Brookings: Topics - U.S. Poverty

Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2013 184pp.

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Presentation - Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

Synopsis:

In Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube take on the new reality of metropolitan poverty and opportunity in America. For decades, suburbs added poor residents at a faster pace than cities, so that suburbia is now home to more poor residents than central cities, composing over a third of the nation’s total poor population. Unfortunately, the antipoverty infrastructure built over the past several decades does not fit this rapidly changing geography. The solution no longer fits the problem. Kneebone and Berube explain the source and impact of these important developments; moreover, they present innovative ideas on addressing them.

The spread of suburban poverty has many causes, including job sprawl, shifts in affordable housing, population dynamics, immigration, and a struggling economy. As the authors explain in Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, it raises a number of daunting challenges, such as the need for more (and better) transportation options, services, and financial resources. But necessity also produces opportunity—in this case, the opportunity to rethink and modernize services, structures, and procedures so that they better reflect and address new demands. This book embraces that opportunity.

Infographic; What’s Driving the Rapid Rise of Poverty in the Suburbs?:

(Click to expand)

The authors put forward a series of workable recommendations for public, private, and nonprofit leaders seeking to modernize poverty alleviation and community development strategies and connect residents with economic opportunity. Anyone can be apart of the solution. Download the Action Toolkit to start confronting suburban poverty.

Event:

On May 20, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings hosted an event marking the release of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, co-authored by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube. Below, you can watch a piece of the event with Elizabeth Kneebone, as she discusses how the landscape of poverty in America has changed.

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Presentation - Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alan Berube

Elizabeth Kneebone

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Ordering Information:

{CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 978-0-8157-2390-5, $28.95 Order

Time for Change: A New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College

Ron Haskins and Cecilia Elena Rouse — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Abstract

If more children from low-income families graduated from college, income inequality would fall and economic opportunity would increase. A major barrier to a college education for students from low-income families is that they are poorly prepared to do college work. Since the War on Poverty of the 1960s, the federal government has funded several programs to help prepare disadvantaged students to succeed in college. Evaluations show that these programs are at best only modestly successful. We propose to consolidate these programs into a single grant program, require that funded programs be backed by rigorous evidence, and give the Department of Education the authority and funding to plan a coordinated set of research and demonstration programs to develop and rigorously test several approaches to college preparation.

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Time for Change: A New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College

Authors

Ron Haskins
Cecilia Elena Rouse

Publication: The Future of Children

Shame and Teen Pregnancy

Richard V. Reeves — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Does shame perform a useful social function? Is it legitimate for the state to engender feelings of shame to further public goals? Is the answer to either of these questions affirmative, in the case of teen pregnancy?

These are the key questions raised by the decision by New York officials to use controversial advertisements that highlight the impact of teen pregnancy on the life chances of the child. The apparently ‘liberal’ response has been to rail against Mayor Michael Bloomberg for shaming teen parents. The very idea of passing moral judgment makes many people of a liberal orientation queasy, especially in the U.S.

I have argued, by contrast, that there is a liberal case for shame as a form of non-coercive regulation towards better choices – including avoiding teen pregnancy.

So, question 1: does shame ever have any positive role to play in a liberal society? Yes: it is in fact a valuable form of non-coercive regulation of behavior. As a general rule, we hope that illegal activities are also shameful ones. In many cases the shame might do more work than the sheriff. Drunk driving is a case in point.

Shame also helps to regulate activities that are legal, but unwise - either because of their implications for the individual themselves, or, especially, for innocent second parties. Racists and homophobes should be made to feel ashamed of themselves. But surely so should those who hit their child, or surround them with smoke, or drink heavily or smoke when pregnant with them.

The second question is whether official bodies have any business being in the shame game. You might agree that shame can be useful, but disagree with state-sponsored shame. Given that tax dollars are being deployed in a campaign like the current New York one, the decision has to be clearly justified - on the grounds of both efficacy and legitimacy. New York has tested its ads extensively, and is confident that they will have an impact by making teens think harder about choices leading to a risk of pregnancy. Time will tell if they are right, but we certainly not assume they are wrong.

Even if the ads work, the legitimacy question remains. The state should only be using shame to combat a legal activity or choice when there is real, significant harm involved, not for the individual but for other individuals or the broader community.

There is, for instance, no good liberal argument against ads invoking shame to try and stop people hitting their children or smoking while pregnant. Real harm is being done to real people. Government officials should exercise great care when it comes to the use of shame. But they should not rule it out.

The third question is whether shame can legitimately be attached to teen pregnancy, if there is reason to believe (as New York does) that is will help to lower rates. Is teen pregnancy really bad enough to justify such an emotional campaign? The short answer: yes. Not because of the impact on the parent, but on the child. Having kids in your teens actually has a small influence on life chances, as Alex Sanger shows in Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century, albeit for the depressing reason that the youngsters most likely to become teen parents have such narrow life chances anyway.

