Your scenario is possible but not likely. Why would the husband already not have maximized his income?
Those studies comparing student populations are gravely flawed by the great differences in the populations studied. If you were to compare homeschooled kids to their social peers (intact families, few extremely poor, not surrounded by social misfits and criminals, the results would not look so favorable as when they are compared to a population weighed down by the children of life's losers. Children surrounded by criminal activity, dropouts, negligent parents etc.)
I am all for truly valid studies being made but those which are biased in favor of one group because of improper modeling techniques are not of much value.
I can (realistically) increase my income by 50%. However, for most of the rest of this year, I will be decreasing it by 75%. Money isn't everything.
My wife works because she enjoys her career, not because she must. I work at what I want, regardless of the renumeration. But our child is getting a good education and avoiding public school indoctrination.
/john
I assume nothing about hiring. I assume that with technology companies will not hire as many people as they once did in lower-level positions (you must be referring to industrial-age economic theory). If they do, I am not idealistic enough to hope that companies will keep such jobs in this country. A person leaving such a job will not be missed, in other words.
Higher-level income families do not usually have children until much later in life. Thus, they are either leaving the workforce anyway by that point or will soon do so. Their income was already anticipated as a loss.
Perhaps it is the Middle Class to which you are referring. I have seen few who now fit that model. Those who seem to be middle-class have put themselves so deeply in debt that there's no way they could homeschool. The extremely poor, to which you may also be referring though you never mentioned that income level, are at the mercy of those around them whether it is public schooling or sending their kids to learn with homeschooled children. Their income is negligble and they often work at jobs (if they work) with high turnover and many seeking to replace them.
Therefore, if we are still going by your original assumption of no public schooling whatsoever, there would still be "charter schools" for the "middle-class" composed of homeschoolers who band together to teach others (which is the way education originally started anyway).
As for the question, "Why would the husband not have already maximized his income?", (do you assume that women would be the ones to stay home?) it assumes lack of training and ambition.
You do have a valid point in that with the current economy, the trend seems to be toward getting rid of white males in the workforce and replacing them with women or minorities at a lower pay-scale. In that case, the teacher would simply switch to the father or the family would outsource if the father was still trying to find a job and the wife was working.
I seem to recall a study that did exactly what you asked: unbiased and taking socio-economic factors into account. As you have not asked to see it, I assume that you really don't care. It seems that you would rather take away all freedom and indoctrinate as the Nazi's did (Germany was one of the first nations to have mandatory public education). I would rather have free-thinking idiots who can't carry on a conversation with me than every one stuffed full of propaganda, even if it is conservative.