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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Biden will cap off a week of outreach to Black Americans with Morehouse commencement

Deepa Shivaram

Family members of plaintiffs in the historic Brown v. Board of Education met with President Biden to mark the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption

Family members of plaintiffs in the historic Brown v. Board of Education met with President Biden to mark the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision.

President Biden is engaged in a flurry of events this week centered around the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that ended racial segregation in public schools, part of an intensified push to court Black voters crucial to his reelection bid.

On Sunday, he will give a closely watched commencement speech to Morehouse College, a historically Black university in Georgia.

Biden held a private meeting with plaintiffs and family members of plaintiffs from the Brown case on Thursday at the White House, and on Friday, he gave remarks at an NAACP event marking the Brown anniversary at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. On the weekend, he heads to the swing state of Michigan, where he'll address an NAACP dinner in Detroit.

We asked young Black voters about Biden and the Democrats. Here's what we learned

The Biden campaign said the engagement was a signal of how the administration has prioritized issues important to Black voters — and how it is working to earn their support.

"We are not, and will not, parachute into these communities at the last minute, expecting their vote," said Trey Baker, a senior adviser to the campaign, in a memo.

Biden's other engagements include a meeting with the Divine Nine , a group of historically Black sororities and fraternities, and interviews with Black media outlets. On Sunday, he will also visit a Black-owned small business in Detroit, Baker said.

Polling shows lack of enthusiasm among Black voters

Black voters have long been the backbone of the Democratic party, and helped ensure Biden's win in 2020. But if turnout is lower this year compared to four years ago, it could hurt Biden's chances for reelection.

A recent survey from the Washington Post and Ipsos showed that only 62% of Black voters said that they are absolutely certain to vote this year, compared to 74% this time in 2020.

A Biden victory in Michigan could depend on Black Voters

The poll also showed that just 38% of Black Americans feel Biden's policies have helped Black people, something Biden tried to explain more on in media appearances this week.

Talking over the phone to Atlanta radio show host Darian "Big Tigger" Morgan for his morning show this week, Biden listed off what he says he's done for Black Americans, including lowering unemployment rates and cancelling some student debt. He also went after his opponent.

"Trump hurt Black people every chance he got," Biden said.

President Biden speaks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on May 17. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

President Biden speaks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on May 17.

In his speech on Friday, Biden told the NAACP that "an extreme movement led by my predecessor and his MAGA allies" was today's "insidious" version of the resistance faced by the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas, after the Brown decision.

Biden blamed former President Donald Trump for naming justices to the Supreme Court who then ended affirmation action for college admissions — and for working to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the country.

"They want a country for some, and not for all," Biden said.

The week's events will culminate with the president's commencement address at Morehouse

On Sunday, Biden will cap off his week giving the commencement address at Morehouse College.

His visit there has already received pushback from students, who have been critical of Biden in his handling of Israel's war in Gaza. The university's president David Thomas told NPR that he would halt the commencement ceremonies altogether if protests became too disruptive.

"Faced with the choice of having police take people out of the Morehouse commencement in zip ties, we would essentially cancel or discontinue the commencement services on the spot," Thomas said.

Biden uses Howard University commencement address to appeal to Black voters

Steve Benjamin, who leads the White House Office of Public Engagement, visited the campus to meet with some students and faculty earlier this week.

"The common thread was that they wanted to make sure we're centering the young people and that the president did that on Sunday," Benjamin said. "The goal will be to make sure we use this as an opportunity to continue to elevate the amazing work that's been done at Morehouse."

He stressed the investments the Biden administration has made in HBCUs. Since taking office, the Biden administration has funded $16 billion in support for HBCUs.

In his remarks to the NAACP, Biden paid tribute to Morehouse's history. The college was started after the Civil War to give freed slaves education and training to become ministers.

"The founders of Morehouse understood something fundamental: education is linked to freedom," he said. "Because to be free means to have something that no one can ever take away from you."

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High school students, frustrated by lack of climate education, press for change

Youth activists pushing for more climate education in Minnesota schools say working with peers to draft legislation gives them hope for a future under threat. (AP Video: Mark Vancleave)

B Rosas, left, Lucia Everist, center, and Libby Kramer, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

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Libby Kramer, left, Lucia Everist, center, and B Rosas, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Lucia Everist, of Climate Generation, center, speaks to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

FILE - Water floods a damaged trailer park in Fort Myers, Fla., Oct. 1, 2022, after Hurricane Ian passed by the area. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

Minnesota Sen. Nicole Mitchell, left, sits with members of Climate Generation, from second left, B Rosas, Lucia Everist, Libby Kramer and Minnesota Rep. Larry Kraft, right, as they speak the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Libby Kramer, of Climate Generation, right, speaks to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

B Rosas, back left, Lucia Everist, back center, and Libby Kramer, back right, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. The advocates called on the council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Several dozen young people wearing light blue T-shirts imprinted with #teachclimate filled a hearing room in the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul in late February. It was a cold and windy day, in contrast to the state’s nearly snowless, warm winter.

The high school and college students and other advocates, part of group Climate Generation, called on the Minnesota Youth Council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change .

Ethan Vue, who grew up with droughts and extreme temperatures in California, now lives in Minnesota and is a high school senior pushing for the bill.

“I just remember seeing my classmates always sweating, and they’d even drench themselves in water from the water fountains,” Vue said in a phone interview, noting climate change is making heat waves longer and hotter, but they didn’t learn about that in school.

“The topic is brushed on. If anything, we just learn about, there’s global warming, the planet’s warming up.”

Libby Kramer, left, Lucia Everist, center, and B Rosas, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

In places that teach to standards formulated by the National Science Teachers Association, state governments and other organizations, many kids learn about air quality, ecosystems, biodiversity and land and water in Earth and environmental science classes.

But students and advocates say that is insufficient. They are demanding districts, boards and state lawmakers require more teaching about the planet’s warming and would like it woven into more subjects.

Some states and school districts have moved in the opposite direction. In Texas , the board of education turned down books with climate information. In Florida, school materials deny climate change .

“Someone could theoretically go through middle school and high school without really ever acknowledging the climate crisis,” said Jacob Friedman, a high school senior in Florida who hasn’t learned about climate except for in elective classes. “Or even acknowledging that there is an issue of global warming.”

That’s bizarre to Friedman, who experienced firsthand when Hurricane Ian closed nearby schools and submerged homes in 2022.

A study conducted after the storm found that climate change added at least 10% more rain to Hurricane Ian. Experts also say hurricanes are intensifying faster because of the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are collecting heat and warming the oceans.

“What an unfair reality to have a young person graduate from high school,” said Leah Qusba, executive director of nonprofit Action for the Climate Emergency, “without knowing about the biggest existential threat that they’re going to face in their lifetime.”

Some places are adding more instruction on the subject. In 2020, New Jersey required teaching climate change at all grade levels. Connecticut followed, then California. More than two dozen new measures across 10 states were introduced last year, according to the National Center for Science Education.

Libby Kramer, of Climate Generation, right, speaks to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Where some proposals require teaching the basic science and human causes of climate change , the Minnesota bill goes further, requiring state officials to guide schools on teaching climate justice, including the idea that the changes hit disadvantaged communities harder .

Some legislators say they’ve heard from school administrators and teachers who say that goes too far.

“What was said to me is: ‘Why are we pushing a political perspective, a political agenda?’” Minnesota Rep. Ben Bakeberg, a Republican, said during a House Education Policy Committee hearing in March 2023. “That’s a reality.”

The bill didn’t advance in the 2023 session. Now it hasn’t this year either. Supporters say they will try again next year.

Aware of such opposition, some students interested in climate opt to campaign at their schools rather than through the legislative process.

Three years ago, floods destroyed Ariela Lara’s mom’s village in Oaxaca, Mexico, while they were visiting. Then Lara came home to California and was hit by smoke-filled skies caused by wildfires that pushed thousands to evacuate or be stuck inside for weeks.

Yet despite what she was seeing, Lara felt in school she was only taught about recycling and carbon footprints, a measure of a person’s personal greenhouse gas emissions.

So she went to the board of education.

“I had to really think about how I could go to the people in power to really rewrite the curriculum we were learning,” Lara said. “It would get so tiresome because for me, I was the one that was really trying to enforce it.”

By the time her school offered Advanced Placement Environmental Science, Lara was too senior to enroll in it. AP Enviro does cover climate change , according to the College Board, but it’s also more broad.

B Rosas, back left, Lucia Everist, back center, and Libby Kramer, back right, of Climate Generation, speak to the Minnesota Youth Council, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

When targeted efforts don’t work, some students feel they’re on their own.

For high school junior Siyeon Joo, climate education seems like a no-brainer where she lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, which was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has been affected by several other intense storms and heat waves.

But Joo wasn’t exposed to climate change at her public middle school and an educator there once told her it wasn’t real.

“I remember sitting in that classroom,” the now-16-year-old said, “being really angry that that was the system that was being forced upon me at the time.”

It took enrolling in a private school for Joo to learn about these topics. Many students don’t have that option.

Experts say climate material could be worked into lessons without burdening schools or putting the onus on students. But much like with legislation, that will take time students say they don’t have.

“I was part of these communities that were really just affirming how much is at stake if we don’t take action,” said Lara, the student in California, recalling how important to her it would have been to receive education about her experiences. “You should be able to go to school and learn about the gravity which the climate crisis is at.”

Alexa St. John reported from Detroit and Doug Glass reported from St. Paul, Minn.

Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn . Reach her at [email protected] .

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

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A Night to Remember at the Opera, Complete With a Phantom

About 130 children took part in a sleepover at Rome’s opera house, part of a campaign to make up for a lack of music education by making the theater and the art form more familiar and accessible.

Children attending a rehearsal at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Credit...

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By Elisabetta Povoledo

Photographs by Alessandro Penso

Reporting from Rome

• May 13, 2024

In the pitch-dark auditorium of Rome’s Teatro Costanzi, a high-pitched lament floated from the top galleries. Dozens of flashlights snapped on, their beams crisscrossing crazily, seeking the source of the sound.

The shafts of light homed in on a spectral figure — a slim, dark-haired woman dressed in white, moving at a funereal pace and plaintively singing. In the audience, 130-odd children, ages 8 to 10, let loose squeals, some gasps, and one “it’s not real.” Several called out “Emma, Emma.”

The children had just been told that the Costanzi, the capital’s opera house, had a resident phantom. No, not that one. This was said to be the spirit of Emma Carelli, an Italian soprano who managed the theater a century ago, and loved it so much that she was loath to leave it, even in death.

“The theater is a place where strange things happen, where what is impossible becomes possible,” Francesco Giambrone, the Costanzi’s general manager, told the children Saturday afternoon when they arrived to participate in a get-to-know-the-theater-sleepover.

Music education ranks as a low priority in Italy, the country that invented opera and gave the world some of its greatest composers. Many experts, including Mr. Giambrone, say their country has rested on its considerable laurels rather than cultivate a musical culture that encourages students to learn about their illustrious heritage.

With little backing from schools or lawmakers, arts organizations like the Costanzi have concluded that it is up to them to reach out to the young.

Mr. Giambrone sought to dispel opera's stuffy image by abandoning the genre’s strict dress code. That change, like the sleepover, is part of his effort to make opera, often seen as an elitist, highbrow and abstruse art form for the initiated, more familiar and accessible, especially to children.

“We believe that the theater should be for everyone, and that it should make people feel at home,” Mr. Giambrone said in an interview. Hence the decision to welcome youngsters to eat, sleep and play there. “Once a theater is a home, it is no longer something distant, something a bit austere to fear, or somewhere you feel inadequate,” he said.

“There’s a lot of talk about Made in Italy, but real shortsightedness when it comes to our musical patrimony, which is envied throughout the world,” said Maestro Antonio Caroccia, who teaches music history at the Santa Cecilia conservatory in Rome. He said that “politicians are deaf to it.”

“Italy is far behind” many other countries, said Barbara Minghetti, of Opera Education , which creates programs for children. “This I can guarantee.”

When he was in Italy’s Parliament, Michele Nitti, a musician and former lawmaker with the 5 Star Movement, proposed a law adding musical education to school curricula. His bill never made it to a parliamentary vote.

He said that not even Giuseppe Verdi, the 19th century composer who also served in Parliament, was able, in his time, to get his fellow lawmakers to support music education in schools.

Mr. Nitti was also unsuccessful in getting lawmakers to declare opera singing a national treasure. He did support the country’s successful bid to have the practice of opera singing in Italy put on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity after switching to the Democratic Party.

“Oh well,” he said.

Rather than letting its opera culture wither, Mr. Giambrone said, “Italy should be teaching other countries how it’s done.”

At the Teatro Costanzi, more than half of the children at the sleepover belonged to scout troops from Rome’s outlying neighborhoods. They were accompanied by coolheaded scout leaders who — impressively — commanded silence just by raising a finger.

Most of the children had never visited the theater before. “Come to think of it, I haven’t been there either,” said Gianpaolo Ricciarelli, one of the parents who dropped off his son.

Another father, Armando Cereoli, said, “Between video games, cellphones and Netflix, there’s tough competition to get kids interested in beautiful things.”

Some of the children came from disadvantaged neighborhoods, so the visit was “a chance to free their minds and to dream,” said Sara Greci, a scout leader and Red Cross worker who brought four girls from a home for abused women and their children.

The opera house runs several outreach programs for the homeless or people who live in Rome’s most far-flung neighborhoods, a way to open the theater to the city and broaden its reach, said Andrea Bonadio, who was hired by the theater to work on such programs.

Nunzia Nigro, the theater’s director for marketing and education, said that several of the children who had participated in the theater’s educational programs over the past 25 years were loyal patrons today. “We’re beginning to reap some of those efforts, and have a younger public,” she said.

