If you need another reason to favor community college programs that focus on preparing students for high-wage, high-demand jobs, here it is. A new study conducted by researchers at Boston College, the University of California Irvine, and the University of Oslo in Norway suggests that educational attainment and income as an adult are predicted by the number and quality of “opportunities” a child encounters while in the educational system.
The study followed more than 800 children from birth to age 26. Study subjects lived in 10 different US cities. Researchers were most interested in the frequency with which study subjects found themselves in supportive learning environments. Supportive learning environments could be anything from having high-quality daycare, schools, or after-school programs to educational toys and books at home.
Students from high-income homes encounter 6 to 7 times as many opportunities as students from low-income homes. Middle class children encounter about four times as many opportunities as students from low-income homes. For study participants, these opportunities translated into better overall education and higher earnings in their mid-20’s.
Household income was an enabling factor for these opportunities. The higher the household income, the more opportunities the study participants encountered. When household income was sufficient to enable opportunities throughout a study participant’s life, that participant was more likely to have access to higher quality education for a longer period of time. In turn, that increased the adult earning potential of the participant. Conversely, participants from lower-income homes had a lower educational attainment and lower earnings at the conclusion of the study period.
High-wage programs can alleviate county’s household income disparities
By developing programs that have a high potential to increase household income (and by making high-quality childcare available to students from low-income homes), WCC could help reduce the “opportunity gap” between high-income and low-income students in Washtenaw County.
The consequence of not developing high-wage programs is that the opportunity gap between low-income and high-income households in Washtenaw County continues to increase. On paper, we do not have a class system. Theoretically, anyone in the US can be economically mobile. The study highlights the reality of American society; while there are no legal barriers to economic mobility, practical barriers virtually ensure that upper-income children remain in upper income brackets, while middle income students may or may not retain the socioeconomic status they were born into, and children from lower-income homes have few reliable opportunities to truly enable their economic mobility.
It is imperative that Washtenaw County develops a concrete and actionable strategy for reducing the income gap among households here. Education focused on high-wage, high demand industries s one way to do that, and WCC is a natural choice, provided that it has developed programs that have the high potential to influence household income here.
Photo Credit: 401(K) 2012 , via Flickr
