The social divide is even starker than the income divide

From an article by David Brooks, The Wrong Inequality. He discusses Red and Blue inequality. Red Inequality is that between the educated and the uneducated. Blue Inequality is that between the richest and poorest. An interesting distinction. Red Inequality is about an aggregate life outcome inequality, encompassing as it does, the accumulation of multitudinous decisions. Blue Inequality is about a statistical snapshot in time. Most people that manage to make a million dollars in a year will do so only once in their life. Red and Blue do overlap (the high functioning individuals that translate that high functioning into high productivity that is also highly compensated productivity).

His description of the consequences of Red Inequality:

Then there is what you might call Red Inequality. This is the kind experienced in Scranton, Des Moines, Naperville, Macon, Fresno, and almost everywhere else. In these places, the crucial inequality is not between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent. It’s between those with a college degree and those without. Over the past several decades, the economic benefits of education have steadily risen. In 1979, the average college graduate made 38 percent more than the average high school graduate, according to the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke. Now the average college graduate makes more than 75 percent more.

Moreover, college graduates have become good at passing down advantages to their children. If you are born with parents who are college graduates, your odds of getting through college are excellent. If you are born to high school grads, your odds are terrible.

In fact, the income differentials understate the chasm between college and high school grads. In the 1970s, high school and college grads had very similar family structures. Today, college grads are much more likely to get married, they are much less likely to get divorced and they are much, much less likely to have a child out of wedlock.

Today, college grads are much less likely to smoke than high school grads, they are less likely to be obese, they are more likely to be active in their communities, they have much more social trust, they speak many more words to their children at home.

Some research suggests that college grads have much bigger friendship networks than high school grads. The social divide is even starker than the income divide.