Education, Employment and Earnings

In the past quarter-century there has been a huge rise in education – for both sexes and for all classes and ethnic groups. Previously, in Britain, the system was not meritocratic: with two-thirds of the population receiving no more than a basic education, numerous able children were eliminated by the ‘11+’ exam. Now, in Britain, as in the US, at least two thirds of the population get better than a basic education. In Germany that always was so, and the old region of West Germany today, despite a current economic crisis caused by an overvalued exchange rate, has only a moderate meritocracy – with a level of total welfare which may well be as high as any in the world. The other side of the coin is the rise in ‘non-employment’. Many nonemployed are people who have taken early retirement or become statesupported invalids and some of these increases may reflect natural tendencies to reduce working life as we become more affluent. But the trends are also partly ‘endogenous’ to the weak labour market. If fewer people had become invalids or retired early, would they have found jobs? They might well have just transferred from one kind of non-employment to another. By the same token, if there really are single women who have deliberately conceived children only to get income support, in a weak labour market, the decision could be quite rational