At Bryant, Professor of Economics Jongsung Kim, Ph.D., is advancing research on how education affects poverty, gender equality, and inequality. 

“These issues are becoming more important — especially in relation to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” says Kim, a trained labor economist. 

Developed in 2012, the 17 SDGs seek to address global environmental, political, and economic challenges. The goals, which the UN aims to accomplish by 2030, include everything from taking urgent action on climate change to ending hunger and malnutrition. Those same SDGs also inform Bryant’s required general education program, the Impact Core. 

Kim plans to provide insight into three of those objectives through his education research: ending poverty, achieving gender equality and empowerment, and reducing inequality within and among nations. 

Education plays a crucial role in economic mobility, notes Kim, who is analyzing how it affects an individual’s chance of falling into poverty and how deprivation presents differently across ethic groups. Additionally, he is looking at differences in education and inequality between the rich and poor, as well as men and women. 

“Labor market success is based on skill set, which is acquired through education,” explains Kim. “For example, if someone speaks five languages, that skill cannot be taken from that person because it’s a part of that individual.” 

For his research, Kim is using econometric and statistical models to analyze data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey, which was completed in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These datasets supply information on the country’s population and housing as well as income and poverty. 

Kim notes that despite the U.S. having one of the most affluent economies in the world, the poverty rate remains in the double digits. By contrast, according to Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office, poverty only affects 8.2 percent of that country’s population, while data from Statistics Canada reveal that 9.9 percent of Canadians lived in poverty in 2022. 

“The good news is that it’s not 90 percent, but it’s still 11.5 percent,” he says, which represents 37.9 million Americans. He also points out that while intergenerational mobility has long been a point of pride in the U.S., statistics show it is getting weaker. “Any good society or organization should protect its least advantaged people,” he says. 

To fully understand — and solve — a complex problem like inequality, Kim emphasizes the need for people in other fields to add their expertise. 

“We need to understand the education system and get insights from education administrators, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists,” he says.

This article was updated from a previous piece published on July 17, 2024.