Coming Apart II

THE BUBBLE

This item, by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed, bears directly on our discussion of the Murray book:

Since 2008, student aid from federal and institutional sources has increased. Political and foundation leaders have also focused on the importance of a postsecondary education, and the need to increase college attainment.

But in the years since 2008, the proportion of low-income recent high school graduates who enroll in college has seen a significant drop, according to a new analysis from the American Council on Education.

In 2008, 55.9 percent of such high school graduates enrolled in college. By 2013, that figure dropped to 45.5 percent. While overall enrollment rates increased just after the economic downturn hit in 2008, they have fallen for all income groups since. However the drop for those from low-income families has been the greatest.
College Enrollment Rates for Recent High School Graduates

	2008	2013
All	68.6%	65.9%
High income	81.9%	78.5%
Middle income	65.2%	63.8%
Low income	55.9%	45.5%

The analysis is based on U.S. Census Bureau data. For the above comparisons, the ACE study defined low-income families as those from the bottom 20 percent, high income as from the top 20 percent, and everyone else in the middle group.

The sorting machine and acceptance rates (Murray, pp. 52-61)

Things are even worse than Murray suggests

The demographics of smoking (see Murray, pp. 36, 113)

Geography: Coming Apart in a Very Literal Sense
This week's epigraph: "Insulation! That was the ticket. That was the term Rawlie Thorpe used. 'If you want to live in New York,' he once told Sherman, 'you've got to insulate, insulate, insulate,' meaning insulate yourself from those people." -- Tom Wolfe, in Bonfire of the Vanities
More and more people are living in poor and rich neighborhoods, fewer in the middle:

• Zips and SuperZips (Murray, ch. 3)
• The geography of inequality: the case of California, the "hourglass state"
• Education and the 2016 election