The Relationship Between Education and Income - Research Paper Example

In the current times when the US economy is marked by augmenting income inequalities, the academicians and labor experts are trying to establish and verify some kind of a correlation between academic success and the income bracket in which an individual comes to stand. Educational achievement stands to be the schism that tends to divide two Americas, the one that has a high income, and the other affiliated to low earnings (Strauss, 2011). The raw statistics available till date is amply indicative of the fact that the higher the level of education of an individual, the higher stand to be one’s earnings (Strauss, 2011).

It has also been found that the better educationally endowed a group happens to be, the lower unemployment rate it tends to have (Strauss, 2011). Literature Review The impact of the financial status of a family on the academic prospects of its progeny tends to be visible right at an early age. According to Smith, Family income has a direct impact on the enrollment of three to five years old, thereby indicative of the fact that the individuals affiliated to low income families get economically and academically marginalized right at an early age (Smith, 2006).

As per Smith, exposure to income disparities exposes the children born in low income families to an early education gap (Smith, 2006). . that low education breeds a low income status, and rather points to a two way relationship between education and income, where the gaps and weaknesses in one variable automatically tends to have a negative correlation with the other variable, which is low income status mars academic achievement and low academic achievement dwindles the eventual earnings. In the light of the issue under consideration, the research conducted by Hotchkiss and Shiferaw is of apt significance.

Hotchkiss and Shiferaw resorted to a wide range of data sources to facilitate a multidimensional understanding of the wages accrued by the individuals across their time and educational status (Hotchkiss & Shiferaw, 2011). Taking into consideration the supply of workforce segments affiliated to disparate academic levels, Hotchkiss and Shiferaw identified a wide wage gap between the groups that had a high school education and the groups that had a college education (Hotchkiss & Shiferaw, 2011).

One interesting thing about the research conducted by Hotchkiss and Shiferaw is that it identified the access to technology and the technological skills at the disposal of the workers having a benefit of only a high school education and those having a college education as the pivotal determinant that explained the gaps between their earnings (Hotchkiss & Shiferaw, 2011). According to Hotchkiss and Shiferaw, the workers that have the benefit of a college education not merely earn more than the workers who have merely a high school education, because of their higher academic achievement, but because of their high technological competence and their ability to facilitate technology driven solutions in a technology driven work environment (Hotchkiss & Shiferaw, 2011).

This adds one more dimension to the issue of the