So the New York campaign focuses on what teen parenthood means for the child. They are not saying, ‘becoming a parent in your teens will be bad for you’; they are saying ‘becoming a parent in your teens will be bad for your child’. And that is not a claim: it is a fact.

One last, vital point: there is no justification for doing less to help teen parents or their their children because they have made bad choices. We need, in fact, to do very much more to improve the life chances of children born to teen parents. Shame legitimately attaches to teen pregnancy. It is also a crying shame that so many kids born to teens are effectively abandoned to their fate.

Authors

Richard V. Reeves

Image Source: © ERIC THAYER / Reuters

In Reducing Teen Pregnancy, Shame Is Not a Four-Letter Word

Richard V. Reeves — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:36:00 -0400

New York is deploying a powerful weapon to reduce teen pregnancy: shame. New advertisements around the city dramatize the truncated life chances of children born to teenagers; in one, a tear-stained toddler stares out, declaring: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.”

Nobody is arguing the facts. But plenty of people are furious at the decision to highlight them. “Hurting and shaming communities is not what’s going to bring teen pregnancy rates down,” declared Haydee Morales, the vice president for education and training at Planned Parenthood of New York City.

This is the allegedly “liberal” response. But liberals should think twice: shame is an essential ingredient of a healthy society, particularly a liberal one. It acts as a form of moral regulation, or social “nudge,” encouraging good behavior while guarding individual freedom.

Read the rest of the op-ed at the New York Times website »

Authors

Richard V. Reeves

Publication: The New York Times

Image Source: © Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Abstract

Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in wellbeing has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being among blacks relative to whites. Investigating various measures of well-being, we find that the well-being of blacks has increased both absolutely and relative to that of whites. While a racial gap in well-being remains, two-fifths of the gap has closed and these gains have occurred despite little progress in closing other racial gaps such as those in income, employment, and education. Much of the current racial gap in well-being can be explained by differences in the objective conditions of the lives of black and white Americans. Thus making further progress will likely require progress in closing racial gaps in objective circumstances.

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Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress

Authors

Betsey Stevenson
Justin Wolfers

Image Source: © Mike Blake / Reuters

Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class

Ron Haskins — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Policy aimed at promoting economic opportunity for poor children must be framed within three stark realities. First, many poor children come from families that do not give them the kind of support that middle-class children get from their families. Second, as a result, these children enter kindergarten far behind their more advantaged peers and, on average, never catch up and even fall further behind. Third, in addition to the education deficit, poor children are more likely to make bad decisions that lead them to drop out of school, become teen parents, join gangs and break the law.

In addition to the thousands of local and national programs that aim to help young people avoid these life-altering problems, we should figure out more ways to convince young people that their decisions will greatly influence whether they avoid poverty and enter the middle class. Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities: at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.

Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year). There are surely influences other than these principles at play, but following them guides a young adult away from poverty and toward the middle class.

Consider an example. Today, more than 40 percent of American children, including more than 70 percent of black children and 50 percent of Hispanic children, are born outside marriage. This unprecedented rate of nonmarital births, combined with the nation’s high divorce rate, means that around half of children will spend part of their childhood—and for a considerable number of these all of their childhood — in a single-parent family. As hard as single parents try to give their children a healthy home environment, children in female-headed families are four or more times as likely as children from married-couple families to live in poverty. In turn, poverty is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes in children, including school dropout and out-of-wedlock births.

It is sometimes said that Americans are turning their back on the marriage culture. The high divorce rate, soaring nonmarital birth rate and consequent rise of single-parent families are certainly weakening marriage as an institution. But look again and discover that college-educated women have high marriage rates, low nonmarital birthrates, and low divorce rates. The marriage culture seems to be alive and well for those with a college degree. These families usually not only have enough money to afford good schools for their children, but they also provide a stable family environment that allows children to flourish.

The recent attacks by Planned Parenthood on Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor, for launching a campaign designed to inform teenagers of the consequences of teen pregnancy provides a good example of how many in our society face the effects of nonmarital births on teen mothers and their children. In one of the campaign posters, a baby with tears rolling down his face says: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” Another shows a girl saying to her mom: “Chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” Planned Parenthood criticized the ads, displayed in the subway and bus shelters, for ignoring racial and economic factors that contribute to teen pregnancy. Other critics say the ads stigmatize teen parents and their children.

Granted, most teen moms are from low-income families and face a number of barriers to success. Along comes Bloomberg with a direct message to get the attention of teenage girls and warn them not to make their situation worse and to think more about their future. If the mother wants to improve her future by continuing her education, being a teenage parent is precisely the wrong way to do it. As for blaming the victim, no one is blaming the baby—yet the baby will also bear long-term consequences.

