Education and Equality

Abstract

It is fairly clear that higher education, among other things, works a considerable income redistribution. In general, this redistribution is from the poor to those people who would be very well off even without education. The higher educational system increases the degree of income differentia tion in the society. People who have considerable natural talent, who would therefore have high incomes in any event, are given higher incomes at the expense of the taxpayer. There is a secondary aspect of income redistribution related to the higher educational system. It has been argued that the children of upper class parents gain more than the children of poor parents and that this difference is greater than the difference between the taxes paid to support education by these two groups. It is not certain that this is so; in any event, the question of the wealth of the parents of the students who receive the taxpayer's gift seems less important than the actual potential lifetime earnings of the recipients. Of course, it is possible to offset the regressive nature of the higher edu cational system by progressive measures in other parts of gov ernment; however, it would seem simpler to convert the higher educational system to one which provides less in the way of benefits for the rich at the expense of the poor.