Emotionally literate teachers help ensure educational equity for adolescent girls: Recent Episodes
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What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Auditing top-earning taxpayers generates more revenue than it costs Taxpayers in the 90th…
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What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Climate change will alter the geographic distribution of American workers and capital investment…
How are young people reshaping the consumer marketplace and what should this tell us about the political marketplace? Understanding a few key elements of their marketplace behavior may help us understand something about their political behavior as well. First, younger Americans live in a world of fragmented communications This year saw the folding of not…
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The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is America’s biggest and most significant national policy geared toward combating climate change. The legislation provides an estimated amount of $300 billion worth of subsidies over the next decade to stimulate a low-carbon transition and to onshore renewable energy manufacturing. While it is a significant achievement to bring renewable energy…
Pensions are an important component of total compensation for most employees but particularly for public school teachers. Teachers tend to have relatively low salaries but retirement benefits that are considerably more generous than in a typical private-sector 401(k) plan. Yet the risk facing teachers is that many teacher pension plans are significantly underfunded, placing their…
Persistently high levels of unemployment have emerged to become a key policy challenge in Nigeria. Between 2010 and 2018, the unemployment rate rose from 5 percent to 23 percent. Worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy is simply not generating enough jobs for labor entrants, particularly women and youth. In 2020, the national unemployment rate…
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Teachers and principals have long struggled to find effective ways to address and reduce student misbehavior—a challenge that has become more acute since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools across the country are reporting increased levels of misbehavior, including fights and more serious acts of violence. Educators largely attribute these increases in misbehavior to…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Poverty persistence in the US is stronger than in other high-income countries Using…
The recent increase in mortgage rates, which has made buying a house or borrowing against home equity more expensive, in part reflects a broad increase in rates on long-term U.S. Treasury securities. But the increase in 30-year fixed mortgage rates over the past year has been unusually large relative to rates on long-term Treasury securities,…
Former Vice President Mike Pence has chosen to run against the President he served for the Republican nomination for president. In all of American history we haven’t seen a vice president run directly against a president he served since Vice President Thomas Jefferson ran against President John Adams in the election of 1800.[1] In 1940,…
At the corner of North and Cecil Avenues in Central Baltimore sits the newly constructed home of a community-based organization, Roberta’s House, which provides mental health and grief counseling services to residents who may not otherwise get these much-needed services. The building represents a transformational investment designed to bring new life to a vacant block…
On May 31, 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech at GLOBSEC, a security conference organized by a think tank in the Slovak capital Bratislava, wherein he formalized his much-awaited opening to the East of Europe. Macron was once a proponent of rapprochement between Europe and Russia, much to the dismay of Central and…
By Dorothy Robyn
Last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced plans to convene a bipartisan commission to tackle federal spending more broadly once the debt-ceiling fight settles down. McCarthy likened it to the commission used to identify unneeded military bases as part of the Department of Defense’s Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, process. The Speaker’s proposal to convene a BRAC commission makes sense but not for the reason he suggests.
What is BRAC?The BRAC process was designed to give Members of Congress the political cover needed to support a desired action (multiple base closures) that would impose severe economic pain on a subset of communities. Congress authorized the use of the current process for the 1988 round of base closures, and it authorized four additional closure rounds in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 2005.
Two features of the BRAC process, which former Rep. Dick Armey of Texas is credited with devising, are key to its success. One is the independent commission, which reviews a set of recommendations that DOD puts forward following an elaborate internal review. The Commission can take individual bases off of DOD’s list. It can also add bases to the list, although that requires extra procedural steps and has been far less common.
The other key feature of BRAC is the requirement that the White House and Congress accept or reject the Commission’s recommendations in their entirety. By prohibiting the President and Members from taking individual bases off of the closure list, the BRAC process makes the Commission’s recommendations conditionally binding. The prohibition on cherry-picking also gives Members plausible deniability as to the outcome of the process.
BRAC is the solution to what economists call a “public good” problem. A round of base closures, like clean air or national security, is something that benefits everyone and that no one can be excluded from enjoying. The challenge with public goods is to pay for them. The BRAC process historically provided a politically palatable way to pay for this particular public good.
Why BRAC Isn’t Suited to Deficit Reduction While an independent commission could play a key role in federal deficit reduction, BRAC is not the right model, and Congress will never agree to the other features of the BRAC process that make it so effective.
The BRAC process works (or worked in the past) because two conditions are met when it comes to base closures. One, all of the players agree that an action (multiple closures) that will impose losses on the few is good for the many. Two, individual closure decisions are unrelated to any cross-cutting political or policy divisions in Congress, with local politics representing the only impediment.
By contrast, when it comes to the federal budget, there is no agreement among the players that a reduction in spending is desirable, and local politics is only one impediment to individual spending cuts, which often threaten the missions of federal agencies and the interests of cross-cutting groups. For this reason, just as with other contentious issues such as climate policy or immigration reform, it is exceedingly unlikely that Congress would authorize a BRAC-like process to address federal spending in the first place.
That said, there may be value in convening a bipartisan panel of outside experts to help identify potential budget cuts as well as tax increases that Congress and the Executive Branch could consider. This is different from the “appellate” role served by the BRAC commission, which reviews and tweaks judgments made by DOD, and the panel’s recommendations would be non-binding. But such a panel may respond to a need for expertise in finding deficit-reduction opportunities.
There is a history of non-BRAC-like commissions having been convened to tackle deficit reduction, and a few of them have produced results. Executive-led efforts such as Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative have also enjoyed considerable success. While the Speaker’s current timing, just before a presidential election, is problematic, early 2025, with the Trump Administration’s tax cuts due to expire in their entirety at the end of 2025, could be an ideal time to convene an independent commission or undertake an executive-led initiative.
Create a BRAC Commission — To Do BRACSpeaker McCarthy’s proposal is just the latest example of the BRAC process being seen — usually incorrectly — as a model for overcoming entrenched political opposition to policy change. For example, Members have introduced several bills authorizing a BRAC-style process to move valuable radio spectrum from federal control to commercial use.
The irony is that Congress continues to treat BRAC itself as a four-letter word. DOD avoids $7 billion in spending every year because of past base closures, making BRAC perhaps the most significant efficiency initiative the Pentagon has ever carried out. And in 2017, DOD determined that it still had 20 percent excess infrastructure. Despite that, beginning in 2012, Congress has repeatedly spurned DOD requests for new BRAC authority because of the opposition from lawmakers who don’t want to see bases closed in their states and districts.
Speaker McCarthy is on the right path in calling for an independent commission to address federal spending. But while BRAC is a poor model for the process of deficit reduction, reauthorization of BRAC could help Congress achieve the substance of its budget reduction target. If the Speaker’s commission is effective, its many recommendations will include the resumption of BRAC that DOD has long sought.
By Richard Lempert
Sometime in the next six weeks the Supreme Court will likely reveal its decisions in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFAI) v. President and Fellows of Harvard and SFAI v. University of North Carolina. Court watchers are almost unanimous that the Supreme Court majority will:
- read the 14th amendment as barring the use of racial preferences by public colleges and universities and
- interpret Section VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as similarly restricting race conscious admissions at any school receiving federal funds.
To achieve these outcomes a conservative majority will have to reject 40 years of a twice reaffirmed precedent as well as the likely intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment and of the Congress that enacted the Civil Rights Act. Given the leanings of six of the nine Supreme Court Justices and their prior rulings on race-related issues, neither of these jurisprudential principles is likely to matter.
Opponents expected to be celebrating affirmative action’s demise before now. In suits against the University of California Regents, the University of Michigan, and the University of Texas at Austin, they had Courts that leaned right, but in each case the most centrist of the conservative-leaning bloc refused to pull the trigger. Today the most centrist Justice, Chief Justice Roberts, is on racial matters well to the right of the Justices whose votes were pivotal in prior litigation. Moreover, his vote does not matter. The Court’s conservative wing now has 6 members, meaning there is no single swing vote.
Here are the most important cases leading up to the current litigation and a discussion of affirmative action’s educational impacts as I observed them while teaching at the University of Michigan.
DeFunis v. Odegaard: A Shot Over the BowDefunis was the first case challenging the constitutionality of racial preferences to reach the Court. It was dismissed as moot in 1974 because DeFunis, a University of Washington law school applicant, had been allowed to attend the school while he was suing it and was weeks from graduation by the time the Court’s opinion would issue. What surprised Court watchers was the view of Justice Douglas, perhaps the furthest left of the Court’s members and a staunch advocate for racial justice and equality throughout his career. In dissent, he emphasized the need for racial neutrality, leaving no doubt that he would have held the affirmative action plan at issue unconstitutional. Affirmative action has been on shaky ground ever since.
Bakke and Diversity: The Controlling RationaleIn 1978, a second case challenging the constitutionality of affirmative action reached the Supreme Court. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke established the precedent that for 45 years has allowed colleges and universities to engage in race-based affirmative action. The University of California at Davis medical school reserved 16% of its available places for applicants recommended by a special committee that reviewed applicants whose academic credentials were below, often substantially below, what the school ordinarily required for admission. Although whites could apply through that committee, no whites secured admission using this route. When the case reached the Supreme Court, four Justices favored striking down the program because it allowed for race-based preferences, while four Justices thought that the Davis Medical School could, consistent with the 14th Amendment, reserve a set number of places for minority applicants. Justice Powell, alone in the center, and with the support of four justices, ruled the Davis program’s numerical quota meant that the program could not withstand constitutional scrutiny. But he also wrote that creating racially diverse educational environments was a compelling state interest sufficient to overcome any constitutional bar on the consideration of race so long as race was only one among many factors that a school used in deciding whom to admit. He cited as a constitutional plan Harvard’s approach, which now seems destined for the Supreme Court chopping block. The four justices who would have held the Davis system constitutional agreed with Powell’s view that some use of race in college admissions systems was constitutionally permissible.
There was originally some dispute as to whether Powell’s idiosyncratic views were binding precedent since he wrote only for himself. However, this matter was resolved by later cases in which five justices endorsed his opinion. Interestingly, Justice Stevens, then only three years on the Court, was one of the four justices who would have voided the Davis plan. By the time he retired, he would have ruled the opposite way. Had he done so in Bakke, the diversity justification would not have been needed to justify an affirmative action plan’s constitutionality.
Following BakkeAfter Bakke, diversity became a nationwide justification for affirmative action. Diversity concerns, however, had little to do with the institution of affirmative action at the school where I taught. Social justice concerns and the virtue of erasing what we would today call “legacies of slavery” were the chief motivating factors. Some of my erstwhile colleagues might add “avoiding violent protests,” but I do not think this was ever an important reason. Consistent with Bakke, the avowed goal of the school’s affirmative action program became enhancing diversity, but this did not immediately change the school’s approach to affirmative action or the reasons why most faculty valued increased minority enrollments.
Over time, however, effects of the change in rationale became noticeable along with manifestations of diversity’s educational value. A student-run journal on race and law was established. Courses focusing on racial and equality issues were invented and taught. More minority scholars were invited to give talks. The already high pressure to hire a more racially diverse faculty increased. Without the demand fueled by the school’s minority group students, not nearly as much of this would have happened. More than minority group students benefitted. Students of all races enjoyed new offerings and opportunities. White students, along with Blacks and other affirmative action minorities served on the journal of race and law; whites along with Blacks and others attended talks by minority scholars; and several Black faculty were among the school’s most popular teachers. Affirmative action also meant that those minority students with LSAT scores and GPAs that were in the same range as those of most white and Asian admittees felt far less alone in the school’s corridors and classrooms, which was perhaps a reason they flourished.
I was also struck by the value of diversity in the classroom setting, I was, for example, teaching evidence to a class of 110 students when the O.J. Simpson trial was dominating headlines. The trial was a godsend to evidence teachers, and class discussion regularly referenced issues that emerged at trial. About 15% of the students in that class were Black. As in the larger population, views about Simpson’s guilt largely broke along color lines. There were, however, enough Black students in my class so that some Blacks believed Simpson was guilty and some whites believed otherwise. The diversity within races enhanced conversation. In particular, Black students’ arguing for O.J.’s guilt freed white students to express similar views without fear of being accused of racism.
A few white applicants also benefitted from the school’s diversity policies. One year, when I chaired the admissions committee, we admitted a Bangladeshi with over-the-top recommendations from people we trusted and also admitted a white American woman who was a single parent, had worked as a waitress, returned later to college and achieved a 4.0 grade average. But the Bangladeshi had undergraduate grades and the woman an LSAT score which were considerably below the range of most admitted applicants. Each, however, had a history of accomplishments attained and obstacles overcome so different from those of most applicants that we wanted them at Michigan. I expect neither would have succeeded had Bakke not sensitized us to the value of diversity in assembling a law school class.
United Steelworkers v. Weber: The Force of IronyA year after Bakke, an affirmative action issue in the employment context reached the Supreme Court. The Steelworkers case, the last unequivocal high court victory for affirmative action, grew out of an in-plant craft training program established to compensate for a history in which the union with rare exceptions excluded Black workers from craft training whatever their competencies. To rectify this situation, the union and management agreed to reserve 50% of future craft training slots for Blacks until their numbers reached what they might have been absent past discrimination. A white worker sued claiming that, but for the agreement, his seniority would have ensured him a slot. The heart of the dispute is encapsulated in dueling footnotes by Justice Brennan, who wrote the majority opinion, and Justice Rehnquist, who dissented. Brennan wrote:
“It would be ironic indeed if a law triggered by a Nation’s concern over centuries of racial injustice and intended to improve the lot of those who had ‘been excluded from the American dream for so long’ … constituted the first legislative prohibition of all voluntary, private, race conscious efforts to abolish traditional patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy.”
Rehnquist responded, “I see no irony in a law that prohibits all voluntary racial discrimination, even discrimination directed at whites in favor of Blacks. The evil inherent in discrimination against Negroes is that it is based on an immutable characteristic, utterly irrelevant to employment decisions.
The attractiveness of Rehnquist’s argument is obvious. His second sentence, applicable not just in the employment context, is what I grew up believing in the 1950s. Civil rights leaders taught this message, and it resonated when Black people were being denied the opportunity to attend schools with whites, were forced to sit in the back of busses, and were denied the right to vote. Weber arose at a different time, when color blindness could be wielded as a tool to institutionalize race-associated disadvantages that civil rights advocates of the ‘50s had hoped legal change would eliminate.
The irony that guided Brennan’s analysis is that Rehnquist’s rhetoric, reduced to its essence, is a claim made by a member of the dominant white majority that draws its apparent moral force from the nation’s collective horror at centuries of oppressing Black people deployed to outlaw programs aimed at overcoming legacies of that horror. Cases decided since Weber make it clear that there is little chance that the current Supreme Court majority will consider much less pay heed to that irony. Moreover, the attractiveness of color blindness in the abstract leads many people to oppose racial preferences, including some who might benefit from them. We do not, however, live in the abstract. The continuing costs of institutionalized racism, both implicit and overt, have been well documented.
Grutter v. Bollinger, and What FollowedAffirmative action’s opponents made several attempts to seek reconsideration of Bakke in the years following that decision. They came closest to success in 1996 in Hopwood v. Texas, a case brought by white students who had failed to gain admission to the University of Texas Law School. In Hopwood, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, heartened by a number of Supreme Court decisions limiting attention to race in governmental decision making, declined to follow Bakke, and the Supreme Court denied review. For seven years, until 2003 when Hopwood was reversed by Grutter, race-based academic admissions was barred in the states of the Fifth Circuit: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Grutter, which challenged the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions process and its companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger, which attacked the undergraduate school’s admissions process, were the next significant cases. The Supreme Court, with Justice O’Connor writing for the Court in Grutter and Chief Justice Rehnquist, who dissented in Grutter, writing in Gratz, upheld the law school’s admissions procedures but rejected the undergraduate school’s approach. The difference was that the law school had designed its system specifically to be Bakke compliant (a committee I chaired drafted the policy). It looked holistically at competing applicants. The undergraduate school, which received a far larger number of applications, relied on a system that gave points to applicants based on numerous factors, including minority status. The Court faulted the latter approach for ignoring individual characteristics and held that it was not sufficiently narrowly tailored to survive the “strict scrutiny” standard for evaluating racial categorizations under the Fourteenth Amendment. The split decision in the Bollinger cases caused no joy among those opposed to affirmative action. It meant that racial preferences in college admissions had survived.