Teenagers are capable of understanding principles and of using them to help make decisions. Anyone who delivers messages to teens about the consequences of decisions that could affect them and others for many years should be praised not criticized.

Bloomberg should next launch a public campaign about the value of marriage to adults, children and society. There will be at least as many critics of this message as the message that young people should avoid teen pregnancy. Good. The bigger the controversy, the more the media will cover the debate, and the more the nation will have the opportunity to reflect on what is at stake. I am confident that most Americans will conclude that organizations like Planned Parenthood have it wrong, and Bloomberg has it right.

Authors

Ron Haskins

Publication: The Washington Post

Image Source: © Brian Snyder / Reuters

Middle Childhood Success and Economic Mobility

J. Lawrence Aber, Kerry Searle Grannis, Stephanie Owen and Isabel V. Sawhill — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:17:00 -0500

Executive Summary

This study uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) to analyze competencies that children need to master by the end of elementary school, the extent to which they are doing so, what might be done to improve their performance, and how this might affect their ultimate ability to earn a living and their chances of being middle class by middle age. Both academic skills and socio-emotional skills contribute to core competency. We measure core competence at age eleven using five outcomes: math skills, reading skills, self-regulation, behavior problems, and physical health.

62% of children have core competence by the spring of fifth grade, while 38% do not meet the benchmark on one or more of the five measures.
Though there are substantial gaps in achievement by gender, race, and socioeconomic status, differences by subgroup decrease in magnitude when we control for demographics and school readiness at age 5.
Achievement gaps by race and socioeconomic status widen over the course of elementary school; the gap between black and white children nearly doubles between kindergarten and fifth grade.

The paper concludes with a discussion of how middle childhood interventions such as a social emotional learning program or a whole school reform program like Success For All might improve short- and long-term outcomes for low-income children. Preliminary results from the Social Genome Model indicate that such programs might raise annual family income at age forty by four percent—approximately $2,400 for a family of four.

Download the full paper »

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Middle Childhood Success and Economic Mobility

Authors

J. Lawrence Aber
Kerry Searle Grannis
Stephanie Owen
Isabel V. Sawhill

A State of the Union Wish List

Ron Haskins — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:00:00 -0500

Here are three things I wish Obama would say, but probably won’t, in next Tuesday’s State of the Union address. The first is to start delivering on his first-term promise to change the tone of debate in the nation’s capital. In his January 14 press conference, the president said that House Republicans have suspicions about government’s role “to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older” and to “make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat.” Issuing blanket statements like this about your political opponents is neither the way to change the tone of debate in Washington nor the way to publicly characterize people you’re about to negotiate with over issues – such as deficit reduction, immigration, and gun control – that are vital to the nation’s future. Obama would be well advised not only to avoid negative and mostly unjustified accusations of this type, but even to try to say something nice about Republicans.

Second, the president should say something as specific as possible about his ideas on further deficit reduction. Between the 2011 Budget Control Act and the 2012 American Taxpayers Relief Act, Congress and President Obama have reduced the deficit over the next ten years by $2.4 trillion (including interest savings). If the $1.2 trillion (again including interest) from the sequester is actually implemented, the total deficit reduction so far will be $3.6 trillion over ten years. Not bad for a dysfunctional government. But at least another $1 or $2 trillion is needed even to maintain a steady debt/GDP ratio over the next decade. Worse, there has been virtually nothing saved from entitlement programs, and no agreement so far that would put Medicare and other health programs on a more sustainable growth path. It would be a breakthrough if the president highlighted and expanded his offer of changes in entitlement programs like he did in his recent press conference. He should also say that he is ready to talk about savings in Medicare – while perhaps adding that he would be especially interested in discussions about savings that could be achieved by having the higher income elderly pay a higher fraction of their health care costs.

Third, President Obama and his wife and children have set a wonderful standard for marriage and American family life. It would be difficult to exaggerate the damage that is being done to American children and the nation’s GDP by the tsunami of nonmarital births and the relentlessly rising share of American children being reared by single parents. For starters, kids in female-headed families are four times as likely to be poor as kids living with their married parents. Black children bear the heaviest burden in this regard because well over 70 percent of them are born into single parent families. Similarly, over 50 percent of Hispanic children are born outside marriage, imposing a heavy burden on them as well. Economic opportunity is a theme President Obama has strongly emphasized, but the astounding level of nonmarital births is like a little motor pushing up poverty rates and reducing opportunity for millions of American children – and disproportionately so for black and Hispanic children.

