Education, Earnings, and College Enrollment in the United States

Technological developments and associated changes in the structure of economic activty have substantial consequences for the relative demands for the various factors of production. Changes in the composition of labor demand have particularly significant consequences, especially in market economies, in which relative earnings and conditions of employment may change substantially even over relatively brief periods. The first of the two papers in this report, which build upon the author's earlier modeling of the markets for different educational-attainment classes of labor, documents the anticipated decline in the relative earnings of the highly educated in the United States in the period since the late 1960s. The second then summarizes the probable implications of these and related developments for the educationl attainments of future cohorts of labor force entrants. It is anticipated that future studies will provide comparative analyses for other economies, illluminating the influence of institutional, demographic, and other factors on the process of labor force adaptation to changing patterns of labor demand