This week, President Biden will convene 40 world leaders for a major climate conference. The event marks America’s return to the world stage on climate action and is an opportunity for the president to work with other global leaders on fighting an existential crisis that has already wreaked havoc across the world.

In a series of videos, Brookings scholars provided their thoughts on the conference and their hopes on what may come of it. Below is a lightly edited transcript of their remarks. (Editor’s Note: On April 22, after these videos were produced, President Biden announced a U.S. pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 52% by 2030.)

Brahima Coulibaly
Vice President and Director, Global Economy and Development

There is broad consensus that collective action to address climate change has fallen significantly short in the past few years, and that the next few years represent a critical last chance window of opportunity to ramp it up at all levels. The U.S. was absent from the global arena for the past four years, as climate was not a priority for the Trump administration. But by making climate change a stronger and urgent priority, beginning with a return to the Paris Agreement on their first day in office, the Biden administration signals both a major shift in the U.S. domestic climate policy and the return of U.S. engagement and leadership to the climate agenda.

This year represents a pivotal year, in part because countries are ramping up efforts to build back their economies, which have been devastated by the pandemic. Policymakers have an opportunity here to simultaneously tackle the pandemic and the climate crisis by making massive investments in a green infrastructure as part of their reconstruction efforts, and make a leap forward on their ambitions to build climate resilient economies.

At the conference, which convenes countries responsible for 80 percent of global emissions and global GDP, I hope to see a strong consensus emerge on the imperative of raising ambition, and importantly also a credible commitment to deliver on those ambitions. Delivering on the climate agenda will require buy-in from all stakeholders. It is reassuring to see that the administration has involved business and civil society leaders.

Samantha Gross
Director, Energy Security and Climate Initiative
Fellow, Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative

I’m excited to see the new U.S. nationally determined contribution (NDC) and our new set of commitments under the Paris Agreement. I expect that President Biden will put out a quite ambitious NDC—the world certainly expects it of him, as do environmentalists in the United States. But more than what’s on the front page and our frontline promise, I’m really wondering what we’re going to see behind that—the kinds of policies and programs that are proposed to support the kinds of emissions reductions that we’re looking for. It’s going to be difficult to get any kind of comprehensive climate legislation through Congress, and so I look to these programs as being a real combination of things that the administration can do itself through executive orders, actions under existing laws, and then maybe a combination of carrots that we might be able to get through Congress. Everybody likes carrots—R&D spending, spending on climate friendly infrastructure, investments in clean power, and also in cleaner industry. And so, I expect to see this kind of combination of things add up to make the U.S. NDC. But beyond the top line, what I really want to see is what’s next for U.S. climate policy.

Nathan Hultman
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development

This year on Earth Day, President Biden will be convening world leaders for a climate leaders’ summit. President Biden has at least two goals out of this summit. The first one is to have a conversation with the key emitters around the world and the key economic powers of the world to better understand how they can collaborate and work together, and then deliver on more ambitious climate action—not only in their countries, but to support climate action across the world with an eye toward the COP26 conference later this year in Glasgow.

The second goal Biden has is to reintroduce the United States as a world leader on climate change. As we all know, the United States has taken a step back at the federal level over the past four years. With the 2020 election, there’s now climate leadership in both the Congress and the executive branch. President Biden is very eager to show that the U.S. is rejoining the ranks of leadership for climate change and doing it in a big way.

There is one critical element for success for this summit that has to happen. The critical element, of course, is the U.S. telling the world what it will be doing domestically to address climate change. That will likely come in the form of a climate target that is invited by all parties under the Paris Agreement. So, the U.S. will be announcing a target of its own, probably some days before the summit, that will signal to the world the level of ambition that the U.S. has domestically. By getting our own house in order and by conveying that to the world, President Biden will have a much stronger position from which to convene and have discussions with world leaders. And that will hopefully lead to a more ambitious outcome from the summit.

Joseph Kane
Senior Research Associate and Associate Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

Obviously, this climate summit sends a strong global signal about the U.S.’s role and hopefully its leadership on climate issues when it comes planning and executing on greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. And, it’s a reset of sorts with the Biden administration rejoining the Paris climate agreement and taking steps towards a net zero economy.