The president has a better chance than anyone in the nation to have an impact on this problem. He should include at least two paragraphs about marriage in his State of the Union address. In the first paragraph, he should describe the advantages of marriage to adults, children, and society, which can be done without mentioning the negative effects of single-parent families. In the second paragraph, he should announce that once a month for the next year, he plans to attend a predominantly black, Hispanic, white, or integrated church – as often as possible accompanied by his wife – to sing the praises of marriage and the great contribution his marriage and family have made to his personal life and to lives of his wife and children.

President Obama has a chance to hit a policy trifecta – encouraging civility in the nation’s capital, reducing the deficit while at last addressing entitlement and especially Medicare spending, and speaking out for marriage as a way to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in America.

Authors

Ron Haskins

Long-Term Impacts of Individual Development Accounts on Homeownership among Baseline Renters: Follow-Up Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:58:00 -0500

Abstract

We examine the long-term effects of a 1998–2003 randomized experiment in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Individual Development Accounts that offered low-income households 2:1 matching funds for housing down payments. Prior work shows that, among households who rented in 1998, homeownership rates increased more through 2003 in the treatment group than for controls. We show that control group renters caught up rapidly with the treatment group after the experiment ended. As of 2009, the program had an economically small and statistically insignificant effect on homeownership rates, the number of years respondents owned homes, home equity, and foreclosure activity among baseline renters.

Download the paper (pdf) »

Authors

Michal Grinstein-Weiss
Michael Sherraden
William G. Gale
William M. Rohe
Mark Schreiner
Clinton Key

Publication: American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Image Source: © Mike Segar / Reuters

A New Federal Policy Architecture to Promote Social Mobility

Richard V. Reeves — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:15:00 -0500

Right now in Washington, it's all fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings. But there is a slower-burn crisis taking place in the US: the quiet decline of social mobility. Harvard academic Robert Putnam has warned that we are heading towards a “mobility cliff,” with affluent kids all but guaranteed a comfortable adult life and the poorest kids likely to remain stuck on the bottom rungs. Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins have vividly described the lack of mobility in the U.S. The opportunity gaps start at conception, widen through K-12, and harden during the transition to adulthood. Horatio Alger is not dead, but he is pretty sick.

To say that promoting mobility is a complex task would be a wild understatement. A vast array of economic, social, cultural and individual factors are at work, to different degrees, across the entire life course – influencing an equally wide canvas of outcomes, from education to character to fertility. Promoting intergenerational mobility is not a policy agenda for the faint-hearted. There are no quick or easy solutions.

But it is wrong to be fatalistic. There are policies proven to narrow gaps. If they are applied consecutively, one brick on top of another, their effects are likely to amplified. And other nations, even those with similar levels of income inequality to the U.S. – such as Canada and Australia – have higher rates of intergenerational mobility. Improving rates of mobility is hard, but not impossible. Given the economic and social consequences of a more stratified society, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders.

A small but important first step would be to create a Federal “policy architecture” to properly track trends in mobility, and evaluate the impact of policies. The UK Government, explicitly committed to a mobility goal, has created a annual dashboard of “leading indicators” of mobility. My former boss, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, has also created an independent commission to report annually on progress towards greater social mobility.

Of course this kind of policy architecture would not promote mobility. But it would create a shared understanding of the facts, and a foundation for developing policy. Back in the 1970s, Brookings called for the creation of an independent agency within the legislative branch of government, to forecast the public finances and estimate the fiscal impact of legislation or proposed policies. The Congressional Budget Office was born. Something similar is now needed for opportunity: say a Congressional Mobility Office? So that if our politicians are able to look beyond today's cliffs and ceilings, and embrace the challenge of promoting opportunity, they'll have a better idea where to start.

Authors

Richard V. Reeves

Image Source: © Aaron Bernstein / Reuters

New State Data Show EITC’s Widespread Anti-Poverty Impact

Elizabeth Kneebone and Jane Williams — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Packed into the new year’s fiscal cliff deal was some good news for working families. Most notable was a provision that extends the 2009 Recovery Act expansions to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) by five years—targeted expansions that strengthened these credits for working families in response to the Great Recession and weak economic recovery that followed.

These tax credits, in addition to encouraging work, also do a great deal to reduce poverty. We know this thanks to the Census Bureau’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which provides a more nuanced measure of poverty across the country, accounting for things the official poverty measure does not—like after-tax income, regional differences in housing costs, and the impact of government policies like the EITC and CTC. Based on the SPM, the EITC and refundable portion of the CTC (including the 2009 expansions) together lowered the poverty rate by 2.8 percentage points in 2011. The impact on child poverty was even greater: under the SPM definition the credits lowered the child poverty rate by fully 6.3 percentage points.

Until recently, estimates of how particular anti-poverty programs affected the SPM were only available at the national level. Thanks to public-use files recently released by the Census Bureau, we can now estimate the extent to which the EITC and CTC have alleviated poverty in individual states throughout the country.