Although Grutter is a reasonably straight-forward application of Powell’s opinion in Bakke, it has wrinkles worth noting. Justice O’Connor, whose vote decided the case, emphasized the importance of diversity not just in the university but in spheres of social life. She appeared to have been particularly influenced by amicus briefs submitted by military and business leaders, which argued that the availability of well-educated, racially diverse college graduates was essential to their organizational performance. Before Grutter, the idea that diversity was sufficient to constitute a compelling state interest was only one Justice’s view. Grutter made it Supreme Court precedent, with five Justices endorsing Powell’s position.
Moreover, while recognizing the value of diversity, Justice O’Connor declared that “[R]ace-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time” so as to ensure “all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary measure.” She cautioned that colleges and universities should continually reassess their admissions policies to see whether changed circumstances allowed schools to maintain diversity without affirmative action, and she expressed the expectation “that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to [achieve diversity].” Although some have seen in this language a mandate to terminate race-conscious admissions by 2028, O’Connor was expressing an expectation. Read literally she rested the termination of affirmative action on changed circumstances. One commentator has suggested that the current Court’s legitimacy maximizing option is to avoid overruling Bakke by endorsing O’Connor’s termination deadline and making it a mandate. I don’t see this happening. The Court’s conservative majority seems eager to declare race-conscious admissions dead as a matter of principle. For them race-based admissions have always been unconstitutional.
The final cases in the path to the Harvard and North Carolina cases involve a suit by Abigail Fisher challenging the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race-conscious admissions. The suit led to two Supreme Court decisions, each following a victory for the University in the Fifth Circuit court of appeals. After the first appeal, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the court of appeals suggesting that that court had not engaged in strict enough scrutiny. When the appellate court reaffirmed its earlier holding, the Supreme Court felt compelled to reach the merits. Hence Fisher II.
When the Court decided Fisher II, in 2016, one seat was vacant (Justice Scalia’s), and Justice Kagan had recused herself probably because before joining the Court, she had had a role in the Fisher I litigation as U.S. Solicitor General. Justice Kennedy was the swing vote in a 4-3 decision affirming the decision below. His opinion deals mainly with issues peculiar to the University of Texas admissions system. What it adds to prior precedent is mainly a reaffirmation of the notion that promoting diversity is a compelling state interest.
ConclusionAlmost from the start, race-based affirmative has divided the Court as it has divided the nation. Key decisions have been decided by single justice majorities, with the swing Justice being the one closest to the center on the most politicized issues the Court addresses. The situation was not a heathy one, hinging as it did on one Justice’s views.
We see its effects in Bakke, which allowed affirmative action to continue while foreclosing most arguments that might have been made in its favor, thus pretermitting much that merits discussion. By the time of Bakke it was perhaps too late for a discussion of what the 14th Amendment’s framers intended with respect to racial preferences, but Justice Marshall made such an argument, which Justice Powell rejected, as he did issues of social justice.
One might fairly ask, why in a society where race-based biases, both implicit and explicit, hamper the life chances of Black and brown people more than others, do social justice concerns have nothing to say about the constitutionality of affirmative action? The situation is similar with respect to extended social benefits. Data show, for example, that minority lawyers are considerably more likely to serve minority clients than are white lawyers, and minority doctors are more likely to serve sick and injured minorities than are white doctors. Yet law schools and medical schools are unable to defend the constitutionality of racial admissions preferences by referencing such data. This is another path that Bakke barred.
Nonetheless the Justices appear poised to outlaw affirmative action. What the current Court majority cannot do is erase the benefits that have accrued to minorities in the half century that the nation has lived with affirmative action. We may not be at the point that Justice O’Connor envisioned, a point where colleges and universities enjoyed the full benefits of racial diversity without affirmative action. However, due in part to affirmative action, we have taken significant steps in that direction.
By Katharine Meyer
Is college worth it? The public is increasingly skeptical. A Wall Street Journal/NORC poll this year found 56% of adults said a four-year college was “not worth the cost,” up from 40% in 2013. This perception is perhaps unsurprising given rising media and political attention to the negative consequences of student loan debt. The labor force is also relatively strong, even for workers with no college experience, making it costlier to pause or defer employment. Political discourse around college (and education broadly) has also become more partisan, with Republicans becoming increasingly skeptical around the value of college.
However, on average, college completion still pays off. College graduates earn more, experience lower unemployment, pay more in taxes, and are less likely to engage in criminal behavior. College graduates overwhelmingly believe college was a good personal investment. Despite these benefits, college enrollment has declined for years, with more dramatic drops since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This post examines the root causes of declining enrollment and what policies can effectively encourage college enrollment.
College enrollment declines have accelerated since pandemicInsights from the National Student Clearinghouse paint a grim picture. Overall enrollment is down, especially at community colleges. Undergraduate completion fell for the first time in ten years. There are more “stopped out” students—students who left college with some credits but no degree. Fewer students are transferring from two-year to four-year institutions.
The biggest declines happened in fall 2020 as first-time enrollment decreased about 10% and overall enrollment fell 2.5% and have since slowed. However, even prior to the pandemic, enrollment was declining. From 2010 to 2021, undergraduate enrollment dropped by 15%, translating into about 2.6 million fewer students. About 58% of that decline occurred over the decade prior to the pandemic, with about 42% of the total enrollment decline occurring between fall 2019 and fall 2021. In the shorter-term, from fall 2017 to fall 2019, 41 states experienced a decline in undergraduate enrollment and only six states had a meaningful increase (more than 2%).
Interestingly, state-level post-pandemic enrollment shifts align with pre-pandemic enrollment trends, as shown in Figure 1. States with pre-pandemic enrollment growth (dark blue) have had had relatively steady enrollment since the pandemic started. In states with large (more than a 5%) declines pre-pandemic, enrollment declined on average by 7.9% from fall 2019 to fall 2022 (dark orange). Enrollment recovery efforts must focus not only on pandemic-induced education shifts but also on these longer-term trends and state-specific patterns.
Variation in college enrollment trendsAt the individual level, some students may eschew college for promising labor market opportunities. But we would be particularly concerned as a society if the short-term costs of college, inequities in college preparation, or the perception that college is not a good fit resulted in racial, socioeconomic, or gender differences in college enrollment that then affected the diversity and economic wellbeing of the workforce.
The recent National Center for Education Statistics Condition of Education highlights concerning gaps in college enrollment by sex. In fall 2021, 70% of female high school graduates immediately enrolled in college, compared to 55% of male students. This is a marked increase in the college enrollment gap by sex that erased any gains in parity over the past decade. Research by Brookings colleagues shows there are already large gaps in high school graduation rates by sex overall and within race, with the recent NCES data showing those gaps in educational attainment only widen further after high school.
Understanding which students were most impacted by enrollment declines is the first step to engaging in targeted recovery efforts. Figure 2 examines undergraduate enrollment changes by race, ethnicity, immigration status, and gender. In the blue bars, I show the percent change between fall 2017 and fall 2019, and in the orange bars I show the percent change between fall 2019 and fall 2021.
Pre-pandemic, enrollment grew among Asian and Hispanic men and women as well as those indicating two or more races but declined for other groups. Fall 2021 enrollment was below fall 2019 for nearly every group. Declines were less steep for women, with fall 2021 enrollment down 4.9%, compared to an 8.2% decline for men. This pattern holds within each race but varies in magnitude. The largest gaps are between American Indian/Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander men and women—for example, almost the same number of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander women enrolled in college in fall 2021 compared to fall 2019, but for men enrollment declined 11.5%. The largest pandemic-era enrollment declines were for nonresident alien men (18.6%) and women (15.5%), with much of those declines likely attributable to COVID-era global migration policies and preferences.
College enrollment efforts must go beyond high schoolersPart of the longer-term decline in initial college enrollment is due to declines in the youth population. Successful efforts to improve post-high school college access include expanding early college and career technical education as well as investments in financial aid, but bolstering overall college enrollment numbers will require thinking beyond recent high school graduates.
One potential pool of new enrollees is adult workers who haven’t previously attempted college. Older enrollees often start their postsecondary education in noncredit programs or short-term credentials. There can be variation in the labor market returns to those credentials, but workers who use these programs as a launchpad for stacking credentials—or those completing programs with close partnerships with the local labor market—can experience significant wage benefits.
Another group of potential college enrollees is students who have attempted some college but have not earned a credential. As of July 2021, 40.4 million individuals had “stopped out” of postsecondary education. Many of those students have accumulated a substantial number of credits. For example, one third have completed at least three quarters of their degree requirements. Re-enrollment rates are low —9% of recent stop-outs re-enrolled for the 2021-22 academic year. Persistence a year after re-enrollment varies substantially by school type, from 71% of students who re-enroll at four-year institutions to 57% of re-enrollers at community colleges.
Cost remains key barrier—and solution—to enrollmentThe annual State of Higher Education report from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found that 47% of adults who aren’t currently in college, including 61% of stopped-out students, have thought about enrolling in the past few years. What drives the college enrollment intention-action gap? The top reported barriers to enrollment related to cost—whether that was 55% of prospective students citing cost of the program, 45% mentioning inflation, or 38% noting the need to work and the opportunity cost of enrolling.
While many financial aid programs target traditionally aged enrollees, there have been more state aid programs targeting older enrollees and re-enrollment, such as the Tennessee Reconnect promise scholarship.
Pandemic-induced unemployment prompted states to make temporary adjustments to eligibility criteria for financial aid programs targeting older workers, such as waiving requirements to be first-time students or waiving requirements for individuals that have not previously earned a postsecondary credential. States should incorporate those waivers into their permanent aid programs. Further, while many “reconnect” programs target individuals who are 24 or older with a focus on career development, lowering the age of eligibility (as Michigan recently did) could expand aid to the large share of 20 to 24-year-olds who didn’t start college (particularly those who would have enrolled in community colleges) during the pandemic.
Expanding financial aid is an important first step. However, older workers also do not benefit from access to high school counselors and other efforts to support financial aid access. States and colleges must engage in informational efforts to raise awareness of financial aid programs, which likely involves partnerships with local employers and other state benefits systems, such as unemployment insurance offices. And direct costs are not the only barriers to enrollment. For example, the Gallup/Lumina poll found currently unenrolled Black and Hispanic adults were more interested in going back to school than white counterparts but were more likely to identify mental health or childcare/kinship care responsibilities as barriers to enrollment—more investments are needed to address these concerns and to build a student support system that works for all students.
States need to continue promoting and supporting college enrollment, even as they work to reform higher education. For example, there are real concerns with the structure of U.S. student loans and particularly racial inequities in debt. Students also need clearer guidance on the value of a given program before they enroll. However, there must be a balance between giving serious policy attention to reforming higher education while simultaneously emphasizing that for most students, a postsecondary credential pays off. Individuals and society benefit from college enrollment and completion, and recovery from pandemic-induced enrollment drops should continue to be a core policy focus for states and federal actors in the years to come.
By Darrell M. West, Sarah M.L. Bender
As the United States approaches the upcoming 2024 elections, the American political climate is charged with heightened tensions. The electorate remains deeply polarized, and both Democrats and Republicans face various challenges as they navigate this crucial period known as the “invisible primary.” Stakes are high for both parties with President Biden seeking a second term in the face of low approval ratings and Republicans seeking to reverse their fortunes after a disappointing midterm performance.
Among the subjects that have raised considerable concern is the rise of generative AI. This innovative tool utilizes advancements in artificial intelligence to generate images, videos, written responses, software, and more. Recently, the Republican National Committee employed generative AI to create an advertisement that criticizes President Biden, suggesting that his potential reelection would lead to a dystopian future for the United States. As a result, observers are curious about the impact of this technology on the 2024 election and public perceptions of the candidates.
To delve into these concerns, Darrell West is joined by Sarah Bender, a JD candidate at the University of Michigan, who has extensively studied AI and its implications for election administration. In this episode of the TechTank podcast, they explore the potential transformative effects of AI on future elections. Listen to the episode and more from the TechTank podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.
By Anjali Adukia, Alex Eble, Emileigh Harrison
Children learn from the books they encounter in their homes, schools, and libraries. The lessons they take from these books shape their beliefs and the future selves they will grow into. These lessons come from many dimensions of books; one such dimension which is particularly salient to the reader is who is and is not present in each picture and passage. The presence or absence of different characters teaches children societal norms about who gets to exist in what spaces. This matters for the children themselves—shaping their beliefs about themselves and their place in the world—but may also help shape their views of what spaces others of different identities may inhabit.
The problem is that it is hard to know, systematically, how race and gender are represented in the books we use to teach our children. Parents and teachers cannot possibly read every available book before they choose which books to give or suggest to their children or students, much less librarians, superintendents, or policymakers. These actors face a dauntingly large number of choices and often turn to external sources for help. A common source many look to for such guidance is endorsement of merit by a third party, such as recognition from national awards like the Caldecott and Newbery Medals. Indeed, our analysis of book purchases, library checkouts, and internet searches shows that winning these awards leads to a substantial increase in the number of children who read them. This then raises the questions: What messages about race and gender do these specific books convey, via representation, to the children who read them? And how can we measure similar representation in the other content considered for children’s use?
Using computer vision and natural language processing to measure representation in children’s booksThis is where we come in. Our solution, which we describe in a paper forthcoming in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, is to use computers—specifically tools from the computer science subfields of computer vision and natural language processing—to measure representation in children’s books. Our approach develops a series of new tools, and combines them with other existing tools, to measure various features, including race, skin tone, gender, and age, of who is represented in the images and text of curricular materials. These tools are powerful and can measure many possible features of characters. We focus on bringing together tools that can measure the representation of these features of characters in both the text and the images of the books we wish to study.
Our analysis shows that these tools can be rapidly and cost-effectively applied to a wide range of curricular materials. They allow us to quickly and cheaply measure if and how people are represented in a large number of books.
We apply these tools to over 1,000 children’s books which have been recognized by a century of children’s book awards. Our analysis focuses on two main sets of books targeted towards children 14 and under. One set receives recognition for their literary or artistic value. These are books that are recognized by the prestigious Newbery and Caldecott awards. We call this the “Mainstream” collection of books because of their influence. The second set of books are recognized for both their literary or artistic value and for how they highlight experiences of specific identity groups. These include awards such as the Coretta Scott King Award, which highlights books centering experiences of Black individuals, and the Rise Awards which recognize books that center women. We call the books in this group the “Diversity” collection.
Despite significant progress, representations of race and gender in children’s books continue to lagWe first show how race and gender have been taught to children via these books’ images and text, and how this has changed over time. Our findings reveal some enduring patterns and others that indicate change. We find that characters in the Mainstream collection are consistently depicted with lighter skin than those in the Diversity collection. You can see how the two distributions vary in this figure: the Diversity collection, outlined in blue, clearly has a darker average skin tone than the Mainstream (see Figure 1). What’s more, it also has more variance—and thus diversity—of skin tones represented than the Mainstream collection.
Figure 1. Distribution of skin colors by human skin colors in Mainstream and Diversity collections in children’s literature
Note: This figure shows the distribution of skin color tint for faces detected in books from the Mainstream and Diversity collections. The mean for each distribution is denoted with a dashed line.
Source: Author’s calculations. See paper for additional details.
In Figure 2, we show that this difference between the two collections holds true even after conditioning on the race of the person being shown.
Figure 2. Distribution of skin colors by human skin colors in Mainstream and Diversity collections in children’s literature by character’s race
Note: This figure shows the distribution of skin color tint by the predicted race of the detected faces in the Mainstream and Diversity collections.
Source: Author’s calculations. See paper for additional details.
In other results, we show that children are more likely than adults to be shown with lighter skin, despite there being no definitive biological foundation for this that we are aware of. In other words, lighter-skinned children see themselves represented more often than do darker-skinned children. This result, unlike those previously, holds for both collections. That is, even in books recognized for highlighting the experiences of Black children, darker-skinned children are less likely to see themselves represented.
