The Math Gap

A reality we've tried to draw attention to amid politicians complaining about "unfair trade" is that a lot of our young people aren't quite up to competing in the big leagues of a global economy. One such emerging reality is that math skills are more important than ever for the American worker. Now three labor economists have quantified that importance. Writing in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Richard Murnane, John Willett and Frank Levy make this point generally by noting that between 1978 and 1986 the average wage dropped 16.5% for 24-year-old males whose education had ended with the 12th grade, whereas college grads experienced only a percentage-point drop in the same period.

But a second analysis showed that even what we achieve in junior high and high school makes a tremendous difference. The authors found that "males graduating from high school in 1972 with strong basic math skills earned 24 cents more per hour (in 1988 dollars) at age 24 than males graduating in that year with average math skills." For 1980 grads, the wage differential between numerate and innumerate had widened to 53 cents an hour. For women, math Was most important of all: female high school grads from the class of '80 who were good with numbers earned 74 cents more than comparable women with weaker math skills.

Formal education didn't seem to matter much in this second group of subjects. The increasing role of what are called cognitive skills was important for people of all educational levels. The authors wrote that it "in part explains the 30% increase since 1970 in wage variation among individuals with the same amount of formal education."

It's important to note that the testing here involved simple stuff: the ability to follow directions, to do fractions, and to interpret line graphs. It's enough to make you wonder how much this country could achieve if all the energy trained on fuzzy issues like the "wage gap" were trained on serious problems like the math gap instead.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1995