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January 27, 2006
Bigger In Texas
Everything's bigger in Texas, and bigger is better, right? Not so fast.
In today's Chronicle, Polly Ross Hughes looks at a new study on income disparity from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The top line conclusion: "no state has a wider gap between its richest and middle-income families than Texas", and Texas ranks second only to New York in income disparity between its richest and poorest. Dubious distinctions, to say the least.
One statistic that really jumps out -- from 2001 to 2003, the average annual income of the top 20% of Texas families (about $119,000) was almost three times that of the middle 20% (about $41,000), and eight times that of the poorest 20% (about $15,000). Wow. The study shows growing inequality nationwide, but the trends are more pronounced in Texas.
Hughes goes on that "the study attributes growing income inequality over the past two decades to globalization, long periods of unemployment, the loss of well-paid manufacturing jobs, weaker labor unions, the rise of lower-paid service jobs and a national minimum wage that hasn't risen in eight years."
One dot that is not connected here is the role of education. Texas happens to have the largest number of high school dropouts and the largest number of residents without high school diplomas in the country. Most research shows a pretty strong correlation between education level and economic success. With a large portion of the population uneducated, it stands to reason their economic prosperity will be limited.
If Texas needed any further documentation of the importance of investing in public education to the future economic success of the state, this study is it. Building a quality public education system will cost more money, but it is the key to sustaining (or rebuilding) a large, vibrant middle class.
Globalization, like it or not, is here to stay. It is simply too expensive to manufacture most things in the United States. Hence, many of those high-paying jobs of the past that didn't require so much formal education are gone forever. For Texas (and America as a whole) to be competitive in the global economy of today and tomorrow, we must have a skilled workforce. We don't have it now, and we are only beginning to feel the consequences.
Posted by houtopia at January 27, 2006 09:10 AM