Moving from skin color to race, we also find that in both collections, Black and Latino people have been underrepresented in these books, relative to their share of the U.S. population, corroborating prior work on the representation of race in smaller subsets of these collections of books. Our analysis of gender shows that, again in both collections, females are also less likely than males to be present in these books, despite equal population shares. Digging deeper, we compare how often females appear in images, as compared to in text. We find that females are consistently more likely to be visualized (seen) in images than mentioned (heard) in the text, which suggests more symbolic inclusion in pictures more than substantive inclusion in the actual story. Figure 3 below plots this result.
Figure 3. Female representation in images and text of children’s books
Note: This figure plots collection-by-decade average percentages of female representation in images (on the y-axis) and female representation in text (on the x-axis). This enables a comparison between the proportion of females represented in the images and the proportion of females represented in the text of the children’s books in our sample.
Source: Author’s calculations. See paper for additional details.
Over time, however, the patterns show signs of change. As time progresses, both collections of books include more characters with darker skin tones. Further, over the period we study, the representation of both race and gender trend closer to equality, though neither ever reach proportional representation, relative to the larger population.
Our paper then analyzes separate data on the checkouts of books in libraries and purchases of books by households to better understand what shapes who consumes different types of children’s books. We find that people tend to buy books that contain characters who share their gender and racial identities. Yet books centering many historically minoritized identities are either more scarce than other books, more expensive, or both. This suggests that greater provision of—and access to—books representing a more diverse range of identities than is currently available would fill a clear and desired need in the market. We also find that the content of books that people in a given area purchase are correlated with the political leanings of a community: in areas where progressive views are more common, people consume books with a more diverse range of identities represented than in areas where conservative views prevail.
Conclusion and implicationsThis research investigates who is represented; in other work, we also investigate how people are represented in children’s books. In these analyses, we show that the manner in which people are represented to children often reproduces societal norms and disparities. We see, for example, that females are more likely to be described relative to their appearance and roles in the family, while males are more likely to be described relative to their competence and roles in business. A century ago, we see a substantial gap between the sentiment, or overall positive feelings, associated with females and males—with males being shown in substantially more positive terms. Over time, however, this difference narrowed and is no longer detectable in books published today. We find similar disparities in the representation of race. For example, Black people, and Black women in particular, are more likely than white people to be mentioned in passages with more negative sentiment. While this gap, too, has lessened over time, in many contemporary stories we still find more negative sentiment associated with Black individuals than others.
Prior research has shown that the content of books can shape children’s beliefs, performance in school, and ultimately the adults they become. Our analysis shows that the representation of characters in books—and in award-winning, highly visible children’s books in particular—conveys important messages about how society values people by their race and gender. These messages trend towards equality over time, but even in many books published today, they still send the message that white people and males are the most visible and thus the most important members of society. This finding highlights some potential harms to children from recent political conflicts over critical race theory and the efforts to ban certain books that have sprung from these conflicts. It also underscores the important work that librarians, teachers, and parents play in building out school and home libraries with content showing a diversity of representation. These efforts can help ensure we teach children that all people can inhabit the many rich potential futures that await them.
By Elaine Kamarck
So here we are, eight months before any votes are cast in the race for the Republican nomination and by most standards—polling, name recognition—Donald Trump is set to win it again.
So why are so many Republicans lining up to challenge the former president? Some of them are longshots with money to burn, but others are well-known elected officials with experience, money, and a reasonable story for why they should be president. Last week, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) joined the race and soon we expect former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to join along with former Vice President Mike Pence.
A few months ago, I helped create the now conventional wisdom which says that a large field of challengers will help Trump because the Republican winner-take-all or winner-take-most delegate selection rules are tailor made for a candidate who holds a solid base among primary voters and who can wrack up a series of plurality wins.
But the conventional wisdom overlooks an important caveat—for Trump to win, he has to win early, and the field of candidates has to be large and stay large after Super Tuesday 2024.
Here’s why.
The race for a presidential nomination takes place in three stages. We’re in stage one right now: the so-called “invisible primary.” This stage lasts from the spring of 2023 until the first votes are cast. During the invisible primary, a lot of important things happen. Candidates raise money, they build campaign staffs, they hone their appeals to the party faithful. And a lot of early conclusions are drawn–often incorrectly. Frequently, the candidate with widespread name identification is the “winner” of these early polls and goes on to win the nomination.[1] By most measures, Trump is winning the invisible primary, which is good news for him.
However, he is not home free. Trump is not your ordinary front runner. He has been indicted and may face more indictments before the Republican convention next summer. He has doggedly stuck to cultivating his base, which, while intense and loyal, is not likely to carry him in a general election. While he is loved, he is also hated, meaning that he will certainly have problems in the general election.
So, onto stage two of the process—the early primaries. This stage runs from late January or early February 2024 to March 4, 2024, or whenever the day before the Super Tuesday is. In 2024, the early primary stage will (on the Republican side) consist of four states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. These four small states have very few delegates. In fact, out of the approximately 1,234 delegates, someone will need to win the Republican nomination. These states in total account for 138 delegates or only 11% of the total needed to win.[2]
During this short period of time, perhaps only five or six weeks, Trump will be most at risk. In these weeks someone needs to take the nomination away from him. This could happen if he performs below expectations. Many a frontrunner has stumbled in these states. As far back as 1968, President Lyndon Johnson won the New Hampshire primary with 48% of the vote but Sen. Gene McCarthy (D-MN) won a sizeable enough percentage of the vote (42%) that a few weeks later, Johnson decided not to run again. More recently, Hillary Clinton’s supposed juggernaut to the nomination was upset by a young African American senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, whose surprising win in the nearly all-white Iowa Caucuses of 2008 turned the nomination into a long race which Clinton ultimately lost. In these early contests, someone can catch fire, and when they do, they acquire that most valuable of presidential primary assets: momentum. But if Trump wins in the early contests, a few candidates may stick around to split up the anti-Trump vote, as happened in 2016, and that will help him win.
That brings us to stage three of the nominating process. What makes stage three so critical is that it is a three-month race for delegates and one in which candidates have to be able to compete in 46 states with different types of systems. Momentum is worth more than money as billionaires Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg discovered in 2020. Stage three begins in the first week of March and continues on until the first or second week of June. During this period, candidates will trade the retail campaigning of the early states to participate in a mad dash around the country from TV studios and radio stations. If someone other than Trump catches fire, they will amass large sums of money thanks to internet fundraising and the kind of free press—momentum—that is manna from heaven for a campaign. If stage three features a one-on-one race between Trump and some new fresh face, Trump could very well lose the delegate race.
This requires, however, that the candidates that falter in the early states get out of the race. In 2016, that didn’t happen. The current conventional wisdom that says a large field helps Trump is based on a scenario where all candidates stay in the race, thus allowing Trump to be a plurality winner. However, some Republicans are harkening back not to 2016 but to the 2020 Democratic race where, in a fast-paced weekend between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday, most of Biden’s opponents dropped out of the race, allowing him a one-on-one contest with Bernie Sanders, which he won handily.
If Trump falters in stage two and finds himself facing one strong opponent, he could be defeated in stage three. In spite of his strong showings in polls of Republican voters, a recent CNN poll found that “…wide swaths of Republican-aligned voters are willing to consider either of the two, [Trump or DeSantis] as well as several other candidates.” A recent Washington Post poll found that Republican voters were not very focused on electability, which would seem to favor Trump. However, “electability” matters in primary elections and many a voter has voted their head over their heart in order to beat the other party. It was the electability issue which catapulted Biden from “dead man walking” to Democratic nominee in just 72 hours in March of 2023.
So, while the safe bet right now is on Trump—what happens in the early primaries will determine whether his path to the nomination will be straightforward or not. In June of 2015, the Republican frontrunner was Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and look what happened to him—he did poorly in the first three contests and never even made it to Super Tuesday.
Footnotes:
[1] For more information see Party Animal: The Front-Runner in the Presidential Invisible Primary. (Back to top)
[2] Estimates of total delegates are early but not likely to change the overall percentage. (Back to top)
By Timothy J. Bartik, Aaron Sojourner, Kathleen Bolter
The United States has long struggled with the challenge of providing quality, affordable child care for working parents. Recent proposed investments in the “care economy”—part of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda—were left on the congressional cutting room floor. Despite this setback, the administration continues to take steps to address the issue through executive action, as our Brookings Metro colleague Molly Kinder observed recently.
This spring, the Biden administration, through the Department of Commerce, asked semiconductor manufacturers vying for a share of the $39 billion in incentives from the CHIPS and Science Act to include a strategy for workers to access affordable and high-quality child care services. While such actions will not alone buttress a care system that many argue is in crisis, the door has been opened for state and local policymakers, in partnership with employers, to try innovative policies that provide support to families in need.
In today’s modern industrial economy, reliable, affordable, high-quality child care is both a necessity and a mutually beneficial policy for workers, businesses, governments, and children. Workers benefit from higher earnings and a more equitable labor market. Businesses benefit from reduced employee turnover and absenteeism, increased worker productivity, and a larger pool of qualified job applicants. Governments benefit from the increased earning potential of children who attend high-quality day cares as well as an increased rate of parental labor force participation. Most importantly, children benefit by having a safe and supportive environment during the workday.
Yet despite these benefits, even before the pandemic, the child care system in the United States was falling apart. Today it is in even worse shape, putting undue pressure on parents—particularly mothers—who too often must choose between managing unreliable care arrangements while working or leaving the labor force altogether. Conservative estimates suggest that the nation’s inadequate child care system results in an annual loss of $122 billion in earnings and productivity—and that’s solely for parents of infants and toddlers.
Child care workers continue to be some of the lowest-paid professionals and often lack health care and retirement benefits. They earn less per hour than parking lot attendants and animal caretakers. Without concerted efforts to improve the quality and compensation of these jobs, the root causes that have led to a shortage of child care workers will not be addressed.
But paying child care workers more and providing them better benefits is a difficult proposition if parents and guardians are expected to shoulder the full cost. Across the country, the cost of center-based child care is higher than the cost of in-state tuition at a public four-year university. High-quality centers generally cost even more. The Department of Health and Human Services defines “affordable child care” as costing less than 7% of income; however, recent surveys have found that more than half of families spend 20% or their income or more on child care.
Finding solutions to such a widespread problem requires an ambitious approach. The incentives provided to employers and the new regulations introduced by the Commerce Department in implementing the CHIPS and Science Act could serve as the catalyst for implementing such an approach.
The Commerce Department guidelines afford a high degree of flexibility for semiconductor companies and the localities hosting them to develop proposals to receive federal incentives. This creates both risks and opportunities The risks primarily stem from individual companies trying to go it alone—if they create or run their own child care centers, they could potentially harm other businesses and workers by luring workers away from already understaffed and financially strained centers.
Better solutions exist, but they require a coordinated approach involving employers, economic development professionals, workforce developers, educators, and child care businesses. Such solutions involve leveraging state and local governments as partners to direct funds to communities and enable them to offer more, higher-quality, and affordable care to all families.
One solution that grant-seeking employers can implement is to enter into community benefits agreements, which articulate specific strategies for maximizing and sharing the benefits of public subsidies. For example, the Commerce Department might look favorably upon semiconductor manufacturers that propose contributing to community-wide funds for child care, which would go beyond merely assisting their own workers. Community benefits agreements could also be used to support supply-building efforts. For instance, Minnesota’s Child Care Wayfinder program identifies aspiring providers and helps them navigate the business and regulatory process to start new care businesses or expand existing ones. Other community benefits agreements, such as First Children’s Finance and the Illinois Facilities Fund, focus on helping providers excel through financing and operational success.
In their attempt to leverage semiconductor incentives to build broader industry clusters, state and local governments could also provide additional and sustainable funding for better child care for the entire community. One such mechanism to accomplish this goal is the creation of tax increment financing (TIF) districts, in which a portion of the increased property tax or other revenue in a designated local cluster pays for needed infrastructure improvements, including constructing child care centers accessible to all community members. In some states, it could also be used to expand education and training for child care workers.
Furthermore, state and local governments might also expand models like Michigan’s MI Tri-Share program, in which the cost of child care is divided between eligible employees, employers, and the state. The program is facilitated by hubs that operate out of local community partners, such as child care-focused nonprofits and economic development organizations that alleviate administrative burdens between employers, employees, and child care businesses. The hubs help employers identify employees who are eligible for the program, work with those employees to find licensed child care businesses, and collect payments from employers, employees, and the state to pay those businesses in a timely manner. Under this system, the cost of providing high-quality child care is distributed more broadly within the community, providing a stable source of funding for child care businesses.
The semiconductor incentives outlined in the CHIPS and Science Act were meant to support thriving national and local economies. A variety of functional systems—including local child care, K-12 education, transportation, and housing—are important components of thriving economies. Leveraging this federal investment to enhance support for child care for all workers in a community can ensure that the growth in semiconductor manufacturing will also result in inclusive growth for all of a community’s population.
By Nicol Turner Lee, Niam Yaraghi, Mark MacCarthy, Tom Wheeler
We are living in a time of unprecedented advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI), which are AI systems that can generate a wide range of content, such as text or images. The release of ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model (LLM), in November 2022 ushered generative AI into the public consciousness, and other companies like Google and Microsoft have been equally busy creating new opportunities to leverage the technology. In the meantime, these continuing advancements and applications of generative AI have raised important questions about how the technology will affect the labor market, how its use of training data implicates intellectual property rights, and what shape government regulation of this industry should take. Last week, a congressional hearing with key industry leaders suggested an openness to AI regulation—something that legislators have already considered to reign in some of the potential negative consequences of generative AI and AI more broadly. Considering these developments, scholars across the Center for Technology Innovation (CTI) weighed in around the halls on what the regulation of generative AI should look like.
NICOL TURNER LEE (@DrTurnerLee)
Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Technology Innovation:
Regulation of Generative AI Could Start with Good Consumer DisclosuresGenerative AI refers to machine learning algorithms that can create new content like audio, code, images, text, simulations, or even videos. More recent focus has been on its enablement of chatbots, including ChatGPT, Bard, Copilot, and other more sophisticated tools that leverage LLMs to perform a variety of functions, like gathering research for assignments, compiling legal case files, automating repetitive clerical tasks, or improving online search. While debates around regulation are focused on the potential downsides to generative AI, including the quality of datasets, unethical applications, racial or gender bias, workforce implications, and greater erosion of democratic processes due to technological manipulation by bad actors, the upsides include a dramatic spike in efficiency and productivity as the technology improves and simplifies certain processes and decisions like streamlining physician processing of medical notes, or helping educators teach critical thinking skills. There will be a lot to discuss around generative AI’s ultimate value and consequence to society, and if Congress continues to operate at a very slow pace to regulate emerging technologies and institute a federal privacy standard, generative AI will become more technically advanced and deeply embedded in society. But where Congress could garner a very quick win on the regulatory front is to require consumer disclosures when AI-generated content is in use and add labeling or some type of multi-stakeholder certification process to encourage improved transparency and accountability for existing and future use cases.
Once again, the European Union is already leading the way on this. In its most recent AI Act, the EU requires that AI-generated content be disclosed to consumers to prevent copyright infringement, illegal content, and other malfeasance related to end-user lack of understanding about these systems. As more chatbots mine, analyze, and present content in accessible ways for users, findings are often not attributable to any one or multiple sources, and despite some permissions of content use granted under the fair use doctrine in the U.S. that protects copyright-protected work, consumers are often left in the dark around the generation and explanation of the process and results.
Congress should prioritize consumer protection in future regulation, and work to create agile policies that are futureproofed to adapt to emerging consumer and societal harms—starting with immediate safeguards for users before they are left to, once again, fend for themselves as subjects of highly digitized products and services. The EU may honestly be onto something with the disclosure requirement, and the U.S. could further contextualize its application vis-à-vis existing models that do the same, including the labeling guidance of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or what I have proposed in prior research: an adaptation of the Energy Star Rating system to AI. Bringing more transparency and accountability to these systems must be central to any regulatory framework, and beginning with smaller bites of a big apple might be a first stab for policymakers.
NIAM YARAGHI (@niamyaraghi)
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Technology Innovation:
Revisiting HIPAA and Health Information Blocking Rules: Balancing Privacy and Interoperability in the Age of AIWith the emergence of sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) advancements, including large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, and LLM-powered applications like ChatGPT, there is a pressing need to revisit healthcare privacy protections. At their core, all AI innovations utilize sophisticated statistical techniques to discern patterns within extensive datasets using increasingly powerful yet cost-effective computational technologies. These three components—big data, advanced statistical methods, and computing resources—have not only become available recently but are also being democratized and made readily accessible to everyone at a pace unprecedented in previous technological innovations. This progression allows us to identify patterns that were previously indiscernible, which creates opportunities for important advances but also possible harms to patients.