Ms. Nigro helped organize the sleepover, tailoring it for 8- to 10-year-olds — old enough to sleep away from home but not old enough to have hormones kick in, she said. As it was, two boys felt homesick enough to get their moms to pick them up.

On Saturday, the children watched part of a rehearsal for an upcoming performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony — “the conductor uses a wand to direct music, not so different from Harry Potter’s but more important,” Ms. Nigro said. They learned how the staff cleaned the world’s biggest chandelier in a historic building, and they got to know the ins and outs of the theater via a treasure hunt (read general mayhem) that had them scrambling up and down stairs, flitting in and out of stalls like a multicharacter French farce.

Emma the phantom — Valentina Gargano , a soprano in the opera’s young artists program — made an encore, exacting a promise from the children that they would tell their friends about “this magic place” and come back when they grew up.

One girl had been so convinced that Ms. Gargano was a real ghost that the organizers made sure they met when the soprano was in street clothes.

After being serenaded with music, including Brahms’ classic lullaby, the children settled down (or tried to) in a patchwork of sleeping bags on an artificial green lawn used in a previous production of Madama Butterfly. Above them loomed oversize photos of some of the stars who performed at the Costanzi, like Maria Callas, Herbert von Karajan and Rudolf Nureyev.

After breakfast on Sunday, the children took part in workshops at which they designed colorful paper ballet costumes, learned basic ballet positions, sang as part of a choir (some more enthusiastically than others) and played an opera-themed version of snakes and ladders. The game was designed and overseen by Giordano Punturo, the opera’s stage manager, done up in a tuxedo and colorful top hat.

He didn’t know about the kids, he said, “but I had the time of my life.”

After a group singalong and photo, it was almost time to head home.

“Did you have fun?” Mr. Giambrone asked the kids. “Yes!!” they cheered. “Did you sleep well?” he asked, to a more mixed response. Several “No “s were notably heard. Come back soon, he said.

After hugging his parents who had come to pick him up, Andrea Quadrini, almost 11, couldn’t wait to tell them that his team had won at snakes and ladders, and that the treasure hunt had been especially fun.

“Wow,” he said. “I saw an opera theater for the first time.”

Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years. More about Elisabetta Povoledo

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The child care system is broken. Here are 5 striking statistics that show why.

As more than 1,000 providers shut their doors for a day without child care, we examine a few numbers that reveal why the landscape is in crisis..

On Monday, more than 1,000 U.S. child care providers plan to temporarily shut down facilities or call in sick to take part in the country's third annual “Day Without Child Care.” The event seeks to raise awareness about early learning professionals' critical role in the nation’s economy and how little they earn in return for that labor. 

“We can’t make it work without more money, bottom line,” Yessika Magdaleno, who has provided child care for nearly 23 years in Garden Grove, California, said in a statement. “I’m always told that I should close my doors and try working in a different, more lucrative industry, but I don’t want to do that.” 

For a short period after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, society seemed to acknowledge that early learning professionals are the workforce behind the workforce, making it possible for essential employees to be on-site at their jobs.

The sector received an infusion of relief funding, including a historic $24 billion from the federal government. Tens of thousands of centers that would’ve otherwise shuttered kept their staff on payroll and stayed open. Parents were able to keep their positions. 

But that funding expired last fall . And while some states have since increased child care allocations , many have not. An analysis published this month by the National Women’s Law Center found that, in states without significant funding increases, the percentage of families unable to access child care has grown since the federal dollars dried up. Nearly a quarter – 23.1% – can’t find or pay for care, up from 17.8% in the fall. 

The workers planning to take the day off have drawn attention to inequities faced in their profession. Here are five striking statistics that shed light on America’s broken child care system. 

Day Without Child Care: Hundreds of providers closed as educators went on strike. Here's why

That’s the median hourly wage for a child care worker in this country.

While the numbers vary by state and locale, these professionals earn less in part because they work with younger children, a situation scholars refer to as "a pay penalty." Poverty rates among early childhood professionals are 7.7 times higher than those among educators who teach students in grades K-8, according to research out of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. 

The pay penalty is especially pronounced among women of color, who account for much of the child care workforce. Black early educators, for example, are paid $0.78 less per hour on average than their white counterparts, according to the UC-Berkeley research.

One in 5 families spends this amount or more on child care in a single year, according to a report from Care.com , an online marketplace for finding such services. That’s nearly $12,000 more than the average cost of attending a public four-year university – including tuition, fees and room and board. And it’s more than double the average cost of rent in the U.S. 

More broadly, the report found that nearly half of parents spend more than $18,000 a year on care expenses. This is unaffordable for most families, especially people struggling to make ends meet.

Yet the vast majority of children whose parents would be eligible for subsidies through the largest federal child care program don’t receive that support in a given month . That program – the Child Care and Development Block Grant – is severely underfunded. 

According to a federal report last year, that’s the portion of a single parent’s income, in some areas (such as Washington, D.C.), that is spent on infant care . The cost is untenable even in states on the low end (such as South Dakota), where infant care accounted for a quarter of a single parent’s household income.

High child care costs often compel parents to leave the workforce. But without alternatives, many single parents turn to the lowest-cost option, which may mean unlicensed providers . 

14.4 million

This is how many U.S. children 5 and younger have all available parents in the workforce and thus need care, Census data suggest . That's roughly 2 in 3 children in this age group . In other words, households with more than one income struggle, too.  

Many parents find themselves having to choose between work and child care. In one 2023 poll of voters, more than a quarter of respondents with children under 6 said they or a family member had to miss work because of child care issues . Nearly 6 in 10 participants who aren’t working or only working part time said they’d work full time if they had access to quality, affordable child care. 

Child care relief: Billions in funding just expired. Costs are already skyrocketing.

$122 billion

According to a report by ReadyNation , this is how much money is sucked out of the nation’s economy due to its child care crisis. The crisis forces parents out of jobs and undermines young children’s learning trajectories, culminating in huge losses in earnings, productivity and revenue. 

In other words, it’s not just parents who suffer. Businesses and taxpayers also take a hit.

Why is the child care system so broken? The biggest reason is that such care is too expensive for families, and public funding is inadequate, said Marcy Whitebook, director emerita of UC-Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. “More often than not, public investment is temporary because policymakers decide the problem it was designed to solve is over. Of course, the needs aren't temporary in child care.”

As Kishia Saffold, a child care owner and operator in Alabama, put it, “It’s only a matter of time until the system implodes.”

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Relative educational poverty: conceptual and empirical issues

• Open access
• Published: 29 September 2021
• Volume 56 , pages 2803–2820, ( 2022 )

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• Judith Glaesser   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6173-3596 1  

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This paper’s goal is to discuss implications for the empirical study of low educational status arising from the use of the concept of educational poverty in research. It has two related conceptual foci: (1) the relationship of educational poverty with material poverty and to what extent useful parallels exist, and (2) the distinction of absolute and relative (educational) poverty and whether the notion of absolute (educational) poverty is a sensible one. For the concept of educational poverty to be analytically fruitful, clear conceptualisation and operationalisation of the relevant issues are required. The paper contributes to the aim of providing these by building on existing work on educational poverty and by drawing on relevant work on material poverty as well as discussing some conceptual challenges and some of the challenges arising from the operationalisation of the concepts. Some of these challenges are illustrated using examples based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). In a further step, factors which may lead to a greater risk of being in relative educational poverty are analysed, employing the method multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The empirical findings highlight the relative nature of educational qualifications: the usefulness of a basic school leaving qualification has changed over time, and it has not been the same for different groups. Thus, a conceptualisation of low educational status as educational poverty has been shown to be useful, and it has been demonstrated that the relative nature of educational poverty ought to be taken into account by researchers.

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1 Introduction

Poverty in the sense of material poverty is an everyday term. While the details of an expert definition of material poverty may differ from the way it is understood by lay people, the concept will be immediately understood by everyone more or less in the way in which it is intended. The term “educational poverty”, on the other hand, has not entered everyday vocabulary. This concept was introduced into academic discourse by Allmendinger ( 1999 ) and, up to now, it has mostly been taken up by German and other continental European scholars (e.g., Lohmann and Ferger 2014 ; Solga 2011 ; Blossfeld et al. 2019 ; Quenzel and Hurrelmann 2019a ). Given that it is distinct from the concept of inequality in education, Footnote 1 it has the potential to be an additional conceptual tool for analysing the role of education in enabling participation in modern society. Throughout this paper, educational poverty will be understood as a lack of formal qualifications Footnote 2 which precludes participation in the labour market (and possibly affects other spheres of life such as family life and health) in a way not experienced by individuals with higher levels of education.

Education and the certification of education in the form of qualifications are more important than ever, given technological progress and the accompanying demand for a highly skilled workforce. This tight coupling of skills and job opportunities suggests that the labour market is likely to be the most important area of life on which education has an impact. In addition, there is some evidence that educational status matters in other areas, too: Solga ( 2011 ) reports lower rates of marriage and, among those who do marry, higher rates of divorce for individuals with a low level of qualifications. They also remain childless more frequently than people with higher qualifications, but, conversely, they are also more likely to experience parenthood during their teenage years. In addition, their health tends to be worse (Quenzel and Hurrelmann 2019b ).

In research on material poverty, a distinction is commonly made between absolute and relative poverty, with the latter defining poverty in relation to some standard which can vary between points in time and between societies. As can be seen from the connection between education and the labour market noted above, it seems plausible that this distinction might also be relevant to educational poverty, since the effect on an individual’s life of their educational status is likely to be at least partially dependent on how important educational status is in a particular labour market. Indeed, the relative value of educational qualifications (and other material and immaterial resources) has been discussed extensively (key authors are Dore 1976 ; Hirsch 1976 ; see also, e.g., Thurow 1977 ), though a lack of formal qualifications has not been explicitly conceived as educational poverty by these authors.

This paper’s goal is to discuss implications for the empirical study of low educational status arising from the use of the concept of educational poverty—developed analogously to material poverty—in such research. It has two related conceptual foci: (1) the relationship of educational poverty with material poverty and to what extent useful parallels exist, and (2) the distinction of absolute and relative (educational) poverty and whether the notion of absolute (educational) poverty is a sensible one. For the concept of educational poverty to be analytically fruitful, clear conceptualisation and operationalisation of the relevant issues are required. This paper contributes to the aim of providing these by building on existing work on educational poverty (see above: Allmendinger 1999 ; Blossfeld et al. 2019 ; Lohmann and Ferger 2014 ; Solga 2011 ) and by drawing on relevant work on material poverty as well as discussing some conceptual challenges and some of the challenges arising from the operationalisation of the concepts. I will illustrate some of these challenges using examples based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). In a further step, again drawing on NEPS data, I will analyse three factors which may lead to a greater risk of being in relative educational poverty. They are sex, school qualification, and cohort (i.e., whether someone was born by 1965 or later). Sex is of interest because of the differing experiences of men and women over time (e.g., Blossfeld et al. 2019 ), school qualifications are a prerequisite for most forms of post-school qualification and, in addition, they can be used by employers offering apprenticeship as a screening device, with higher school qualifications presumed to indicate greater suitability for an apprenticeship, and cohort matters because of the changing context in which qualifications are obtained and used (e.g., Lohmann and Ferger 2014 ). Clearly, other factors are likely to be involved in educational poverty (though the literature on what these may be is not very detailed), but given the need, for analytical reasons, to restrict the number of factors, I am concentrating here on ones of particular theoretical interest.

2 Challenges

2.1 conceptual issues, 2.1.1 material versus educational poverty.

Poverty, as noted in the Introduction, is commonly understood to refer to material poverty, and I therefore begin by discussing the relationship between material and educational poverty, noting similarities and differences. Peter Townsend, the renowned scholar in the field, describes poverty thus: “Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and the amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average family that they are in effect excluded from ordinary living patterns, customs and activities.” (Townsend 1979 , p.31) Clearly, material poverty affects nearly all spheres of life (including, of course, education as part of a reciprocal relationship: children growing up in poverty are less likely to obtain a high level of education, and individuals with low levels of education are more likely to experience poverty because of their greater difficulties in obtaining adequately-paid work). As I noted in the Introduction, insofar as educational status affects an individual’s opportunities in the labour market, educational poverty can also be expected to affect a wide range of areas of life, restricting societal participation in a variety of ways.

One feature of material poverty is that it is not always stable. Some individuals move in and out of poverty, for example because they lose and find work repeatedly. In fact, Townsend ( 1979 , pp.56/57) notes that the proportion of the population who are always poor is smaller than that of those who experience occasional spells of poverty, but who do not remain poor permanently. In addition, many more people live “under the constant threat of poverty and regard some of the resources flowing to them, or available to them, as undependable” (p. 57). Footnote 3 By contrast, educational resources are likely to be more stable. Once someone obtains a qualification, they will not lose it again, it remains linked to the person. While it is possible to move out of educational poverty by gaining qualifications later in life, these then cannot be lost either. However, relative to the demands of the labour market, qualifications may decrease in value over an individual’s lifetime: a level of qualification which would have been deemed sufficient at the beginning of someone’s working life may later on be considered insufficient with regard to the changing demands of the labour market. In that sense, the person would become educationally poor over time, but this would be a more gradual process compared to the possible fluctuations described by Townsend in relation to material poverty. Footnote 4 In a similar way, what would count as educationally not poor for parents might be seen as educationally poor for their children.

Another obvious difference between material and educational poverty is that it is perfectly possible to transfer money to people who are considered unacceptably poor (political will and availability of funds permitting, though given individuals’ life situations, the ameliorating effects of such transfers cannot be guaranteed). But it is not possible simply to transfer “education” onto people who have been unable to achieve some minimum standard (at least not legitimately). It is possible to implement educational programmes to allow them to catch up, but with no guarantee of success.