What I’m most interested and curious about on this global stage is to what extent certain domestic priorities will come up. And there’s two categories of domestic priorities that that I’ll be looking for. The first is infrastructure—not just energy infrastructure, but our transportation infrastructure, our water infrastructure, how we manage our land. These are central elements to how we not only mitigate an extreme climate, but actually adapt to a changing climate and boost resilience. These are all central elements in the American Jobs Plan, the $2 trillion, eight-year plan that the administration just came out with. So, I imagine this is a big priority that should come up in this summit.

The second priority I will be looking for is where people center in these conversations. We know there are these massive infrastructure investments, potentially these big projects that can make a difference. But how are we targeting our efforts? How are we measuring progress? How are environmental justice issues, workforce development issues, technological issues, the just transition of fossil fuel communities—how are those all coming up in these conversations? These are things that different people in different places need to feel empowered in their capacity to address climate challenges—they should not simply be overlooked.

So, these are two big domestic areas of action that that I’ll be looking for. I would like to see not just a global and national perspective on these issues, but the state and local components too.

Christina Kwauk
Nonresident Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Center for Universal Education

President Biden’s Leaders’ Summit on Climate is an important demonstration of the U.S.’s return to global climate action. But a key theme that’s missing from the agenda is action for climate empowerment through education and training, especially for girls and women. Research suggests that education for climate action, delivered to just 16 percent of secondary students and middle-income and high-income countries, could alone reduce carbon emissions by 2050 by nearly 20 gigatons. Imagine if children, youth, and adults around the world were to receive such an education.

Research also suggests that the education of girls and women, together with addressing an unmet need for family planning, could also help to avoid 85 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050. So, education—and especially for girls and women—is a powerful climate solution. But it’s notably absent from the climate agenda.

Article 12 of the Paris Agreement calls on governments to ensure that society can contribute as both citizens and consumers to local global efforts to address the climate crisis. But we cannot empower society if the majority of the world’s population continues to be oppressed by systems and structures of patriarchy, racism, and the legacies of colonialism. President Biden has emphasized the need for green job creation to support a just transition to a clean energy economy, but without a new green learning agenda aimed at equipping all of us with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for a gender equal future, some of us won’t get there, and as a consequence, we will all lose in this climate crisis. So, the Leaders’ Summit on Climate must address the need for a new green learning agenda, and President Biden and the 40 world leaders coming to this must talk about the role of education and training for climate action.

Sanjay Patnaik
Director, Center on Regulation and Markets
Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in Economic Policy Development
Fellow, Economic Studies

It is very exciting to see that President Biden is putting together a global climate summit with 40 world leaders on April 22nd and 23rd. I believe that this is a very important signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. is back at the table when it comes to climate change, and it will facilitate a lot of high level discussions that can pave the way for more detailed negotiations at the climate conference at the end of the year at COP26. I think what would be really critical for President Biden, however, is to show that the United States is actually committed—and credibly committed—to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and showing a way forward on how to achieve any emissions reductions goal that the U.S. has committed to.

What kind of domestic policy instruments will the Biden administration use to actually reduce emissions? What kind of policy instruments and regulations will have a long-lasting effect so that our international partners know that in a few years we are still on our emissions trajectory? I think given the swings back and forth on climate policy in the United States over the past few years, this would be the most important issue at the conference. But nevertheless, it is a really encouraging sign that the U.S. is taking on leadership again in climate change and working together closely with some of the international partners that have already done a lot in that space, such as the European Union.

      

While March is typically a time to celebrate women’s contributions in history, the past year of COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on women, especially women of color. In light of this, and in honor of Women’s History Month, we asked women at the Brookings Institution to share their top policy considerations for the Biden-Harris administration to help address the needs of women, both within the U.S. and around the world. Interestingly, we found many common themes emerge across a diverse set of voices and research areas. Below are highlights from their responses. You can listen to the full set of their policy proposals on the Brookings Cafeteria Podcast.

