In “Unequal America”, the cover story of the alumni magazine distributed to Harvard graduates, the U.S. comes up short, and unequal, compared to Japan, Finland, and some other places where the citizens and public policy are more virtuous. Nowhere in the article does the author consider the fact that the U.S. has more immigration than Japan and Finland. A great proportion of our population growth is derived from immigration and the children of recent immigrants. Somehow this fact never seems to make it into our public discussion of income distribution.
We could make our statistics look more like Japan’s if we accepted only very well-educated high-ability high-income immigrants. Would that make the U.S. a kinder and gentler place?
One interesting statistic from the article…
“In 1950, the average tuition price at a private college was roughly 14 percent of the U.S. median family income; public college tuition was even lower (only 4 percent). Percentages for both types of institutions fell further in the ensuing decades, bottoming out around 1980, but then rising steeply ever since. In 2005, the cost of attending the average public college was 11 percent of median family income; for private colleges, the average was 45 percent.”
Harvard, of course, charges more than 100 percent of median family income, a fact not noted in the article, but elsewhere in the magazine there is a report that the university’s $40+billion wealth is growing nicely….
Immigrants per Capita is actually higher in “Unequal” Denmark, Sweden, and Canada.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/imm_new_cit_percap-immigration-new-citizenships-per-capita
All these countries rank much higher in their gini index (basic inequality index):
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gin_ind-economy-gini-index
The US is unique because our immigration policy is actually centered on repatriation of families. This means that if a poor Chinese man wins the diversity immigrant visa lottery (it is literately a lottery), he can then, after a time, get immigrant visas for all of his family, how can then bring over all of their families, ad nauseum. This is as opposed to Canada, where they welcome the world with open arms and they are so much more multicultural than the US… unless you happen to not come from the elite of whatever country you are immigrating from. That is a generalization, but the basis of US immigration policy is repatriation of families, whereas the basis for every other developed country I know is to bring in well educated immigrants. There are of course exceptions – in the US there are a limited number of sponsorships that employers can undertake, and in these other countries there are ways for poor people to immigrate, whether it be through claiming asylum or other means. In addition, this does not even begin to address the fact that the US is one of the few countries in the world (Canada being the only other one I know, and even then, apparently only starting in the 20th century) where citizenship is automatically awarded if you are born in the country – something which would push up our immigrant numbers significantly.
Basically this long winded, poorly worded post merely means to point out that the US is almost alone in having education/financial standing not count towards your chances of immigration. There is one financial stipulation, that you can prove that you will not immediately become wards of the state – however, this is a very easy hurdle to overcome due to the various manners in which you you are allowed to prove it.