Privacy regulations, most notably HIPAA, were established to protect patient confidentiality, operating under the assumption that de-identified data would remain anonymous. However, given the advancements in AI technology, the current landscape has become riskier. Now, it’s easier than ever to integrate various datasets from multiple sources, increasing the likelihood of accurately identifying individual patients.
Apart from the amplified risk to privacy and security, novel AI technologies have also increased the value of healthcare data due to the enriched potential for knowledge extraction. Consequently, many data providers may become more hesitant to share medical information with their competitors, further complicating healthcare data interoperability.
Considering these heightened privacy concerns and the increased value of healthcare data, it’s crucial to introduce modern legislation to ensure that medical providers will continue sharing their data while being shielded against the consequences of potential privacy breaches likely to emerge from the widespread use of generative AI.
MARK MACCARTHY (@Mark_MacCarthy)
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Technology Innovation:
Lampedusa on AI RegulationIn “The Leopard,” Giuseppe Di Lampedusa’s famous novel of the Sicilian aristocratic reaction to the unification of Italy in the 1860s, one of his central characters says, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
Something like this Sicilian response might be happening in the tech industry’s embrace of inevitable AI regulation. Three things are needed, however, if we do not want things to stay as they are.
The first and most important step is sufficient resources for agencies to enforce current law. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan properly says AI is not exempt from current consumer protection, discrimination, employment, and competition law, but if regulatory agencies cannot hire technical staff and bring AI cases in a time of budget austerity, current law will be a dead letter.
Second, policymakers should not be distracted by science fiction fantasies of AI programs developing consciousness and achieving independent agency over humans, even if these metaphysical abstractions are endorsed by industry leaders. Not a dime of public money should be spent on these highly speculative diversions when scammers and industry edge-riders are seeking to use AI to break existing law.
Third, Congress should consider adopting new identification, transparency, risk assessment, and copyright protection requirements along the lines of the European Union’s proposed AI Act. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s request for comment on a proposed AI accountability framework and Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) recently-announced legislative initiative to regulate AI might be moving in that direction.
TOM WHEELER (@tewheels)
Visiting Fellow, Center for Technology Innovation:
Innovative AI Requires Innovative OversightBoth sides of the political aisle, as well as digital corporate chieftains, are now talking about the need to regulate AI. A common theme is the need for a new federal agency. To simply clone the model used for existing regulatory agencies is not the answer, however. That model, developed for oversight of an industrial economy, took advantage of slower paced innovation to micromanage corporate activity. It is unsuitable for the velocity of the free-wheeling AI era.
All regulations walk a tightrope between protecting the public interest and promoting innovation and investment. In the AI era, traversing this path means accepting that different AI applications pose different risks and identifying a plan that pairs the regulation with the risk while avoiding innovation-choking regulatory micromanagement.
Such agility begins with adopting the formula by which digital companies create technical standards as the formula for developing behavioral standards: identify the issue; assemble a standard-setting process involving the companies, civil society, and the agency; then give final approval and enforcement authority to the agency.
Industrialization was all about replacing and/or augmenting the physical power of humans. Artificial intelligence is about replacing and/or augmenting humans’ cognitive powers. To confuse how the former was regulated with what is needed for the latter would be to miss the opportunity for regulation to be as innovative as the technology it oversees. We need institutions for the digital era that address problems that already are apparent to all.
Google and Microsoft are general, unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and are not influenced by any donation.
By Manann Donoghoe, Andre M. Perry, Hannah Stephens
On the surface, the history of U.S. environmental policy is one of sweeping success through pivotal regulation. The 1970 Clean Air Act, for example, is estimated to have reduced overall air pollution by 66.9% and added 1.3 years to the life expectancy of the average American.
But it is also a story of “one-size-fits-all” policy instead of equity and justice. Even as environmental legislation has reduced overall pollution, exposure to dangerous toxins has worsened for low-income households and, especially, people of color. Air pollution is between 10% and 15% above average in communities of color, and today more people of color live in “fence line communities” (neighborhoods near high-polluting facilities) than they did 30 years ago.
Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is another sweeping piece of environmental legislation—a $369 billion investment that is predicted to reduce emissions by up to 50% by 2050. However, for many in the climate and environmental justice community as well as a broader set of local planners and practitioners who have pushed to implement more equitable policies in their cities, the IRA falls short for its failure to legislate on justice.
That’s because the bill’s demand-driven approach—reliant on tax breaks and subsidies to incentivize climate change mitigation—means that climate resilience could actually become more inequitable and harm lower-income households and communities of color. But as this piece will explore, state and local leaders are well-positioned to strengthen measures for assessing and enforcing equity during the IRA’s implementation, potentially bending the law toward better outcomes for all communities.
How reparative is the IRA?Earlier this year, we outlined a reparative stance for climate change policy—principles for environmental policy premised on closing racial wealth and prosperity gaps as a path to building climate resilience for households and communities. We focused on wealth, health, and financial and housing security, as these are the factors that amplify the individual costs—economic and personal—of climate change. These factors mediate climate risk, and they can make the difference between a disaster causing a temporary setback or entrenching poverty.
Fortunately, the Biden administration is taking progressive civil action seriously, especially in climate justice. President Biden signed the Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act into law, announced $177 million in funding for 17 technical assistance centers to help communities access environmental justice funds, and created the White House Office of Environmental Justice, which could be pivotal in designing new policy approaches that complement emissions reductions with inclusive climate resilience.
Alongside the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) as a central component of the administration’s policies driving climate action, it would be disingenuous to say that the IRA doesn’t include a commitment to justice and equity. It is supported by the Justice40 initiative, a policy to ensure that at least 40% of federal investments in climate policy flow to historically disadvantaged and overburdened communities. The IRA is also complemented by recent executive orders to reform governance structures, including plans to strengthen racial equity and support underserved communities across government agencies.
Moreover, the law includes at least $45.95 billion for environmental justice programs, including $10 billion in competitive grants. At about 12% of the IRA and 3.4% of the IRA and IIJA combined, these environmental justice commitments fall short of the Justice40 initiative (see Figure 1). Still, it’s no small change. These programs will be guided by the climate and economic justice screening tool, a Council on Environmental Quality-led mapping tool that helps federal agencies and local governments identify in-need communities based on vulnerability to climate risk.
While all of this is moving in the right direction, the IRA is still undergirded by a one-size-fits-all approach. We have written before about how the law doesn’t really reckon with equity, notably sidestepping codifying a process to score investments for equity outcomes. What exactly a successful environmental justice program will look like is unclear; the IRA’s lack of guidance for how successful program outcomes will be defined, measured, or sustained is a substantial gap that will make assessing and refining progress in equity challenging.
This is all to the detriment of the transformational potential of the IRA. The risk is this: Without a strategy that considers racial equity, climate change policies can become a vehicle that inadvertently widens racial wealth and prosperity gaps even while delivering emissions reductions. This has been the story of environmental policy in the U.S., and without action, it risks becoming the story of climate policy too.
The benefits of the IRA will not be distributed neutrallyThe distribution of federal resources and their impacts on local pollution and climate vulnerability are more important than overall emissions reductions in terms of how communities of color are impacted by climate change. Because the legacies of racist policies have systemically concentrated vulnerability in specific places and communities, a distributionally neutral approach can cement underlying inequality. While it’s true that the IRA will drive decarbonization nationally and federal provisions for justice will help offset some unequal outcomes, inequity is still baked into the law’s key mechanisms.
First, demand-driven policies that don’t codify equity risk widen resilience divides by leaving low-income communities and communities of color behind. This is because the financial incentives in the bill are geared toward homeowners—typically middle- to high-income residents, the majority of whom are white. Moreover, others have pointed out the near complete lack of provisions for reducing the determinants of vulnerability, including housing security, equitable access to health care, and improving the provision of and access to public space. A more reparative policy would include provisions for renters and those in insecure employment and housing, thus addressing the underlying wealth gaps that leave these groups more vulnerable to climate change impacts and disasters.
Second, without restrictive supply-side regulation (meaning phasing out fossil fuel use), demand-side policies will prolong fossil fuel extraction, which will continue to overexpose communities of color to related harms. Oil companies made record profits in 2022, and following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, consumer prices sky-rocketed and companies expanded drilling projects in the United States. Already, big producers have doubled back on emissions reduction commitments. Relatedly, the IRA opens the door to carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology—an approach that coal and gas producers support, in part because it would allow for the continuation of fossil fuel burning. The most likely locations for this infrastructure are areas where communities are already overburdened by pollution from oil and gas refineries—for example, along the Gulf Coast, where large developments are already planned. This combination is bad news for many frontline communities that can’t afford to wait any longer for greater controls on local pollutants.
Some commentators, including our colleagues at Brookings, have argued that these compromises are worth it for accelerated climate action, on the basis that imperfect policies are better than none at all. But we argue that a failure to enact inclusive and equitable policy entails a wider social risk than just leaving some behind, as regressive policy can perpetuate a negative feedback loop that undermines the effectiveness of climate policy itself. The reason why international development agencies are increasingly supportive of inclusive climate action is not because they’re moral actors, but because it’s smart climate policy. The social costs of climate change—i.e., the impacts across the economy, from housing to health care—tend to be worse in countries that are less financially secure and more inequitable because of the way that these factors amplify climate risks (see Figure 2).
In the U.S., where race is frequently one of the largest predictors of climate vulnerability, it’s logical to pursue an approach to climate action premised on racial justice. But the IRA doesn’t answer some of the crucial questions we raised in our report on reparative climate policies. How will racial equity be codified into mitigation and adaptation policy? How will it guarantee progress in environmental justice during implementation? How will this policy reduce racialized gaps in climate resilience?
State and local implementation could bend the IRA toward more equitable outcomesThese limitations on climate justice mean that the IRA will need to be supported by local and state policies to have a better chance of achieving more equitable outcomes.
A good start for both levels of governance would be working with community partners in vulnerable regions to simplify access to the varying buckets of climate funds. Historically underinvested communities typically struggle to attract grant-based funding due to a lack of resources and expertise. Investing in community-based organizations through initiatives such as local equity navigators can help ensure that funds flow to where they’re needed the most. Emerging policies, such as the recently announced Community Disaster Resilience Zones, are an opportunity to co-develop resilience strategies with frontline communities and learn from the mistakes of past policies such as the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which predominantly went to wealthy coastal communities.
Just as important will be how the IRA interacts with local policies that aren’t formally about climate but still affect it, such as those in housing, employment opportunities, community infrastructure, and the affordability of services that mediate climate vulnerability. Our colleagues have shown how the IRA’s interaction with other policies—including the IIJA and macroeconomic factors—will shape the law’s outcomes, but it will also determine its effectiveness at resolving racial disparities.
The extent to which local governments can plan for more equitable outcomes is likely to be mixed, with cities in some of the most vulnerable regions either less willing to act on climate justice or stymied by regressive state policies. Yet some regions are setting a positive example by spearheading complimentary racial justice initiatives that will amplify the IRA’s impacts on resilience. Task forces on reparations have been established in Boston, Rochester, N.Y., and San Francisco. Recently, Evanston, Ill. became the first city in the U.S. to grant residents direct reparations, and Los Angeles County has returned $20 million worth of land to the descendants of a Black family that had it stolen from them under eminent domain. Other cities, including New York and Chicago, are testing procedures to incorporate equity scoring into the planning processes for new infrastructure.
Similarly, some states are pursuing policies that will inadvertently or intentionally create better outcomes for communities of color. Good examples include tighter regulations on air pollution, like New York and New Jersey’s legislation to ban environmentally harmful developments in overburdened communities, and policies to improve affordable and sustainable housing for renters, such as Pennsylvania’s American Rescue Plan-funded Whole Home Repairs Program.
Though not intended as adaptation policy, these cases demonstrate an impetus for more reparative policy, not just a one-size-fits-all approach. The nascent White House Office of Environmental Justice should take note of this local and state momentum. A more just and equitable climate policy with measurable progress during implementation could provide structures that pair emissions reduction with programs to bolster adaptive capacity and reduce climate resilience gaps. In this, the IRA is lacking, but future policies don’t have to be.
By Elijah Asdourian, Alexander Conner, Nasiha Salwati, David Wessel
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Credit, interest rate channels more important than exchange rates in monetary policy transmission Using a multi-country panel of output and price data by industry, Sangyup Choi of Yonsei University, Tim Willems of the Bank of England, and Seung Yong Yoo of Yale show that the credit and interest rate channels of monetary policy are the most important. The authors estimate that industries with more tangible assets, higher investment intensity, faster depreciation, and higher labor intensity are more sensitive to monetary policy surprises, consistent with the credit channel of monetary policy having a larger effect on industries with assets that are more difficult to collateralize. The credit channel is amplified during downturns and in nations with shallower financial markets, as predicted by the financial accelerator effect. The authors confirm the traditional interest rate channel through the sensitivity of durable goods producers to monetary policy surprises; output in that sector varies significantly with the current and expected future borrowing costs facing potential customers. They find no evidence for an exchange rate channel of monetary policy, nor a “cost channel,” where firms might pass increased costs of working capital – a production input – to consumers after a monetary policy surprise. The authors did not test the asset price channel of monetary policy.
Goods sector companies and service sector companies use tax cuts differently With data on American companies’ balance sheets from 1950 to 2006, James Cloyne of UC Davis, Ezgi Kurt of Bentley University, and Paolo Surico of London Business School find that goods-producing firms spend relatively more on capital and wage bills following corporate tax cuts while service sector companies increase dividend payouts. Companies’ spending peaks about two years after the initial cut in tax rates before going back to normal levels after four years, and the increases are significant: goods-producing firms increase investment by 8%, employment by 2%, and wage bills by 4%, and service-sector firms increase dividend payouts by 5%.
Inflation may come down even if real wages increase While nominal wages have been growing at a higher rate than consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target, real wages remain below the level implied by their pre-COVID trend. Steven B. Kamin of the American Enterprise Institute and John M. Roberts, formerly of the Federal Reserve Board, use a modified version of the Board’s large-scale macro model (FRB/US) to explore how inflation might respond to the evolution of the gap between real wages and their pre-pandemic trend. Notably, the authors find that if workers try to close the wage gap while companies maintain price markups, the likely result is a wage-price spiral where wage growth is passed through to higher prices, which in turn necessitate higher interest rates that increase unemployment. In this scenario, both inflation and unemployment rise sharply, and the wage gap persists. Conversely, if competition erodes markups, increases in real wages can be consistent with disinflation, they find. In particular, if companies’ price markups are a result of strong aggregate demand, then “the disinflationary benefits of reducing demand pressures may be even greater than generally thought,” they say.
Chart of the week: Case-Shiller home price index has ticked up in recent months Source: S&P Global
Quote of the week: “I expect spending and economic growth to remain quite slow over the rest of 2023, due to tight financial conditions, low consumer sentiment, heightened uncertainty, and a decline in household savings that had built up after the onset of the pandemic. Inflation has come down substantially since last summer, but it is still too high, and by some measures progress has been decelerating recently, particularly in the core services sector. While it is reasonable to expect that the recent banking stress events will lead banks to tighten credit standards further, the amount of tightening and the magnitude of the effect such tightening might have on the U.S. economy is not yet clear, and this uncertainty complicates economic forecasts,” says Philip N. Jefferson, Member, Federal Reserve Board.
“Short-term interest rates are 5 percentage points higher than they were a little over a year ago. History shows that monetary policy works with long and variable lags, and that a year is not a long enough period for demand to feel the full effect of higher interest rates. While my base case forecast for the U.S. economy is not a recession, higher interest rates and lower earnings could test the ability of businesses to service debt … Since late last year, the Federal Open Market Committee has slowed the pace of rate hikes as we have approached a stance of monetary policy that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2% over time. A decision to hold our policy rate constant at a coming meeting should not be interpreted to mean that we have reached the peak rate for this cycle. Indeed, skipping a rate hike at a coming meeting would allow the Committee to see more data before making decisions about the extent of additional policy firming.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to an initial decrease in birth rates in the U.S. followed by a partially offsetting rebound, as we documented in our December 2021 Brookings post (based on birth counts through June 2021). A similar pattern of an initial, substantial decline in births followed by a rebound in births occurred in many…
By Paul Gewirtz
The Group of Seven (G-7) countries have recently agreed on a central part of their economic approach to China — “de-risking” — and, just as importantly, “de-risking, not decoupling.” This phrase originated with the European Union, so the agreement seems wide.