2.1.2 Relative versus absolute educational poverty

Rowntree (quoted in Townsend 1979 , p.33) defines families whose “total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency as being in primary poverty”. Clearly, this describes a state of deprivation which would be considered as poverty regardless of historical period, society or political context, in other words, it is an absolute conceptualisation of poverty. Townsend (and others), however, does not agree that there is such a thing as absolute poverty. Instead, he goes on to show that the “minimum necessaries” can only ever be determined relative to the societal standard relevant at the time, coming to the conclusion that “… definitions which are based on some conception of ‘absolute’ deprivation disintegrate upon close and sustained examination and deserve to be abandoned. … In fact, people's needs even for food are conditioned by the society in which they live and to which they belong, and just as needs differ in different societies so they differ in different periods of the evolution of single societies. Any conception of poverty as ‘absolute’ is therefore inappropriate and misleading” (p. 38). Footnote 5 We can see a parallel with educational poverty: illiteracy would clearly seem to qualify as a definition of absolute educational poverty, as would a complete absence of qualifications. However, there were historical periods during which illiteracy would not have prevented an individual from participation in normal societal activities, and a lack of formal qualifications certainly would not have done so, so illiterate individuals and those lacking formal qualifications would not have been considered educationally poor (in fact, the concept itself would have been meaningless). Furthermore, the phenomenon of “illiteracy” can be discussed as illiteracy, an alternative conceptualisation as “educational poverty” is not needed. On the other hand, in many societies today it is perfectly possible to have basic literacy and even some educational certificates and still be considered educationally poor. It seems, then, that Townsend’s concerns re absolute material poverty apply equally to the concept of educational poverty which has to be defined relative to the historical period and the societal context in which the individual lives.

In introducing the concept of educational poverty, Allmendinger ( 1999 ) nevertheless takes up the distinction between absolute and relative poverty, defining absolute minimum standards of educational qualifications for each country under study, with those falling below this standard considered educationally poor. Footnote 6 She then defines relative educational poverty by referring to the distribution of educational certificates in the relevant country or society. Blossfeld et al. ( 2019 ), drawing on Allmendinger, also distinguish between absolute and relative educational poverty, though their empirical analysis based on NEPS data only considers absolute educational poverty. According to Quenzel and Hurrelmann ( 2019b ), this is a common way of proceeding, with many scholars discussing the conceptual difference between absolute and relative poverty, but then ignoring the distinction in their empirical analyses.

The fact that the distribution of resources (for material poverty) or educational certificates (for educational poverty) is employed as a standard against which relative poverty may be defined shows the connection between inequality and poverty, since inequality is also assessed by referring to the distribution of relevant resources. However, a large amount of inequality is not in itself an indicator of a large amount of poverty, since a few very rich individuals at the top end of the distribution can co-exist with individuals at the bottom end of the scale who have the resources to lead a way of life which is much more restricted, but not necessarily deprived in the sense described by Townsend. The difference between material poverty and material inequality does not arise so much from a difference in empirically demonstrable phenomena, but from the angle from which the issue is viewed: inequality focuses on distribution, whereas (relative) poverty is defined against a standard of behaviour (such as the tea drinking example offered by Townsend, see footnote 5 ). The latter of course partly depends on the distribution of resources—what is considered a normal standard of behaviour is linked to whether people have the resources to enable them to act on this standard—but it can be expected to be more stable since temporary changes in circumstances would not immediately alter such a behavioural standard. Turning to education, Lohmann and Ferger ( 2014 ) argue that the difference in focus between inequality and poverty is that “research on educational inequalities […] is primarily concerned with inequalities of opportunity”, while “research on educational poverty focuses on inequalities of condition” (p. 1).

Finally, in the context of a discussion of the relative position of individuals, whether regarding their material or immaterial resources such as educational certificates, it is important to acknowledge existing work in this area, especially that by Fred Hirsch ( 1976 ) on positional goods and Ronald Dore ( 1976 ) on qualifications inflation. Hirsch analyses the way in which the value of certain material as well as immaterial goods depends at least partly on how many other people have access (or not) to the same goods. An example is driving a car: if just one person drives their car, they will get to their destination more quickly than if they used slower means of transport, but if everybody drives, there will be congestion, slowing everybody down. Hirsch also discusses education, where the value of credentials partly depends on the number of people holding the same credentials, given the use of credentials as a screening device. Dore’s entire focus is on educational credentials. He demonstrates and discusses, amongst other things, how a surplus of individuals with a certain level of qualification against a background of a shortage of jobs at the relevant level can change the educational requirements for jobs: even if the demands of the job itself do not change, an employer may well demand higher levels of qualifications from applicants simply to be able to select candidates from a large pool of applicants. Clearly, this analysis matters for the exploration of educational poverty: what Dore describes can happen at any level, including that of the least qualified individuals who may see their employment opportunities diminish with rising qualifications among their competitors. Thus, they are being rendered (relatively) educationally poor without a change in their own qualifications.

2.2 Empirical issues

2.2.1 data: national educational panel study (neps).

Since I am going to illustrate some of the conceptual points made in the previous section by drawing on empirical examples, I first describe briefly the data I employ throughout the paper. The data come from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Adults, https://doi.org/10.5157/NEPS:SC6:11.0.0 . From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network (see also Blossfeld and Roßbach 2019 ). Its aim is to collect longitudinal data on all aspects of education in formal and informal contexts, covering certificates as well as competences, and enabling researchers to investigate causes and consequences of educational outcomes. Data are collected in six cohorts, covering respondents at birth, at the start of nursery, in school years 5 and 9, at the start of university, and as adults. General data collection started in 2011, with new waves added every 1 or 2 years. For the adult cohort, on which the present paper draws, data collection actually started as early as 2007, and the data include, amongst other things, retrospective information on educational experiences and data on parents’ educational and occupational statuses. The present paper uses data on respondents with no missing data on respondent’s education, joint parental education and joint parental class, n  = 15,413. Footnote 7

2.2.2 The relationship between cognitive ability and educational certificates

Up to now, the discussion of educational poverty has centred on poverty of certificates, since certificates are what employers usually draw on in selecting employees. Given that a large part of the effects of educational poverty is mediated by labour market experiences, this is clearly an important aspect of educational poverty. It is also relatively easy to measure. However, attention should also be paid to cognitive ability and competences, since it seems plausible that they can affect the same outcomes, i.e. labour market opportunities, health, and family. Indeed, a number of researchers discuss both poverty of certificates and poverty of competences in their work on educational poverty (e.g., Blossfeld et al. 2019 ; Lohmann and Ferger 2014 ; Quenzel and Hurrelmann 2019b ; Solga 2011 ). The NEPS data contain a good range of competence measures; however, the difficulty is that these were obtained in adulthood, well after educational certificates were obtained (or not). But competences affect which certificates are obtained, rather than the other way round which makes the adult cohort NEPS data Footnote 8 unsuitable for investigating this relationship. In principle, it is possible to analyse the role of poverty of competences for, say, labour market outcomes, but given that such outcomes are likely to be at least equally strongly affected by certificates, this makes the analysis of the role of competences difficult in practice because the two measures are so closely intertwined. In addition, some attention will need to be paid to the mechanism by which competences can have effects on people’s experiences: in the labour market, a prospective employer does not usually have access to someone’s performance on a cognitive or competence test, so they rely on certificates as a proxy for competence.

2.2.3 Measurement

The problem described in the previous paragraph is one where, in principle, it is possible to collect the data necessary to address it. In what follows, the nature of the problem lies in the nature of the measure rather than the process of data collection: educational poverty, understood as a shortage of qualifications so severe that it restricts societal participation, cannot be measured in the same way as material poverty. The main basis for measuring material poverty is income or resources in the form of money, with non-monetary resources such as benefits in kind sometimes taken into consideration. Money is easily measured on an interval scale. Level of education, Footnote 9 by contrast, is frequently indicated either by years of education or by highest qualification obtained. The former is not necessarily very helpful especially in systems with a high degree of educational stratification, since the type of qualification achieved is more meaningful than the time taken to achieve it. If anything, taking a greater number of years to achieve a certain qualification may actually be interpreted negatively compared with someone who takes a shorter period of time to achieve the same formal level, so using years of education as an indicator of educational achievement would be counterproductive. But even in systems with a low degree of stratification, years of education is highly correlated with level of education, thus not adding much extra information. At first glance, years of education appear to be measurable on an interval scale, but the range is very restricted, the distribution uneven, and the meaning of one additional year of education is not the same at each point of the scale. Table 1 and Fig.  1 illustrate the differences between income and years of education, two measures used to indicate material and educational poverty respectively, using NEPS data. It can be seen that, indeed, while using an interval scale appears appropriate for measuring income, years of education has only seven values and a concentration of the majority of cases in just two of them, 12 and 13. It also has a far smaller range than the income scale.

Graphical display of income and years of education

Highest qualification obtained, by contrast, is measured on an ordinal scale. It has the advantage of being relatively straightforward to measure and to interpret, at least by people familiar with the relevant educational system, but a mean cannot be calculated in a meaningful way (though mode and median are viable alternative measures of central tendency). Instead, simple frequencies and percentages of individuals in the different ordered categories form the key measures of interest, as in Table 2 .

The German qualifications are listed in Table 2 in ascending order of status. Hauptschule is the most basic form of school in the German tripartite system, offering a qualification which allows the recipient to enter vocational training for mostly manual trades. Mittlere Reife is the qualification offered by the intermediate school type of Realschule, suitable for most forms of vocational training. Footnote 10

These different forms and levels of measurement have implications for the operationalisation of concepts of interest, as I discuss in the next section.

2.2.4 Operationalisation

With respect to relative material poverty, there appear to be two—related and not entirely distinct—ways of operationalising the concept. One is fairly widespread. It relies on income distribution and defines a poverty line which is some percentage (50 or 60 percent) of the median income. Anyone below this line is considered poor. The other way relies on substantive criteria which describe the situation of someone living in relative poverty. Townsend describes in some detail relevant considerations in deciding upon a standard which separates (relatively) materially poor from (relatively) non-poor individuals, and it becomes clear that, while he does discuss income-based definitions, income alone cannot form the basis of a definition of material poverty. Instead, societal norms define obligations people are expected to meet. There is no single criterion which determines poverty status, instead, there is a “pattern of non-observance [of social customs which] may be conditioned by severe lack of resources” (p. 57). Thus, operationalising poverty solely based on income distribution is potentially misleading because it may not capture actual differences in the experience of living conditions. Using a poverty line based on the median income to determine whether or not someone is experiencing poverty has the effect of their being designated poor (or not) with rising and falling average incomes, even if neither their own incomes change nor, more importantly, their situation in terms of what they can afford or whether they can participate in normal societal activities (see also footnote 3) (for the problems associated with using a single dimension to create an indicator of a complex concept such as poverty, see also Berg-Schlosser 2018 ). The advantage, however, of an income-based poverty line is that it is fairly straightforward to measure and, despite the reservations noted here, it is likely to capture fairly accurately the situation experienced by poor people in the sense that normal participation in socially expected and accepted activities is likely to be difficult if not impossible given an income below the poverty line. In addition, what are socially expected and accepted activities will at least partly depend on what most people are able to afford, thus income distribution is relevant in that respect. However, as an alternative to a solely distribution-based measure, it is possible to construct a list of goods and activities, along with their cost, which together constitute a range of “normal” societal activities. Their combined cost would constitute a criterion-based poverty line, in other words, a threshold below which an individual or household would be considered relatively poor.

What are the implications for the operationalisation of educational poverty? Absolute educational poverty seems impossible to operationalise given that education always has its effects in social and historical context. Allmendinger ( 1999 ) suggests that everyone having less education (indicated through certificates) than the population average might be defined as educationally (relatively) poor, and this, according to her, would suggest that all those in the lowest quartile or quintile of the distribution would fulfil this criterion. However, using such a distribution-based measure would ignore substantive criteria such as those suggested above in relation to material poverty. In addition, Table 2 shows that the distribution of certificates can be very uneven, making it difficult to define “the average of the population” or a clear cut-off point. Footnote 11 It would seem more appropriate to consider substantive criteria in defining educational poverty, taking account of what certificates are needed to participate in normal social activities, including the labour market which is likely to be the sphere of life in which education has the greatest impact.

The method used for the analysis shown below is Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in its multi-value (mvQCA) variant. I do not have space here to fully explain this method, but the references given in this section should be helpful to readers unfamiliar with it. The interpretation of the findings as I present them will also help the reader understand the method.

Briefly, then, QCA was developed by Charles Ragin (Ragin 1987 , 2000 , 2008 , see also, e.g., Rihoux and Ragin 2009 ; Rihoux 2020 ). Based on set theory and Boolean algebra, it offers a way of systematically analysing conjunctions of factors as potential necessary and sufficient conditions for an outcome. Data are arranged in a truth table which shows all the possible combinations of values on the conditions under study and their relationship with the outcome. This truth table forms the basis for Boolean minimisation which is a way of logically summarising all the possible combinations of factors leading to the outcome. Ragin developed crisp and fuzzy variants of QCA, with the former employing dichotomous variables indicating full membership or non-membership in a set, and the latter allowing partial membership of a set. Lasse Cronqvist introduced another QCA variant: in multi-value QCA (mvQCA) crisp sets with more than two categories may be used (Cronqvist 2003 ; Cronqvist and Berg-Schlosser 2009 ). Originally developed for the use with small to medium n, QCA has since been usefully employed with large n (e.g., Cooper 2005 ; Glaesser and Cooper 2011 ; Greckhamer et al. 2013 ; Ragin 2006 ; Ragin and Fiss 2017 ). QCA’s strengths are that it enables the researcher to analyse systematically complex connections amongst factors, allowing for multiple pathways to the outcome and investigating the effects of combinations of factors. I use the mvQCA variant in this paper because it is the most suitable for the type of data I analyse: since some of my factors have more than two categories, crisp set QCA would not be suitable (it is possible to employ dummies, but this makes the analyses clumsy and the findings harder to interpret). In order to use fsQCA, on the other hand, I would have had to decide how to calibrate the school qualification measure. Any decision taken in calibration affects the results, whereas the categories used in the mvQCA have substantive meanings which are straightforwardly interpretable. The analysis was performed using the R package QCApro (Thiem 2018 ). Footnote 12

4 Relative educational poverty: some empirical findings

Clearly, it is important to consider the relative nature of the value of educational certificates despite the challenges associated with operationalising relative educational poverty discussed above. As we have seen, this value changes over time: on the one hand, technological change leads to a change in the structure of the labour market in modern societies, so that there will be a demand for more highly skilled workers, on the other hand, educational expansion has produced an oversupply of candidates with high formal qualifications, a development which leads to lowly qualified candidates being rejected for jobs which previously had been carried out perfectly competently by workers with this level of qualification (Dore 1976 ). Taken together, these two developments lead to a devaluing of basic qualifications in the labour market.

