Brookings: Experts - Hal Wolman

Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects : Volume 4

Nancy Pindus, Margaret Weir, Howard Wial and Hal Wolman, eds. — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Institution Press 2012 320pp.

The mission of the Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects series is to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing the key social and economic problems facing today’s cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas.

Volume four of the series introduces and examines thoroughly the concept of regional resilience, explaining how resilience can be promoted—or impeded—by regional characteristics and public policies.

The authors illuminate how the walls that now segment metropolitan regions across political jurisdictions and across institutions—and the gaps that separate federal laws from regional realities—have to be bridged in order for regions to cultivate resilience.

Contributors include:

Patricia Atkins, George Washington University;

Pamela Blumenthal, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development;

Sarah Ficenec, George Washington University;

Alec Friedhoff, Brookings Institution;

Kathryn Foster, University at Buffalo, SUNY;

Juliet Gainsborough, Bentley University;

Edward Hill, Cleveland State University;

Kate Lowe, Cornell University;

John Mollenkopf, Graduate Center, City University of New York;

Mai Nguyen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill;

Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California;

Rolf Pendall, Urban Institute;

Nancy Pindus, Urban Institute;

Sarah Reckhow, Michigan State University;

Travis St. Clair, George Washington University;

Todd Swanstrom, University of Missouri, St. Louis;

Margaret Weir, University of California, Berkeley;

Howard Wial, Brookings Institution;

Harold Wolman, George Washington University.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Nancy Pindus

Nancy Pindus is a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute.

Margaret Weir

Margaret Weir is a professor of sociology and political science at the University
of California, Berkeley.

Howard Wial

Hal Wolman

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Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects : Volume 3

Hal Wolman, Howard Wial and Nancy Pindus, eds. — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2010 261pp.

Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects, the third in a series, sets out to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. The chapters analyze responses to five key policy challenges that most metropolitan areas and local communities face:

Creating quality neighborhoods for families
Governing effectively
Building human capital
Growing the middle class
Enlarging a competitive economy through industry-based strategies
Managing the spatial pattern of metropolitan growth and development

Each chapter discusses a specific topic under one of these challenges. The authors present the essence of what is known, as well as its likely applications, and identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy.

Contributors includes G. Thomas Kingsley (Urban Institute), Ron Zimmer (Vanderbilt University), Cassandra Guarino (Michigan State University), Richard Buddin (RAND Corporation), Robert W. Wassmer (California State University, Sacramento), Robert A. Baade (Lake Forest College), Genevieve Giuliano (University of Southern California), and Ajay Agarwal (Queen’s University).

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Hal Wolman

Howard Wial

Nancy Pindus

Nancy Pindus is a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute.

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Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects : Vol. I

Hal Wolman, Howard Wial and Margery Austin Turner, eds. — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 12:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2008 240pp.

The goal of this book, the first in a series, is to bring policymakers, practitioners, and scholars up to speed on the state of knowledge on various aspects of urban and regional policy. What do we know about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, or experiments on key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas? What can we say about what works, what doesn’t, and why? And what does this knowledge and experience imply for future policy questions?

The authors take a fresh look at several different issues (e.g., economic development, education, land use) and conceptualize how each should be thought of. Once the contributors have presented the essence of what is known, as well as the likely implications, they identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Hal Wolman

Howard Wial

Howard Wial is an economist in the Metropolitan Policy program at the Brookings Institution.

Margery Austin Turner

Margery Austin Turner directs the Center on Metropolitan Housing and Communities at the Urban Institute.

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Poverty, Programs, and Prices: How Adjusting for Costs of Living Would Affect Federal Benefit Eligibility

Leah Beth Curran, Kimberly Furdell, Edward W. Hill and Hal Wolman — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Public policies rarely account for regional differences in living costs across the country. Applying cost-of-living adjustments to measurements of economic wellbeing and eligibility standards for social programs in 98 central cities reveals that:

Federal poverty guidelines, often used to determine eligibility for social programs, change significantly when indexed for cost of living (COL) differences. Out of 38 large cities in higher-cost areas in the Northeast and West, 36 experience increases in the federal poverty guidelines. Conversely, more than half of the large cities located in lower-cost areas in the South and Midwest (38 of 60) see shifts in the opposite direction.
The percentage, number, and distribution of families that are considered poor under federal poverty guidelines would change dramatically in many central cities if regional differences in the cost of living were recognized. In high-cost areas on the East and West coasts, the poor population would increase substantially both in real and proportional terms. Cities like New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA rank among those with the greatest increases in both the number and proportion of poor families under COL-adjusted standards. However, cities in lower-cost areas of the South and West, such as El Paso, TX and Shreveport, LA, have among the largest declines in the number and share of poor families once living costs are taken into account.
Adjusting federal poverty guidelines for regional differences in the cost of living has a considerable impact on the number of families eligible for public programs. Overall, the share of families eligible for Early Head Start and Head Start as well as the National School Lunch Program would increase 29 percent in large cities across the country. San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA, and Bridgeport, CT experience the largest increases in eligibility for these programs, while San Antonio, TX, Corpus Christi, TX, and El Paso, TX see the largest declines in the eligible population under COL-adjusted guidelines.

Measures such as the federal poverty guidelines provide more accurate perceptions of the relative economic wellbeing of populations across the country when they consider regional cost-of-living differences. To craft effective public policies and programs for low-income families throughout the United States, researchers and policymakers should give further attention to the impact that regional COL differences have on program eligibility standards. In particular, policymakers can employ COL-adjusted measures to determine where state and local policies are most needed to supplement federal assistance targeted to low-income families and individuals.

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Authors

Leah Beth Curran
Kimberly Furdell
Edward W. Hill
Hal Wolman