“De-coupling” any major country’s economy from China was always impossible and sounds harshly radical, but it’s been a commonly used and divisive word in China policy circles. The word “de-risking” sounds considerably more moderate, makes intuitive sense, and has now produced a highly publicized consensus on China policy among a large variety of different countries.
But in reality, the word “de-risking” is extremely ambiguous and its meaning uncertain. The word itself tells us very little about China policy. Its scope all depends on how the word is interpreted. Very likely, different countries will interpret and apply “de-risking” differently, creating divergence and not consensus — in some countries producing a modest scope of economic separation, in some potentially a policy similar to “de-coupling.”
There are three parts to the massive uncertainty about what “de-risking” means and the likely divergences in its application.
First, what does the “de” in “de-risking” mean? Some leading dictionaries define “de-risking” as “to eliminate risk” or “to remove risk.” Others define it as “reducing the possibility that something bad will happen” or making something “less risky.” The U.S. State Department in a non-China context defines “de-risking” as “to avoid, rather than manage, risk.”
These different definitions would produce very different “de-risking” policies. If you define the de-risking goal with China as “eliminating” the relevant risks, rather than “reducing” them, you will take far more sweeping actions.
The second major uncertainty is what counts as a relevant risk. Even if you define de-risking as reducing rather than eliminating risk, the potential scope of de-risking and the degree of economic separation from China depends on what problems are treated as relevant risks.
The most common risks the U.S. government invokes in discussing economic separations from China are risks to national security. As President Joe Biden recently put it at the G-7 summit, de-risking involves “protecting a narrow set of advanced technologies critical for our national security” — with the greatest focus on “technology that could tilt the military balance.” Protecting “national security” is probably the most important role of national government. It is also a broad and vague concept. The Commerce Department, for example, has explicitly embraced “national security” export controls on China regarding technologies that “improve the speed and accuracy of its military decision making, planning, and logistics.” This would include vast sectors of U.S. manufacturing and exports involving research and communication tools with predominantly civilian uses.
In addition, presidents have historically overused their authority to protect “national security.” (President Donald Trump, for example, invoked “national security” under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act to impose preposterous tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada.) A de-risking policy toward China shaped around broadly-framed risks to “national security” could become close to “de-coupling.”
Beyond “national security,” many other problems involving China can be included in a de-risking policy — human rights, for example. The U.S. government has already authorized the use of economic tools such as export controls against China to address “a significant risk” regarding “activities that are contrary to the … [United States’] foreign policy interest of the protection of human rights.”
De-risking is also certain to address a variety of economic risks China poses. The G-7 communiques focus especially on risks to “economic resilience and economic security.” De-risking includes taking whatever economic steps a country deems appropriate to diversify supply chains, reduce excessive dependency on Chinese supply chains, and resist economic coercion. Biden, in the course of personally embracing the “de-risking, not de-coupling” policy, broadened this list of economic risks and explicitly added “countering harmful practices that hurt our workers.” Would any country conclude that China’s economic growth is itself a risk to its own economic strength? (The G-7 leaders’ communique states that “Our policy approaches are not designed to harm China nor do we seek to thwart China’s economic progress and development.” Chinese official media ignore this statement and say that the G-7’s goal is “to suppress and contain China.”)
The third major uncertainty about de-risking is how a particular risk is evaluated and balanced against a country’s other national interests in deciding whether action should be taken against China and what that action should be. Most risks will require complex assessment before deciding whether and what steps of economic separation from China are taken. How likely or how harmful does a particular risk have to be? How do different countries’ decisionmakers strike the balance between some potential risk and what may be substantial benefits to civilians and to various manufacturers and investors? In addition, what economic tools will governments use to address the risks? Diversifying supply chains and export controls are certain. But restricting outbound investments remains a deeply controversial issue over which countries are divided — not only because of investors’ domestic political power, but also because restricting outbound investments to China would involve controversial decisions about which investors are covered by which countries and extremely complex investment reviews.
Agreeing on a shared goal of de-risking is definitely important, and China’s official media are flatly wrong that “de-risking” is the same as “de-coupling.” But no one can say now what policies different countries will implement under the de-risking label. “De-risking” at this point is only a word, and what I’ve said here is all about the difference between “words” and implementing “actions.”
The words governments use certainly matter. And more than ever, words — as contrasted with “actions” — have become central to governance through statements, media briefings, leaks, and, of course, written laws themselves. “De-risking” is a choice of a very ambiguous word. Governments use ambiguous words all the time for multiple reasons — to build consensus, to create wide leeway in interpretation and thus a wide range to make policy, sometimes even to deceive the public and other countries.
But such words must be interpreted and given meaning, and then actions figured out. Until actions replace words, we won’t know what the new “de-risking” policy is. But we can reasonably predict there will, in fact, be sharply divergent “de-risking” policies of different countries — not the consensus we have now.
By Elaine Kamarck, Michael Hais
A funny thing happened slightly more than fifty years ago. In the 1980 presidential election, pollsters and politicians alike noticed that women were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate, incumbent Jimmy Carter, than to vote for the Republican Ronald Reagan. In 1976, when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford, men and women were the same in their partisan preferences. But in 1980, the gap was nine points. Although this gap has been smaller in some elections than in others, for the past half century the gender gap has been a regular feature of American elections. The gender gap was 12 points in 2020, with 57% of women preferring Biden compared to 45% of men. Now, election results from last year’s midterms suggest it may be disappearing among younger voters.
As we have done in other articles in this series, we divide the electorate into two groups — those under 45 years of age and those over 45 years of age.[1] As the first graph illustrates, younger white men prefer Democrats in about the same percentages as do younger white women — 55% to 52%. However, among older Americans the gender gap is ten points — only 31% of white men prefer Democrats, whereas 41% of white women do — numbers that are more in keeping with those we’ve seen in the past 50 years.
Among African Americans there is virtually no gender gap in either age group, as Graph 2 shows. This is not surprising given the strong bonds between African Americans and the Democratic party.
The Hispanic gender gap looks more like that of white voters with a considerable gender gap among older voters but no gap among younger voters.
Why the absence of a gender gap among younger voters? Abortion is probably a big reason — like their female partners, men under 45 years old grew up under Roe v. Wade. Historically men’s and women’s views on abortion have not differed dramatically.
But there are likely more fundamental reasons. Since the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, when today’s older generations were in their formative years, America’s culture has changed markedly. Today, little girls can more realistically aspire to graduate from college or graduate school and hold such traditionally “male” occupations as soldier, police officer, lawyer, and doctor and men’s presence in traditionally “female” occupations like teacher, social worker, nurse or homemaker is becoming more common.
As expected, there was some opposition to these challenges to traditional culture, especially among older Americans.[2]
In spite of the resistance, however, significant change did occur. In 1950, only 24% of those awarded bachelor’s degrees and 10% of those earning Ph.D.’s were women. By 1980, those numbers had risen to 49% and 30% respectively. In 2020, 58% of bachelor’s degree and 54% of Ph.D. recipients were women. Currently, about 40% of American lawyers, 37% of active physicians, 18% of police officers, and 19% of active duty commissioned military officers are women. At the same time, men now make up more than a quarter of public-school teachers, one in five social workers, and one in ten nurses.
These changes have produced a reduction of the wage gap separating women from men, especially among younger workers. According to Pew research, “… the wage gap is smaller for workers ages 25 to 34 than for all workers 16 and older. In 2022, women ages 25 to 34 earned an average of 92 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group – an 8-cent gap. By comparison, the gender pay gap among workers of all ages that year was 18 cents.”
As men and women find themselves in a more equal world, younger men, who have grown up in an environment of increasing gender equality, may be finding MAGA world’s vision of society and “manhood” — where women stay home and are followers while men are the breadwinners and leaders — an anachronism that simply doesn’t make sense in a world of working wives, (somewhat more) shared child-rearing and record numbers of women in leadership positions. These cultural shifts may also be influencing womens’ voting patterns.
As these generational and societal trends continue to play out with todays under age 45 voters becoming tomorrow’s senior citizens, it is possible that America’s political gender gap will become a quaint historical anachronism as well.
[1] Somewhat different results occur if the age under which someone is “young” changes, but we find this over/under 45 years of age the most interesting since it encompasses the Millenniel generation and the next younger generation.
[2] A 2009 Pew survey indicated that while two-thirds of those younger than 30 (Millennials) completely disagreed with the notion that “women should return to their traditional roles in society,” fewer than half (43%) of those 65 and over (members of the Silent and GI generations) completely disagreed.
By Madiha Afzal
Pakistan’s ongoing political crisis has reached a crescendo this month with former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s arrest and its fallout. The contours of the conflict are clear: it is Khan versus Pakistan’s military establishment. And the gloves are off.
Khan was arrested on May 9 from the premises of the Islamabad High Court, whisked away by dozens of paramilitary troops in riot gear, ostensibly for a corruption case. But the manner and timing of his arrest — coming just after he had doubled down on his allegations that a senior intelligence official was responsible for an assassination attempt against him last November — indicated that the arrest was more about the confrontation between Khan and Pakistan’s military which began last spring with his ouster in a vote of no-confidence.
The arrest set off protests on the same day across Pakistan, some of which turned violent and involved vandalism against military installations. In unprecedented scenes, protesters attacked the gate of the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, the corps commander’s house in Lahore, and other buildings, including the Radio Pakistan offices in Peshawar. At least eight people died in clashes with the police. The country’s telecommunications authority shut off access to mobile internet services and social media for several days. In response to the protests, police have arrested thousands of Khan’s party workers, reportedly harassing their families in the process; many of them are yet to be produced in court. They also arrested senior leaders of Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and key members of his former cabinet: his former foreign minister, finance minister, human rights minister, and information minister.
On May 11, Pakistan’s Supreme Court deemed Khan’s arrest from the premises of a court unlawful, and the Islamabad High Court granted him bail the following day. As he was released, he pointed a finger at one man: Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir.
A fight to the finishKhan’s confrontation with the military has now devolved into an existential, zero-sum fight between the country’s most popular politician and its most powerful institution. Khan, once the military’s favored politician, has since last year stoked popular resentment against the institution, which he blames for his ouster. The attacks on military buildings after Khan’s arrest damaged the institution’s veneer of invincibility. The military — long Pakistan’s sacred cow, its one institution deemed untouchable — has not taken kindly to Khan’s dissent. It has responded forcefully to the protests on May 9 — which it has called a “black day” — saying that violent protesters will be tried in military courts. Trying civilians in army courts would violate Pakistan’s obligations under international human rights law. But Pakistan’s National Security Council backed the military’s decision and its civilian government has lined up behind it, dealing a blow to the constitution and rule of law in the country. This week, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore allowed the handing over of 16 civilians to the military for trials.
In some ways, Khan’s popular support had acted as a buffer over the last year against the military’s assertiveness. But after the protests on May 9, the military establishment has reverted to its usual playbook for political leaders and parties that fall out of line in Pakistan. In this, it is using the pliant coalition government as its partner, as it has in the past with the government of the day. For its part, the government, in its eagerness to comply with the establishment, has been all too willing to forget the lessons of the past, when it itself had been at the receiving end of the establishment’s ire.
Senior leaders of the PTI, part of Khan’s inner circle, have been rearrested repeatedly even after being granted bail over the last two weeks. This week, they buckled under mounting pressure and have been leaving the party, one after the other. Shireen Mazari, the former human rights minister, who had been arrested five times over two weeks, was the first in the top ranks to quit this week. Fawad Chaudhry, the former information minister, followed suit. Party stalwart and close Khan aide Asad Umar announced that he was stepping down from his leadership positions within the party immediately following his release from jail. Among the PTI’s senior-most leaders, only former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, still incarcerated, remains with the party. Other prominent party members have also resigned. The government says it is considering a ban on the PTI.
Pressuring politicians to quit or switch parties has long been part of the Pakistani establishment’s playbook, which allows it to maintain an iron grip on politics. Khan had been the beneficiary of such maneuvering prior to the 2018 election. But the ferocity of the pressure and the speed of the defections this time around have taken even seasoned observers of Pakistan’s politics and its civil-military machinations by surprise.
Meanwhile, the coalition government has taken on a separate confrontation with the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, alleging that Pakistan’s judiciary is biased in favor of Khan. Parts of the judiciary are now pitted against one other.
At the same time, the economy is in dire straits. The country has been perilously close to default for months, and inflation reached a record 36.4% last month. The last tranche of an International Monetary Fund bailout program, set to expire in June, has been on hold for months as the fund waits for Pakistan to secure loans from the Gulf and China. The failure of the coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to deal with the economic crisis has left it deeply unpopular.
No institution in the country seems capable — or willing — to take it out of its current mess.
What’s at stakeGeneral elections are due in Pakistan by October. It is far from clear whether they will happen on time or whether they will be free and fair. It is apparent that the state wants Khan sidelined before then. After his ouster last year, Khan had rallied massive amounts of popular support — and demonstrated it in lively rallies around the country and in by-elections held in July and in October. His party, which had been in power in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, dissolved those two provincial assemblies this January in a bid to force early elections. But that gamble backfired: the state has refused to hold those provincial elections within 90 days as constitutionally mandated and has defied a Supreme Court order saying the Punjab elections needed to be held by May 14.
For a while, it seemed that in the usual conflict between the establishment and an ousted political leader, this time could be different. Khan had momentum because of his rallies, the unique demographics of his popular support (urban, young, middle class), his party’s savvy use of social media, and the extent to which he took the military head-on. But given the frontal assault on Khan and the PTI at this point, all of that may not be enough to substantially change outcomes for him. If history is any guide, it’s not looking good for Khan, his party, or Pakistan’s democracy. Quashing the PTI will leave behind a genuine and frustrated support base for Khan — one completely disillusioned with Pakistan’s establishment parties — that has no one to support.
What the United States can doThe Biden administration, which has limited its engagement with Pakistan over the last two years, should stand in favor of democracy in Pakistan, the rule of law, and the supremacy of its constitution, all of which are currently under threat — and not with the United States’ usual and favored partner in Pakistan, its military. This means the administration should explicitly speak up against violations of the rule of law and the country’s constitution — especially against the idea that civilians may be tried in military courts in the country — and in support of free, fair, and on-time elections in Pakistan this year. This is the only way forward for the country.
By Christopher Miller
Once again Congressional debt ceiling debates have markets, the media, and the public concerned about the ability of the U.S. to pay its bills on time. Economists at Brookings have explored various aspects of this debate—the origins, the impact, and the consequences. Explore recent explainers, analysis, and testimony below.
- What is the debt limit and why does it exist?
- What happens if Congress does (or doesn’t) raise the debt ceiling?
- What have Brookings experts said to policymakers?
What is the debt limit and why does it exist?What is the federal debt ceiling?Sage Belz, Sophia Campbell, Lorae Stojanovic, and David Wessel
The origins of the debt limit date back to World War I, when Congress ended the practice of approving every Treasury bond issue individually and allowed the sale of Liberty Bonds up to a specified amount to help finance the war. As The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy explains, basically the same process occurs today: When the federal government runs a deficit, it borrows money to cover the difference, usually by selling Treasury securities. However, in recent decades, efforts to raise the amount the U.S. can borrow by selling securities have become major political sticking points, with opponents of raising the limit arguing that they seek to rein in government spending.
In this post, the Hutchins Center answers common questions on the debt limit, including how the government functions when the debt limit is reached and what happens if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling.
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What’s the difference between a government shutdown and a failure to raise the debt ceiling?David Wessel
As of January 19, 2023, the U.S. had borrowed as much money as it is legally allowed to borrow—$31.4 trillion. Since then, the Treasury has taken so-called “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the nation’s bills, but its ability to do so will end in the coming days according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. In a recent post, David Wessel of the Hutchins Center examined how this differs from a “government shutdown,” which occurs when the federal government fails to pass a budget. Under an all-too-familiar shutdown, roughly 75% of government functions continue, as their funding is not governed by annual appropriations, Wessel explains. This shutdown of operations has happened four times for more than one day. Failure to raise the debt limit, on the other hand, would threaten all government spending, and it has not happened in the modern era.
