't, as all empires inevitably recede in power and collapse. But if it happens, it probably won't be due to simple differences on a few graphs.
bluedino 13y ago
We were ever that great, or is everyone else just finally catching up?
pg 13y ago
It's only decline if the US is doing worse than it did in the past. But this data seems to be a single snapshot. It would be good if someone could find past results and see if there has actually been a decline.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  if someone could find past results There are no past results. These are the results from the first OECD "Survey of Adult Skills" http://skills.oecd.org/documents/OECD_Skills_Outlook_2013.pdf http://skills.oecd.org/documents/OECD_Skills_Outlook_2013.pd...
- jballanc 13y ago
  If you interpret the title as referencing a general decline (as opposed to a specific decline in these metrics) and attempting to explain that decline with the charts presented, then perhaps you'd accept this as evidence of a decline: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+minus+BRIC+GDP+over+time http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+mi... ? Edit: I realize this is a rather liberal reading of the title. I'd argue the title has been, not unexpectedly, sensationalized.
  - jcnnghm 13y ago
    That's not evidence of a decline, see http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+real+GDP+over+time http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+real+GDP+over+time. That would seem to indicate that other countries are catching up, not that the US is declining. Also, in real terms, it doesn't look like the narrowing of the gap is accelerating (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+minus+BRIC+real+GDP+over+time http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+mi...).
    - heliodor 13y ago
      Yes, it shows that other countries are catching up, but every country in the world affects every other country through import/export. If every country in the world were at the economic level of the US, our products would cost much more and every American's purchasing power would go down. If we put money aside and look at social aspects like education or corruption, I don't think the US has ever topped those charts recently. The Scandinavian countries seem to dominate those types of charts year after year.
adamtait 13y ago
It looks like they're comparing averages from all those countries, when we all know that the population of the USA is largest. Even though the distribution might be different, the number of people that fit into the distribution are very different. We have some really smart people in Canada, but we also have 1/3 of the population of the US. Even if our average proficiency with problem solving is 10% higher, we still only have a fraction of the people who are proficient as the US.
- refurb 13y ago
  US population = 314M Canadian population = 35M 35M/314M = ~1/9 not 1/3
PaulHoule 13y ago
The purpose of a system is what it does. The school system has two purposes. One of them is to keep the teacher's union going. Union teaching jobs are unequivocally awful -- less than 50% of people who get teaching certificates can bear to work in the field, left with student debt and no income to repay it. (It's a good racket for the union teachers who teach the teacher thought.) They get rapidly discouraged and burned out but at least they get a defined benefit pension... For now. The other one is to kneecap people... Specifically from Kindergarten all the way to college I was taught that I could be bullied with impunity and never see anybody held to the account. This normalizes bullying in the workforce, which is exactly what they want because they want you to be weak and controllable. I'm going through this crap with my son. I went to a meeting with the superintendent and he was gushing over how much he wanted feedback from the mother of a "special" kid and how she was a partner in her education but he didn't care what I thought because there was a new paradigm and don't you know homework is obsolete and spelling too and how my input is definitely not wanted and won't be listened to. And they wonder why people vote Republican...
lquist 13y ago
It seems ironic to me that this story has been submitted to Hacker News, a social news website at the center of Silicon Valley, an extraordinary fount of innovation unequalled worldwide. American "progress" or "success" will be determined much more by the pace of innovation than by the abilities of the general population.

38 points by coenhyde 13y ago

A lot of this feels like measuring the results of education with standardized tests. Do they ultimately correlate to economic output/GDP? How does the US maintain it's current level of economic output if it's so stupid? Maybe it doesn't hurt economically that larger chunks of the population are dumber in the US. Less intellectual competition might allow the best companies/players to rise to the top and multiply their effects. Study but http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argues-us.html http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argu... Where did a large number of our brightest math and physics students end up? Wall St. Their contribution is well known. The US doesn't seem to have enough productive places to stick educated people.

freyrs3 13y ago
The private sector has plenty of places to put PhD level people with technical skills, it's just in roles that in which their expertise tends to be directed toward more risk-averse ventures and their skills tend to be underutilized. The number of physics PhDs I see in low-level software development roles sometimes scares me.
chongli 13y ago
A lot of this feels like measuring the results of education with standardized tests. Funny you should say this. Finland (right at the top) does not use rote learning or standardized tests in its education system.