4.1 Descriptive results

Qualifications inflation is evident in the NEPS data when considering changes over eight cohorts, ranging from those born between 1944 and 1950 to those born between 1981 and 1989: Hauptschulabschluss (HS) with vocational qualification was the most common qualification in the earlier cohorts. The proportion of respondents with this qualification then fell from 38% (1944–1950) to 8.3% (1981–1989). The combination Abitur (i.e., the Higher Education entrance qualification) with vocational qualification went from fairly uncommon (6.9% for the 1944–1950 cohort) to one held by a fifth of respondents (20.0% for the 1981–1989 cohort). Finally, having a university degree went from a qualification held by 15.1% of the 1944–1950 cohort to being the second most common one at 21.3% (only surpassed by Mittlere Reife with vocational qualification at 23.9%) for the 1981–1989 cohort. Over time, the proportions of respondents with Hauptschulabschluss who have remained without vocational qualification have increased, from 9.9% in the oldest cohort to 29.2% in the youngest. Figure  2 summarises some of these developments, and it is worth noting that what has sometimes been defined as absolute educational poverty—the absence of any qualification—has remained fairly constant over time. This is represented by the dotted line in Fig.  2 .

Changes over time in highest qualifications achieved

The two developments taken together—the seemingly greater risk for Hauptschulabschluss holders of remaining without a vocational qualification and the increasing number of Abitur holders who obtain vocational qualifications—may largely reflect changes in the composition of these groups. Presumably, Hauptschulabschluss is increasingly only obtained by individuals who struggle in some way—whether academically or in life more generally—so that they are unable or unwilling to gain a vocational qualification. Employers who can offer apprenticeships are more likely to offer their places to Mittlere Reife or Abitur holders given that there are enough candidates with these higher levels of qualifications. This may be because they use qualification as a simple screening device when faced with a large number of applicants, and/or because they fear that the group of Hauptschulabschluss holders is indeed negatively selected for academic ability and/or motivation (see Solga 2011 , p.430, who also discusses such developments).

These descriptive findings suggest that it would be interesting to analyse the joint contributions of various factors to educational status, investigating how this has changed over time. Employing mvQCA, I will make use of the idea of the relative nature of the value of educational certificates as described at the beginning of this section in analysing the outcome of “post-school qualification”. This refers to attaining a qualification recognised in the labour market (i.e., either a vocational qualification or a degree). With its tightly regulated labour market, it is fairly difficult in Germany to obtain stable employment without such a qualification which makes this an important outcome. Post-school qualification (“POST.SCHOOL”) is coded 1 = “has vocational qualification or degree”, 0 = “has no post-school qualification”.

4.2 mvQCA results

As I explained in the Introduction, I used three factors as the conditions in the mvQCA analysis. Given that a focus on context and interactions is a core principle of QCA (which is the reason I chose it as my method of analysis), it would not make sense to state hypotheses concerning the likely effects of individual conditions. Instead, I comment briefly on how they might be expected jointly to be linked to the outcome: This paper’s key focus is on relative educational poverty. Accordingly, one of the three conditions is cohort, since I expect the role of education—more specifically, of the lowest qualification, Hauptschule—to change over time, with Hauptschule possibly being sufficient for reaching some post-school qualification for the older cohort, but not the younger. At the same time, it is plausible that male sex will be part of a configuration which is sufficient for obtaining a post-school qualification for the older cohort, but that it loses its relevance for the younger cohort. As for necessity, I do not expect any of the three conditions to be individually necessary for the outcome given that it has been fairly common in all age groups across a variety of subgroups, though it is plausible that a disjunction of several factors will be.

Sex (“MALE”) is coded 1 = “male” and 0 = “female”, Footnote 13 school qualification (“SCHOOL.QUAL”) is coded 0 = “no qualification”, 1 = “Hauptschule”, 2 = “Mittlere Reife”, 3 = “Abitur”, and cohort (“COHORT”) is coded 0 = “born 1944–1965” and 1 = “born 1966–1989”. Table 3 is the truth table, showing the 16 possible combinations of these three factors. The column headed “outcome POST.SCHOOL” indicates whether or not the respective row has reached the threshold for consistency with sufficiency. Footnote 14 This threshold is set by the researcher, depending on how close to perfect sufficiency a relationship is desired. It can be informative to explore more than one threshold in order to get a sense of the interplay of factors (an approach used, for example, by Cooper 2005 ), taking account of jumps in consistency. In Table 3 , there is a gap between configurations 0 2 0 (consistency 0.917) and 1 1 1 (consistency 0.849), and again between configurations 0 1 0 (consistency 0.848) and 0 1 1 (consistency 0.745), suggesting that 0.9 and 0.8 are useful places to set thresholds. These are reflected in the entries 1/0 in the column headed “outcome”.

The column headed “ n ” gives the number of cases with the combination described in this truth table row. The final column headed “consistency” gives the consistency with sufficiency for each row. In the case of crisp and mvQCA, this figure is simply the proportion of cases in the row with the outcome. So, for example, the first row contains the 1276 cases who are male, have a Mittlere Reife qualification as their highest school qualification and who belong to the older cohort. 96.3 percent of them obtained a post-school qualification. Given that the truth table is ordered in descending order of consistency, the rows with the highest proportion of cases obtaining a post-school qualification are found nearer the top of the table.

There are some interesting insights to be gained merely from studying the truth table. We can see that it is fairly common to obtain a post-school qualification: in most groups, over 90 percent achieve this. Respondents whose highest qualification is a Hauptschulabschluss are the exception: the only row containing Hauptschule leavers with a consistency above 0.9 is the combination 1 1 0, i.e. men from the older cohort. They obtain post-school qualifications in similar proportions to cases with higher school qualifications. Footnote 15

The truth table can now be used to generate two Boolean solutions in a process of minimisation to obtain (quasi-)necessary and (quasi-)sufficient combinations of conditions for achieving the outcome. In the first, employing a threshold of 0.9 for consistency with sufficiency, no quasi-necessary combination of conditions was found (as indicated by the single-headed arrow). The combination of Mittlere Reife OR Abitur OR [male AND Hauptschulabschluss AND older cohort] was quasi-sufficient for obtaining a post-school qualification. In other words, there are three routes to the outcome at this consistency level: (1) Abitur, (2) Mittlere Reife, (3) Hauptschulabschluss combined with being male and a member of the older cohort. The second solution, employing a threshold of 0.8, shows a combination of conditions which are jointly (quasi-)necessary and (quasi-) sufficient for the outcome, as indicated by the double-headed arrow. They are Mittlere Reife OR Abitur OR [male AND Hauptschulabschluss] OR [Hauptschulabschluss AND older cohort]. The figures given below, on a scale of zero to one, provide information on the consistency with sufficiency for every combination of conditions (the column headed “incl”) and raw and unique coverage (in the columns headed cov.r and cov.u, respectively). The coverage figures indicate the empirical relevance of each combination of conditions, with unique coverage calculated Footnote 16 for cases who only have the conditions specified by the particular path, and raw coverage for those on the path who also have conditions specified by other paths.

4.3 Solutions

Threshold of 0.9 consistency with quasi-sufficiency.

SCHOOL.QUAL{2} + SCHOOL.QUAL{3} + MALE{1}*SCHOOL.QUAL{1}*COHORT{0} =  > POST.SCHOOL

Threshold of 0.8 consistency with quasi-sufficiency

SCHOOL.QUAL{2} + SCHOOL.QUAL{3} + MALE{1}*SCHOOL.QUAL{1} + SCHOOL.QUAL{1}*COHORT{0}<=> POST.SCHOOL

The analyses show the relevance of context: not surprisingly, Mittlere Reife and Abitur are both (quasi-)sufficient conditions on their own for gaining a post-school qualification regardless of cohort, but Hauptschulabschluss, the most basic form of school qualification, was not sufficient for most cases, only for men from the older cohort. This latter group corresponds to the fifth truth table row. When a slightly less stringent threshold for sufficiency is chosen, then only one of the two factors, sex and cohort, had to be combined with Hauptschulabschluss, but it still was not sufficient on its own.

5 Discussion

Poverty can be employed as an emotive term to stress the seriousness of an individual’s situation. Such a usage would seem to be more appropriate for political campaigners rather than for researchers striving for neutrality and objectivity. In addition, describing someone as poor may lead to their being stigmatised and written off. Having said that, the conceptual discussion in this paper has shown that, despite key differences with material poverty, the concept of poverty is useful in describing a situation where someone is excluded from participation in what is considered normal in the society in which they live. Understood in this way, it makes sense to talk about educational poverty as a lack of formal qualifications which severely restricts participation in a number of areas of social life as defined in the Introduction, a definition I drew upon throughout this paper.

What has also become clear from the conceptual discussion is that educational poverty, like material poverty, ought to be understood as a relative concept. While the distinction between absolute and relative poverty has been made by a number of scholars (e.g., Allmendinger 1999 ; Blossfeld et al. 2019 ; Sen 1983 ), in practice they still describe even absolute poverty by referring to the context in which it is experienced. Clearly, then, it is important that in analysing educational poverty, we do not lose sight of its relative nature. A particular level of education may have been perfectly adequate during an earlier period, only for the same level to represent educational poverty in an age in which more and more people acquire ever higher levels of formal education. Equally clearly, different groups can be affected differentially at different times and in different societies, so that what constitutes educational poverty for one may not have the same implications for another.

Empirically, the shifts in educational qualifications analysed descriptively in Sect.  4.1 already show that distribution matters: a Hauptschule qualification followed by a vocational qualification has gone from being the most commonly held type of qualification to being fairly unusual over the course of the observation period. Quenzel and Hurrelmann ( 2019b ) describe clearly how this development is associated with the job opportunities of people whose highest school qualification is a Hauptschulabschluss, noting that the composition of this group has become more homogeneous over the years, with most of them coming from educationally deprived households. Apart from the implications for their educational opportunities, this also means that they have fewer informal networks to draw on to help them in their job search. At the same time, employers use school qualification as a screening device, assuming—rightly or wrongly—that an individual from such a negatively selected group is less likely to fulfil their requirements compared to someone from the much larger pool of individuals with higher levels of qualification. The QCA analysis (Sect.  4.2 ) confirms empirically the importance of a relative conceptualisation of educational poverty: since gaining a post-school qualification will greatly ease the transition into the labour market, it is one of the outcomes which ought to be considered in analysing potential effects of educational poverty. As I was able to show, the value of Hauptschulabschluss has not remained the same: it was a (quasi-) sufficient condition (at the 0.9 level) for obtaining the outcome of a post-school qualification only for a certain group—men—and during a certain period of time—that in which respondents born before 1966 completed their schooling. This means that, for women born at any point in time and for both men and women born after 1965, having Hauptschulabschluss as their highest level of school qualification can be considered to be a marker of educational poverty, but not for men born before 1966. This suggests that, as might be expected given what we know about education as a positional good (Hirsch 1976 , see Sect.  2.1 ) and qualifications inflation (Dore 1976 , see Sect.  2.1 ), the value of Hauptschulabschluss decreased over time because of the general increase in levels of school qualifications. As for the difference between men and women, this may be linked to the increase in women’s labour market participation: for women born earlier, given the expectation that they would raise a family, it is possible that they did not see the need to attempt to obtain a post-school qualification if they could expect this to be difficult given their low level of school qualification.

While it was useful to draw on theoretical work undertaken in the field of material poverty in conceptualising educational poverty, it seems likely that the relevance is limited when it comes to policy implications. The means of tackling poverty are likely to differ between the two fields (even though the two types of poverty may well share some causes). For example, I noted above that material poverty can in principle be alleviated by transferring money to the individuals affected, but this is not the case straightforwardly for educational poverty. While it is possible to create opportunities for gaining qualifications at any stage in an individual’s life, this alone does not mean that they will be taken up.

With this paper, I have intended to contribute to the existing work on educational poverty and thus to encourage further empirical research drawing on this concept. Any such research ought to take account of the relative nature of educational poverty, as I have demonstrated.

Availability of data and material

Data were supplied by the LIfBi.

Inequality in education and educational poverty are clearly related, however. Similarly, inequality in resources is related to material poverty but distinct from it (Sen 1983 ; Solga 2011 ; Townsend 1979 ). I will discuss these issues in Sect.  2.1 .

I refer to formal qualifications because they are the main focus in this paper. Similar arguments would apply to competences not measured by certificates.

In addition to such substantive changes in circumstances, an individual’s official poverty status varies with the setting of the poverty line, so that even without a change in circumstances, someone may be defined as being poor when previously they were not, and vice versa. But this is an artefact arising from decisions which may be politically motivated and which do not necessarily mirror closely the experience of the individuals concerned.

A sudden loss of the value of qualifications can, of course, occur following emigration to a country where one’s qualifications are not recognised, or, for qualifications obtained in the UK, as a result of Brexit and the accompanying loss of EU-wide automatic recognition of professional qualifications obtained in other member states.

