Good-in-theory

A Summary - What has investigation of MCAP revealed

• Households with children are markedly poorer than households without.

• MCAP mainly covers the top 60-80% of CA families with children.  There are perhaps 1.5x as many children in the bottom 40% than the top 40% of the CA household income distribution. In other words, less than 20% of CA children are in the top 60-80% of CA households.  More info here and here.

• In California, the median income of families with children is ~6% less than that of the median family.

• Though California has high median wealth, its high immigrant and minority population suggests wealth inequality is worse in California than in the US at large

• White Californians are underrepresented, controlling for eligibility, within the UC.  Asian Californians are ovverrepresented, controlling for eligibliity, within the UC.  The complement to each of these is that Asian Californians are likely underrepresented at comparable private and OOS public colleges, while white Californians are overrepresented at such institutions.  More data here, note the correction.

• Over 60% of the students who are eligible to go to the UC but do not are white students.  Relatively few Asian students who are eligible to go to the UC go elsewhere.

• Berkeley has a lot of rich (150k+/yr family income) students (~30%).

• UC Tuition functions as a redistributive tax, which is generally regressive. MCAP attempts to fix the tax rate at no more than 15% for the upper middle class

• The UC in general, and Berkeley in particular, has been seriously increasing its proportion of OOS students

• The national university system sees Berkeley’s MCAP as a means of competing over elite students.  See, in particular, the NYT and the Atlantic Wire.

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