The map below illustrates the average number of people kept out of poverty by the combined impact of the federal EITC and CTC using the most recent data available. (Due to sample size issues, the map presents an average of three years of Current Population Survey data, from 2009 to 2011.) The EITC and CTC boosted working families’ earnings above poverty in every state; large states like Texas and California saw more than 1 million people lifted out of poverty, while at the other end of the spectrum, these credits kept over 9,000 residents of North Dakota from falling below the poverty line.

Though currently the SPM only measures the effects of the federal tax code, many states also have local versions of the EITC that further strengthen the anti-poverty impact of the federal credit. And a number of these states and others are poised to make important decisions about state-level EITCs in the next legislative session. In North Carolina and Oregon, legislators will vote whether to extend their state EITCs, set to expire this year, while Utah legislators will decide whether to establish a state EITC for the first time. While Oklahoma and Kansas are likely to see proposals for a reduction in the size and impact of their state EITCs, Oregon and New Mexico could potentially expand their credits.

As the new SPM data document reveals, tens of thousands of individuals in each of these states are kept out of poverty each year by the federal EITC, about half of whom are children. (See this table for detailed data.) As working families continue to struggle with the aftereffects of the worst recession since the Great Depression, these states have the opportunity to make sure their tax codes are working for those families by enacting, preserving, or expanding state credits that boost the impact of the federal EITC.

Authors

Elizabeth Kneebone
Jane Williams

Publication: The Avenue, The New Republic

Image Source: © Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

On Establishing a Commission to Develop Recommendations for Reducing Child Deaths Due to Maltreatment

Bill Frenzel — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:06:00 -0500

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

My name is Bill Frenzel. I am a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, but my testimony today is mine only and has nothing to do with Brookings.

I have been advised by your fine staff to concentrate my remarks on the commission, its structure, its outlook, and possible results. I have served on several commissions: (1) the National Economic Commission in 1988, appointed by the President and Congressional leaders; (2) The President’s Advisory Commission on Social Security in 2001 and 2002; (3) The President’s Advisory Commission on Tax Reform 2005; (4) the President’s Advisory Commission on Trade Policy and Negotiations from 2001 to date; and (5) several private commissions, most notably the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, from 2003 to 2007.

The first three of the above were colossal failures. The Pew Commission was judged successful, even though some of its most important recommendations were enacted long after it had disbanded. I have some opinions on how best to structure and manage a government (or private) commission. Mostly they depend on what the commission is intended to do. Some of them follow.

Appointing Authority
Presidentially appointed commissions, and those appointed jointly by the President and Congressional leaders carry substantial prestige, and few potential appointees have nerve enough to decline them. They, however, are more appropriate for frontline issues, and they labor in the national spotlight. None have been successful in my memory except the Social Security Commission in 1982 and 1983, and a couple of base closing commissions.

If you want it to be on the six o’clock news, have the President appoint the commission. If you want results, you may want to choose another appointing authority.

Presidential problems abound. Presidents like to stack commissions with people to whom they owe something. You will get good people, but they may not exactly be the qualified people you want. You may not get geographical distribution you want. You may not get other balances you seek.

Worst of all, Presidents are too busy. If recommendations are not a slam dunk, or important enough, they lie there and die. I believe that is what happened to President George Bush’s Tax Reform Commission in 2005, or more recently to President Obama’s Fiscal (Bowles-Simpson) Commission.

If the commission’s sponsors can advise the legislative leaders on appointments (I presume they can), it will be much easier to get the skills and experience, the regional balance, and such other balances as are thought necessary, through Congressional appointment. Here I assume that child mistreatment is not a subject that will engender partisan problems, and that House and Senate sponsors themselves can agree on commission member selection. Net, I believe that Congressional appointment is more likely to produce a better distribution, and better talent, and a better outcome, than if the President is involved.

Size
Less than a dozen members won’t give you the geographical nor the experience spread you will need. More than 20 is likely to cause difficulties of less than orderly process. The draft bill of Congressmen Doggett and Camp has it about right, although I believe 15 to 18 is optimal, particularly if you choose leaders as described below.

You will also have to have a method for replacing members who are obliged, for reasons of health, family, etc., to leave the commission.

Qualifications
This subject is not my strong suit, but, in general, the draft bill covers the waterfront well. It also describes millions of people, and you want the very best. Your staff will have to call in the best advisors it can locate to identify the best of the best, both in talent and temperament. And don’t eliminate all lobbyists. They can’t taint this kind of commission.

I hate to mention the phrase, but bi-partisan cooperation will produce the best commission. One of my Pew Commission’s greatest strengths was that if anyone knew anybody else’s party leanings, they were never mentioned. Members could have been all Democrats , or all Republicans. What mattered was their experience and their unrelenting desire to help children.

