Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty

The educational system is shaped by public policy, criteria of selection for different tracks, the way it is financed, the cost of study for students and their families, and the availability of continuing education. Technological progress depends on the pace of innovation and the rapidity of implementation. It generally increases the demand for new skills and creates new occupations. This leads to the idea of a race between education and technology: if the supply of skills does not increase at the same pace as the needs of technology, then groups whose training is not sufficiently advanced will earn less and be relegated to devalued lines of work, and inequality with respect to labor will increase.