Category: education

Is the U.S. Still a ‘Land of Opportunity’?

~ MilesCorak ~ 5 Comments

The New York Times posed this question to a group of experts, Richard Florida, Isabel Sawhill, Timothy Smeeding, and five others, including me.

More specifically, they asked:

There is a growing consensus that it is harder to move up the economic ladder in the United States than in many other places, like Canada. Should more Americans consider leaving the U.S. to get ahead? Or can the U.S. make changes to be more of a “land of opportunity”?

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Inequality and Occupy Wall Street 8: causes of growing inequality and policies to address it

~ MilesCorak ~ 1 Comment

This video of a panel discussion called “The Challenges of Growing Inequality” organized by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University features a discussion by Lawerence Katz, a prominent labour economist. Katz speaks on the causes of inequality and offers advice to Occupiers on what should be done about it.

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Economics is about being a good plumber

~ MilesCorak ~ Leave a comment

Ester Duflo is a smart women.

She has a PhD from MIT where she has taught development economics since her graduation in 1999. She holds a chair in the Department of Economics there, edits an influential economics journal, has published too many articles to count, won major prizes and awards—including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship that is nicknamed the ‘genius’ award—and has authored or co-authored four books with the most recent released earlier this year called Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the way to Fight Global Poverty.

And to just what does this 38-year-old aspire? … She wants to be a good plumber!

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Success in school for child migrants is linked to their age of arrival

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Children who migrate to Canada have a better chance of finishing high school if they arrive in the country at a younger age.

In a study published by Statistics Canada I show that immigrant children arriving in Canada after the age of nine are more likely to drop out without finishing high school than those arriving at a younger age.

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