ON MY NIGHTSTAND. Warren and Tyagi's The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke (details or compare prices) has come out in paperback. I will have more to say about its conclusions when I finish, but let me offer the following by way of prologue.

Ultimately, however, it did not matter whether there was a meaningful gap between the schools in the center cities and those in the surrounding suburbs, or whether the streets really were safer far away from the big city. It didn't even matter whether there really was a crisis in public education, as the politicians and the local news might insist. What matters was that parents believed that there was an important difference -- and that the difference was growing. The only answer for millions of loving parents was to buy their way into a decent school district in a safe neighborhood -- whatever the cost.

That's page 28. I'm glad to see the argument that there is school choice -- it comes bundled with a house purchase -- is getting broader circulation. There's more, in the next paragraph.

And so it was that middle-class families across America have been quietly drawn into an all-out war. ... Their war is a bidding war. The opening shots in this war were fired in the most ordinary circumstances. Individual parents sought out homes they thought were good places to bring up kids, just as their parents had done before them. ... Millions of parents joined in the search for a house on a safe street with a good school nearby. Over time, demand heated up for an increasingly narrow slice of the housing stock.

Or perhaps midwived sprawl, although there has to be a gold mine of research topics dealing with the expansion of school districts perceived as "good." What is the supply elasticity of teachers? Let me return to the book.

This in itself would have been enough to trigger a bidding war for suburban homes in good school districts. But a growing number of families brought new artillery to the war: a second income. In an era when the overwhelming majority of mothers are bringing home a paycheck and covering a big part of the family's bills, it is easy to forget that just one generation ago most middle-class mothers -- including those in the workforce -- made only modest contributions to the family's regular expenses.

You just can't avoid the Say Aggregation Principle. It's only logic.

But what is really impressive is a suggestion that surfaces at page 33.

In order to free families from the trap, it is necessary to go to the heart of the problem: public education. Bad schools impose indirect -- but huge -- costs on millions of middle-class families. In their desperate rush to save their children from failing schools, families are literally spending themselves into bankruptcy. The only way to take the pressure off these families is to change the schools.

The concept of public schools is deeply American. It is perhaps the most tangible symbol of opportunity for social and economic mobility for all children, embodying the notion that merit rather than money determines a child's future. But who are we kidding? As parents increasingly believe that the differences among schools will translate into differences in lifetime chances, they are doing everything they can to buy their way into the best public schools. [Colleges, too, although the premium to attending a name college is small to nonexistent. This book will be good for several week's worth of posts.[ Schools in middle-class neighborhoods may be labeled "public," but parents have paid for tuition by purchasing a $175,000 home within a carefully selected school district.

I like it when the bundling argument gets where lots of people, possibly some with more influence than I, might read it. I also like thos (p. 34)

A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly. A taxpayer-funded voucher that paid the entire cost of educating a child (not just a partial subsidy) would open a range of opportunities to all children. ... Fully funded vouchers would relieve parents from the terrible choice of leaving their kids in lousy schools or bankrupting themselves to escape those schools.

And here, in a neat form, is the choice argument packaged with an egalitarian argument. Haven't I been ringing these changes for years?

More, much more, once I finish reading the book.