Townsend gives a simple example in discussing tea: “Tea is nutritionally worthless, but in some countries is generally accepted as a ‘necessity of life’. For many people in these countries drinking tea has been a life-long custom and is psychologically essential. And the fact that friends and neighbours expect to be offered a cup of tea (or the equivalent) when they visit helps to make it socially necessary as well: a small contribution is made towards maintaining the threads of social relationships.” (p. 50).

Referring to this dependence of the definition on the country under study might of course be seen as describing relative rather than absolute poverty.

This paper is part of a larger project with a common dataset. Unlike those in the present paper, some of the other analyses draw on parents’ status which is why cases with missing data on these measures were excluded. However, the analyses presented in this paper were repeated with a slightly larger dataset ( n  = 17,107) which only excluded cases if data were missing on respondents’ education, and the results were essentially the same.

It will be interesting to analyse this relationship using the NEPS adolescents and students data once they have been collected for long enough for most respondents to have potentially reached the outcomes of interest.

Clearly, this does not apply to competences which can—appropriate tests permitting—easily be measured on an interval scale.

This brief description is a simplification of the German system with its 16 federal states, all of which have their own educational systems, though with common elements across all 16 states.

Using years of education instead of certificates would lead to similar problems for much the same reasons, as discussed in the previous section.

Nothing hinges on the choice of software package since I have no reason to expect different findings were I to use an alternative package, given the structure of my data.

No ordering is implied by the choice of the 1 and 0 labels, these are merely following convention.

Strictly speaking, quasi -sufficiency is being assessed, since we will not often, in large n studies, find a relation of perfect sufficiency. What Ragin’s use of quasi -sufficiency captures is something like: the combination of conditions is sufficient to raise the proportion gaining the outcome above the chosen threshold. Quasi-sufficiency therefore can be used to assess how closely the truth table data reflect perfect sufficiency.

The truth table suggests that there are no cases with no school qualification who go on to obtain a post-school qualification (see the four consistency values of zero). While it is plausible that this would be very difficult for them, this is likely to be partly an artefact arising from the use in the NEPS data of the CASMIN classification of qualifications which, in constructing the relevant derived variables, assumes that anyone with a vocational qualification has previously obtained the required school qualification, correcting any (presumed) mistakes in a process of data-cleaning and variable construction (Zielonka and Pelz 2015 ).

The figure basically gives the proportion of cases with the outcome that are accounted for by this path.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Barry Cooper for his extremely helpful thoughts and comments on this paper. I also thank the LIfBi for providing the NEPS dataset.

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Glaesser, J. Relative educational poverty: conceptual and empirical issues. Qual Quant 56 , 2803–2820 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-021-01226-3

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The Impact of Education and Culture on Poverty Reduction: Evidence from Panel Data of European Countries

1 Department of Economics, University of Foggia, 71121 Foggia, Italy

2 Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, University of Palermo, Viale Delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy

The 2030 Agenda has among its key objectives the poverty eradication through increasing the level of education. A good level of education and investment in culture of a country is in fact necessary to guarantee a sustainable economy, in which coexists satisfactory levels of quality of life and an equitable distribution of income. There is a lack of studies in particular on the relations between some significant dimensions, such as education, culture and poverty, considering time lags for the measurement of impacts. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by focusing on the relationship between education, culture and poverty based on a panel of data from 34 European countries, over a 5-year period, 2015–2019. For this purpose, after applying principal component analysis to avoid multicollinearity problems, the authors applied three different approaches: pooled-ordinary least squares model, fixed effect model and random effect model. Fixed-effects estimator was selected as the optimal and most appropriate model. The results highlight that increasing education and culture levels in these countries reduce poverty. This opens space to new research paths and policy strategies that can start from this connection to implement concrete actions aimed at widening and improving educational and cultural offer.

Introduction

Poverty eradication has been the key objective for spans in many countries since that has been recognized as the greatest hostile issues ‘jeopardising balanced society socio-economic development’ (Balvociute, 2020 ). Poverty can be considered one of the core features of unsustainable socio-economic development and as a persistent phenomenon that can have upsetting effect on peoples’ lives (Bossert et al., 2022 ). For this reason, the extreme poverty removal, as well as the fight against inequalities and injustices, have been placed at the center, with climate change, of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The nature of poverty is multidimensional and inequalities within and among countries is an obstinate origin for concern (Fund, 2015 ; Alvaredo et al., 2017 ; Alkire & Seth, 2015 ; Kwadzo, 2015 ). For its interpretation and measurement, the literature has added to the monetary approach of material deprivation, the social and subjective dimension of the human being (Bellani & D’Ambrosio, 2014 ; Maggino, 2015 ). As stated by Kwadzo ( 2015 ), it is possible to define three poverty measurements: monetary poverty, social exclusion, and capability poverty. Similarly, there are a lot of indicators measuring well-being and quality of life: Index of Happiness, Human Poverty Index and Human Development Index (Senasu et al., 2019 ; Spada et al., 2020 ; UNDP, 1990 ; Veenhoven, 2012 ; Watkins, 2007 ). All these indicators focus and start from education. For example, the Human Poverty Index (HPI) was introduced by the United Nations to complement the Human Development Index (HDI) and used, for the first time, in the 1997 Human Development Report. In 2010, it was replaced by the Multidimensional Poverty Index. The HPI focuses on the deprivation of three essential parameters of human life, already taken into account by the Human Development Index: life expectancy, education and standard of living (Alkire et al., 2015 ; UNDP, 1990 ).

Previous studies shown that education indicators have a large impact on a country’s poverty (Bakhtiari & Meisami, 2010 ; UNDP, 1990 ; Watkins, 2007 ) and that investing in health and education is a way to reduce income inequality and poverty. In addition, studies highlight that increasing equality and the quality of education is essential to combat economic and gender inequality within society (Walker et al., 2019 ). However, few studies provide empirical evidence on how education impacts on income inequality (Liu et al., 2021 ; Santos, 2011 ; Walker et al., 2019 ) and most of these studies analyses the poverty phenomenon neglecting the combined effect of various variables. Different dimensions of poverty have also empirically demonstrated a high degree of correlation (Kwadzo, 2015 ). In addition, the literature review analysis highlighted a gap in quantitative studies, especially on the paths between some relevant dimensions, such as education, culture and poverty, considering time lags for the measurement of impacts. In light of this, the main objectives of this study are: (i) To identify over the five-year period considered (2015–2019), with what delay and with what magnitude and sign, the poverty is influenced by some indicators representative of the educational and cultural dimension; and (ii) Consequently, better calibrate education policies in European countries, in order to achieve a reduction in the poverty rate in the short term, in compliance with the objectives of the 2030 Agenda.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. A literature review regarding the relation between poverty, education and inequalities is presented in Sect.  2 . The Sect.  3 enlightens research gaps linked to the aims of this study and hypothesis to corroborate. Section  4 defines data and summarizes the methodological approach used to reach the work’s aims. Results are presented and discussed in Sect.  5 . Finally, the last section sets out our main conclusions by highlighting limitations of the study and future directions.

Theoretical Framework

The core role of education.

Over the last decades it is possible to individuate in the EU-28 a quickly growing portion of the population having income below 60% of the median disposable income. In addition, there is a share of the population has been becoming more impoverished (Balvociute, 2020 ; EUROSTAT Statistic Explained, 2019 ). In same way, it is possible to speak about “poverty trap”, a mechanisms whereby countries are poor and persist poor: existing poverty appears a straight cause of poverty in the future (Knight et al., 2009 ; Kraay & McKenzie, 2014 ). Aspects such as accommodation, education, medical and material services are considered essential. In particular, an increasing number of empirical studies have supported the positive effects of education on the creation of wealth by individuals and on promoting economic effective and fair development (UNESCO & Global Education Monitoring Report, 2017 ; Walker et al., 2019 ; Xu, 2016 ; Zhang, 2020 ). A research note by European Commission ( 2015 ) shows that individuals with primary education remain the most vulnerable in all EU countries (with a risk of poverty ranging from 13%—Netherlands—to 56% Romania). Even the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) endorsed by the World Bank and ‘Education for All’ program (UNESCO, 2007 ) emphases the significant role of education (Awan et al., 2011 ). A diverse balance can be possible and policy efforts to interrupt the poverty trap might have long-term effects. In this framework, the model proposed by Santos ( 2011 ) shows that a policy oriented towards aligning the quality of education would reduce initial inequalities. In light of this, Shi & Qamruzzaman, ( 2022 ) in a recent work, study, by means of numerous econometrical methods, the tie between investments in education, financial inclusion, and poverty decrease for the period 1995–2018 in 68 nations, underlining the role of education-backed poverty mitigation public policies that need to be more targeted. Several studies demonstrate that level of poverty and education are strictly related. For instance, Bossert et al. ( 2022 ) by focusing on Atkinson-Kolm-Sen index, that measures the percentage income gap of the poor that can be attributed to inequality among the poor (Sen, 1973 , 1976 ), emphasized the close relation between poverty and inequality. Consistent with previous studies, Lenzi and Perruca ( 2022 ) demonstrate that tertiary educated people report higher ranks of life satisfaction. This link is even more marked in rural territories where education is recognised as an important tool for reducing poverty as it allows the acquisition of skills and productive knowledges which increase people’s productivity and their earnings (Tilak, 2002 ). A recent report of the United Nations ( 2021 ) underlines how the reduced access to educational and health services in rural areas becomes a barrier, determining the difficulty of people living in these areas to found employment in well-paid professions contributing to economic growth (Chmelewska and Zegar, 2018 ). However, as Liu and colleagues ( 2021 ) find, different levels of education have distinct effects on poverty in rural areas of China and that the latter is driven not only by factors within the region but also by the level of poverty in the surrounding regions. In addition, numerous empirical evidences reveal a link between educational level and income inequalities in several geopolitical contexts. Bakhtiari and Meisami ( 2010 ), in a work of over 10 years ago, makes use of a panel data set of 37 Islamic countries (eight time periods) to study income inequality along with a model of poverty, with the main variables as income level, health status, education and savings. Findings show that enhancing the health and education can reduce income inequality and poverty. Likewise, as Arafat and Khan ( 2022 ) underline the high level of education not only contributes to reducing the degree of poverty but improves the conditions of mental, social and emotional well-being compared to poorly educated families. After about 10 years, similar works by Wani and Dhami ( 2021 ) and Sabir and Aziz ( 2018 ) reach the same results investigating the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries and 31 developing countries (by employing the System Generalized Method of Moments). In several cases, and especially in rural areas, poverty is linked to the lower level of household income compared to urban areas, resulting in differences in access to basic goods and services to meet personal needs (Chmelewska and Zegar, 2018 ). In this territories household income level is directly associated with food security, in fact, an increase in the level of income reduces food insecurity (Chegini et al., 2021 ). However, as evidenced by other authors (Kirkpatrick et al., 2020 ; Kusio & Fiore, 2022 ), access to education can help to overcome the migration of young people and geographical isolation and inaccessibility that characterize the poor areas (Kvedaraite et al., 2011 ). In turn, young, educated people affect entrepreneurial attitudes. Walker et al. ( 2019 ) in the recent report ‘ The Power of Education to Fight Inequality. How increasing educational equality and quality is crucial to fighting economic and gender inequality ’ show how education can be emancipating for individuals, and it can play the role of a ‘leveler and equalizer within society’. Education interrupts obstinate and rising inequality by promoting the development of more decent work, rising incomes for the poorest people: it can aid to endorse long-lasting, wide-ranging economic growth and social cohesion.

Gradstein and Justman ( 2002 ) underlined the role of education in shaping the social cohesion that can assure equality between individuals. Universal free education enhances people’s earning power, and can bring them out of poverty. Low levels of education hamper economic growth, which in turn slows down poverty reduction (UNESCO, 2017 ; Global Education Monitoring Report, 2019 ) estimates that each year of schooling raises earnings by around 10%;53 this figure is even higher for women. In Tanzania, having a secondary education reduces the chances of being poor as a working adult by almost 60%. According to a study by UNESCO and the Global Education Monitoring Report ( 2019 ), if all adults finished secondary school, 420 million individuals would be lifted out of poverty. The convergence of crises deriving first from COVID-19 then from climate change, and conflicts, are generating extra impacts above all on poverty, nutrition, health and education affecting all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Equilience, a synchratic neologism composed of Equity + Resilience, that is resilient systems in respect of equity as a balancing of the different interests of the parties. Recent research (Berbés-Blázquez et al., 2021 ; Williams et al., 2020 ; Contò and Fiore, 2020 ) highlight the crucial importance to promote the ‘marriage’ between equity and resilience.

Aims of Study and Hypothesis

This research is potentially the first study to investigate the relationship between educational, cultural factors and poverty in European countries.

The main research directions are as follows: (i) To assess the impact of education and culture (expressed by the following indicators: Cultural employment, Total educational expenditure, Graduates in tertiary education, Number of enterprises in the cultural sectors, Tertiary educational attainment ) upon poverty (indicated by Persons at risk of poverty or social ); (ii) To compare the strength and direction of the relationships between the variables considered in two temporal situations, i.e. with zero lag, and with lag equal to one year. The data cover the period 2015–2019 and were extracted from the Eurostat database.

In the light of the above discussion, of the literature review analysis, and of the theoretical frameworks examined this study explores the following research hypotheses with regard to the European context:

Education and culture have an inverse impact on the levels of poverty.

Our second hypothesis states:

The association between cultural, educational variables and poverty, in the short term is more intense if we consider a delay of one-year.

The dataset is a balanced panel of annual observations for 34 European countries and covers the period from 2015 to 2019. On the basis of literature findings, our analysis focused on the following dimensions: education, income inequality and poverty.

