The children of high-income parents often become high-income adults, while their low-income peers often become low-income adults. Education plays a central role in this intergenerational income persistence. Because education-based inequalities grew in recent decades, many scholars predicted that intergenerational income persistence would increase.…

This paper documents changes in the entire ability distribution of individuals entering the teaching profession using the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a constructed Armed Force Qualifying Test score that allows direct comparison of ability between cohorts. Such direct comparison between cohorts was…

This report revisits the debate about why social mobility levels are relatively low in Great Britain and the United States of America compared to other countries. It focuses on three main areas within this debate: (1) the changing role of educational inequalities; (2) the expectation of ever higher levels of education as revealed in increasing…

Differences in education and labor market outcomes across groups completing high school at different ages and by different means (e.g., by graduation as compared with receiving a general education development diploma) may be due to a variety of factors, including all those that influence a person to leave school early. For an early school-leaver,…

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and several alternative data sets containing proxies for industries' rates of technological change (including the Jorgenson productivity growth series, National Bureau of Economic Research productivity data, and the Census of Manufacturers series on investments in computers, the Research and…

Education professionals have long known that family background is a stronger predictor of academic success than are school or teacher characteristics. The past 30 years have seen a series of drastic alterations in patterns of family living in the United States, and these changes mean that a substantial number of youngsters are being born or are…

This report focuses on the education and work experiences of rural youth during the emerging adult years (age 20 to 24), as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It documents how rural emerging adults combine work and school and experience idleness, closely examines their educational attainment, and compares their experiences…

This report presents a new synthesis of statistical indicators and research findings on the quality of science and mathematics education in the United States. In more detail than any other report, it addresses the progress made toward the U.S. national goal of ranking first in the world in mathematics and science by the year 2000. It draws on…