There’s an interesting
new report (from Stanford’s Raj Chetty) showing how lack of diversity in
STEM is leading to reduction in the number of innovations being created in this
country, even by low-income children who would be expected to be inventors due to
their proficiency in math in school. (Generally proficiency in mathematics is a predictor of patent filing.) The report calls the result of this gap “Lost
Einsteins.”
The New York Times wrote
about this latest report this week:
The researchers worked with the Treasury Department to link the
tax records with patent records. Doing so allowed them to study the backgrounds
of patent holders (and the study focused on the most highly cited, significant
patents). The researchers — Chetty, Alex Bell, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova
and John Van Reenen — were also able to link these records to elementary-school
test scores for some patent holders.
Not surprisingly, children who excelled in math were far more
likely to become inventors. But being a math standout wasn’t enough. Only the
top students who also came from high-income families had a decent chance to
become an inventor.
This fact may be the starkest: Low-income students who are among
the very best math students — those who score in the top 5 percent of all third
graders — are no more likely to become inventors than below-average math
students from affluent families.
Here is a graphic which demonstrates the difference in patent-holding by income level.
Of course there is also variation by race and by gender as well:
Our goal should be to make sure that the difference in innovation rates are not related to race, gender or income.