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7 things to know about the debt limitLeonard Burman and William G. Gale
“Raising the debt limit is not about new spending; it is about paying for previous choices policymakers legislated.”
The debt ceiling is often misunderstood, write William Gale and Len Burman of the Tax Policy Center, and “[p]olicymakers often fuel this misunderstanding with misleading statements that distort the debate.” In a brief from January, Gale and Burman laid out seven facts about the debt limit, including that the limit has been raised 78 times since 1960, only one other advanced country (Denmark) has a debt limit rule like ours, and not raising the debt limit would require $1.5 trillion in spending cuts this year.
Ultimately, Gale and Burman argue for reinstating the Gephardt Rule, a rule that has been in place at various times to automatically authorize borrowing to fund legislatively approved programs.
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What happens if Congress does (or doesn’t) raise the debt ceiling?How worried should we be if the debt ceiling isn’t lifted?Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner
The U.S. has always managed to raise the debt ceiling in time to prevent spending cuts, but this time could be different. “The economic effects of such an unprecedented event would surely be negative,” wrote Edelberg and Sheiner last month. “However, there is an enormous amount of uncertainty surrounding the damage the U.S. economy will incur if the U.S. government is unable to pay all its bills.” Their analysis explores several scenarios: What payments would Treasury prioritize in the event of a default? How would the stock market respond? Are any of the proposed alternatives to Congressional action viable?
“The workarounds that have been proposed—the platinum coin, increasing borrowing despite the debt limit, prioritizing payments—either bring significant legal uncertainty or are not sustainable solutions. These unlikely workarounds do not avoid the chaos that is inherent to the debt ceiling binding. The only effective solution is for Congress to increase the debt ceiling without delay or, better yet, abolish it.”
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Debt ceiling brinksmanship has clear negative effects on taxpayersWendy Edelberg and Noadia Steinmetz-Silber
An unfortunate reality of the current debt ceiling clash is that at least some damage is likely already done, according to a new report by Wendy Edelberg and Noadia Steinmetz-Silber of The Hamilton Project. Their analysis finds that, between mid-April and May 22, interest rates on Treasury bills maturing on June 1 rose from 4.4% to 5.7%. The premium investors demand to hold short-term Treasuries is significantly larger and rose significantly earlier than during debt limit negotiations of 2011 and 2013. In effect, investors are demanding higher returns to shoulder the risk of not being paid on time, and they clearly see that risk as higher this time around. “The relatively large premium being charged now on Treasury securities maturing in June suggests that financial markets are concerned that principal payments will indeed be delayed and more so than in prior debt limit standoffs,” write Edelberg and Steinmetz-Silber. The increase in interest rates will cost taxpayers, and even if a deal is reached, the entire situation may repeat when the next round of debt ceiling debates comes around.
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What have Brookings experts said to policymakers?Wendy Edelberg testifies on how a US default crisis harms American families and businessesWendy Edelberg
Building on her analyses with Louise Sheiner and Noadia Steinmetz-Silber, Wendy Edelberg spoke to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee recently to discuss the impact of a debt limit bind on American families and businesses. In addition to the higher costs of interest payments that taxpayers would have to pay, as noted above, if Treasury wanted to continue making interest payments without being able to borrow more money it would have to cut non-interest spending by 35% or more.
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Why Congress needs to abolish the debt limit: Testimony before the House Budget CommitteeLouise Sheiner
In testimony given early in 2022, Louise Sheiner made three arguments for why the debt ceiling should be abolished. Firstly, she argued, the debt ceiling has not achieved the stated goal of its proponents: imposing fiscal discipline on Congress. Secondly, as she and Wendy Edelberg explored more fully, the impacts of a default are uncertain but would certainly be negative. And finally, we as a country face any number of real, tangible economic challenges, Sheiner said, and the debt ceiling gets in the way of facing those challenges. “Bickering over the debt ceiling is a waste of time and energy, creates unnecessary uncertainty, threatens the benefits of issuing the world’s safest asset, and undermines public confidence in our political institutions.”
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The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Benedic Ippolito, Matthew Fiedler, Loren Adler
Congress is currently considering policies that would expand site-neutral payment for ambulatory services in the Medicare program. These policies would reduce hospital revenues, while generating savings for Medicare beneficiaries and the federal government and removing an incentive to shift services out of physician offices and into hospitals. Some policymakers have suggested using a portion of the federal savings to lessen the impact of a site-neutral policy on hospital finances. While we question whether this is the highest-value use of these funds, this paper discusses how policymakers could do this without reintroducing incentives to shift services into the hospital setting, as would occur under some existing proposals.
As background, Medicare payments for ambulatory services vary based on where services are delivered. Payments are generally much higher if a service is delivered in a hospital outpatient department (HOPD) that resides on a hospital’s campus (or, for some services, in certain “grandfathered” off-campus HOPDs) rather than a physician’s office. Payments for services delivered in an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) are also generally higher than those delivered in a physician’s office, albeit to a lesser degree.
As we have previously argued, these payment differences are not necessary to ensure that patients can access appropriate care:
Paying more when a service is delivered in an ASC or HOPD rather than a physician’s office often makes little sense. To ensure appropriate access while containing program costs, Medicare payments should generally reflect an efficient provider’s cost of delivering care. Thus, to justify paying more for a service in facility settings, the clinical needs of the patients treated in facilities must differ in ways that make delivering that service more costly. For the types of services commonly delivered in physician offices (e.g., office visits, imaging, and drug administration), it is hard to see how large cost differences could arise, especially since the differences between patients treated in HOPDs and physician offices appear modest.
But they do have important costs. They impose direct financial costs on Medicare beneficiaries and the federal government, in the form of higher premiums and higher cost-sharing. They also encourage shifts of services out of physician offices and into the hospital setting. Such shifting often involves hospitals buying up physician practices, which makes physician markets less competitive and thereby raises the prices negotiated by commercial insurers. And while it may not be intrinsically more costly to deliver these types of services in the hospital setting, locating as many physicians as possible on hospital campuses (or grandfathered off-campus HOPDs) may increase providers’ costs and make accessing care less convenient for patients.
Congress is currently considering proposals that would remove these payment differences. One notable proposal considered by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce would reduce Medicare payments to HOPDs and ASCs for services that are most commonly delivered in a lower-cost setting (e.g., if a service is most frequently delivered in a physician’s office, then it would be paid at the Physician Fee Schedule rate). This proposal mirrors an approach discussed in June 2022 by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.
This policy would generate substantial savings for the federal government, raising the question of how to use these funds. Policymakers may wish to return some of these savings to affected providers. We harbor doubts that this would be the best use of these funds. In general, savings should be directed to where they will generate the most value—whether that be priorities within health care, priorities in other domains, or deficit reduction. It would be a surprising coincidence if the highest-value use of these funds—even within the health care sector—happened to be returning them to the precise group of providers they came from. Moreover, we believe that concerns from hospitals that these changes will threaten access and quality of care are of questionable merit. The services targeted by this proposal are, by design, services that are most often provided in lower-paid settings, which implies that those lower payment rates will be adequate to ensure continued access to these services, whether in the HOPD or ASC setting or elsewhere. A more plausible concern is that this reform will broadly reduce hospitals’ revenues, which could force some providers to take steps to cut costs, but this may or may not have inappropriate effects on quality of care.
Nevertheless, we recognize that returning some of the savings to affected providers could lessen political resistance to the policy and address access or quality concerns that do exist. However, if policymakers take this approach, they should avoid reintroducing incentives to shift services out of physician offices and into HOPDs. More generally, they should favor options that foster efficient, high-quality care delivery.
The Energy and Commerce proposal discussed above included a provision that was designed to mitigate policy-induced revenue reductions for certain hospitals. Specifically, revenue reductions would be capped at 4.1% of total Medicare revenue for hospitals with an above-median share of low-income patients (as measured using methods for determining Medicare disproportionate share payments to hospitals).
Unfortunately, this policy would partially reintroduce incentives to shift services into HOPDs. Once a hospital’s revenue loss reached the 4.1% cap, the compensatory payments it received would grow with each additional service it delivered in the HOPD setting—and by the precise amount of the difference between the HOPD and physician office payment rate. As a result, such a hospital would still face the same incentive to shift services into the hospital setting that it faces under current law. For this reason, we recommend against this policy. However, there are other options to achieve similar goals while retaining improved incentives.
Option 1: Mitigate financial losses for the most-affected providers
Congress could limit the revenue reductions for affected hospitals, as envisioned in the Energy and Commerce proposal, but in a way that does not reintroduce incentives to shift services into HOPDs. One way to do that would be to tie the amount of compensatory funding each hospital received to the volume of affected services that the hospital delivered in a reference year prior to enactment rather than the current year.
Concretely, policymakers could direct CMS to do the following:
- Compute the percentage reduction in total Medicare revenue that each hospital would have experienced due to an unconstrained version of the site-neutral policy in some reference year (e.g., the final year before the policy change was enacted).
- For each hospital, calculate the difference between this unconstrained loss and a specified maximum allowable percentage revenue loss.
- For hospitals with revenue reductions larger than the maximum allowable loss, compute the dollar amount that would have been required to return the hospital’s revenue to the target level in the reference year.
- In each future year, the hospital would receive a lump-sum transfer in that amount, perhaps adjusted for factors like inflation or market-wide volume trends.
As an alternative, policymakers could direct CMS to compute the percentage increase in rates for inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) services and non-site-neutral outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) services that would have been required to return each hospital’s revenue to the target level in the reference year.[1] (Here, we use the term non-site-neutral OPPS services to refer to OPPS services that would not be subject to site-neutral payment under the proposal.) The hospital’s payment rates for IPPS and non-site-neutral OPPS services would then be increased by that percentage in future years.
This second approach could have advantages and disadvantages relative to the first approach. Unlike the first approach, the second would increase hospitals’ marginal return to delivering IPPS and non-site-neutral OPPS services, which is an advantage if policymakers are concerned about beneficiary access (and a disadvantage if they are concerned about overutilization). A downside of the second approach is that some non-site-neutral OPPS services can, in fact, be delivered in non-hospital settings; thus, this approach would modestly strengthen incentives for hospitals to shift these types of services into HOPDs. If they wished, policymakers could avoid this problem by increasing prices only for IPPS services; the relative merits of an IPPS-only approach would also depend on the relative adequacy of Medicare’s payments for inpatient versus outpatient hospital care under current law.
Like the existing Energy and Commerce policy, this policy could be targeted to particular hospitals (e.g., hospitals that serve a large proportion of low-income patients), either by limiting it solely to those hospitals or by varying the maximum allowable percentage revenue loss. One could also structure this type of policy to allow for a phase-in that limits revenue reductions more aggressively in early years than in the long run.
Option 2: Mitigate financial losses for the hospital industry more generally
Rather than targeting funds to hospitals based on which ones would lose the most revenue from the shift to site-neutral payments, policymakers could return money to hospitals by broadly increasing rates for IPPS and non-site-neutral OPPS services (or some subset thereof).[2] Like Option 1, this option would also largely avoid reintroducing incentives to shift services into HOPDs, subject to the caveat discussed above that increasing payment rates for non-site-neutral OPPS services would modestly strengthen incentives for hospitals to shift these services into HOPDs. As with Option 1, policymakers could specify larger increases for certain types of hospitals if there are specific concerns about beneficiary access or quality of care for those hospitals, and they could consider phasing such a policy down over time.
Option 3: Increase Physician Fee Schedule payment rates
Finally, policymakers could consider using some savings to increase payment rates under the Physician Fee Schedule. This could take the form of a direct increase in rates and/or changing how rates are updated over time (e.g., by restoring some linkage between rates and a price index). This change would directly offset some of the revenue losses to hospitals that would now be paid under the Physician Fee Schedule for many ambulatory services, with larger benefits for hospitals that deliver more such services, while also benefiting physicians who deliver ambulatory services in the physician office setting. Like the other two options, this option would avoid reintroducing incentives for hospitals to shift services from physician offices into HOPDs. This policy may also have the political benefit of expanding the constituency for site-neutral payment reforms to include physician groups.
Conclusion
If policymakers choose to use some of the federal savings from expanding site-neutral payment to lessen financial impacts on hospitals, they should avoid reintroducing incentives to shift services out of physician offices and into HOPDs. This analysis presents three approaches that would meet that standard.
Among the three options that we consider here, we would generally encourage policymakers to avoid Option 1 since it would provide more assistance to hospitals that were more aggressive in shifting physician services into HOPDs. There is no clear reason to believe that funds given to these hospitals would do more to benefit Medicare beneficiaries, and there are downsides to giving these hospitals a permanent competitive advantage over their peers. (A caveat is that Option 1 could be worth considering if it helped policymakers more tightly limit the total amount of funds returned to hospitals.) We do not have a clear view on the choice between Option 2 and Option 3, but this choice should hinge on one’s views about the relative adequacy of Medicare’s payments for the relevant categories of services under current law.
[1] If policymakers increased IPPS rates, they might wish to transfer some of the savings under the site-neutrality policy to the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund in order to avoid accelerating its insolvency.
[2] MedPAC has recently considered a similar policy that would increase prices only for non-site-neutral OPPS services. The relative merits of these approaches depend on the relative adequacy of payments for the various services at baseline.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Paul Lushenko, Sarah Kreps
Drones have taken center stage during the war in Ukraine. Initially, Ukraine capitalized on the Turkish-manufactured TB2 Bayraktar drone to help disrupt Russia’s invasion, including by sinking the Moskva, Russia’s acclaimed guided missile cruiser. In the second half of 2022, Ukraine took the unprecedented step of building an “army of drones” to consolidate earlier gains, incorporating both smaller, tactical drones as well as civilian drones modified for military use. At the same time, the United States has sent over 1,000 “kamikaze” Switchblade drones, sometimes referred to as “loitering munitions,” to Ukraine as part of its security assistance packages worth $40 billion. As the war has dragged on, Ukrainian officials have requested more advanced drones from the United States, which U.S. policymakers have been reluctant to provide.
Why is this the case? Considering a strong plurality of Americans support sending military aid to Ukraine, U.S. policymakers should feel welcome to send advanced attack drones, such as the MQ-9 Reaper long-endurance, high-altitude surveillance drone, to the country. Indeed, research shows that “U.S. officials routinely invoke polling data to enhance the legitimacy of their policy actions.” This has notably been the case in the bipartisan effort to transfer sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine, including the M1A1 Abrams tank.
Yet U.S. officials point to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which was established in 1987 to prevent the proliferation of potential delivery vehicles for ballistic and nuclear weapons, as a reason why they cannot send these drones to Ukraine. The Biden administration also references its new Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) Policy, which considers the potential human rights consequences of arms sales, to limit the export of drones.
But do Americans believe that domestic policy and international norms should constrain the export of armed drones, among other forms of military aid? To answer this question, we carried out an original survey of Americans. We investigated whether domestic and international constraints shape public attitudes, or whether other considerations, such as other exporters, the nature of the importer, the intended use of drones, or previous military aid, matter more.
Our study reveals that legal commitments guiding drone exports do not shape public support despite these measures being the basis for Washington’s continued restraint. Rather, two considerations shape public support for drone exports: the recipient country and purpose of use. Americans prefer to trade drones to perceived allies and that their intended use be non-lethal. While policymakers have the responsibility to do what they believe is in the public interest, they also acknowledge they have to be responsive to voter preferences. Not only do our results show Americans support drone exports, especially to Ukraine, but they also show that Americans are indifferent to domestic policy and international norms that policymakers often cite to restrain drone exports. This suggests that U.S. citizens do not think they matter much.
HOW DO WE STUDY PUBLIC OPINION?To probe U.S. citizens’ support for drone exports, we varied five attributes that may affect public attitudes for drone exports. First, we rotated the importing country, drawing on research that shows trade often tracks with security alliances. Second, we alternated the use of drones, capitalizing on a study that suggests the public may support drone exports if the capability is used for non-lethal versus lethal purposes. Third, we randomized previous military aid, not including drones, to assess the escalatory potential of drones compared to other weapons.