Because that also matters in this case, the House and Senate sponsors of this commission should be able to agree on a slate and to convince the leadership appointers to ratify it.

Regionality
The kind of people you choose for the commission will mostly be nationally known, and will know others of national renown in their fields. But America is pretty big, and communities, states and regions are different, even when pursuing the same goals. You need wide geographical and cultural distribution on your commission.

The locals will know all the other good locals, and they will be helped by the local peers who seek the same outcomes the commission seeks. You can never cover all the bases, nor get perfect representation, but you need to make a good try.

However, I believe it would be unwise to write distribution requirements into the bill. They would be long and confining. I believe that the sponsors, aided by the Subcommittee staffs will understand their responsibility to take geography into careful account.

Congressional membership
This is for you to determine. My own feeling is that members of Congress ought to be committed to other duties, and are too busy to be dependable members of such a commission. If you put one member of Congress on the commission, with two houses and two parties you will have to have at least four members of Congress, and that may make it impossible to include the other experiences and talents you want on the commission. I would not preclude members of Congress, but neither would I appoint any to this kind of commission.

Commission Leadership
When you assemble an all-star line-up of commissioners, with experience and ability, you may find among them a natural leader who can manage the work plan, handle the schedules, instill a sense of practicality, keep the commissioners happy and engaged, and maintain regular communication with this Subcommittee and its staff. That is possible, but it’s also highly unlikely.

If my Pew experience is any guide, it is a good idea to go outside the fields of endeavor for leadership. I believe I was chosen as Chair precisely because I had no experience in foster care. The same may a little less true of the Co-Chair, former Congressman Bill Gray. Having multiple leaders, a Democrat and a Republican, was for optics. In practice, either of us could have done, and did, the same job.

My highly subjective recommendation is that you pick a former member of Congress, or two, for the Chair.

She/he might, or might not, have experience in the field (from this subcommittee, for instance). More than keeping the program on the move in businesslike manner, the chair has to remind, constantly, the real enthusiasts on the commission that perfection in recommendations is not always possible in a contentious and budget-restricted Congress, and that a consensus report multiplies its impact.

Consensus
Unanimity is contrary to human nature, but commission reports have far greater impact if they represent a consensus of the full commission. Minority or dissenting remarks may often be appropriate, and they may make the objectors fell better, but they really weaken the thrust of the report. In a child maltreatment commission, every effort must be made to have a unanimous set of recommendations.

Consensus seeking is a duty of leadership. It’s one more reason in favor of appointing some kind of professional chair, or chairs, who can encourage commission members to hang together.

Congressional Approval
When the commission reports, its recommendations may include requests for Congressional actions of some sort. It is highly desirable that this subcommittee react to those recommendations as swiftly as possible. The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care referred to earlier, reported in 2005, had part of its recommendations enacted that year, but some not until 2008.

The Report will also include recommendations for state and local government units in all branches, and for private organizations, too. Those units can move without federal approval, but the federal blessing will nurture far more enthusiasm.

Honoraria
First-class people will fight to get on this commission. You should pay their necessary expenses of travel, etc., but it is not necessary to award them honoraria. After you hire a first staff and pay commissioners’ expenses, there won’t be much money left anyway.

Staff
$2 million won’t buy a large staff, but you won’t need many people, because plenty of resources, private and governmental, national and local will be available to the commission. The staff should be competent, but lean, less than 10. It does not have to do the research. It just has to sort it out. Spare no expense on a first-rate staff director. She/he will save you a bundle in the long run.

Your staff, and the Senate’s, ought to help the commission and its staff director identify and recruit the staff, but the commission needs to maintain its independence.

Operations, Hearings, etc.
Other things being equal, the commission should do its business here in Washington. Its staff should be here, in close contact with your own staff and with other federal agencies.. Hearings in other locations sound like wonderful ideas, and sometimes are, but field hearings usually turn out to be mostly for show. It is usually cheaper to bring commissioners to Washington than to New York, LA, or

Chicago. It will be hard to find child mistreatment in the boondocks. I believe that you will find witnesses happy to come to Washington to testify about their local conditions.

However, the commission may find it necessary and helpful to travel to national meetings of court personnel, and governmental or private organizations. There is a cost, but to learn and to inspire, such meetings may be needed.

Term
I believe the draft bill has the term limits thing right. Two years is plenty. More time means the idea will get stale. However, depending on the date of creation, please be sure the final Report due date does not occur in an election year.

