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A 2008 family planning survey by the El Salvador Ministry of Health found that fertility dropped 60 percent in the last 30 years, from 6.3 lifetime births per woman in the mid-1970s to 2.5 in the 2003-2008 period. More...

(April 2011) By almost any measure, Americans have become more educated over the last 40 years. Yet there are signs of a growing education gap, with a greater proportion of women now receiving degrees than men. In addition, a recent study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce estimates that between 2008 and 2018, American colleges and universities will fall 3 million postsecondary degrees short of the 22 million necessary to meet U.S. employers' demand for workers with high levels of education and training. This is a critical shortfall. As the U.S. economy emerges from the recession of 2007-2009, the inability of workers to fill the necessary jobs represents a lost opportunity for both the individual and the society.

Lower education also has important implications for individuals. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the mean earnings of workers with a bachelor's degree are 87 percent higher than those of workers without any education beyond a high school diploma. And recent research finds that beyond age 25, U.S. adults with less than a high school diploma live five to seven years less than adults with a graduate degree, depending on their gender and race/ethnicity. Such differential mortality, as well as differential morbidity among adults with various levels of education, affects both worker productivity and health care costs.

The inter-relationships between educational access, economic vitality, physical well-being, and demographics provide the focus of this forum. Indeed, the growing demand for workers with postsecondary training makes access to education critical, particularly as the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population changes.  Acknowledgments