Fourth, we randomized other drone exporting countries, allowing us to study whether international competition shapes public support for drone sales. We measured respondents’ understanding of international competition by gauging their support for drone exports in terms of other countries that are leading proliferators of drones globally. Finally, we presented respondents with different export governance measures, shifting between the MTCR and CAT Policy (the aforementioned policies designed to prevent arms proliferation and protect human rights), to assess how the relevancy of these instruments moderates public support for drone exports.
After reading a hypothetical drone export scenario that mixed these attributes, we asked respondents to gauge their support for the export of drones using a five-point scale, with one corresponding to “strongly oppose” and five corresponding to “strongly support.” We rescaled the responses from zero to one, reflecting the percentage of respondents who support drone exports by each attribute-level.
WHAT SHAPES PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR DRONE EXPORTS?Contrary to policymakers’ frequent references to the constraints imposed by export governance measures, we find that public support for drone exports is not conditioned by a consideration of domestic policy or even international norms.
Rather, we find that public support for drone exports is shaped by two considerations. First, Americans care most about the recipient country. If the country is perceived to be an ally, whether the respondent was correct or not, the respondent’s willingness to support drone exports rises. Americans are most supportive of drone exports to Ukraine (62%), for example, in comparison to Germany (59%) or Japan (57%). Interestingly, over 56% of respondents identified Ukraine as an ally, which is comparable to respondents’ perceptions of allies who have formal defense treaties with the United States, including Germany (52%) and Japan (50%). Americans were least supportive of drone exports to Saudi Arabia (46%) despite 28% of Americans believing that Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States.
Second, Americans also care about the intended use of drones. We find that the public is less supportive of drone exports used for lethal purposes. Public support for drone exports is highest if the capability is used for seemingly innocuous reasons, including humanitarian assistance (59%), while it is lowest if the capability is used in terms of conflict, namely strikes (53%). Drones used for intelligence-gathering splits the difference, at 55% approval, which is closer to levels of public support for the export of drones used for strikes. This latter finding implies that Americans support the export of drones to Ukraine, but with a caveat. As one participant noted, policymakers should ensure that drones do not “risk escalation to direct conflict with Russia.” This is consistent with other feedback, with one respondent arguing that “Russia is in the wrong, but we should not be interfering in such a blatant way.”
Our results also show that the public is no more or less reluctant to export drones than other forms of traditional military aid, such as tanks that are “physically present and visible,” when determining their level of support to the export of drones. Whether, or which, other countries are also exporting drones has little effect on public support for American exports.
A CALL TO ACTION FOR U.S. POLICYMAKERS? Taken together, our findings point to a potential disconnect between public and U.S. policymakers’ support for drone exports, particularly to Ukraine. Yet our results should not be interpreted as a “green light” for drone sales. Policymakers have a duty to implement policies that they believe are good for the country. As such, they often point to the CAT Policy and MTCR to constrain drone exports, reflecting a concern for the risks of proliferation.
Policymakers might well be right. Opposition groups in some countries have used drones against their own national government’s leaders, and authorities in other countries have targeted their political rivals. But our analysis suggests that these concerns may not be shared by Americans, especially when it comes to exporting attack drones to Ukraine. And, as Steven Pifer notes, “the Kremlin’s red lines — never clearly articulated — appear less stringent than some in the West evidently believe. There remains space for expanded U.S. and Western military assistance to Kyiv that would not cross the lines that appear to have emerged over the past year.” Indeed, concerns over escalation in Ukraine due to U.S. military aid have softened over time. While tanks where once perceived as too provocative to provide Ukraine, risking a direct conflict between Russia and the United States, they are now lauded as a “game-changer.”
As the conflict in Ukraine drags on, policymakers have much to consider. They are already opening the door to providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine after months of denied requests. Even if the public endorses this move, signaling support to the transfer of more advanced weaponry to Ukraine, only policymakers can decide whether sending armed drones should follow.
By Scott Christensen
Thailand’s May 14 general election could become the most consequential political event in the country since the mid-1970s, when a pro-democracy movement first toppled the ruling military regime. The winner this round was the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP), which secured 152 of the 500 seats in the lower House. The party ran on a reformist platform which aims to dismantle the powers of the military-backed establishment that has governed the country since it seized power in a coup in 2014.
The election was a setback for Pheu Thai, the populist party affiliated with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who lives in self-imposed exile. Pheu Thai had expected to win 200 districts and lead a new government, but instead came in second place with 141.
MFP won 32 of Bangkok’s 33 districts — losing the one by only four votes. The MFP also carved into Pheu Thai’s northern region stronghold by winning most of the seats in the region’s three largest provinces. The result suggests that voters have had enough of the long-running rivalry between the Thaksin cabal and its military-backed opponents. The MFP’s reform agenda was a more popular alternative. The political landscape now looks almost entirely redrawn.
Thailand’s parliamentary procedures mean it will take several months for a new government to form and assume power. The MFP’s proposals for structural reform are both radical and divisive in a Thai political context, and the MFP faces opposition persuading the new parliament to endorse its leadership. But it looks like both time and voters are on the side of reform. Whichever major party leads the next government, military rule is most likely over, and reformist ideas will increasingly shape public policy and debate. A seismic shift has occurred. The significance of this election result cannot be overstated.
Birth of a progressive ideologyLed by Harvard and MIT-educated Pita Limjaroenrat, age 42, the MFP presented voters with a plan to reform the powers of the military and other unelected state institutions. This includes proposals to scrutinize defense budgets, eliminate conscription, reform the judicial system, decentralize fiscal administration to the provinces, and de-monopolize certain industries. The MFP also aims to raise wages and expand social welfare, measures that economists reckon would cost 3-4% of GDP. MFP would fund these efforts by raising taxes on corporations and on the wealthy, many of whom currently pay almost nothing in personal income tax.
The vote outcome affirms a desire among voters to strengthen democratic institutions and impose more accountability on the military and civil service, along with more economic equity. It represents a growing interest in policy platforms over tired populist agendas or fealty to particular leaders. And it reflects a simmering dissatisfaction with what voters see as selective if not corrupt enforcement of the law — a landmark proposal for police reform has been gathering dust on the outgoing prime minister’s desk for nearly three years now.
The election outcome also could have important geopolitical implications. An erstwhile Cold War partner of the United States, Thailand is the only functioning multiparty democracy in mainland Southeast Asia, a sub-region dominated by autocrats and one-party states that is increasingly under the influence of the People’s Republic of China. It should escape nobody’s attention that Thailand just delivered a resounding vote against authoritarian politics in favor of a progressive platform that is more decidedly liberal in a Western sense than anything seen here in at least three decades, if ever.
Next steps and potential outcomesThe MFP has formed a coalition with Pheu Thai and others representing a comfortable majority of 313 of the 500 MPs in the House. The Electoral Commission has up to 60 days to certify the results, after which parliament will convene to ratify the new government. That process will also include the 250 members of the Senate, an appointed body that was hand-picked by Thailand’s outgoing rulers back in 2019. The coalition will need to win at least 376 out of the combined 750 bicameral seats for Pita to become prime minister. Many senators will oppose measures to weaken the military. Even more will reject the most controversial plank in the MFP’s platform — reforming Thailand’s “lèse-majesté” law, or Article 112 of the criminal code, which carries a prison sentence for threatening, insulting, or defaming the monarchy. Without winning over enough senators or opposition MPs to reach 376 votes, Pita’s efforts to form a new government could fail.
Discussions over Article 112 have proven divisive enough that the aspirant coalition has excluded the item from its May 22 formal policy statement. The MFP says it will refer the matter to the new parliament for discussion. The next several weeks will reveal whether this backpedaling is sufficient to win the MFP the additional votes it needs.
Pita could also be charged with an irregularity related to shares in a defunct media firm held by a family trust, which could disqualify him or his party from taking power. For nearly two decades Thailand’s military rulers have used coups and court rulings to keep elected opponents out of power. But voter tolerance for rule-rigging has worn thin. A disqualification against the MFP’s former leader following the 2019 election was a factor that drove thousands of protesters into the streets in 2020-21. Those events landed many of the protesters in jail and helped bolster the support base that propelled the MFP to a win on May 14.
In the event of insufficient parliamentary votes or a court ruling against the MFP, Pheu Thai — which opposes abolishing Article 112 but is open to reviewing it — could break away and attempt to form a government more acceptable to the Senate’s conservative old guard. The math in that scenario may require the inclusion of one of the military-backed parties to form a viable coalition. It would also require joining up with the populist Bhumjaithai Party (BJT), a military ally and coalition partner in the outgoing government that opposes revising Article 112. This could be a risky strategy for Pheu Thai given its pre-election commitment not to join hands with any military-backed group. But it could be presented to voters as a stalemate breaker that still honors the electorate’s desire for a transition to a civilian-led government.
Expect a more assertive foreign policy under Move ForwardIf Pita and his coalition can win endorsement from parliament the new government would be entirely in civilian hands. This shift would most certainly redirect Thailand’s role and profile globally and its relations with major world powers — including the United States, a longstanding treaty ally.
While his foreign policy isn’t yet fully articulated, MFP leader Pita says he wants Thailand to play a more assertive role in global affairs with what his party has called a rules-based foreign policy. He has also stated that Thailand should not choose sides or align too closely with any one superpower.
But the MFP’s underlying philosophy is clear. The party’s reform platform is the boldest and broadest repudiation of authoritarianism we have seen in Thailand in decades. This would surely imply a reassessment of Thailand’s relations with autocratic regimes and place increased emphasis on international law and human rights. Pita has indicated interest in driving foreign policy efforts directly, potentially serving also as either foreign minister or defense minister. There could be a momentous opportunity for the United States in particular to re-elevate engagement with Thailand on the basis of a shared platform of ideals.
Closer scrutiny of military procurements — which include the former government’s budget-busting plan to buy Chinese-made naval submarines — inevitably will trigger a review of Thailand’s relationship with China. Sino-Thai relations expanded cordially during a decade of military-backed rule. We can also expect Thailand to revise its stance on Myanmar, where the outgoing government’s so-called quiet diplomacy has been seen as too accommodating of Myanmar’s military leaders. And if Pita is eventually elected prime minister, he could well emerge as a bold and articulate regional statesman — he has said that he wants to help raise the profile of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on the world stage.
Time — and voters — are on the side of reformWhatever the outcome shall be, one thing is currently etched in stone: The powers of the Senate to ratify a prime minister will expire in March 2024. After that, a new Senate would be appointed for a five-year term by the government in power at the time. The only way to maintain the Senate’s status quo is for the military to launch another coup and amend the constitution, or for a Pheu Thai-led coalition to revise the rules and allow the Senate to be re-stacked with more old guard. Both scenarios not only appear unlikely but the former risks a significant backlash from the electorate, while the latter would be political suicide for Pheu Thai.
Time, therefore, appears to favor the MFP and a rapidly growing constituency that wants to see reform. Much of the MFP’s electoral base is under 40 years old. And they don’t appear to be motivated by the populist agendas of the more traditional Thai parties. The MFP has now tapped into this with the most comprehensive platform for structural change ever to be endorsed at the ballot box.
By Carlos Martín, Carolyn Kousky, Manann Donoghoe, Karina French
This November marks the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act—the statute that enables the federal government to assist states and their residents after emergencies and major disasters. The act is the foundation for our national disaster policy, but its anniversary comes with some clouds overhead.
In the years since the Stafford Act’s passage, we have entered a new, quickening pace of natural disasters. Witness the hurricanes Katrina, Harvey, and Maria; Superstorm Sandy; and the Camp, Mendocino, Dixie, and August fires. The devastation these events caused mobilized our federal disaster system, but there have also been thousands of smaller yet just as personally devastating events that failed to garner national resources. In the last year alone, the federal government authorized 16 times as many presidential emergency declarations as in 1988, when the Stafford Act became law and the costs of damages were much lower on average.
Across all these cases, human suffering and irrecoverable damages fall through the cracks in the system. And there are many cracks; long-standing inequities such as racism and income disparities often translate into different rates of disaster assistance and vastly divergent outcomes.
Federal disaster responses do not fully prevent this pain. The focus on the trauma and heroism of relief and response obscures the benefits that can come from better shared preparedness in our neighborhoods and the physical mitigation of damages to our possessions, communities, and infrastructure.
Finally, the increasing frequency and magnitude of these disasters mean that federal assistance has also become unsustainable operationally. Federal coffers are tapped daily, government staff are burnt out, and communities are raised and rebuilt at a thoughtless pace. The system needs to be fixed.
As risk grows, major questions arise about why, when, and how the federal government intervenes. Thirty-five years after the Stafford Act, our current federal disaster system—stressed by climate change and continued development in high-risk areas—demands reform.
To that end, researchers at Brookings are introducing a series of briefs that seek to integrate ethical and operational principles into the key debates at the core of our federal disaster policy inertia. The goal is to get policymakers to speak to each other, find common ground on our national objectives, and get going on the critical work of policy reform. In this introductory piece, we define the four principles that we believe should be driving any disaster policy and program reform: equity, efficiency, effectiveness, and environmental value.
Explicit focus on equity in federal aid can reduce pre-disaster vulnerabilities and post-disaster disparitiesResearch has shown that low-income households and communities that face burdens such as racism, disinvestment in infrastructure and public works, and cumulative environmental injustices suffer disproportionately from disasters. These disasters can be tipping points for families and individuals on the edge, pushing the marginally homeless into homelessness, and those living paycheck-to-paycheck into debt and financial insecurity. Yet our current disaster safety net contains too many holes—enough for the most vulnerable of our neighbors to slip through.
There have been many calls for disaster justice, often as a critical component of environmental, climate, and housing justice. Attention to this topic has been fueled by media coverage and recent scholarship documenting inequitable recoveries and the challenges that many lower-income households, households of color, rural and tribal communities, and physically challenged individuals face in the recovery process. These efforts are identifying access gaps and the unequal distribution of federal disaster resources at all stages. Further, the ability of those federal resources to reduce disparities in health, wealth, housing, and other life and livelihood outcomes is poorly documented. In some cases, instead of improving these metrics, inequitable access to disaster aid worsens pre-existing disparities.
We define “equity” as the fair distribution of resources—and fair participation in that distribution—before, during, and after a disaster based on need and vulnerability. There are several dimensions to our equity principle:
- Appropriate distribution of resources: The identification of demographic groups in disaster-affected areas is an essential step toward measuring differences in service and resource provision. Communities that have suffered from racism, persistent income disparities, and local public infrastructure underinvestment are often shortchanged and rarely prioritized. Current federal policy overlooks many pre-existing vulnerabilities and needs by ignoring basic demographic information about survivors—ultimately focusing attention and resources based on property values rather than people.
- Fair access: Accessing and understanding federal resources and programs can be challenging for those with constrained resources and other pressing life priorities before a disaster. After, most families are focused on basic survival and not complex applications and proof-of-need requirements for federal aid programs. Some communities, such as Native American tribes, have struggled even with being recognized by federal disaster agencies. All groups face access burdens from needless and repetitive bureaucracy, but certain households are especially challenged. Language, culture, educational attainment, immigration status, and geography can create an uneven field for accessing purportedly neutral, universal aid. Scrutinizing the methods and media for providing information and services to individuals reveals wide application and approval rate disparities.
- Inclusive participation: Procedural equity presumes that at-risk households and survivor communities participate in the planning and distribution of resources. Yet participation is often limited before a disaster strikes and is logistically complicated after. Given Congress’ established timeframes for services combined with federal agencies’ weak program rules for garnering public input on documents such as state hazard mitigation plans, inclusion is constrained from the outset. Representation matters, and reserving more seats at the table through active community engagement will help to ensure disaster management delivers for everyone.
- Diversity in recovery institutions: Equity also extends beyond identification and procedural concerns, including ensuring that populations from potentially disadvantaged groups are proportionally represented or overrepresented in a disaster recovery effort’s management, staff, and contractor and consultant pools.
- Accounting for historical inequities: Our current federal disaster policy does not account for historical social and economic disinvestments, or even disparities from past disasters. Instead, we need to rectify the economic and social legacies and trauma from multiple and intergenerational hazards. Too often, disaster policy wants to rebuild what was, even if that might not have been good for anybody.
