Education Attainment Forecasting and Economic Inequality in the United States

This paper explores a major issue in the context of economics of inequality, namely how far the stark inequalities are retarding educational attainment in the United States in the recent period. An application of the time series ARIMA model is made to forecast both high school and college education in the United States for the period 2018-2022. The study obtains fluctuating trends (forecast) in certain categories of school educational attainment. A Multi Variate Error Correction Model is utilized to assess how far socio economic factors are responsible in the process of educational attainment. The study obtains a bidirectional long run causal association across educational completion, income growth, inflation, and income inequality. Income inequality and the distribution of income in the United States has a positive bearing on the education sector. Further distributive polices and the behaviour of government spending have a significant effect on the quality of learning. Last, attainment of education and its ramification has an important bearing on the level of income in the United States in the long run