The Race between Education and Technology

TLDR

Goldin and Katz have published cliometric studies on American inequality and education for two decades, and this volume assumes readers are comfortable with advanced statistical methods such as Mincerian earnings regressions. The authors aim to analyze the historical interplay among education, technological change, and inequality in the United States over a period extending beyond the 1990s. They use a long historical dataset starting in 1890, drawing on high‑quality series such as the 1915 Iowa census, and apply advanced statistical methods and best‑practice assumptions to estimate rates of return to education.

Abstract

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz have been publishing scholarly "cliometric" articles on trends in American economic inequality and education for two decades. After they discovered that their research fit together if they addressed the historical relationships between education, technological change, and equality, they decided to merge efforts and publish somewhat integrated versions of their work in this volume. One of their goals was to examine those relationships over a time span greater than that used by other explorations of the pressing issue of increasing inequality in the United States since the 1990s. The authors begin in 1890 and emphasize the years from 1915 to the present. This long work is highly statistical, calls on quality data series, including the beloved Iowa state census of 1915, and employs state-of-the-art techniques and "best-practice" assumptions needed for such complex estimates as rates-of-return to education. The book is not for the statistically uninitiated. Readers have to be prepared for such things as a "standard Mincerian log annual earnings" and, at times, statistical overkill, such as a complex multiple regression analysis performed on state-level data.