Thereby, the variables considered for our investigation are as follows:

• Poverty indicator: Persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion (% of population, thousand persons; hereinafter labelled with PRP);
• Education and cultural indicators: Cultural employment (thousand persons); Total educational expenditure (million euros); Graduates in tertiary education (‰ of population;); Number of enterprises in the cultural sectors (number) Tertiary educational attainment (‰ of population). Respectively, hereinafter they will be labelled with CE, TEE, GTE, NEC and TEA.

The indicators have been extracted from the Eurostat database. The summary statistics are reported in Table ​ Table1. 1 . In the selected time period, Iceland is the country that shows the lowest values with respect PRP (12.08%). Instead, the country showing the worst performance is Romania (PRP = 41.60%). With regard to the education indicators, Germany holds the highest values for both CE (81,661.48 thousand persons) and TEE (30.588.86 million euros), highlighting great attention to education issues. Instead, in Eastern Europe (Montenegro, Romania, and Hungary) the indicators pertaining to the education area take on more penalized values. Italy is the country that boasts the largest number of enterprises in the cultural sector (NEC = 179,136.8), thanks also to the artistic beauties of which this country is rich. As far as the tertiary education level is concerned, the highest value of is held by Cyprus while the lowest by Romania (respectively TEA = 57.34 and TEA = 25.26). For subsequent processing, since the variables considered are both in the form of ratios and counts, all data were converted to natural logarithms.

Summary statistics for the Eurostat datasets, 2015–2019

Methodology

The methodological approach used is based on linear panel data models including the simple Pooled Ordinary Least Square (pooled OLS) model, the Fixed Effects (FE) model and the Random Effects (RE) model. Before proceeding with the application of the linear models, the correlation matrix between the variables taken into consideration was performed and subsequently, to avoid multicollinearity problems and distorted estimates, the study, based on the principal component analysis (PCA), used two indicators related to education and culture. According to Jolliffe and Cadima ( 2016 ), through PCA starting from a set of correlated variables, a set of uncorrelated variables is obtained, known as Principal Components (PC). In PCA, only common factors that have an eigenvalue greater than one or greater than the mean should be kept (Jolliffe, 2002 ; Kaiser, 1974 ). In this study PCA allowed to obtain the following indicators: EDU1, which includes CE, NEC, TEE, and EDU2, composed of TEA and GTE. These indicators have been incorporated into the panel data models, replacing the original variables.

The first linear panel data model adopted is the pooled OLS, which assumes no heterogeneity between countries, whose equation is as follows:

where ln PRP is the natural logarithm of the poverty indicator, α is the intercept, EDU is composed of the principal components extracted, ε is the error term, i denotes statistical units, in this case countries, and t denotes the time index.

The second model adopted is FE which controls for cross-country heterogeneity and is expressed as:

where α i is the regional specific parameter denoting the fixed effect. The basic intuition of the FE model is that α i does not change over time.

Finally, the third model is RE denoted as;

In the RE model, variations between units are assumed to be random and uncorrelated with the independent variables in the model.

To verify the two research hypotheses, for each of the three models (pooled OLS, FE and RE) two versions were calculated, with lag 0 and lag 1 year. In the model at lag 0 the variables are synchronous, while in the model at lag 1 principal components enter the equation with a one-year lag compared to PRP. The choice of the reference model between pooled OLS, FE and RE is based on several tests. In choosing between FE and pooled OLS, the study applies the F-test. A p-value of less than 5% indicates that there are important country effects that OLS fails to detect, and that thus neglecting unobserved heterogeneity in the model can lead to estimation errors and inconsistencies. The study also tests which is better between the OLS and RE model using the Breusch-Pagan (BP)-Langragian Multiplier (LM) test. The null hypothesis of the BP-LM test is that there is no substantial variance between regions. A probability value of less than 5% for the BP-LM test indicates that the RE model is appropriate and the OLS pool is not. Finally, the Hausman test χ 2 is also performed to compare the FE model and the RE model. According to Algieri and Mannarino ( 2013 ), the Hausman test χ 2 aims to identify a violation of the RE modelling hypothesis. In this test, the alternative hypothesis is that the FE model is preferable to the RE model, while the null hypothesis is that both models produce similar coefficients. A p-value greater than 5% denotes that both FE and RE are reliable, but the RE model is more efficient because it uses a lower degree of freedom. We also test for heteroskedasticity in the FE model using the modified Wald test developed by Lasker and King ( 1997 ). The null hypothesis of this test is that the variance of the error is similar for all countries (Amaz et al., 2012 ). All statistical analyses were conducted in Stata 17.0 (Stata Corp LP, College Station, Texas, USA). A critical value of p  < 0.05 was specified a priori as the threshold of statistical significance for all analyses.

The relationships between the variables, measured by Pearson’s linear correlation coefficient, is shown in Table ​ Table2. 2 . It is noted that the PRP variable is negatively correlated with all the other panel variables, albeit with modest correlations. Instead, TEE shows a high positive correlation with NEC ( r  = 0.963 and r  = 0.903, respectively). There is also a high correlation between NEC and TEE ( r  = 0.857). Therefore, in the light of the results, to exclude the problem of multicollinearity between the covariates, we proceeded to analyse the principal components.

Pearson correlation coefficient

* p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001

Table ​ Table3 3 shows the results of principal component analysis. On the basis of these results, the need to maintain the first two principal components is highlighted, since their eigenvalues are greater or very close to 1 and cumulatively represent the 84% of the information. They will be labelled as EDU1 and EDU2 respectively. EDU1 refers to TEE, CE and NEC, i.e. it refers to a cultural dimension of the country and therefore, even if not strictly connected to the school environment, with an important educational role, while the EDU2 component referring to GTE and TEA, is more closely related to the school.

Principal component analysis: factor loading, eigen value and variance explained

Table ​ Table4 4 shows the results of the three econometric models (pooled OLS, FE, RE) on the link between education, culture and poverty. It is observed that all models converge in showing that poverty decreases with increasing education and culture. In particular, the EDU1 indicator always shows a negative coefficient, and this relationship is statistically significant in the model fixed at lag 0 and lag 1 (respectively b  = − 0.3804, p  < 0.001; b  = − 0.3925, p  < 0.001). Furthermore, for EDU1, in all three econometric models it can be noted that the coefficients are higher in absolute value passing from lag 0 to lag 1, highlighting that the impact between cultural and educational tools and poverty reduction occurs with a delay, perhaps necessary to have positive results. Also, the EDU2 indicator always shows a negative coefficient and this relationship is statistically significant in all three models, both at lag 0 and at lag 1 (for all p  < 0.001). To discern the econometric model that best fits the data, as a first step the F-test allows you to choose between the OLS and FE models. The value F = 80.09 for lag 0 and F = 109.61for lag = 1, (for all p -value < 0.001), indicates in both cases that the FE model is more suitable than the pooled OLS. This demonstrates that in the relationships examined time plays an important role, which a simple OLS model may fail to capture, i.e. EDU1 and EDU2 have an effect on poverty decrease that changes over time. The choice between the RE model and the pooled OLS was instead based on the BP LM test, which suggests that the RE model is more suitable than the pooled OLS. Finally, the Hausman test χ 2 allows to identify which between FE and RE is more suitable: The value χ 2  = 15.95 at lag 0 and χ 2  = 13.40 at lag = 1, (for all p -value < 0.001) suggests that the FE model is more suitable than the RE model, indicating the presence of non-random differences between countries or over time. The model that best fits the examined panel of data is therefore the FE model.

Pooled OLS, Fixed Model, Random Model, at lag 0 and at lag 1

** p  < 0.01, *** p  < 0.001

In light of these results, as supposed in hypothesis H 1 , it is evident that education and culture play a significant role in poverty reduction. Furthermore, as supposed by hypothesis H 2  and based on the FE model which was found to be the most suitable, this impact is more intense if one considers a year of delay, above all for cultural and educational variables relating to a dimension that is not strictly scholastic.

Discussions and Conclusions

The present study analysed the relationship between education, culture and poverty for 34 countries, over the period 2015–2019. The findings indicate that rising education and culture levels in these nations reduce poverty. The model also highlighted that this relationship is weaker if we consider a contemporaneity of the values of the variables (at lag 0), while it is strengthened if we consider a time interval of one year.

As policy-makers regularly disclose the consequences of unfair development by identifying problems requiring solutions built on evidence-based guidelines, these results can have interesting and fruitful implications. By concluding, education appears, in line with other studies (Sabir & Aziz, 2018 ; Xu, 2016 ), one of the best effective methods to eradicate poverty. In line with the work by Walker et al., ( 2019 ), investing in universal-free-public education for all the persons can close different circles: the gap between rich and poor people, between women and men, between poor and rich areas within a country and among countries. In addition, education appears crucial to fight inequalities across the world. The results appear also consistent with the UN report ( 2021 ) that emphasizes the importance of the access to educational and health services in marginal poor areas to improve and contribute equal economic growth and reduce poverty (Chmelewska and Zegar, 2018 ; Bakhtiari & Meisami, 2010 ; Wani & Dhami, 2021 ). The same findings come from the work by Peng ( 2019 ) based on data from poor Chinese provinces showing that education has steady and positive impacts on farmers’ income, and the outcome of growing income in poor zones is higher than in other areas.

All in all, as evidenced by the European Commission ( 2015 ), the means to diminish the risk of poverty appears ‘straight-forward: go to school, get a job’. Clearly, these implications have to consider conditions and country environment. In line with previous research (Noper Ardi & Isnayanti, 2020 ; Walker et al., 2019 ), these results highlight that education can have an immediate impact on income inequalities and poverty; on the other hand, education (and public spending on it) has a longer-term impact on inequality through its effects in enhancing future salaries and chances. Indeed, as stated by some notable researchers (Kraay & McKenzie, 2014 ), the ‘more-likely poverty traps’ need action in less-traditional policy areas. The scholars have to further perfect the theoretical concepts and policy standards of poverty alleviation through education (Shi & Qamruzzaman, 2022 ).

This paper reinforces the conclusions deriving from other research (Mou and Xu, 2020 ; Assari et al., 2018 ; Batool and Batool, 2018 ) that are to give evidence of how education can forecast coming ‘Emotional Well-Being’ thus decreasing the inequalities by means of more generous policies and strategies. The latter can support international experience-based education (Xu, 2016 ).

In the following research phases, other variables can be inserted to improve the specifications of the model and also verify the existence of homogeneous groups of countries. In addition, a distinction between urban and rural areas to highlight the link between income, education and poverty and differences could enrich the literature and provide useful information to guide national policies in a targeted way. Regarding possible limitations of the paper, it is possible to notice a time period limited for missing data and health variables are missing.

The ‘dark’ side of this conclusions is considering the effects of the COVID19 pandemic that has increased on one hand the online teaching and training: on the other hand, education has become more difficult in remote, rural and/or marginal areas due to connections and hardware limitations.

Therefore, nowadays strategies, models and polices focusing on equi-lience (equity and resilience) processes can promote the creation of a different balance between the needs of sustainable growth and those of social, fair and environmental development (Fiore, 2022 ). Therefore, developing a strategy to convey a trained, skilled and well-supported workforce, investing in relevant and fair teaching resources, ensuring funds and building better liability mechanisms from national to local levels can be significant and fair paths to reduce poverty and inequalities. These strategies have to be aimed at developing national education plans that try to identify pre-education existing inequalities in order to arrange actions in poorer rural and marginalized districts or regions.

Open access funding provided by Università di Foggia within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.

Declarations

Authors disclose financial or non-financial interests directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication.

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Basic Ecclesial Community: Home of Synodality

• Franciscano A. Mutia, Jr
• Annaliza Magno
• Dinah Suarez Mutia
• Sep 18, 2023

Franciscano A. Mutia, Jr, Annaliza Magno &  Dinah Suarez Mutia

San Agustin Institute of Technology,  Valencia City, Bukidnon, Philippines Holy Cross of Davao College

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2023.7899

Received: 26 July 2023; Revised: 11 August 2023; Accepted: 19 August 2023; Published: 18 September 2023

This research paper explores the significance of the Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) as a foundational pillar of synodality within the Roman Catholic Church. Synodality, understood as a participatory and consultative decision-making process, has garnered increasing attention in recent ecclesiastical discourse. The paper delves into the historical roots and theological framework of the BEC, tracing its origins to Vatican II and its subsequent development. It highlights how BECs, with their small-scale and communal nature, foster active engagement and inclusivity among members, providing an ideal environment for synodal practices to thrive. This paper illustrates the practical implementation of synodality within BECs and its potential implications on ecclesial governance and pastoral ministry.

Keywords: Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC), Synodality, Roman Catholic Church, Ecclesia, Participatory Church, Laity, Faith, Mission

INTRODUCTION

Basic Ecclesial Community promotes the dignity and responsibility of the laity within the Church, fostering a sense of ownership and belonging among their members [1].  However, BECs have faced various challenges recently. These challenges include sustainability, a decline in participation and commitment among members, a lack of commitment from the leaders, a lack of resources and training for leaders, and a lack of social actions [2].  What can the Church do to address these challenges?

The objectives of this synthesis paper are as follows: to deepen our knowledge and appreciation on BEC; To know how the process of synodality can revitalize it; To give solution to the challenges faced by BECs so to create a more participatory and inclusive Church that values the contributions of all its members, and provide a platform for BECs to voice their concerns and share their experiences.

This paper will explore the possibility of integrating the process of synodality in Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) practices in the Catholic Church to revitalize it. The paper also highlights how to address the challenges faced by BECs and provides recommendations for their continued growth and effectiveness as a synodal Church.

Thus, Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) are essential to the Church’s mission to spread the Gospel and serve the people’s needs. They provide a space for people to deepen their faith, develop a sense of community, and engage in acts of service and social action.

BECs also serve as a bridge between the Church and the broader society, as they often work closely with other social and political organizations to address poverty, injustice, and inequality.