Annelies Goger
David M. Rubenstein Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

“If we can muster the resources to send Americans to the moon, we can spend just as much energy tackling the structural, institutional, and cultural forces that continue to perpetuate social control over women.”

“Most of our policies throughout history have been built on the prototype of a white, able-bodied man with a wife performing unpaid labor at home. This erases the everyday realities and experiences of women and non-binary Americans, among others. It undervalues our work, controls our bodies, our options, and our economic security. It literally puts our livelihoods and lives at risk.”

Camille Busette
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, Governance Studies, Metropolitan Policy Program; Director, Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative

“There are a lot of low-income women and women of color who work for less than $15 an hour and for whom raising that minimum wage would be really important—not only to for their own well-being, but also to that of their children.”

“[The U.S. should] think about how we can provide Social Security credit for women who stay at home to take care of kids and, also, other family members. Currently, our Social Security system does not recognize that work, and as a result, women who spend a good portion of their careers taking care of others in the home are really behind when it comes to Social Security credits. And that really affects them adversely, financially.”

Carol Graham
Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow and Research Director, Global Economy and Development

“We should really be thinking about how the COVID pandemic has absolutely reversed many of the gains that women made in labor force participation in the past decade, and again, the reversals are the worst on the low-wage end.”

“We really need a strong focus on helping low-wage women who have left the labor force and have not returned.”

Elaine Kamarck
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies; Founding Director, Center for Effective Public Management

“Women have proven that they can do almost anything men can do in the workplace, but the biggest hurdles they face are the result of what men cannot do: bear children.”

“We must make motherhood compatible with work, education, and professions. Until that happens, society will not have women’s full contributions.”

Helen Shwe Hadani
Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Center for Universal Education; Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking

“Childcare challenges continue to drive parents, mostly mothers, out of the workforce at alarming rates. A woman’s career path is often influenced by childcare considerations rather than her career goals.”

“Investments to improve childcare need to target these childcare deserts, which are often rural areas and communities where families of color live.”

Kristin Broady
Policy Director, The Hamilton Project; Fellow, Economic Studies

“In light of Women’s History Month, I think it’s important to keep in mind that women, particularly women of color, make up the majority of essential workers in the United States. … So, we need to think about how to support them.”

“We need to provide workforce training and education for women … particularly minority women, whose jobs may not come back.”

Madiha Afzal
David M. Rubenstein Fellow, Foreign Policy

“A critical policy decision the Biden administration currently faces [is] what to do about U.S. troops in Afghanistan. This is a U.S. decision that is sure to impact outcomes in Afghanistan, including what the future looks like for Afghan women and children, who have seen enormous gains since 2001 after the dark days under the Taliban in the 1990s.”

“Our troops are already in Afghanistan, and the decision the president faces [about whether to withdraw troops] has the potential to directly impact the rights of women and children there, rights we helped to secure.”

Vanda Felbab-Brown
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy

“Fundamentally, it is crucial to get away from simply prescriptions developed in Washington, D.C., or London, faraway places, and really to enable women on the ground to come up with their own solutions.”

“More than ever, we need to allow local solutions articulated by local women in rural spaces, in territories governed by non-state armed actors, as well as in capitals of the partner countries.”

“We need to really come up to a fundamental readjustment in how we think about women’s rights and women’s progress to allow women on the ground to come up with their solutions and, importantly, their priorities—even when those priorities might be quite different than those that we would want to embrace in faraway places like our own capital.”

      

In this edition of Charts of the Week: how federal infrastructure investment can put America back to work; Southeast Asian nations’ fiscal response to COVID-19; and the unionization battle for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama.

In their new policy brief, Marcela Escobari, Dhruv Gandhi, and Sebastian Strauss write that “[a] large-scale federal infrastructure investment program that is deliberately designed for maximum workforce impact can help accelerate reemployment, prevent scarring, and boost long-term inclusive and sustainable growth.” The authors discuss range of workforce issues, including—as demonstrated in the chart above—how a “workforce impact analysis” can identify how many underemployed and unemployed workers new infrastructure projects can absorb in particular sectors.

