Educational attainment as a constraint on economic growth and social progress

Unless new policies offset the effects of existing demographic and educational patterns, improvements in labor quality are likely to contribute less to economic growth in the United States in the coming two decades than has been the case since the 1960s. The key reasons for this projection are the relatively slow increase in years of schooling obtained by young adults and the relatively low share of the population in the age group when labor market entry typically occurs. Furthermore, international test scores indicate a continuing mediocre performance for U.S. students on average. These trends suggest that capital formation or technology development would have to provide an offset in order to keep per capita income growth from slowing in coming decades. They also suggest that surges in demand for educated labor, as have occurred periodically in scientific and technical fields, will be challenging to accommodate.