The Education Gap in the Postindustrial Era

In this article, by performing an analysis that incorporates the variable of "occupation," which takes into consideration the progression from education to income, we attempt to determine the reason for the lack of significant expansion in the education gap. In the second section of the paper, we give an overview of research on the growth of income and wage disparity and discuss current conditions. In the third section, we discuss the mechanism responsible for growth in the gap and consider the reasons why, assuming the mechanism comes into play, we see little or no growth in the gap. In the fourth section, after explaining the data used in our analysis, we evaluate income disparity to educational level from the 1980s to the present to determine whether this indicator has increased or not. Then we investigate the correlation among educational level, occupation, and income to attempt to clarify why we see no expansion in the income disparity to educational level. Finally in the conclusion of the article, we provide a theory about what these results mean from the wider context beyond just individual income disparity.