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Over the relevant time period of comparison (70's to today), GINI has increased from about 40% to 47%. You're confusing the Gini before taxes and transfers wit

Over the relevant time period of comparison (70's to today), GINI has increased from about 40% to 47%. You're confusing the Gini before taxes and transfers with the Gini after taxes and transfers (which is the one relevant for inequality). Also, the past two decades started in the 90s, not the 70s. Based on the historical data, it looks as if inequality increases college enrollment and does not alter mobility. There's been a lot else going on since the 1970s (end of the Cold War, the internet, increasing acceptance of women going to college, just to name a few factors). I really don't know how you get the idea that there's just one single factor affecting college enrollment (see also the Flynn effect, which is likely a pretty huge factor). If you want to claim that increasing inequality increases college enrollment, you'll have to provide better support for such a claim. More importantly, while college enrollment rates have increased, college graduation rates (relative to enrollment) have decreased [1], and overall college degree attainment has shown relatively little change [2]. This is consistent with the general experience that, while tuition does not necessarily form an obstacle to initial enrollment, the additional financial pressure often makes it hard to actually maintain a course of study (especially if that requires you to work more while studying full time). For all practical purposes, higher tuition fees do create a barrier to enrollment. That there have historically been countervailing factors does not mean that more expensive college tuition does not functionally retard enrollment relative to what it would be otherwise. Also, what increase there is in college enrollment comes at the cost of an explosion in student loan debt, where families saddle themselves with long term financial liabilities, more and more often without a degree to show for it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completion_rates_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completio... [2] https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/fig4.jpg https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/histo...

yummyfajitas 13y ago
If you have data on GINI after taxes/transfers, I'd love to see it. But please recognize that you are in a minority here - most left wing sorts don't look at data after taxes and transfers. For example, anyone who talks about poverty is talking about pre-tax/transfer data (after taxes and transfers, poverty is almost nonexistent). I really don't know how you get the idea that there's just one single factor... I don't really get why you completely ignored the sentence right after the one you quoted, which explicitly says I don't think correlation is causality. You still have not clearly stated what data would falsify your theory. Should I conclude that your claims are unfalsifiable, and therefore closer to a religious claim than a scientific one?
- rbehrends 13y ago
  If you have data on GINI after taxes/transfers, I'd love to see it. Umm, Google, Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GiniPlots_USA.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GiniPlots_USA.png See also [1] for a list of countries by Gini both before and after taxes/transfers. But please recognize that you are in a minority here - most left wing sorts don't look at data after taxes and transfers. For example, anyone who talks about poverty is talking about pre-tax/transfer data (after taxes and transfers, poverty is almost nonexistent). Say what? For example, Germany actually has higher inequality than the US before taxes and transfers, but significantly lower inequality after taxes and transfers [1]. And even egalitarian Finland's pre-tax Gini isn't much different from that of the US (taxes and transfers cut it almost in half). Inequality before taxes and transfers is practically unavoidable in a developed countries; taxes and transfers are the difference between the European social democracies and the US. And no, poverty is not non-existent after taxes and transfers; about one in six Americans lives in a food-insecure household [2]. Ever been to Gary, IN [3], East St. Louis, or Chicago's South Side? America has not only a high relative poverty rate, but also a high absolute poverty rate (compared to the rest of the developed world). Also, why do you seem to assume that I'm a "left wing sort" (other than by tea party standards where Rockefeller Republicans are proto-communists)? You still have not clearly stated what data would falsify your theory. Should I conclude that your claims are unfalsifiable, and therefore closer to a religious claim than a scientific one? Huh? Just because a random variable that is the aggregate of many other random variables (college enrollment) is not sufficient to make statements about one of the component random variables (college tuition) does not mean that it's unfalsifiable. You do have to control for the other variables, though. But there's nothing inherently unfalsifiable about a relation between tuition and college enrollment/completion. Just because you can't find it easily on Google doesn't mean that you couldn't design a study to examine that relation minus confounding factors. And the evidence is strong that there is such a relation (it's also common sense - if a good becomes more expensive, fewer people will purchase this good, unless there are countervailing effects). If you look at it more closely, for example, you will learn that income affects college graduation rates and college degree attainment rates (and, conversely, having a college degree affects income and social mobility) [4]. Higher tuition both negatively affects graduation rates and also segregates low-income students into lower quality colleges (or kept out of college entirely). The underlying paper by Bailey and Dynarski [5] documents pretty clearly that income inequality translates into inequality in educational attainment and that low-income students dropping out disproportionately often is a major driver of this effect. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ... [2] http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hun... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-indiana-photos-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-indiana-photos-2012-7 [4] http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/economy/income_college/ http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/economy/income_college/ [5] http://users.nber.org/~dynarski/Bailey_Dynarski.pdf http://users.nber.org/~dynarski/Bailey_Dynarski.pdf

