The Troubling Tie Between Wealth Inequality and Education
I grew up in Newburgh, a fairly large town picturesquely set on a wide, mountainous bend of the Hudson River. Newburgh is a place whose history is closely intertwined with Henry Hudson, George Washington, and Robert Fulton. However, crime, unaddressed poverty, racial tensions, and poor education overshadow the town’s bygone glory. What was once such a promising area has been left to crumple into itself.
After my freshman year, I moved from Newburgh to Chappaqua. Many of my classmates in Newburgh came from troubled backgrounds, and I had friends who didn’t have enough money to buy lunch or an adequate winter coat. In Chappaqua, meanwhile, many of my friends come from affluent families, Whole Foods is a frequented lunch spot, and Canada Goose jackets abound in the hallways.
Whenever I go back to Newburgh, I am reminded of the numerous old friends who were thrown off course due to a lack of guidance or whose families were in need. My experiences in Newburgh have made me hyper-aware of the injustices created by wealth inequality.
Among these injustices is access to educational resources. In Newburgh, many peers and friends in this low-income district could not afford technology, tutors, practice materials for standardized tests, or multiple attempts at these standardized tests. Not coincidentally, Ivy League admissions are normally limited to one to three students per year out of a graduating class of around 700 students.
Meanwhile, in Chappaqua, many of my peers can afford high-end laptops, supplemental tutoring, review materials, college essay specialists, application counselors, diagnostic testing and preparatory work for the SAT and ACT, and multiple attempts at these exams. Additionally, large sums of tax money are diverted towards funding the school system, giving students access to advanced technology and well-supported teachers.
This disparity in resource access in education is a product of wealth inequality. Because of the discrepancy in the resources available to wealthy and less fortunate students, economically advantaged students score higher on standardized tests. According to a 2012 New York Times article on a study from that year, “At elite private American universities, moreover, students are six times as likely to come from a professional as a poor or working class background.”
Two other New York Times graphics from 2009 and 2016 reflect similar trends. The 2009 graphic shows that there is a direct correlation between family income and SAT scores; higher family income means higher standardized test scores. The 2016 graphic similarly shows a relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status and levels of academic attainment; children of wealthier families see higher levels of academic achievement than their less fortunate peers.
As a result of this access inequality, economically disadvantaged students are handicapped compared to their wealthier counterparts. Their potential in education is minimized, and a result, their opportunities to elevate themselves are reduced.
It’s a truly disturbing phenomenon to witness first-hand. Many of my old friends in Newburgh were academically gifted at a young age — enrolling alongside me in an honors program in elementary school, for example — yet their levels of academic achievement have tapered significantly, largely because of their socioeconomic backgrounds.
What’s further unsettling is the long-lasting implications that this access inequality has. It’s important to keep in mind that the affected students are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Because their own futures are diminished, their progeny experience similar injustices, seeing their own futures and their children’s futures become compromised. The cycle continues, thus creating a sacrilegious system of social immobility in a country that is supposed to be defined by meritocracy.
I’m fascinated by this moral transgression, as it mirrors the stratified society of the Gilded Age America that I learned about in AP US History. In this era, business tycoons such as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan accumulated great sums of wealth. But as a new upper class emerged, the rest of America was plunged into a period of rampant poverty and social unrest. American society was gilded by a wealthy upper class masking the disturbing poverty that lay beneath. During this time period, social immobility was arguably at its highest.
One hundred twenty-five years later, the same problems are still plaguing our nation. According to a recent New York Times article, “a child born in Pakistan has a better chance of escaping poverty than one brought up here,” and the United States “has double the immobility of Canada.” The America I live in today is eerily redolent of the America I encountered in APUSH. As the article suggests, social immobility continues to reinforce socioeconomic boundaries within society, preventing the have-nots from becoming the haves.
That means that the hard-working immigrant family with a corner store on a busy city block might not be able to elevate itself out of this lower status, or that the studious high school student whose family lives in an impoverished life in rural America might be bound to this poor life on a farm. The consequences of this issue are real, human consequences. Wealth inequality — and the tangential problem of access inequality — is an issue embedded in the fabric of humanity, and ignoring it is ignoring the raw vulnerability of the human condition.
The best way to bridge socioeconomic gaps and reduce the expansive gap between rich and poor in America is by educating those with less: education is the most powerful tool to change the world. The current disparity in access to educational resources between wealthy and poor students has furthered wealth inequality, creating a cyclical pattern that reinforces a glass ceiling over marginalized populations. Many of my old friends in Newburgh already have a cap on their potential — a limitation that will affect future generations.
