The Tyranny of Merit and War: A Complex Dilemma of Income Inequality, 1996–2017

• In Event: 30620 - Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Social Stratification and Its Discontents

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the aggregate effect of public education on economic inequality. By expanding the number of national samples and data, this study contributes to the ongoing debate about does education and war in the past have impacted government through expenditure expansion and market regulation, thereby reducing economic inequality (Acemoglu et al., 2001; Sheidel 2018). The sociological importance of this study is fulfilling the blank identified by Killewald, in which sociologists acknowledge the strong correlation between education, wealth accumulation, income, and higher education recognized by many sociologists, yet often lacking analysis of concrete empirical mechanisms (Killewald et al., 2018).
Using data from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and World Inequality Database (WID), the article reveals that over the past two decades, higher education's role in human capital, skills training, and technological changes has widened wealth and income disparities globally. Beyond economic inequality from financialization and liberalization accompanying democratic transitions, disparities in higher education access exacerbate income gaps.
Our results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between public tertiary education expenditure and Top 1% income. In contrast, the top 10% exhibit a significant negative correlation with the growth of public expenditure on tertiary education. This finding implies that the growth of public expenditure on higher education enhances the upward mobility to attaining middle class income, thereby weakening the exclusion of the top 10% and reducing their share of income. Conversely, the top 1% consistently benefit from the expansion of public expenditure on higher education through the closure of credential and qualification (Flemmen 2017). Overall, our result aligns with the more cautious views of Killewald, Beckert, and Artige and Cavenaile, who question whether such expenditures necessarily reduce economic inequality across societies (Killewald et al., 2018; Beckert 2022; Artige and Cavenaile 2023).

Authors

• Shih-Hao Lin, Virginia Tech

• Thung-Hong Lin, Academia Sinica