Inequality and Schooling Responses to Globalization Forces: Lessons from History

Date Published:

Sep 1, 2006

Abstract:

In the first global century before 1914, trade and especially migration had profound effects on both low-wage, labor abundant Europe and the high-wage, labor scarce New World. Those global forces contributed to a reduction in unskilled labor scarcity in the New World and to a rise in unskilled labor scarcity in Europe. Thus, it contributed to rising inequality in overseas countries, like the United States, and falling inequality in most of Europe. Falling unskilled labor scarcity and rising skill scarcity contributed to the high school revolution in the US. Rising unskilled scarcity also contributed to the primary schooling and literacy revolution in Europe. Under what conditions would we expect the same responses to globalization in today’s world? This paper argues that modern debates about inequality and schooling responses to globalization should pay more attention to history.

Notes:

Paper presented at the Conference on Migration, Trade and Development, Dallas (October 6, 2006). This paper draws from a recent book with Timothy J. Hatton, Global Migration and the World Economy: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance (MIT Press 2005). It has also been influenced by participant’s comments at the Center for Global Development Workshop on Emigration’s Impact on the Third World (September 11, 2006).
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