Basic Ecclesial Community is typically small, grassroots faith communities emphasizing active participation, shared leadership, and a commitment to social justice. They operate on the principle of subsidiarity, which acknowledges the importance of decision-making at the most local level possible. BECs also promote the dignity and responsibility of the laity within the Church, fostering a sense of ownership and belonging among their members [3].

Moreover, many BECs that have been formed could not be sustained, especially when the parish priests who initiated them were transferred, and those who took their place needed to be more supportive. It was also the case when external pastoral agents who helped form BECs were gone. Some BECs have run out of steam. The members were enthusiastic at the start but lost interest after a while. Finally, there are BECs, where only a few actively participate in the ongoing activities (e.g., the monthly BEC gatherings or the weekly Bible-sharing). Most of those who attend are women. The men and young people are seldom seen [4].

Some BECs have leaders who are incompetent and lacking in commitment. The ongoing faith formation is essential for equipping BEC leaders with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual resources necessary to engage effectively in the life and mission of the Church. Others have authoritarian leaders. Some act like little priests, falling into a new form of clericalism of lay leaders. Leaders need more teamwork. Many need to go out of their way to reach out to the members and encourage them [5].

Putting it in the context of our local church in Valencia specifically in chapel setting, during the time of its foundation as a chapel we started it by choosing leaders. Leaders who will man the chapel were elected along with another set of officers who will be the in-charge of the different cellula since every chapel is composing of many cellula. At first, leaders who were elected have shown great desire to serve but eventually it withered so much so that only few have stayed committed and grounded to their mission. One of our officers who became inactive lamented that he left or got lay low because of busy schedule and work-related conflicts. In the same way, one of them shared that her reason for becoming inactive was because of discouragement and personal conflicts encountered toward her churchmate/co-worker. This has been a sentiment and one of the problems that hinders the growth of our BEC.

In addition, many BECs remain inward-looking communities that lack social concern. Their activities revolve around Bible-sharing and liturgical celebrations. They do not respond to social problems and issues they face – e.g., poverty, hunger, criminality, injustice, conflict, the destruction of the environment, etc. These BECs feel helpless amid poverty and conflict. They cannot address these concerns and think BECs should only focus on spiritual matters [6].

Furthermore, many practitioners and members of BECs need an adequate understanding of the vision and nature of BECs. Many associate BECs exclusively with the small group or cell, composed of five to 15 families, who gather monthly to reflect on the Word of God. The BEC becomes just an activity (Bible-sharing) or that small exclusive group. But in the parishes, BECs are area-based — those staying within certain vicinity form the BECs under the direction of the parish leaders. They are supposed to focus on community dynamics [7].

Therefore, we can find the BEC principles and practices in various passages and teachings. Jesus, during his earthly life, always worked together with his followers in forming a community of disciples. He sent his apostles to organize their work of evangelization. The apostles always proclaimed the Gospel from one place to another. They gathered at home. They assembled in the family houses of their colleagues, listening to the Word of God, sharing bread, and praying together. This church assembly in the family was the fundamental unit of primitive Christianity [8].

BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS

Old Testament

The whole human race’s call to union with God

Genesis 1: 26-28

“Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth” [9]

The divine intent is expressed by “let us make a human,” an echo of the language of the divine assembly; in ancient Near Eastern literature, the gods decided the fate of humankind. The Bible accepts the picture of the assembly, but Yahweh alone makes the decision.  The origin of human beings is not simply from the waters on the earth like the plants, fishes/birds, and animals; it is “in our image, according to our likeness.” The human is a statue of the deity, not by static being but by action, who will rule over all things previously created. In the ancient Near East, the king was often called the image of the deity and was vested with God’s authority; royal language is here used for the human. Mesopotamian cosmogonies ordinarily portrayed humans as slaves. Verse a repeats the divine command of male and female he created them:

Subdue the earth: The nuance of the verb is “to master,” “to bring forcefully under control.” Force is necessary at the beginning to make the untamed land serve humans. Humans nonetheless are to respect the environment; they are not to kill for food but are to treat all life with respect. As humans are the pinnacle of the created world; the world is made for man and woman. The imperatives in “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth” are a biblical way of defining essence, like the imperatives in Exod 20:2-17; Lev 19:2; Deut 16:18-20, etc. Plants will suffice for food for humans and animals; there will be no bloodshed. The prohibition is modified in the renewal of creation after the flood (9:2-5) because of the disobedience and violence mysteriously present in the human heart [10].

The normative sources for the synodal life of the Church in Scripture and Tradition show that at the heart of God’s plan of salvation, the whole human race’s call to union with God and unity in Him is fulfilled in Jesus Christ and brought about through the ministry of the Church. The Old Testament shows that God created the human person, man, and woman, in his image and likeness as a social being called to work with Him by moving forward in the sign of communion, by caring for the universe and directing it towards its goal (Genesis 1,26-28) [11].  From the beginning, sin plagues God’s plan, tearing apart the network of ordered relationships that expressed truth, goodness, and the beauty of creation and blinding men’s and women’s hearts to their calling. God, however, rich in mercy, confirms and renews His covenant to bring all that has been scattered back to the path of unity, healing human freedom and directing it to welcome and live the gift of union with God and accordance with our brothers and sisters in creation, our common home [12].

New Testament

The life and practices of the first Christians in Acts 2:42-47

“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” [13]

It clearly suits his purpose to have the most comprehensive summary here at the keynote position of his history. This compendium of the principal norms of church life incumbent upon the newly baptized probably reflects Luke’s time. This is portrayal of the first community as unwavering in all of them (proskarterountes) begins the pattern of idealization that marks all the summaries and attests the author’s distance from his subject matter. The teaching of the apostles: Didache includes proclamation to outsiders (5:28; 13:12; 17:19), so this phrase is a generalization of the sermon just ended. Faithful continuity in Didache from Jesus to the apostles is one of the principal arguments of Luke-Acts (1:1-8; Luke 1:1-4). common life: Koinonia, used only here in Luke’s writing, but 13 times in Paul’s, connotes the bond of responsibility for one another enjoined on believers by their assent to the gospel (2 Cor 8:4; 9:13; Gal 2:9-10). Breaking of the bread: Originally the ritual opening of a festive Jewish meal, this was the gesture of the risen One at Emmaus (Luke 24:35) and recalls the earlier dominical instructions with bread-breaking as well (Luke 9:11-27; 22:14-38). We can consider the phrase a terminus technicus for the Eucharist in Luke-Acts. Many wonders and signs: An effective transition to 3:1-11, but also a consolidation of the credentials of the Eschatological prophecy (Joel), in which his witnesses collaborate with the risen Lord.

Having served as Jesus’ forum in Jerusalem, the Temple becomes the appropriate venue for the apostolic assembly. This principal institution of OT Judaism can be appropriated by Christians under the Twelve, along with the OT itself, as a powerful [14].

In Acts 2:42-47, St. Luke describes the life and practices of the first Christians. According to the Vulgate, their occupations were threefold: (a) attendance at doctrine; (b) participation in the breaking of bread; (c) assistance at prayer.  St. Luke also gives here some account of the manner of living of these first Christians. They were together, united in perfect charity. They were frequently in the temple and praying together. They had all possessions in common. They went from house to house to convert souls, taking the food they found with joy and simplicity of heart, their number increasing daily. St. Luke says they were in favor and esteemed by all the people. The apostles did many prodigies and miracles to confirm their doctrine, which struck others with great terror and horror for their past lives. This living in common is not a precept for all Christians but a life of perfection and counsel, for such are called to it by heaven [16].

The chief characteristics of the Jerusalem community are adherence to the teachings of the Twelve and the centering of its religious life in the eucharistic liturgy (Acts 2:42), a system of distribution of goods that led wealthier Christians to sell their possessions when the needs of the community’s poor required it (Acts 2:44); and continued attendance at the temple, since in this initial stage there was little or no thought of any dividing line between Christianity and Judaism (Acts 2:46) [17].  Acts 2:46 says: “Each day, with one heart, they regularly went to the temple but met in their houses for the breaking of the bread; they shared their food gladly and generously; they praised God.” This passage refers to their ordinary meals, which the faithful took together. It is very likely that after their simple supper, the Christians also partook in Holy Communion, following the order observed by our Lord in instituting the Eucharist [18].

This passage shows the importance of community in the life of believers. BECs also emphasize the importance of building a sense of community among members. It also tries to emphasize that these elements form the fundamental structure of the Church, which the Holy Spirit wishes to build up [19].

Synodality is rooted in the New Testament. The Greek word “synodos” means “a coming together,” This term is used in the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-35). The Jerusalem “Council” marks the official rejection of the rigid view that Gentile converts must thoroughly observe Mosaic Law [20].  This is the first recorded synod in the history of Christianity, where the apostles and elders gathered to discuss the issue of circumcision for Gentile converts to Christianity. When some of the converted Pharisees of Jerusalem discover the results of Paul’s first missionary journey, they urge that the Gentiles be taught to follow the Mosaic law. Recognizing the authority of the Jerusalem church, Paul and Barnabas go there to settle the question of whether Gentiles can embrace a form of Christianity that does not include this obligation [21].  In support of Paul, Peter formulates the fundamental meaning of the Gospel: that all are invited to be saved through faith in the power of Christ [22].  The Council was held to discern God’s will and make a decision binding on all the Christian communities.

Biblically, the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) is the synod’s ‘primordial and fundamental model.’ There the primitive Church wrestled with the influx of Gentiles and the dictates of the law. The apostles and elders met to consider, discuss, and debate matters. After consulting with one another and the Holy Spirit, a consensus was reached. Peter presided over the assembly. James presided over the local Church. Others, like Paul and Barnabas, participated. There was a demonstration of reciprocity of charisms and mutual interdependence between the ministerial priesthood and the royal priesthood of the baptized, which produced a solution for the People of God [23].

In addition, Acts 2:1-40 provides us with a model of the Church that we are called to imitate in our Synodal process. Synodality is a faith journey accompanied by the “ecclesial spirit.” No one is excluded. In the Jewish community, women were neglected, but here, women are included. It is an essential aspect of the Synodal process. Synodality of the Church has a deep root in the Pentecost event, where the Apostles, Mary, and others received the gift of the Holy Spirit and the universal mission to proclaim the Risen Christ to all the people [24].

Jesus knew that sheep were in a lot of trouble without a shepherd in Mark 6: 34-44:

“When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. By now it was already late and his disciples approached him and said, “This is a deserted place and it is already very late. Dismiss them so that they can go to the surrounding farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” He said to them in reply, “Give them some food yourselves.” But they said to him, “Are we to buy two hundred days’ wages worth of food and give it to them to eat?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out they said, “Five loaves and two fish.” So he gave orders to have them sit down in groups on the green grass. The people took their places in rows by hundreds and by fifties. Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to [his] disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. And they picked up twelve wicker baskets full of fragments and what was left of the fish. Those who ate [of the loaves] were five thousand men.” [25]

The miraculous feeding points back to God’s feeding of his people in the wilderness and to Elisha’s feeding of 100 men. It points forward to the idea of life in God’s kingdom as a banquet at which the Messiah will preside. Thus, Jesus is teaching about the nature of God’s coming kingdom. Some obvious connections are made with the Last Supper, suggesting a Eucharistic aspect to the account. Mark and his readers saw this incident as an anticipation of the Last Supper and the messianic banquet, both of which were celebrated in the community’s Eucharist.

The story of Jesus’ feeding of 5,000 is told in all four Gospels. Mark has gone back to his more usual term for Jesus’ followers. In the first part of this story (6:35-38), the disciples engage in dialogue with Jesus and fail to perceive his purposes. The theme of their misunderstanding of Jesus will be further developed, it is a lonely place, and the hour is now late: The disciples’ first statement makes clear the problems involved in feeding the crowd. They suggest in 6:36 that Jesus let the people go buy food for them. The description of the place as eremos, “lonely,” may have some connection with the OT manna motif, though this place with towns around it hardly qualifies as a desert.

You give them to eat: Jesus’ answer to their “reasonable” suggestion takes them off guard; their second statement about buying 200 denarii worth of bread is close to hostile in tone. One denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer (Matt 20:2). Two fish: The references to fish (6:41,43) throughout the story seem like afterthoughts. Their role in the story is interpreted in various ways: as an indication that fish was used in some early Christian Eucharists, as sea creatures for food like the quails on which Israel fed in the wilderness, or as anticipating the sea creatures that would be part of the messianic banquet.

The vivid portrayal of the crowd in 6:39-40 gives a sense of order and decorum, thus contributing to the idea of the messianic banquet. Looking up into heaven he blessed and broke the breads: The similarity in phraseology between 6:41 and 14:22 (at the Last Supper) indicates that this meal in the wilderness was understood as an anticipation of the eucharist (which in turn anticipates the messianic banquet). The blessing would have been the traditional Jewish blessing before meals, gave them to the disciples so that they might place them before the people: The description of the disciples’ activity is sometimes viewed as part of the Eucharistic anticipation, for they function as distributors of the bread. All ate and were satisfied: Another element of the story’s background may have been Elisha’s miraculous feeding of 100 men (2 Kgs 4:42-44), in which all eat and even have some leftovers. Twelve baskets full of fragments: klasmata, “fragments,” appears in a Eucharistic context. The number 12 may have some symbolic reference to Israel; cf. seven (Gentiles) in 8:8. 44. five thousand men: The greatness of the number of persons fed means that Jesus’ miraculous feeding far outstrips the one performed by Elisha [26].

