ABSTRACT
This chapter presents evidence directly bearing on the increasing demand for skills hypothesis. It shows that one type of skill, the ability to understand and use basic mathematics. The chapter describes the distribution of this skill in the population of high school students, and evaluates the importance of skill differences in predicting subsequent wages. It also describes changes over the past decade in high school students' basic math skills and evaluates the relative importance of changes in schooling and changes in home environments in contributing to these changes. The chapter presents an explanation for why the United States has made so little progress in either raising average cognitive skills or closing the gap between the cognitive skills of poor children and those from more affluent families. Evidence from the national assessment of educational progress shows that lack of mastery of basic mathematical skills is not an isolated problem affecting only a relatively small number of students.