Budget
I lack experience and information to analyze the budget. It appears adequate if you don’t pay commission members. A lean staff alone, as I have described it, depending on quality and experience, might cost as much as half your budget annually. I don’t suggest raising the budget (you will have trouble enough with $2 million), but I do suggest consulting a HR specialist in some of the fields described so that you will have an idea of the costs. If you can arrange to use federal facilities (one advantage of Presidential appointment), you could save a bundle on rental costs.

Purpose
The commission is intended, I believe, to shine a light on an important problem, to inspire citizens, organizations, and various governmental units to combat it, and to develop recommendations for them to make substantial reductions in child mistreatment and fatalities. It will have recommendations for every person and agency involved, and it is likely to recommend changes in national policies.

The draft bill’s instructions to federal agencies to report to Congress in 6 months is a great idea. In addition the commission ought to report recommended changes in law directly to this Subcommittee and its Senate counterpart. As noted above, if Congress does not take the commission seriously, nobody else will either.

I request unanimous consent that this written testimony be made a part of the record. I will answer questions as best as I am able.

Authors

Bill Frenzel

Publication: House Committee on Ways and Means

Progressives and the Safety Net

Henry J. Aaron — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:59:00 -0500

Something wonderful happened in the United States during the middle third of the twentieth century. After decades of policies that smacked of Social Darwinism, our country created a strong, if incomplete, social-insurance safety net. The actions our government took expressed a solemn promise to vulnerable Americans. Social Security and Medicare assured the elderly and disabled basic cash income and health care roughly similar to that enjoyed by the rest of the population. They lifted the elderly and disabled from a status of privation to near equality with the nonelderly in both money income and access to health care. Various other federal programs provided food, housing, and educational support, or encouraged their provision by state and local governments. By official measures, poverty among the elderly fell below that of other age groups thanks to Social Security, and health coverage improved markedly for the nonelderly poor because of Medicaid.

Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, these advances are under attack and that solemn promise is in jeopardy. To be sure, these programs enjoy enormous popularity. At the same time, however, a solid minority has never accepted the idea that taxes should be used to pay for pensions and health insurance. As long as economic growth generated enough revenue to pay for these programs and the rest of government’s commitments, opponents of social insurance and other elements of the safety net gained little political traction. Three deficit reduction plans enacted during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, along with sustained economic growth, produced budget surpluses in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

But then everything changed, and the national debt ballooned. The recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009 led to higher unemployment and lower revenues. Imprudent tax cuts slashed revenues still more. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the tragedy of 9/11 led to huge increases in military spending. As a result, large and seemingly limitless deficits emerged, and budgetary angst has become epidemic.

In addition, official projections have warned that retiring baby boomers and rapidly rising health-care costs will cause Social Security and Medicare benefits to greatly outpace program revenues. Although these long-term forces have little to do with current budget deficits, they have combined to generate a sense of fiscal crisis. On top of this comes the “fiscal cliff,” the concatenation of dubious fiscal decisions timed to take effect almost simultaneously. The tax cuts enacted during President George W. Bush’s first term and the payroll-tax holiday enacted in early 2011 are set to expire on December 31, 2012. The government debt will soon breach the ceiling set in August 2011. Mindless spending cuts passed in 2011, based on formulas that pay no heed to the relative importance of programs and that have nothing to recommend them other than simplicity, are also to begin on New Year’s Day 2013.

Analysts agree that if all of the tax increases and expenditure cuts take effect, economic activity will slow, and a weak recovery will morph into recession. Failure to raise the debt ceiling would wreak tsunami-like devastation on financial markets that would inundate the rest of the U.S. and world economy.

Against this backdrop, the American public is being told that the cause of looming financial catastrophe is an “entitlement crisis.” Fiscal Jeremiahs warn that the only way to deal effectively with current deficits is to cut back Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid years in the future. The full House of Representatives has twice passed budget plans, crafted by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, that would replace Medicare with a voucher that beneficiaries could use to buy either private insurance or a plan like traditional Medicare. The Ryan plan would also convert Medicaid into a block grant at spending levels well below what is projected under current law. The grants would not increase during recessions when Medicaid enrollments tend to spike. States, pinched by falling revenues and rising service demands, would have to cut benefits just when they are most needed.

But while reports of a crisis are overblown, and conservative proposals to solve it are draconian, progressives do need to think about how best to reform the entitlement programs. The simple fact is that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid form a very large and growing part of the federal budget—currently 50 percent of noninterest spending. Furthermore, the phrase “entitlement crisis” has been repeated so often and so earnestly that denying its reality is more likely to damage one’s own credibility than to dislodge what is actually profound confusion. Cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits are neither necessary nor desirable and should be resisted, even as reform of the whole health-care delivery system proceeds. But political and economic realities—the need to secure majority support for measures to lower deficits once economic recovery is well advanced—make some cuts highly likely. It behooves supporters of social insurance to have in reserve program cuts that would do the least harm and might advance other meritorious objectives. To begin this search, one should start with the underlying economic and demographic forces that are driving spending.

