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The two income trap as it is called is a real phenomenon, although it's effect size is debatable. Essentially a lot of the stuff middle class people spend a lot of their money on are inelastic in supply(Real estate in a good school district, tuition into high status schools ect) such that single income households weren't able to compete with dual income households and gradually either fell out of the middle class or adapted.
This is entirely an artificial problem. We could build more housing, but no, because then NIMBYs might only make 300% returns on their house instead of 400%.
There are only so many kids we can stick in the high class school building before it degrades the exclusive experience they're jossling for. I'm not really even a proponent here but what the people are really bidding on is space in the high value social networks and the various benefits of proximity. We can and should be building more, but we also need to accept that there is always going to be high cost real estate because not everything actually scales.
Most people aren't worried about high-status high schools and aren't getting into top colleges, regardless of price. To the extent that drives the two-income trap, it doesn't affect the bulk of the population.
One of the highlighted comments in this old SSC post points out that we could have vastly more space in elite colleges. But elite colleges aren't discriminating based on price anyway--having a second income earner in your household probably makes them less affordable given how generous they're getting for low and even middle income students.
And given the decline in fertility, especially among the very people jostling for space in high status schools, we probably could have fewer students in those desirable schools even as if we built way more housing!
There are always different leagues and social milieus with their own exclusive prizes. That said if you think most parents aren't thinking about school districts when deciding where to live then you've not met many.
There are highschools where zero students will go to an ivy league school, high schools where maybe one will and highschools where greater than 20% of the students will go to one. Yes, it's not the tuition itself that is getting you in the door but there are many other things money can buy and even if your kid isn't getting into an ivy there is still a lot of benefit to growing up rubbing shoulders with the type of person who does. You can go look up the cost of homes by school district if you want, the cost difference and arbitrary line on the map makes is incredible.
The average person is fine with a good school, where their kids will learn something and won't be mugged, which isn't constrained the way relative status (e.g. top 5%) is.
Yes, and the school itself is only doing marginal amounts of work. Most of it is the students and parents (and the school looks good due to selection).
In my personal experience, the total benefit to doing this, without going to a good school yourself, is pretty much 0. Maintaining social connections, especially ones that could result in a meaningful benefit, that long is uncommon. Yes, people are willing to pay quite a lot money for private schools and/or good public schools, but the evidence of either of them providing a strong causal benefit is, as far as I'm aware, pretty weak. Saving your money and just giving it to them will probably be way more helpful.
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You can build as many buildings and make as many good school districts as you have good kids to put in them. At least if that's your only constraint; other constraints like needing to be located near the parents' employment complicate things. It's not a pure status good, because most parents aren't looking for an "exclusive experience".
Not that doing anything about NIMBYism (the drumbeat for which seems to have increased lately; more millennials and zoomers who don't want to take out a mortgage wanting SFH homes to be torn down in favor of commie blocks to reduce rent, I guess) would help; it's largely NIMBYism which keeps the good districts good.
As someone put it in an recent AAQC, it's not the buildings or the 'magic' dirt that make some communities more desirable, it's the cohort. If your extra school buildings are filled with the kids of those who failed to compete for space in the original school buildings then you have created and interior product and everyone in the system can plainly see this. I live in Chicago, a city with stark economic shifts from one neighborhood to another, it is just simply the case that people do not move to the low cost neighborhoods unless they have no other option.
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