State of Democracy Lecture Series

The State of Democracy Lecture Series presents: Claudia Goldin, Harvard University "The Race Between Education and Technology"The American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Will it be able to keep pace with the demands of the 21st century? Claudia Goldin’s recently published book, The Race between Education and Technology (with L. Katz; The Belknap Press, 2008), provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that an egalitarian educational system suppressed inequality, giving rise to an American Century that was driven by investment in human capital. However since 1980, an educational slowdown has produced circumstances of rising inequality. Goldin discusses the reasons for this and what might be done to ameliorate it.