clavalle 13y ago

I always wonder when I see charts like this: How would, say, the top 1 or 2% of each of those countries fare against each other?

atlanticus 13y ago

Compare Massachusetts to all of Europe and then Europe looks like it is in decline.

mgirdley 13y ago

People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and more. At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and more. Well, for most of that time, by a number of measures, America -- and particularly the conditions of the middle class -- has been declining. > At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles. Repeatedly saying something is going to happen that doesn't is being a Chicken Little. Repeatedly saying something is happening when it is objectively desmonstrable is not being a Chicken Little. Even when it keeps happening over an extended period of time.

vacri 13y ago

Every set of graphs must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not in that order?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

MaysonL 13y ago

The author's literacy, numeracy and problem-solving ability seem questionable. Decline means descent: going from a higher level to a lower level, of which the article demonstrates exactly none.

mikeash 13y ago
There's an implicit assumption that we used to be on top, although it's not supported by data (and I'd hazard that the data would not support it). It's another form of nostalgia, really. People think the US was so great and wonderful in the past and now it's crap. It was crap all along, really. Happened to be some good crap, and still is in many ways, but crap just the same. If the USA wants to return to the global domination it had in the 1950s, the answer is clearly another devastating world war that leaves the USA is the sole advanced nation untouched, since that's how we got to that position previously. Not by education or technology or resources or innovation (although there was plenty of that too), but by having all the competitors tear each other to pieces for years. Now the world is enjoying relative peace, and that means we're not so special anymore!
- jballanc 13y ago
  I think you're right, but only partially. In addition to being the only industrialized nation in the world left mostly untouched by the war, it was also the prime destination for the world's best and brightest looking for someplace to escape to. Add to that the fact that the US was already in the mindset of trying to prove itself equal to the "traditional" superpowers (England, Germany) and that it found itself immediately after the war in competition with a genuinely scary foe, and the US really had nothing to loose by going all out. Peace is not the US's only enemy. The US also suffers from that most damnable of afflictions: success. Physical isolation means that the US doesn't have to worry about aggressors on its borders, but it also means that the US feels less of a push from its friendly competitors. Why invest in science or education? Why not just enjoy having the world's largest military by a long-shot? Why not enjoy the land? the natural resources? That the US will eventually loose its top spot is certain. The problem is, when the US finds itself no long top dog, will it have the means to kick itself back into gear. That, I think, is the real damning implication of these graphs. Being better educated won't prevent the eventual decline of the US, but it will determine just how far down that decline goes...

nerdo 13y ago

Comparing a heterogeneous group to homogeneous groups, in three charts. Broken out, America doesn't look so bad: http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is-destiny-in-education-too-but-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-k http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is...

mikeash 13y ago
And why is that a better way to examine the numbers than the one in the article, exactly?
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Under the assumption that you're interested in knowing the cause of the problem, gaining insight into the factors that lead to or indicate the problem can aid in understanding. To speak in specifics rather than generalities: in this case, we see that White and Asian children do not seem to be having problems compared to their peers in other countries. Thus, we can assign a lower probability estimate to the hypothesis that the problem is the American educational system writ large. It seems to be a problem localized in certain parts of the system and population.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Sure, but does this give any insight? Examining one factor out of the thousands that could potentially affect this does not strike me as in any way useful, especially since it happens to be a factor that's certain to generate lots of emotion and very little rational discussion. For example, it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race directly. I don't buy into the PC idea that everybody is exactly, precisely the same, but the differences simply aren't all that large. What seems much more likely is that it's related to poverty. Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical reasons, and I'd wager that the charts would show just as much, if not more, link between poverty and scores as between race and scores. But we can't say for certain without a proper analysis of all potential confounding factors. Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the wrong way to do it.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

The charts seems a bit strange. What does England/Northern Ireland mean? Is it a combination of the two countries scores? Did they both score equally? Why leave out Scotland and Wales and not plot the UK?

kroger 13y ago
This is a good question. The source is the "Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) (2012)." On the report they have a list of "National entities" (UK is not there) and "sub-national entities", where they have Flanders (Belgium), England (UK), Northen Ireland (UK), and England/N. Ireland (UK). I guess they don't have data for Scotland and Wales.
itchitawa 13y ago
It doesn't even list all the OECD countries. This gives the false impression that US is at the bottom. Yep, it's worse than everyone better than it!
- PeterisP 13y ago
  It does clearly include the average value and the USA value - even if it cherrypicks a few examples from the huge list of countries, these two numbers are enough to see that the impression isn't false.

