A paper by Institute economist Brad Hershbein (coauthored with Melissa Kearney and Lawrence Summers) on whether increased levels of education can help reduce income inequality in the United States is the subject of a March 31 "The Upshot" column in the New York Times. In "Why More Education Won't Fix Income Inequality," writer Neil Irwin presents the results which show that better education will improve the lives and economic potential of working-class Americans. However, it has little impact on inequality, which proves to be a more complicated problem to solve.
Read the paper, "Increasing Education: What it Will and Will Not Do for Earnings and Earnings Inequality."