Education touted for economic growth
As more well-educated baby boomers leave the work force, the economy of the United States could stagnate, people attending Tuesday’s Kalispell Chamber of Commerce luncheon were told.
Brian Bosworth of FutureWorks, a private consulting and public policy research firm, spoke about education and its role in the economy.
In the 40-year period from 1960 until 2000, the U.S. relied on an increased educational growth level to create economic development, Bosworth said. The rising educational attainment of the U.S. work force led to 25 percent of all economic growth in the country in that 40-year period, he said.
That contrasts to today’s scene, he said, in which the U.S. is in a period of declining educational attainment that will “draw down our economic growth.”
Bosworth shared plenty of statistical data to support his positions.
In 1960, 41 percent of Americans had a high-school diploma and 8 percent had a bachelor’s degree or an advanced college degree. Forty years later, 80 percent of Americans had a high-school diploma and 24 percent had at least a bachelor’s degree.
From 1960 to 2000, the work force grew at a rate of 100 percent, he said. It’s predicted to grow at a 30 percent rate between 2000 and 2040.
There are fewer people entering the work force and younger people today have less education than older workers.
Educational attainment began to level off in the 1980s and remains flat at best today and in some cases has even declined, Bosworth said.
High-school graduation rates in the early 2000s are down from their levels in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, although there has been a slight uptick in the last year or two, he said. College entrance rates are stagnant and college completion rates have decreased in the last decade, he said.
People “leaving their jobs in the next 40 years will be better educated than the new people entering the job market,” he said. “There will be a significant erosion in the educational level of workers in the next 40 years.” And, he predicts, the percentage of the labor force with less than a high-school diploma will grow in the next 20 years.
All those are reasons why it’s important to focus on educating older Americans (ages 25 to 64) to fill some of those jobs that will be vacated by retiring boomers, he said. “We can’t have an educational philosophy that gives up on adults as we largely have,” he said.
While he’s fine with the educational concept of “leave no child behind,” Bosworth wants that idea extended to “leave no one behind,” child or adult.
Trends show there aren’t enough young people graduating from college to replace the older workers who are leaving the work force now, Bosworth said.
He used data from 2008 to back up that statement. At that time, 62 million of the 120 million working adults between the ages of 25 and 64 had no post-secondary education, be that a two- or four-year college degree or a vocational certification. Of those 62 million adults, only 400,000 were getting some sort of post-secondary training, either in a college or vocational training setting.
It’s important to note that the decline in overall education levels of Americans “will play out differently in different parts of the U.S.,” he said.
Cities with higher levels of education have higher incomes and faster income growth, he said.
In 1980, the 10 most-educated regions of the U.S. had average per capita incomes of 12 percent above the national average while the 10 least-educated regions had average per capita incomes of 3 percent below the national average.
In 1998, those statistics showed tremendous change, Bosworth said.
People living in the 10 most-educated regions had average per capita incomes that were 20 percent higher than the U.S. average and those in the 10 least-educated regions had average incomes that were 12 percent below the national average.
Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 857-4439 or by e-mail at sridenour@dailyinterlake.com