The Lowy Institute’s Roland Rajah, writing for the Order from Chaos blog, examines three factors that will drive whether and how Southeast Asian economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. One of these is macroeconomic response; noting that most nations in the region have been “been unable to match the fiscal largesse of their Western counterparts,” he adds that “fiscal policy in Southeast Asia has still been very expansionary—particularly if compared to past crises—and this has played a crucial role in limiting the economic and social fallout from the pandemic.”

Researchers in the Metropolitan Policy Program—Andre Perry, Molly Kinder, Laura Stateler, and Carl Romer—illuminate the unionization drive by Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, a majority-Black city, and also the racial disparities the movement reveals. “Amazon’s disproportionately Black workforce has risked their lives during the pandemic,” these authors observe, “but the company has shared little of its astonishing profits with them.”

      

This week’s edition of Charts of the Week offers data on expected rising federal expenditures due to climate change; rising carbon emissions among African nations; and COVID-19’s prevalence in counties that favored Donald Trump versus those favoring Joe Biden.

In their paper for the Blueprints for American Renewal and Prosperity series, Joseph Kane, Jenny Schuetz, Shalini Vajjhala, and Adie Tomer propose a Climate Planning Unit in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to “to reduce the federal fiscal impacts of climate change by developing strategic intra-agency and cross-agency mitigation and adaptation projects and programs.” The chart above shows the estimated fiscal impacts in the federal response to climate change into the late 21st century.
In their viewpoint from a chapter in the recent Foresight Africa report, expert authors describe policies, including carbon pricing, for a green transformation in the economies of Africa. “As African economies look to recover from the negative shocks of the pandemic and grow fast,” they argue, “a price on carbon is essential for that growth to not also lead to rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions, which are on the rise anyway.”
Over the past year, William Frey has tracked the spread and contraction of the coronavirus pandemic in regions, states, and counties throughout the United States. His latest analysis tracks cases from March 2020 through February 2021. In the figure above, Frey explains that “Biden counties registered higher monthly new case rates from March through July. This flipped modestly in August, when Trump counties exhibited higher new case rates. Yet, in September and especially in the months surrounding the election, Trump counties registered noticeably higher new COVID-19 rates than Biden counties.”

      

In this Charts of the Week edition, a look at how some banks rely heavily on overdraft fees for profits, the demographic issues around a growing aging U.S. population with a stagnant younger population, and how a new climate planning unit in the White House can help improve federal climate action.

Aaron Klein examines how for a number of small banks overdraft fees have become a significant source of their net income. “These banks are really check cashers with a charter,” he writes, asking “Why do bank regulators tolerate this?” Klein argues that regulators need to “crack down” on such institutions: “These regulators that allow banks to have a business model that depends on a single fee, charged only to consumers who run out of money, are not protecting the ‘safe, sound, and fair operation’ of the banking system.”

William Frey documents the aging U.S. population and the relatively stagnant growth of younger generations whose labor will increasingly support their elders in decades to come. Frey notes that the overall share of children (under 18) in the U.S. population has dropped from 35.7% in 1960 to 22.1% in 2020, and is projected to fall to 20.6% by 2040. Also, this younger generation is becoming more diverse racially and ethnically, and its modest growth is being fed by children of color who “stand on the wrong side of rising racial and ethnic inequalities.”

“In the decades to come,” Frey writes, “children will be a far rarer demographic commodity than they were in the nation’s past. This is why they need to be nurtured. Not only are they America’s future, but the youth will become an important asset to our future labor force, which will be tasked with supporting an increasingly large retiree population.”

In a new paper for the Blueprints for American Renewal and Prosperity series, experts explain how American transportation, water, and housing—what they call “land use systems”—contribute to the growing climate challenge, and argue that a new White House office can help “reduce the federal fiscal impacts of climate change by developing strategic intra-agency and cross-agency mitigation and adaptation projects and programs.” In their paper, they document the increasing federal expenditures on climate action in key areas, and outline how this new Climate Planning Unit can contribute to more effective federal climate action.