octaveguin 13y ago

Things they actually tested (or at least, a sample): http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_online%20sample%20items.ppt http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli... I was surprised by the quality. These seem like really good tests of general competence. This gives a lot of weight to the results.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
To be fair, we've been getting our butts kicked in primary education for many decades, and it hasn't killed us yet. Betimes everyone was scared that Japan would take us over because their kids were so much "smarter" than ours, and look what happened to that. Which is not to say I wouldn't love for us to do better on these tests, but it's also hard for me to summon terror over them either.

enraged_camel 13y ago

I'm not sure if it is possible to conclude that America is "declining" by looking at three simple charts. Regardless of the fact that American students are lagging in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving, America has a huge landmass with a vast amount of (still) untapped resources. Not only that, it is also geographically isolated from the so-called "Old World," which gives it significant advantages in terms of physical safety and security. Does this mean America will continue to remain the #1 world-power? Not necessarily. In fact, it probably won't, as all empires inevitably recede in power and collapse. But if it happens, it probably won't be due to simple differences on a few graphs.

bluedino 13y ago

We were ever that great, or is everyone else just finally catching up?

pg 13y ago

It's only decline if the US is doing worse than it did in the past. But this data seems to be a single snapshot. It would be good if someone could find past results and see if there has actually been a decline.

rgbrenner 13y ago
if someone could find past results There are no past results. These are the results from the first OECD "Survey of Adult Skills" http://skills.oecd.org/documents/OECD_Skills_Outlook_2013.pdf http://skills.oecd.org/documents/OECD_Skills_Outlook_2013.pd...
jballanc 13y ago
If you interpret the title as referencing a general decline (as opposed to a specific decline in these metrics) and attempting to explain that decline with the charts presented, then perhaps you'd accept this as evidence of a decline: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+minus+BRIC+GDP+over+time http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+mi... ? Edit: I realize this is a rather liberal reading of the title. I'd argue the title has been, not unexpectedly, sensationalized.
- jcnnghm 13y ago
  That's not evidence of a decline, see http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+real+GDP+over+time http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+real+GDP+over+time. That would seem to indicate that other countries are catching up, not that the US is declining. Also, in real terms, it doesn't look like the narrowing of the gap is accelerating (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+minus+BRIC+real+GDP+over+time http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+mi...).
  - heliodor 13y ago
    Yes, it shows that other countries are catching up, but every country in the world affects every other country through import/export. If every country in the world were at the economic level of the US, our products would cost much more and every American's purchasing power would go down. If we put money aside and look at social aspects like education or corruption, I don't think the US has ever topped those charts recently. The Scandinavian countries seem to dominate those types of charts year after year.

adamtait 13y ago

It looks like they're comparing averages from all those countries, when we all know that the population of the USA is largest. Even though the distribution might be different, the number of people that fit into the distribution are very different. We have some really smart people in Canada, but we also have 1/3 of the population of the US. Even if our average proficiency with problem solving is 10% higher, we still only have a fraction of the people who are proficient as the US.

refurb 13y ago
US population = 314M Canadian population = 35M 35M/314M = ~1/9 not 1/3

PaulHoule 13y ago

The purpose of a system is what it does. The school system has two purposes. One of them is to keep the teacher's union going. Union teaching jobs are unequivocally awful -- less than 50% of people who get teaching certificates can bear to work in the field, left with student debt and no income to repay it. (It's a good racket for the union teachers who teach the teacher thought.) They get rapidly discouraged and burned out but at least they get a defined benefit pension... For now. The other one is to kneecap people... Specifically from Kindergarten all the way to college I was taught that I could be bullied with impunity and never see anybody held to the account. This normalizes bullying in the workforce, which is exactly what they want because they want you to be weak and controllable. I'm going through this crap with my son. I went to a meeting with the superintendent and he was gushing over how much he wanted feedback from the mother of a "special" kid and how she was a partner in her education but he didn't care what I thought because there was a new paradigm and don't you know homework is obsolete and spelling too and how my input is definitely not wanted and won't be listened to. And they wonder why people vote Republican...

lquist 13y ago

It seems ironic to me that this story has been submitted to Hacker News, a social news website at the center of Silicon Valley, an extraordinary fount of innovation unequalled worldwide. American "progress" or "success" will be determined much more by the pace of innovation than by the abilities of the general population.