Read the full article at democracyjournal.org »

Authors

Henry J. Aaron

Publication: Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

A Poverty and Opportunity Agenda: What’s in Store for the Next Four Years

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Event Information

December 5, 2012
9:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

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Following an election in which President Obama scored a large victory in the Electoral College, Democrats increased their majority in the Senate, and Republicans maintained control of the House, intense pressure remains – particularly from Republicans – to reduce spending on safety net programs as a means of addressing the nation’s deficit. In addition, tax increases on higher income families will likely be part of the mix.

On December 5, the Center on Children and Families at Brookings and Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity held an event to examine the impact of the election on programs affecting the poor and contributing to opportunity for economic advancement. How has the election affected threats to enact major cuts in anti-poverty programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)?

To answer this and related questions, we heard from two major political figures within the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as well as a panel of experts with extensive experience in previous administrations.

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New Ways to Promote Retirement Saving

William G. Gale, David C. John and Spencer Smith — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Many American households do not save for retirement. Those that do save often contribute too little, invest poorly, or withdraw funds early. These patterns leave households, particularly low- and middle-income households, vulnerable to insufficient savings to finance adequate living standards during old age and retirement.

This research report proposes retirement saving reforms designed to help boost saving among low- and middle-income households. These 11 proposals are grouped under five themes: (1) making saving easier, (2) making saving more rewarding, (3) strengthening the market infrastructure for saving, (4) providing private information to savers, and (5) improving public education for saving.

Download the full report at aarp.org »

Authors

Publication: AARP

Inequality Is Not What We Imagine

Scott Winship — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:50:00 -0400

Rising inequality in America, according to a number of economists and many more pundits and political actors, has hurt economic growth. By reducing economic mobility, it is said to have inefficiently allocated talent. Similarly, outsize salaries in the financial sector are said to distort career decisions of college graduates. Inequality, others say, reduces worker motivation and happiness and social trust, which affect productivity. It lowers aggregate demand because the rich consume a lower percentage of their income and in ways that do not promote future growth. It reduces entrepreneurship by saddling college graduates with student debt.

These contentions make intuitive sense and are eminently plausible. The problem with most analyses of rising inequality is that they do not take the all-important step of actually examining the evidence. Such ad hoc hypotheses about inequality’s effects on growth are easy to spin. From the right, Edward Conard and others have just as plausibly argued that rising inequality gives people the incentives to take risks and work hard — elements crucial for robust economic growth; if it would induce more people to pursue Steve Jobs levels of innovation, maybe we need higher inequality still!

What does the evidence show? The liberal Center for American Progress recently released a report purporting to show how inequality hurts the economy. If the research on the link between inequality and growth persuasively showed a strong connection, you can be sure that the center would have trumpeted it. Here is what the authors, Heather Boushey and Adam S. Hersh, instead wrote:

"There is, of course, a rich literature on the relationship between inequality and growth. Although there are many conflicting views, there is ample evidence that inequality can, in fact, hurt growth under many circumstances. But this literature focuses mostly on the experience of developing countries, and its applicability to the challenges currently facing the United States is not entirely clear."

Widely cited research by I.M.F. economists — embraced by the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, in a speech in January and highlighted by Annie Lowrey in The New York Times this week — has this very problem of focusing primarily on developing countries. Inequality in dictatorships and oligarchies with mass poverty is a very different matter than inequality in rich democracies.

Indeed, research by Christopher Jencks of Harvard University looking at the experience of 12 developed countries over the past century indicates no relationship across those countries between the share of income received by the top 1 percent and economic growth rates. Since 1960, however, countries with higher inequality have experienced more growth. Boushey and Hersh do not cite Jencks’s study but nevertheless conclude that, “Ultimately, data and methodological issues mean that analyses are too imprecise to deliver definitive answers to this old and central question in economics research.”

Studies that look at some of the specific hypotheses mentioned above also are inconclusive or refute the idea that inequality is harmful to growth. Inequality does not appear to lead to financial crises. Its link to opportunity is highly questionable. The evidence that it distorts political outcomes is similarly thin and again based largely on developing countries.

It is not enough to construct arguments about why inequality might matter; in the end this is a question we can subject to empirical testing. The evidence does not give much reason to worry that inequality saps growth, or much reason to think that it increases it.

Authors

Scott Winship

Publication: New York Times

Brookings: Topics - U.S. Poverty

Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

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Alan Berube

Elizabeth Kneebone

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Progressives and the Safety Net

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A Poverty and Opportunity Agenda: What’s in Store for the Next Four Years

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New Ways to Promote Retirement Saving

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Inequality Is Not What We Imagine

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