17

In the movie Inside Job, Matt Damon makes the following claim:

For the first time in history, average Americans have less education and are less prosperous than their parents.

Is that true? What measurements of prosperity support his point and which measurements disagree? If it's true that Americans are now less prosperous and educated than their parents, is this the first time in history that has ever been the case?

Improve this question
4
  • 3
    I've heard this not just about Americans, but most of the western world.
    – Mark Henderson
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 2:02
  • 1
    Unless Matt Damon makes a more specific claim with regards to education, I think it'd be best if we focused on the quantity of education rather than the quality of said education.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 6:27
  • The prosperity claim, for average Americans, ought to follow the historical Gini coefficient, and for the USA from 1967-2007 income equality disparity has grown. That being said, aggregate income growth may offset the distribution inequality, but that does not look to have been the case when one accounts for cost of living increases. On prosperity, this claim seems plausible.
    – Brian M. Hunt
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 14:15
  • 1
    @BrianM.Hunt Is income disparity a good metric? I thought it was better during the Great Depression than during the 1920s boom in the USA.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 22:12

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
22

The second graph on this U.S. Census page negates the claim that Americans are less educated than their parents. Americans are more educated than ever in history.

Per capita income has also increased significantly in the past fifty years.

However, Matt Damon is talking about "average Americans" in this claim, so we would need to dig a little deeper to evaluate it. Let's assume that he means "the middle 20%" -- those people in the 40th-59th percentile of income. This is closer to the concept of a median than average, but who says "median American" these days?

In Table A-2 beginning on page 38 of this US Census report, the following numbers are shown for the middle 20% (third quintile):

  • 1967 - $41,670 (17.3% of income)
  • 2011 - $49,842 (14.3% of income)

Notice how income has increased for this group while its share of the country's income has decreased. This means that while "average" Americans make less than wealthier Americans today than they did in 1967, they also have more purchasing power than they did in 1967. They can buy nicer stuff and more of it.

The claim benefits from being vague, though. "Prosperous" could measured in other ways, since it's roughly synonymous with "success," and success can be interpreted many ways. Were I arguing with someone about this in person, I would ask them to define "average American" and "prosperous" for the purposes of their argument before running around the Internet to gather answers. :)

Improve this answer
8
  • 6
    Does the income include inflation?
    – Baarn
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 10:23
  • 4
    Yes, the figures I posted are inflation-adjusted.
    – Micah
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 14:18
  • 1
    I can't find page 38 nor table A-2 in that report. I only saw income distribution in table 2.
    – William Grobman
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 18:13
  • 4
    Does this answer account for the amount of debt-per-capita, both personal debt typically held by an "average American" plus pro rata official debt? I would think that while PPP may indeed have risen, it seems to have only done so marginally, while the debt of an “average American” seems to have increased by magnitudes over the past 40 years.
    – Brian M. Hunt
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 20:52
  • 2
    One also needs to be more precise about the term "less educated". I imagine that the graduation statistics (high school,college) have gone up, one might interpret "less educated" to mean that even with a college education, what is actually learned is less and at a lower quality.
    – Baby Dragon
    Commented Feb 23, 2013 at 2:47

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .