Middle-class economic power and the evolution of educational systems

Abstract

When the economic reach of the middle class grows in a country, competition within the education field may increase, pushing more middle-class families and their upper-class peers to engage in behaviors that, when agglomerated, reshape and potentially disequalize the education field. Linking data from the World Income Inequality Database, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and the Programme for International Student Assessment, we ask whether change in the share of income held by the middle three quintiles of the household income distribution over two decades (1998–2018) predicts change in educational opportunity structures and performance inequality. We find that rising middle-class economic power is associated with expansion of the private school sector and, in recent years, overseas tertiary education. After adjusting for time trends, we also find an association with supplementary academic tutoring. In contrast, a significant association with between-school academic tracking dissipates upon adjustment for a global increase in this practice. Importantly, not only is rising middle-class economic power linked to disequalization of educational opportunity structures, but it also exacerbates socioeconomic disparities in student performance.