      

February was a short month, but there was no shortage of research and analysis from Brookings scholars. Here’s a sample of 10 things we learned.

1. The economic impact of COVID-19 on core industries and the Hispanic workforce

Aaron Klein and Ember Smith compared the economic impacts of COVID-19 in three cities negatively impacted (Las Vegas, Orlando, and Reno, which specialize in hospitality and leisure) to three that were not as much (technology hubs Seattle and San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., which specializes in government). “COVID-19, which devastated some industries like leisure and hospitality, barely impacted others,” they write, and where it did hit hard, Hispanic or Latino workers were particularly harmed. Read more to learn about their policy recommendations.

2. Nearly half of essential workers are in low-paid occupations

“America’s essential workforce deserves a raise,” argue Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler. In their analysis, they note that essential workers are nearly half of all workers in occupations with a median wage below $15/hour, and also that “Black and brown workers are overrepresented among the nearly 19 million frontline essential workers in occupations with a median wage less than $15 an hour, half of whom are nonwhite.” Raising the federal minimum wage, Kinder and Stateler write, would disproportionately benefit these workers, “who too often are denied decent-paying work.”

3. Three pathways for multilateralism

With the rise of nationalism and unilateralism around the world, Thomas Wright explores “three pathways that multilateralism might take,” especially with respect to Europe: incrementalism (gradually integrating China and other non-Western powers into the world order); alone in the jungle (Europe as a “third pole” between China and the U.S.); or reinvigorating the free world (Europe and the U.S. cooperating to strengthen democracies against authoritarianism). Read his report to get his assessment of these paths, and also why he argues that “Democracies will have to demonstrate to their citizens that an internationalist and cooperative foreign policy delivers concrete results on issues that matter directly to their day-to-day lives.”

4. Make Congress a better place to work

In a paper for the Blueprints for American Renewal and Prosperity project, Molly Reynolds calls for making Congress a better place to work for its hundreds of elected officials and thousands of support staff. Offering a number of reform ideas, Reynolds argues that a “well-resourced, high-capacity Congress where employees from diverse backgrounds and experiences can build long careers and expertise is a necessary condition for successful legislating in the years ahead.”

5. Strengthen international cooperation on artificial intelligence

In another paper from the Blueprints for American Renewal and Prosperity initiative, Joshua Meltzer and Cameron Kerry analyze the global landscape of cooperation on artificial intelligence—with attention to the challenges posed both by China and prescriptive regulation—and propose policies to strengthen international cooperation. “To foster AI policies that support development of beneficial, trustworthy, and robust artificial intelligence,” they argue, “will require international engagement by the United States and cooperation among like-minded democracies that are leaders in artificial intelligence.”

6. How to spur action on the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all UN member states in 2015 are a blueprint to make progress in 17 key areas by 2030. While the global COVID-19 pandemic has impeded progress and collaboration on meeting the SDGs, the work must continue. In this report, the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation describes 17 Rooms, a “new approach to stimulating cooperative action toward the [SDGs],” and “an efficient way of convening natural allies, ideally promoting enough familiarity to enable collaboration and enough diversity to spark new ideas and pathways to action.”

7. A plan to restore federal government ethics and rule of law

“When it comes to federal government ethics and the rule of law, a great deal was broken in the past four years that must now be repaired.” In a new report, Brookings scholar Norm Eisen, Virginia Canter—from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington—and other experts review how the Trump administration “watered down” ethics rules in government, and how President Biden’s ethics plan can fix what’s broken to restore federal government ethics and the rule of law.

8. Experts weigh in on President Biden’s first foreign policy address

After Joe Biden’s first major foreign policy speech as president on February 4, nearly 20 foreign policy experts at Brookings offered their views on what they heard. For example, Célia Belin, hearing President Biden say that “alliance are our greatest asset,” asked, “alliances to do what?” “The United States will find eager partners in Europe,” Belin observed. “Not only has the European Union already provided a list of topics on which to engage, but all major European leaders have expressed a desire to work together.” On China, Ryan Hass noted that “President Biden’s treatment of China in his first foreign policy address signaled that he views China as a central challenge, but not a burning issue that eclipses all other concerns.” Read more to hear what scholars had to say about other topics, including Russia, refugees, India, and arms control.