In Mark 6: 34-44, we find the event where the multiplication of loaves and fishes happened. Jesus knew that sheep were in a lot of trouble without a shepherd. They can’t fend for themselves against slayers and have difficulty finding the necessary food and water. Jesus was moved with compassion for the people among the crowd because He knew significant needs prompted their pressing demands. Jesus and the disciples saw precisely the same condition among the multitude. The disciple’s solution was to get rid of the need by getting rid of people in need. But Jesus saw a different solution and wanted the disciples to see it by saying, “Give them something to eat.”   In the article titled Small Christian Communities The Fundamental Paradigm of the Church, Bishop Peter Kang of Cheju Diocese states that it is the mission of the disciples of Jesus to give something to the people to eat, not abandon them. When Jesus said ‘something to eat,’ he meant not only bread, the food one takes in the mouth, but the authentic food that enriches our whole life.” [28]

The accounts of the multiplication of loaves and fishes, two in Mark and Matthew and one in Luke and John indicate the early Church’s vast interest in their eucharistic gatherings [29].  The great miracle of the loaves and fishes is one of the most striking figures of the Blessed Eucharist in which Jesus nourishes our souls [30].   The taking, saying the blessing, breaking, and giving to the disciples correspond to the actions of Jesus over the bread at the Last Supper [31].  The assurance that Jesus can provide – even miraculously – for our needs should be as precious to us as it was to the earliest Christians [32].

MAGISTERIAL TEACHING OF BEC AND SYNODALITY

The Second Vatican Council and the Call for a More Participatory Church

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was a significant turning point for the Catholic Church. It sought to engage with the modern world and renew its understanding of its identity and mission. The Council emphasized the importance of the laity’s role in the Church and called for greater participation in the life and mission of the Church by all the baptized. Key documents, such as Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, highlighted the ecclesiology of communion, which emphasizes the unity and diversity of the Church as the Body of Christ and the importance of collaboration and dialogue among all members.

The Council also called for a renewed commitment to social justice and the promotion of human dignity, recognizing the Church’s prophetic role in addressing the signs of the times. This renewed focus on the laity and social justice provided fertile ground for developing BECs as vehicles for promoting a more participatory and socially engaged Church.

The Second Vatican Council’s call for a more participatory Church affirmed the importance of active participation by all the baptized in the life and mission of the Church [33].  Active participation involves attending liturgical celebrations and engaging in various aspects of the Church’s life, such as faith formation, social justice initiatives, and community building.

BECs provide an environment that encourages active participation by all members, regardless of their social status or level of education. Through shared leadership, dialogue, discernment, and decision-making, BECs empower their members to take responsibility for their faith and community, fostering a sense of ownership and belonging within the Church. This emphasis on active participation is at the heart of the synodal vision of the Church, which seeks to involve all the baptized in its journey of faith and mission [34].

Synodality as a Theological and Ecclesiological Concept

In 2021, Pope Francis called for a more synodal and inclusive Church rooted in discernment and collegiality. Accordingly, he declared a Synod on Synodality. It refers to a way of governance that promotes collaboration, consultation, and dialogue among different members of the Church, including bishops, priests, laypeople, and theologians. The goal of synodality is to create a more participatory and inclusive Church that reflects the diversity and richness of the Christian community.

Synodality is a theological and ecclesiological concept reflecting the Church’s understanding of itself as a pilgrim journeying together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It emphasizes the importance of dialogue, discernment, and decision-making at all levels of the Church and involves the active participation of all members, including the laity, clergy, and religious [35].

The Vocation of the Laity

The Second Vatican Council emphasized the dignity and vocation of the laity, asserting that all the baptized, both clergy and laity, are called to participate in the life and mission of the Church. The Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, describes the laity as those who are “incorporated in Christ and made sharers in the people of God” (LG 31) [36].   This understanding acknowledges the equal dignity of all the baptized. It recognizes the unique gifts and charisms that the Holy Spirit bestows upon the laity for the building up of the Church and the transformation of the world. BECs provide a space where the laity can exercise their vocation and contribute to the life of the Church by actively participating in community building, social justice initiatives, and the process of discernment and decision-making.

In addition, as articulated by the Second Vatican Council, the universal call to holiness affirms that all the baptized, regardless of their state, are called to a life of holiness and mission (LG 39-42) [37].  This call is rooted in the belief that every Christian is called to be a disciple of Christ, witnessing to the Gospel through their words and actions in the world. BECs help to nurture the call to holiness and mission among their members by providing opportunities for spiritual growth, faith formation, and communal discernment [38]. Furthermore, through their commitment to social justice and solidarity with the poor, BECs offer a concrete way for the laity to live out their baptismal vocation and engage in the transformative mission of the Church.

Moreover, the laity is crucial in promoting synodality within the Church, as they bring diverse perspectives, experiences, and gifts to dialogue and discernment.  By actively participating in the life of the Church, the laity contributes to the Church’s capacity to engage with the signs of the times and respond to the world’s needs. In BECs, the role of the laity in promoting synodality is evident in the structures and practices that encourage shared leadership, mutual support, and communal discernment. BECs embody the principles of synodality by empowering the laity to take responsibility for their faith and community, fostering a sense of ownership and belonging within the Church. The experience of BECs can serve as a model for the wider Church in its ongoing journey toward becoming a more synodal and inclusive community [39].

In addition, ongoing faith formation is essential for the spiritual growth and development of BEC members, as it equips them with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual resources necessary to engage in the life and mission of the Church effectively. Faith formation in BECs often involves Bible studies, prayer meetings, catechetical instruction, and spiritual retreats, which allow members to deepen their understanding of Scripture, Church teachings, and the demands of discipleship. By emphasizing the importance of lifelong learning and spiritual growth, BECs foster a culture of continuous formation that enables their members to respond creatively and courageously to the challenges and opportunities they encounter in their faith journey.

The Word of God and the sacraments play a central role in nourishing the spiritual life of BECs, as they provide the foundation for the community’s prayer, worship, and mission. Regular reading and reflection on Scripture, particularly the Gospels, help BEC members to encounter Jesus Christ and discern the Holy Spirit’s action in their lives and the world. In addition, celebrating the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, strengthens the bonds of communion among BEC members and deepens their relationship with Christ and the Church [40].  By participating in the sacramental life of the Church, BEC members are nourished by the grace of the Holy Spirit and empowered to live out their baptismal call to holiness and mission.

Thus, Theological reflection and formation within BECs can help members to develop a critical understanding of the Gospel’s implications for social justice and the Church’s social teaching. This critical consciousness enables BEC members to engage in prophetic witness and advocacy, challenging unjust structures and systems and working towards transforming society in light of the Gospel values [41].

HERMENEUTICS

The BEC is a new way of being a Church that must channel God’s grace of conversion and be sustained by a spirituality that nourishes the conversion experience. Spirituality produces fruit in practice, and the BEC must produce fruit to survive. The BEC must facilitate the fundamental transformation of people’s lives. However, considering the challenges faced by BEC, there is a need to emphasize the importance of fostering a culture of sustainability among BECs. Since the flourishing and development, the endurance and sustenance of the communities, as well as their progress and decline, are highly dependent on the people’s participation, level of commitment, and sense of responsibility, the Church must realize that all dioceses and parishes could not be required to follow a single program or schema to construct and maintain BECs. There is no single model for what it means to be a local church that can serve as a gauge. The BEC derives its strength from how it is embodied in the specificity and particularity of a given people’s cultural context.

Taking from one of the Biblical foundations, in the passage of Genesis 1:26-28 it does not explicitly mention synodality, but it does touch upon themes of authority, collaboration, and stewardship that are relevant to the concept of synodality.

Firstly, the passage notes that God created humanity in his own image and likeness, suggesting that every person has inherent dignity and worth, and that all people have a role to play in God’s plan for creation.

Secondly, the passage emphasizes the importance of collaboration and shared responsibility. God speaks in the plural (“Let us make mankind”), suggesting that creation is a collaborative effort. Furthermore, the command to “rule over” the earth is given to humanity as a whole, not to any one individual or group.

Finally, the passage highlights the importance of stewardship and care for the earth. Humanity is called to “fill the earth and subdue it”, but also to “rule over” the creatures of the earth with care and respect.

Taken together, these themes suggest that synodality can be seen as a way of working together to fulfill our shared responsibility for the care and stewardship of the earth, and for building a just and equitable society.

Therefore, synodality is needed to revitalize our BECs. The Church must allow the diversity of its members to drive the flourishing and mutual enrichment of the communities. It entails empowering and motivating the people at the grassroots level, i.e., those who are highly involved and engaged in their situations. The BEC must become a place where individuals can recognize their potential and capacity for empowerment. The regular meetings and encounters of the various communities must allow the communities to share and learn from one another’s stories.

Being indifferent to the needs and existence of our fellow human beings in our basic ecclesial communities denies our humanity. Humans are compelled to respond to others and be attentive to their requirements. We cannot take this for granted to other people. We must therefore extend ourselves to others. This is the purpose of synodality, to listen to the voices of our brothers and sisters and to journey with them. BECs can be an excellent avenue for us to hear the voices of our brothers and sisters. Therefore, the Church must see that synodality exists in each BEC group. Synodality aims to have empathy for the other. There must be a taking of action, to the best of our ability, to alleviate the suffering of another. This has been the vision of BECs but was not implemented because the members need to understand what it means to be a Basic ecclesial community. If PCP II’s vision of BEC is to be a “community of disciples whose members live in communion and participate in the mission of Christ as prophetic, priestly, servant community and as a Church of the poor,” then in every BEC, there should be an active solidarity, loving outreach to the other that transforms society fundamentally. This vision and the synodality must motivate and inspire the community members to realize the community’s mission, goal, and objectives. In other words, the Basic Ecclesial Communities of the Philippines form a communion of shared life, imbibing in oneself the selves of several humans they journey with together.

Likewise, this is what a responsible life entails. People can commit to this life-sharing because they firmly believe in the Good News proclaimed by the Gospel. They sincerely worship together, which gives them the strength to serve one another selflessly. This generosity manifests in their prophetic witness, resulting in a joy-filled community. These characteristics distinguish an authentic Basic Ecclesial Community.

BECs, as homes of synodality, have a vital role in fostering a more just and human society. Through the BECs, ordinary lay people, especially people experiencing poverty, can be heard and actively participate in social transformation. If all community members shared the vision of BEC and got involved, then BECs can do many things to help transform society. Some BECs are already doing that, and it must be replicated by all BECs worldwide. The process of synodality also needs to be integrated with the BECs so that the members will be committed to participation, dialogue, discernment, and social action. Once this is realized, the BECs can genuinely be what John Paul II describes them: “a sign of vitality within the Church, a solid starting point of a new society based on a civilization of love.”

In many ways, the BEC can be seen as a home for synodality within the Church. This is because BECs embody many of the key characteristics of synodality, including:

• Participation: BECs are characterized by active participation by all members, with each person contributing their unique gifts and talents to the community.
• Listening: BECs provide a space for people to listen to one another, to hear one another’s stories, and to learn from one another’s experiences.
• Dialogue: BECs encourage dialogue and conversation, with members sharing their perspectives and engaging in respectful debate and discussion.
• Collaboration: BECs are characterized by collaboration and shared decision-making, with decisions made collectively by the group.
• Mission: BECs are focused on mission, with members working together to serve the needs of their community and to promote social justice.

The magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church on Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) and synodality highlights the importance of active participation, inclusivity, and collaboration within the Church. The Second Vatican Council marked a significant turning point, calling for a more participatory Church that emphasizes the role of the laity and its commitment to social justice. This renewed focus on the laity paved the way for the development of BECs as vehicles for promoting an engaged and socially active Church.  The laity is called to participate in the life and mission of the Church, contributing their unique gifts and charisms for the building up of the Church and the transformation of the world. By providing a space for active participation, listening, dialogue, collaboration, and mission, BECs serve as a home for synodality within the Church. They provide a model for how the Church can work together at the local level to address the challenges facing our communities and to promote the common good.

• Claver Francisco. (1988). “The History of the BCCs: The Philippine,” Human Society Series 50, Manila.
• Fr Amado L. Picardal, CSsR, STD. Promoting and Forming BECs: The Problems. Retrieved from https://www.heraldmalaysia.com/news/promoting-and-forming-becs-the-problems/40716/5#:~:text=Many%20BECs%20remain%20inward%2Dlooking,    destruction%20of%20the%20environment%2C%20etc.
• Fr Amado L. Picardal, CSsR, STD. Promoting and Forming BECs: The Problems. Retrieved from https://www.heraldmalaysia.com/news/promoting-and-forming-becs-the-problems/40716/5#:~:text=Many%20BECs%20remain%20inward%2Dlooking,destruction%destruction% 20of%20the%20environment%2C%20etc.
• Retrieved from https://asipafabc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2009-P-Kang-Small-Christian-Communities-converted.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3pn1UjDd_z0u26BBro8gbfqo21x_wmJigtlKw6IaclBcYsSd5EzxaiHgk
• Genesis, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, ©2023 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Accessed on May 15, 2023, https://bible.usccb.org/bible/Genesis/1
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• Retrieved from  https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/ cti_documents/ rc_cti_20180302_sinodalita_en.html
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• Retrieved from https://thedivinelamp.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/father-callans-commentary-on-acts-242-47-for-sunday-mass-may-1-divine-mercy-sundayfirst-sunday-after-easter/
• Retrieved from https://www.ecatholic2000.com/haydock/ntcomment97.shtml
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• Retrieved from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/acts/15
• Christophe Pierre. “Synodality and Pope Francis: The Church that Walks Together.” The Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry 77, no. 1 (2021): 3-23, at 4. doi:10.1353/jur.2021.0020
• Retreived from https://www.usccb.org/resources/Biblical_Resouces_for_Synodality_A4_EN.pdf
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• Flanagan, B. P. (2021). Changing the Church Through Synodality. Changing the Church: Transformations of Christian Belief, Practice, and Life, 333-339.
• Retrieved from https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_ councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html
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• The Cebu Archdiocesan Pastoral Plan 2000, as cited by Marvin Mejia in his article “A Watershed of Life” in Sharing Our Stories, Sharing Our Spirit: An Encounter of the Pastor and the Flock Toward A New Way of Being Church, Manila: Socio Pastoral Institute, 2000.

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