Affluence, Inequality, and Educational Achievement: A Structural Analysis of 97 Jurisdictions across the Globe

How does economic inequality affect societies' average levels of student achievement, and how might the answer to this question inform our understanding of U.S. students' achievement in cross-national perspective? Analyses of country-level data (N = 97) from three recent international studies reveal that while more affluent countries exhibit higher average achievement than less affluent countries, more unequal countries have lower average achievement than less unequal countrieseven net of affluence and other factors. This helps explain why U.S. students score relatively low compared to their counterparts in other developed nations. I discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the role of stratification in societies generally and for raising achievement in the U.S. specifically.