9. Consider wealth, not income, for student loan debt cancellation

Andre Perry and Carl Romer explore approaching student debt cancellation by wealth, not by income. As tuition costs have risen far more than wages and inflation, they observe, so too have increased amounts of borrowing and student debt. “The problem is especially pertinent for Black households,” they note, “for whom a lack of generational wealth risks making student debt a long-term financial burden.” The wealth disparity between Black and non-Black people means that Black households are not building as much wealth that can help pay off student loans. Perry and Romer argue that “because student debt disproportionately harms the wealth-poor—and the Black wealth-poor in particular—student debt cancellation could be a powerful tool in dismantling institutional discrimination and shrinking racial wealth disparities if implemented correctly.”

10. A time squeeze hurts middle-class Americans

Over the last few decades, the wages of middle-class men have stagnated; women’s increased work is the main reason middle-class workers have had income gains at all (and those still lower than the bottom and top quintiles of earners). In their report, Tiffany Ford, Jennifer Silva, Morgan Welch, and Isabel Sawhill explore the “time squeeze” felt by many middle-class Americans as they navigate often family-unfriendly workplaces to “document the pressure that many parents experience as they try to balance paid work and caring for others.” Their argument: “the centrality of work shapes how middle-class Americans think about and utilize their time. This top-down shaping of middle–class time has negative impacts on well-being and has direct implications for their health, relationships, and overall sense of autonomy and purpose.”

      

During Black History Month, we’ve highlighted some research and data from recent Brookings scholarship on employment, income, wealth, health, education, and other indicators that highlight racial gaps in America. You can peruse the previous charts here, here, and here.

In their piece on the challenges facing Black men, Richard Reeves, Sarah Nzau, and Ember Smith explain that life expectancy is lowest for Black men compared to other groups both at birth and at age 65. “For white men,” they write, “life expectancy at birth is about 6 years lower than at age 65. But for Black men, that gap is over 9 years—showing that Black men are more likely to die prematurely.” This and the many other facts they cite in their piece on the challenges facing Black men lead Reeves, Nzau, and Smith to call for a “New Deal for Black Men.”

In their new essay, Andre Perry and Carl Romer explore approaching student debt cancellation by wealth, not by income. As tuition costs have risen far more than wages and inflation, they observe, so too have increased amounts of borrowing and student debt. “The problem is especially pertinent for Black households,” they note, “for whom a lack of generational wealth risks making student debt a long-term financial burden.” The wealth disparity between Black and non-Black people means that Black households are not building as much wealth that can help pay off student loans. Perry and Romer argue that “because student debt disproportionately harms the wealth-poor—and the Black wealth-poor in particular—student debt cancellation could be a powerful tool in dismantling institutional discrimination and shrinking racial wealth disparities if implemented correctly.”

“America has a wage problem,” write Sifan Liu and Joseph Parilla in a new essay. “The COVID-19 pandemic brought the low-wage crisis to new heights, as unemployed and underemployed low-wage workers—particularly women and people of color—face severe economic insecurity.” Whereas 44% of all U.S. families before the pandemic did not earn enough income to meet all their living expenses, the chart demonstrates that households headed by women, Black and Latino or Hispanic individuals, and those with less than an associate’s degree are even more likely to be struggling than most. Read their essay to learn more about these data and solutions for local and regional policymakers to create inclusive economic recovery strategies with family-sustaining wages.

      

In this Charts of the Week, some data from research on the wages, earnings, and unemployment gaps by race.

“America’s essential workforce deserves a raise,” argue Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler. In their analysis, they note that essential workers are nearly half of all workers in occupations with a median wage below $15/hour, and also that “Black and brown workers are overrepresented among the nearly 19 million frontline essential workers in occupations with a median wage less than $15 an hour, half of whom are nonwhite.” Raising the federal minimum wage, Kinder and Stateler write, would disproportionately benefit these workers, “who too often are denied decent-paying work.”

