Money plays a vital role on every individual. Depending on the perceive function of money, it is a general entity wherein it is used for exchanging items, commodities, properties, services, to name a few. Furthermore, money evolves on a cyclic pattern (from purchasing a commodity or exchanging items, etc. ) and one stage of this pattern can be considered the income. Income can be manifested in terms of salaries, commissions, profit, and the like. Likewise, the quantitative value of the income earned has an effect on the various activities involving money: Education can be considered one of them.
Education is the basic foundation of an individual’s intellectual competencies, and consequently the epitome of the modern age of technology and social advancements. Education, to have a good one, does not necessarily depend solely on an individual’s intellect. Money also plays a vital role on sustaining relevant undertakings and projects not to mention the type of school, degree to be taken, and the level of educational attainments. Therefore, the correlation between income and education can be considered significant and the inequalities on income can greatly affect education.
There has been a rising trend on the relative and significant relationship between income inequality and education. Aside from the Anglo-Saxon nations, industrialized countries are also being affected by the inequality in income. Several possible causes can be considered such as the following: the eminent reductions of the distributive responsibility of the state; the apparent decline on the presence of union groups in the workplace; the augmented level of competition considering an international level; progress in technology; and the possible combinations of such.
Though on a national level, it can be considered very diverse in such a way that these only represent a general context rather than a specific conclusive assumption. In a broader sense, a larger inequality in income relatively generates an increased social instability, greater poverty range, and social pressure, thus creating an adverse environment on investing in substantial capital. Also, this will restrain the access to proper schooling, human capital investment, and consequently reducing growth potential, though these cannot be applied to countries wherein compulsory education are given cost- free.
Furthermore, it is hard to identify a distinct pattern of progress among the countries all throughout the globe because the structures on the social aspect change in a different way such as religion, traditions, and heritage, among others. But if a single country would be considered, the fundamental associations governing the cumulative choices on education can be understood. The hypothetical literature makes vast simplified assumptions: wherein the educational choices are directly influenced by the inequality in income and can be considered directly correlated.
This subsequently allowed several specific classification of an inter-generational symmetry in the distribution of human capital and incomes. In various models, the same hindrances occurs such as: the cultural poverty and environment, the lack of economic markets intended for financing education, not to mention the inadequacy in tariff levying of community officials. This relatively averts the necessary investments in human assets by a portion of the population, who have consequently earns a lesser amount of income.
Even though there may be other persistence, such as inheritance or the effects of family educational background, a greater portion of the quantity of the whole population are ensnared at a lower level of education as well as low income for approximately one generation. Therefore, within the perceived models, the illiterate people are also considered poor people. At the same time, the income distribution are also closely related to several factors such as legislation on labors, existence and coverage of trade unions, composition of employment opportunities, economic rather than educational policies (Bourguignon 1994).
Aside from these models and factors, the relative inequality in income may hinder the access to education when it is proved to be costly on the family. In a statistical point of view, the more skewed the income distribution, the higher would be the share of the population that are excluded from attending school (though other factors may be present) and the relative cause would be a higher inequality in educational attainment which is critical in a developing nation and in return will affect the economic as well as the income distribution.
Thus, it manifests a self-revolving trap in the content of poverty and the most probable solution would be the access towards education. The relative improvement on the access towards education would eventually raise the opportunity to earn more by the people belonging to the lower strata, and considering the other factors to be constant, consequently reduces the inequality in earnings. If the aggregate income is in line to the labor income, a positive correlation between the income distribution and educational achievements distribution can be achieved.
The other factors that are considered constant can be crucial since it can never be a constant parameter in an evolving social and economic environment. For instance, consider a biased-skilled technological alteration. Some analysts have claimed that this caused the “boost” in collegiate premiums in the United States. Considering the element of time, it is eminent that there has been an increase in enrollment in spite of a considerable increase on tuition fees.
Until the furnishing of fresh college graduates eventually depresses the premium, there would be an observed growth in income inequality and at the same time a relative reduction in the inequality of the educational attainment. Therefore, it is difficult to exactly assume or predict the significant factors or sign regarding the relationship of inequality in income and educational attainment or achievements.
More so, the crucial point to consider is the relative role of education to eventually measure the level of income inequality considering the plausible conditions or state of equilibrium between the human capital and income in a given population, and the effective role and actions of the urging people or countries to significantly upgrade or increase their educational attainments would have a considerable or moderate effect on the existing distribution of income or earnings.
Several studies on the correlation of the income inequality and education can be seen on the works of the following authors such as: one author suggested that the pertinent relationship between education and inequality in income and growth is negative for the poor countries and a positive for the rich countries (Barro 1999); another is a wok of another author who decomposes the growth on an output scale over the period of 1967 up to 1985 to become a quantifiable component manifested on the rates of enrollment as well as a price element as determined by the significant stocks of human assets (O’ Neil 1995).
In other associated paper, the author interpreted the proof that the consequence of the average or the initial period on the secondary level of school on the inequality of income is significant to serve as a substitute of the effects on the political aspect: the further political liberty exists, the more will the society be informed and consequently it will be more intricate for the rich people to apposite additional resources. All of these studies have recognized the subsistence on a distributional context the significant relationship between inequalities in income as well on educational inequality.
Though it is difficult to measure the correlation on a generalized scale, an individual study of each country’s income and educational relationship or link can be made to specifically identify and come up with a specific analysis. Furthermore, the perceived effect of the inequalities in income to educational achievements is considered to be correlated and significant. It resembles a cyclic pattern wherein the bottom-line is poverty.
Therefore to alleviate poverty, access towards education should be opened so that in the long run, the inequalities on income would be marginalized. References Barro, R. (1999). Inequality, Growth and Investment. NBER Working Papers 7038. O’Neil, D. (1995). Education and Income Growth: Implications for Cross- country Inequality. Journal of Political Economy 103 (6): 1289-99. Bourguignon, F. (1994). Growth, Distribution and Human Resources in G. Ranis (ed. ) En Route to Modern Growth, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD.