Analysis: California's new education gap
By STEVE SAILER, UPI National Correspondent
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LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- New Census Bureau figures show that California,
traditionally America's trendsetter, is pioneering a new kind of class
structure, one somewhat reminiscent of highly unequal Latin American
countries such as Brazil or Mexico.

Although California was long viewed as the promised land of the American
middle class, it is slowly developing a novel U-shaped social system
featuring relatively large numbers of both the well-educated and the badly
educated sandwiching a shrinking middle.

Although this trend toward greater inequality would seem to be at odds with
the ideals of the Democratic Party, it might bode well for Democrats' success
in the voting booth, if results from 2000 prove an adequate guide to the
future. California, the state that bequeathed Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan
to the Republican Party, gave Al Gore an impressive 54 percent to 41 percent
victory over George W. Bush last November.

According to a Census Bureau Supplementary Survey of 700,000 households
across the country, California boasts 2 million recipients of graduate
degrees (master's or Ph.D. or professional diplomas such as M.D. or J.D.).

Yet this sophisticated state also is home to 2.2 million adults who never
even attended high school. Their ranks are up 7 percent from 1990. By
contrast, in the rest of America, the number of adults who had never seen the
inside of a high school dropped by 30 percent over the past decade.

In California, 10.7 percent of grownups have no more than elementary
schooling, compared to only 6.4 percent in the other 49 states.

Of all the states in the Union, California now has the lowest percentage of
its population with a midlevel education consisting of at least a high school
diploma or some college, but not a bachelor's degree from a four-year college.

Further, the Golden State is now one of only three states with above average
percentages of people who never got past elementary school and of holders of
graduate degrees. The other two are New Mexico and Rhode Island.

California's educational inequality is driven by both foreign immigration
and domestic migration. The state has attracted the top and the bottom of the
schooling pyramid, while repelling the middle.

Silicon Valley and other technology centers attract the highly educated from
Asia and across America.

More surprisingly, a prestigious degree is now often expected in Hollywood.
A veteran sitcom writer who worked for years on "Married with Children"
complained privately about the "Harvard mafia" that she feels increasingly
has controlled TV joke writing ever since the Harvard Lampoon-laden
screenwriting staff of "The Simpsons" emerged in 1990.

California's upper-middle-class newcomers tend to be liberal, especially on
cultural issues.

In contrast, Mexican immigrants comprise much of California's huge number of
less-educated people. According to a 2000 Census Bureau survey, 65 percent of
America's Mexican immigrants never finished high school versus only 9.6
percent of natives.

According to the Voter News Service exit poll, California's Hispanics voted
68 percent to 29 percent for Gore.

Meanwhile, as immigrants move in, native-born Americans leave California.
>From 1990 to 1999, according to University of Michigan demographer William
H. Frey, 2.2 million more California residents moved to other states than
other Americans moved to California.

Frey, who is also with the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., pointed
out, "Another cause of the rise of the California Democrats is selective
out-migration of the more rock-ribbed Republicans. The folks who have been
leaving California's suburbs for other states have the white, middle-class
demographic profiles of Republican voters. California's middle-class families
are being squeezed out by real estate prices. And Republicans are heading for
whiter states where they won't have to pay taxes for so many social programs
for the poor."

What's at work in New Mexico and Rhode Island, the other two states that are
above average in both graduate degrees and adults who've never been to high
school?

Ever since the Manhattan Project built the atomic bomb during World War II,
New Mexico has had a social chasm with Los Alamos physicists and Santa Fe
glitterati on one side, and poor Mexican-Americans and American Indians on
the other.

Rhode Island is demographically split between the workers in New England's
intellectual-industrial complex and the state's many blue-collar immigrants
from the Portuguese-speaking world, most notably the very poor Cape Verde
Islands off the coast of West Africa.

California's "education gap" also shows up in income statistics. In
California, 6.8 percent of all households make more than $150,000 per year
versus 4.1 percent elsewhere.

In contrast, 14 percent of California households are poor compared to only
12.3 percent of households in the other 49 states. And this measure actually
underestimates California's poverty problem, because the federal government
uses the same poverty level nationwide, despite California having a higher
cost of living. For example, the state's median rent is 30 percent greater
than elsewhere.

The evidence from the 2000 election suggests that inequality might be good
for the Democratic Party. Gore carried California, New Mexico and Rhode
Island. In fact, New Mexico was one of only two states that Gore carried west
of the Mississippi River and east of the Pacific Coast states.

A plausible consensus has emerged that the 2000 election offers abundant
insights into long-term political trends. That's because both parties ran
fairly generic candidates and no major crises or issues roiled the race. This
allowed underlying regional and class differences to emerge in sharp relief.

The Voter News Service exit poll showed Gore carrying the educational
extremes. Nationally, the former vice president won 59 percent to 39 percent
among voters without high school degrees. Similarly, he beat Bush 52 percent
to 44 percent among those with postgraduate degrees.

In contrast, Bush carried the middle. He beat Gore 49 percent to 48 percent
among high school graduates and 51 percent to 45 percent among both those
with only some college and those with a bachelor's degree.

Strikingly, the percentage of residents with graduate degrees proved one of
the strongest predictors of whether a state would vote Republican or
Democrat. Gore won only three of the 25 states with the fewest graduate
degree holders, but 17 of the 25 highest states.

Utah, the destination of so many disgruntled ex-Californians, is emerging as
the anti-California. It leads the country with only 2.4 percent of its
residents never having attended high school.

Paradoxically, this staunchly Republican state, where Gore won only 25
percent of the vote, exemplifies some of the traditional egalitarian ideals
of the Democratic Party. A 2000 study by the Economic Policy Institute found
Utah to have the most equal income distribution of any state.

Still, Utah is more likely to be the anomaly and California the harbinger of
the United States' future. If so, this suggests that the Democratic Party's
politicians will be better served than the party's ideals of educational and
economic equality.

-- Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved. --