In their piece on the challenges facing Black men, Richard Reeves, Sarah Nzau, and Ember Smith explain that “Black workers—regardless of gender—earn less than white workers, and white men have substantially out-earned white women and Black workers since 1980.” The data show that Black men earn $378 less per week than white men, and $125 less than white women. “Breaking the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage for Black boys and men,” they argue, “requires first a deeper understanding the gendering of their race—and the racialization of their gender—and second, a battery of specifically tailored policy interventions: a New Deal for Black Men, no less.”

Aaron Klein and Ember Smith compared the economic impacts of COVID-19 in three cities negatively impacted (Las Vegas, Orlando, and Reno, which specialize in hospitality and leisure) to three that were not as much (technology hubs Seattle and San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., which specializes in government). “COVID-19, which devastated some industries like leisure and hospitality, barely impacted others,” they write, and where it did hit hard, Hispanic or Latino workers were particularly harmed. Read more to learn about their policy recommendations.

      

In this edition of Charts of the Week: the inheritance gap contributes to the Black-white wealth gap; and some perspectives on race and higher education. For more, visit the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative.

Researchers from the Hamilton Project at Brookings look at how wealth contributes to a household’s ability to meet economic shocks from the coronavirus pandemic. The wealth gap between Black and white households has many causes, one of which is the intergenerational transfer of wealth via inheritances. In 2019, for example, 30 percent of white households received an average inheritance of nearly $200,000, while only one in 10 Black households did, at $100,000 on average. “Because inheritances are lightly taxed,” they observe, “inequalities in inheritances play a significant role in perpetuating a Black-white wealth gap that spans generations.”

Writing for the Brown Center Chalkboard, Dick Startz says that while historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) “have been supplying leaders to the nation and to communities for nearly 200 years,” they “work their magic with very little money.” Startz examines data related to HBCU performance and finances, including the fact that the expected family contribution for students at HBCUs is much lower than at non-HBCUs, “which is another way of seeing that HBCUs serve students whose families just don’t have much money.”

Ariel Gelrud Shiro and Richard Reeves observe that for-profit colleges, which have rebounded under Trump-era deregulation, “yield higher debts and poorer labor market outcomes for students when compared to other forms of postsecondary education.” And, while Black and Latino students constitute less than a third of all college students, they represent nearly half of enrollment in for-profit colleges as a result of, say Shiro and Reeves, “predatory recruitment tactics targeted at Black and Latino communities.”

      

On this first Friday of Black History Month, a focus on research and data that illuminate some of the conditions experienced by Black Americans, including innovation, wealth, and education. For more, visit the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative.

Jonathan Rothwell, Andre Perry, and Mike Andrews write that the “history of Black people’s contributions to the catalog of inventions that marked the Industrial Revolution has been largely muted” and that “the disregard of many of the era’s Black inventors not only whitewashes the historical record, but biases who we perceive to be innovators in the present.” Among their findings in this research on patents between 1870 to 1940: in the North, Black people’s share of patents equaled their share of the population in that region (1.6%); and Black people’s share of inventions was higher than all immigrant groups except those from England and Germany.

Researchers from the Hamilton Project at Brookings look at how wealth contributes to a household’s ability to meet economic shocks from the coronavirus pandemic. “In 2019,” they observe, “the median white household held $188,200 in wealth—7.8 times that of the typical Black household.” Further, they note, while Black households comprise 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, they hold just 4 percent of total household wealth. “The Black-white wealth gap,” they add, “serves as an important factor in understanding how economic recoveries can become uneven and unequal across demographics.”

In November 2020, the Center on Children and Families at Brookings launched a new Boys and Men Project to focus on policymaking in education and training, work, family policy, criminal justice, and poverty, with particular attention to improving the conditions of Black boys and men. In a piece highlighting outcomes for Black men in eight key dimensions, researchers Richard Reeves, Sara Nzau, and Ember Smith note (as one of the eight dimensions) the education gap between Black men and all others. “In 2019,” they write, “28% of Black men ages 25-29 had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 30% of Black women, over 40% of white men, and nearly half of white women.”