yummyfajitas 13y ago

If you have data on GINI after taxes/transfers, I'd love to see it. But please recognize that you are in a minority here - most left wing sorts don't look at data after taxes and transfers. For example, anyone who talks about poverty is talking about pre-tax/transfer data (after taxes and transfers, poverty is almost nonexistent). I really don't know how you get the idea that there's just one single factor... I don't really get why you completely ignored the sentence right after the one you quoted, which explicitly says I don't think correlation is causality. You still have not clearly stated what data would falsify your theory. Should I conclude that your claims are unfalsifiable, and therefore closer to a religious claim than a scientific one?

rbehrends 13y ago
If you have data on GINI after taxes/transfers, I'd love to see it. Umm, Google, Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GiniPlots_USA.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GiniPlots_USA.png See also [1] for a list of countries by Gini both before and after taxes/transfers. But please recognize that you are in a minority here - most left wing sorts don't look at data after taxes and transfers. For example, anyone who talks about poverty is talking about pre-tax/transfer data (after taxes and transfers, poverty is almost nonexistent). Say what? For example, Germany actually has higher inequality than the US before taxes and transfers, but significantly lower inequality after taxes and transfers [1]. And even egalitarian Finland's pre-tax Gini isn't much different from that of the US (taxes and transfers cut it almost in half). Inequality before taxes and transfers is practically unavoidable in a developed countries; taxes and transfers are the difference between the European social democracies and the US. And no, poverty is not non-existent after taxes and transfers; about one in six Americans lives in a food-insecure household [2]. Ever been to Gary, IN [3], East St. Louis, or Chicago's South Side? America has not only a high relative poverty rate, but also a high absolute poverty rate (compared to the rest of the developed world). Also, why do you seem to assume that I'm a "left wing sort" (other than by tea party standards where Rockefeller Republicans are proto-communists)? You still have not clearly stated what data would falsify your theory. Should I conclude that your claims are unfalsifiable, and therefore closer to a religious claim than a scientific one? Huh? Just because a random variable that is the aggregate of many other random variables (college enrollment) is not sufficient to make statements about one of the component random variables (college tuition) does not mean that it's unfalsifiable. You do have to control for the other variables, though. But there's nothing inherently unfalsifiable about a relation between tuition and college enrollment/completion. Just because you can't find it easily on Google doesn't mean that you couldn't design a study to examine that relation minus confounding factors. And the evidence is strong that there is such a relation (it's also common sense - if a good becomes more expensive, fewer people will purchase this good, unless there are countervailing effects). If you look at it more closely, for example, you will learn that income affects college graduation rates and college degree attainment rates (and, conversely, having a college degree affects income and social mobility) [4]. Higher tuition both negatively affects graduation rates and also segregates low-income students into lower quality colleges (or kept out of college entirely). The underlying paper by Bailey and Dynarski [5] documents pretty clearly that income inequality translates into inequality in educational attainment and that low-income students dropping out disproportionately often is a major driver of this effect. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ... [2] http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hun... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-indiana-photos-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-indiana-photos-2012-7 [4] http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/economy/income_college/ http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/economy/income_college/ [5] http://users.nber.org/~dynarski/Bailey_Dynarski.pdf http://users.nber.org/~dynarski/Bailey_Dynarski.pdf