A comprehensive reform of disaster policy should anticipate and integrate equity across all these dimensions. By not grounding policy in this principle, we risk widening inequalities, making some more vulnerable to future disasters, and undermining all other public policy goals in the long term.
Efficiency is key to distributing disaster responsibilities and costs and minimizing bureaucracyThe principle of program efficiency is a practical one, involving streamlining the federal financial, human, and knowledge resources required to meet targeted outcomes. Our principle of efficiency is based on the classical definition of efficiency: Public investments are assessed based on the amount of social benefit they accrue at the lowest social cost. But it also goes well beyond that, considering the costs that fraud and moral hazards add to current and future federal disaster programs as well as the broader concept of good stewardship of the public commons.
Therefore, this principle also focuses on the most efficient distribution of the responsibilities and costs of preparing for disasters and recovering from them, across all key stakeholders from the federal government through state and local governments as well as private sector developers and insurers. Dimensions of this principle include:
- Efficient use of resources: Achieving the greatest total benefit at lowest cost in our use of public funds is critical to ensure that resources to support households and their housing are not wasted in bureaucracy or profit-seeking. Economists and policymakers often define efficiency by quantifying costs and benefits with the hope of identifying projects that maximize the net benefits. Yet estimating benefits and costs can be time-consuming and resource-intensive; it has also been criticized for failing to account for the equitable distribution of those costs and benefits. There is currently no clear assessment of costs per household across programs or of the value-addition for different stakeholders. Ultimately, the costs in money, time, and other operational constraints must be included in comprehensive reform.
- Disincentivizing moral hazards: Our efficiency principle includes concerns about “moral hazard,” or a lack of incentives to reduce or manage a risk when someone else is paying the cost. Moral hazards can lead to gaps in insurance coverage, less investment in risk reduction measures, and poor community planning. There is concern that the expectation of public assistance after a disaster can reduce the impetus for households to protect themselves from those disasters. This is especially true among communities and individuals with the knowledge and financial resources to act independent of federal intervention. Local governments are also subject to moral hazard, since they have many of their costs paid for through federal disaster aid dollars. In response, they may forego more environmentally appropriate land use decisions or fail to adopt stricter building codes.
- Promoting good stewardship: Related to these efficiency considerations are the costs and impacts of monitoring for fraud and other abuse in garnering assistance unfairly. It is unclear whether the resources and time exhausted to monitor individual- or household-level fraud are warranted given the modest savings from their detection. The possible scamming of federal assistance is largely mitigated by the Stafford Act’s duplication of benefits clauses. Inspector General audits and Government Accountability Office reports have noted that, while some individual fraud exists, it is rarely of a magnitude that crowds out needy beneficiaries. However, attempts to reduce fraud can end up excluding some households from the aid they deserve and can radically slow the process of aid dispersal. Fraud surveillance has created a higher bar for applications across all disaster programs—often unfairly, when it comes to particularly vulnerable populations. At the same time, program supervision largely ignores other sources of financial abuse that drain program resources. Fraud in the form of disaster assistance providers, contractors, private insurers, and consultants receives less attention, though these entities often charge hefty fees both because of the emergency conditions in which they work and because the going rates are expensive in these high-turnover professions.
Disaster response options must be monitored, evaluated, and deemed effectiveThe third principle of reform—effectiveness—separately considers whether policies, programs, and private actions actually achieve their objectives while taking into account unintended effects. This principle highlights that to evaluate our public programs, we need clear objectives. Yet national policymakers rarely do this for individual disasters or our overall disaster policies, making this metric challenging to evaluate or achieve. Dimensions of this principle include:
- Clarifying objectives: Local and national elected officials typically proclaim “we will rebuild” or “we will build back better” after a hazard event without specific and measurable goals for housing, livelihoods, local economies, ecosystems, or other indicators. Policy interventions should ensure that investments in disaster recovery go beyond typical repairs and look toward long-term community-building. Health, wealth, and community stability are all longer-term outcomes to which short-term assistance should contribute. Yet our policy focus has been solely on immediate rebuilding. Our effectiveness definition, then, overlaps with equity and efficiency principles in the sense that it seeks successful outcomes, but ones that are fair and delivered with minimal social costs.
- Mitigating unintended consequences: Our effectiveness principle goes one step further than simple success measures, and considers if policies that achieve their objectives come with other unintended negative effects. For example, investments in either infrastructure or household risk mitigation designed to lower overall risk levels could fail to achieve this aim by creating an inaccurate sense of security and an inappropriate set of responses by households and communities that result in higher long-term risk (a parallel to “climate maladaptation”). Early policy work around flooding termed this the “levee effect.” Additionally, wholesale buyouts and relocations could produce the intended stated objective—immediately reducing the number of households at risk of flooding—but lead to numerous other poor or unwanted effects, such as higher housing costs for relocated people or diminished social networks and community traditions.
- Promoting an evidence base: We often treat each new disaster as if no disasters came before it. Ultimately, that’s because we lack good evidence to determine what is effective. There is a daunting lack of consistent monitoring and evaluation of the health, housing, and financial outcomes for survivor households, though anecdotally, these outcomes are known to diminish severely in specific disaster events, particularly for people who were vulnerable beforehand. There are too many unanticipated long-term impacts that may determine whether the intervention was ultimately equitable. For example, a concentrated investment in home buyouts or community-level infrastructure could result in rising housing unaffordability, displacement, and gentrification. Yet these life outcomes are rarely measured and monitored, though their cumulative effect is a critical dimension of disaster policy.
More work must be done to measure disparate impacts between survivor groups and policies that produce the desired outcomes, which can then be supported and scaled.
Forward-thinking policy should foreground disasters’ effects on our environment and integrate environmental change into reformsEnvironmental changes will affect disaster management, but disaster management also affects the local environment. Holding environmental value as a principle means bringing climate change adaptation into our reforms, but also looking at how “green” infrastructure and ecosystem services can be better integrated into disaster policy. Dimensions of this principle include:
- Addressing climate change: In the absence of a comprehensive adaptation strategy, disaster policy has become our nation’s de facto climate adaptation policy. Our disaster programs are now the main source of support for households and communities facing both increasing climate shocks (such as hurricanes and wildfires) and slower-onset stressors (such as sea-level rise). But the resources available for disaster recovery are not structured to enable households and communities to integrate adaptation and resilience into rebuilding. While steps have been taken to move more federal risk reduction dollars into pre-disaster change (such as through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program), too many federal resources only come after climate-related disasters have damaged houses and their occupants’ livelihoods. Climate adaptation planning and investments in public works, housing, social programs, and related interventions need to be addressed in the calm before the storm, not only during or immediately after it. There are some existing programs that do this, but they typically do not address the myriad of chronic effects from climate change in addition to the acute disasters.
- Disasters and ecosystems: Many natural systems can help lower the risks of disasters, such as wetlands mitigating flooding and ecological forestry reducing wildfire risk. These systems simultaneously provide a range of other environmental benefits (or “ecosystem services”), from habitats for diverse species to air and water purification to carbon sequestration. Disasters have also led to (or are even caused by) direct environmental hazards such as toxic releases or acute pollutants. Understanding the complex, place-based interplay between local ecosystems and human settlements and the ways that climate change is exacerbating what we know—and don’t know—about them should shape disaster programs in the future.
How future entries in this series explore disaster reformsThe next five pieces in this series will each take on one policy or program debate, present novel solutions for reform, and assess them against our original principles. We are conscious of the overlap and intersection between our principles. For example, increasing the urban tree canopy lowers ambient temperatures (effectiveness), does so in cost-effective ways (efficiency), and supports greater environmental benefits such as carbon sequestration and habitat provision (environmental value). Since lower-income neighborhoods often have substantially fewer trees and thus suffer more from heat and respiratory health impacts associated with poor air quality, prioritizing these communities would also satisfy our final principle (equity).
Each post will focus on one central debate about how to fix our broken disaster management policies, such as how we define a “disaster,” which government agencies should manage disaster responses, who bears the burden of paying for those actions, and how these burdens need to account for long-standing vulnerabilities in communities. These issues are all currently being debated among federal policymakers, but without guiding principles for their resolution.
Too often, policy debates in Washington exist independent of principled conversation. Conversely, statements of principle regarding an important public conversation are typically abstractions—platitudes devoid of the nitty gritty details that change individuals’ lives and livelihoods and are more likely to represent the loudest interests than the very principles espoused. We see this especially in disaster policy—a field that has historically received bipartisan support, but where current authorized and appropriated programs are in desperate need of comprehensive statutory reform. We believe our current system can be reformed, and introduce this series with that goal in mind.
This series is generously supported by the Walmart Foundation.
By Elijah Asdourian, James Lee, Nasiha Salwati, Louise Sheiner
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Cap and trade more costly than carbon taxes, but both reduce emissions Using data from the last 20 years, Diego Känzig of Northwestern University and Maximilian Konradt of the Geneva Graduate Institute compare the efficiency of national carbon taxes across European countries to that of the European Union Emission Trading System, a program that caps carbon emissions and then lets businesses trade the rights to those emissions. The authors find that while both policies are effective at reducing total emissions, cap and trade comes at a larger economic cost. Under cap and trade, economic activity falls, unemployment rises, and prices rise. Under carbon taxes, governments have tax revenue to redistribute to citizens, thus mitigating the effects of rising prices, and manufacturers are less likely to pass the full cost of emissions onto consumers. Lastly, the authors find that the effects of cap and trade are heterogeneous across countries, with higher energy prices, larger declines in economic output, and larger decreases in emissions in countries with heavily concentrated electricity markets.
School finance lawsuits have little impact on states’ spending per pupil in the long run School finance lawsuits challenge funding disparities across state districts, with plaintiffs arguing that the disparities lead to unequal educational opportunities that violate state constitutions, and defendants (usually state government officials) seeking to uphold existing finance systems. Using data on 205 distinct school finance litigation cases across 48 states between 1968 and 2021, Eric A. Hanushek and Matthew Joyce-Wirtz of Stanford find that plaintiffs win the cases about slightly less than half the time. Plaintiffs in states where per pupil spending is lower than the national average are more likely to initiate lawsuits but somewhat less likely to win. While rulings in favor of plaintiffs raise per pupil spending of a state within five years of the decision, the authors find that litigation cannot explain the growth in how much states spend per pupil over the 1970-2019 period. “[F]or all of the energy and activity of the courts, the overall impact on spending for schools of 50 years of litigation is surprisingly modest,” the authors conclude.
Quality of housing among safety net recipients has increased since 1985 While housing expenditures have risen sharply for the neediest Americans, the quality and size of the homes they inhabit have also improved, according to Erik Hembre and Samuel Wylde of the University of Illinois-Chicago and J. Michael Collins of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Between 1985 and 2021, monthly housing expenditures among safety net program recipients rose 93%, adjusted for inflation. This spending resulted in bigger and better homes: transfer program recipients in 2021 lived in homes as nice as the average American home in 1985, according to a quality index developed by the authors. Further, the size of their homes increased by 9%. Using a house pricing model that accounts for quality and size, the authors conclude that these social safety net recipients increased their real housing consumption by 45%.
Chart of the week: Foreign-born workers make up increasingly large share of the US workforce Quote of the week: “We still have some major data releases coming up in the next three weeks and I’ll also be learning more about evolving credit conditions, both factors which will inform me on the best course of action. Between now and then, we need to maintain flexibility on the best decision to take in June … One might lean toward hiking by focusing on the economic data and interpreting it to suggest that inflation and economic activity are not consistent with significant and ongoing progress toward the FOMC’s 2% inflation goal. Based solely on the data we have in hand as of today, we are not making much progress on inflation. If one doesn’t believe the incoming data will be much better, one could advocate for another 25-basis-point hike as the appropriate action in June,” says Christopher Waller, Member, Federal Reserve Board.
“Alternatively, one might view the current and incoming data as supporting a hike in June but believe that caution is warranted because there is a high level of uncertainty about how credit conditions are evolving. Another hike combined with an abrupt and unexpected tightening of credit conditions may push the economy down in a rapid and undesirable manner. This possibility is the downside risk of an additional rate hike in the current environment. If one is sufficiently worried about this downside risk, then prudent risk management would suggest skipping a hike at the June meeting but leaning toward hiking in July based on the incoming inflation data. There is a little over a month between the June and July FOMC meetings, and during that time we will learn more about how credit conditions are evolving. Over four months will have passed between the Silicon Valley Bank failure and the July meeting. By then we will have a much clearer idea about credit conditions. If banking conditions do not appear to have tightened excessively, then hiking in July could well be the appropriate policy.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Halimatou Hima
Conflict, insecurity, and the resulting humanitarian crises have imposed major disruptions on education systems in many parts of the African continent. Between 2020 and 2021, over 2,000 attacks on schools and educational infrastructures were documented in 14 African countries, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali most affected. In the Central Sahel (namely Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger), the confluence of armed conflict and threats of attack have led to the closures of 7,000 schools, affecting the education of 1.3 million children and young people, while over 30,000 teachers are unable to teach. Girls are particularly affected and are less likely to return following these school closures.
In 2022, the number of forcibly displaced people reached 36 million on the African continent—a threefold increase over the last ten years—and the majority are children and young people. If prevailing trends persist, the number of children and young people in need of education support in conflict-affected settings is likely to soar. Forced displacement acutely affects access to education and the continuation of learning, yet current education systems are not equipped to cope with the prolonged forced displacement facing conflict-affected settings. Forcibly displaced children, on average, benefit from fewer years of schooling, and are less likely to transition to secondary school.
Why does the provision of education matter in conflict-affected settings?It is worth highlighting why education matters in conflict-affected settings. Education alone does not prevent conflict from erupting. However, education is central to sustainable peacebuilding and offers a tangible opportunity to break cycles of inequality that are a salient feature of fragile and conflict-affected states on the continent. In addition, education can address some of the drivers of violent extremism, although evidence shows that unmet expectations among educated youth could still fuel grievances and drive support for violent extremism. Third, keeping children in school during crises or conflict, provides a sense of normalcy, which is essential to their psychological well-being and cognitive development.
What should policymakers do to realize the promise of resolution UNSC 2601?From a rights-based perspective and capability framework, the continuation of learning is central to how forcibly displaced communities reimagine their futures. In an effort initiated and coordinated by Niger and Norway, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted the landmark resolution on the protection of education in armed conflict zones (UNSCR2601). Realizing the promise of this binding commitment (applicable to all U.N. member states) will require a more intentional response and coordinated approach—amidst crises that are increasingly protracted in nature, complex, and often with a regional dimension.
1. Reverse trends of declining government and humanitarian funding for education:Insecurity imposes fiscal pressure on governments, which often lowers the proportion of government spending on education. This adversely impacts the ability of education systems to address the needs of children and youth affected by conflict, insecurity, and violence (see Figure 22 below).
Moreover, to be effective, interventions must draw on joint humanitarian and development praxes—yet in many African countries, notably in the Sahel, the humanitarian leg of education is direly underfunded: In Mali and Burkina Faso, respectively, less than 7 percent and 3 percent of humanitarian appeals for education have been met—compared to the global average of 50.7 percent.
2. Strengthen data and evidence on learning outcomes and trajectories of children and youth forcibly on the move: There is a dearth of data particularly on internally displaced children, who often find themselves absorbed in the wider host communities. Consequently, their educational needs are often not fully accounted for, as they are not measured by conventional data. Quality data that is disaggregated, safely and ethically collected, as well as standardized can also support better diagnostics and the design of policies and programs. Beyond quantitative data, the use of qualitative measures that document the educational experiences and trajectories of girls and boys who are internally displaced can lay the foundations for more inclusive approaches, both for forcibly displaced children and their host communities.
3. Revisiting how education gets provided and for what purpose: Much of education in emergencies focuses on primary education, with little attention afforded to post-primary and vocational training which young people in forced displacement cite as a valuable way to link education with economic opportunities. Moreover, the recognition that education is indeed already a priority for forcibly displaced communities can help reframe the angle of interventions, with a renewed focus on structural barriers. Lastly, quality matters, and even more so for populations facing crises: Without an environment that fosters learning and provides clear value, staying in school becomes nearly impossible for populations facing so many competing needs. Continuity of education in crisis settings, especially for girls, depends on quality and perception about the value of schooling.
In conclusion, it is imperative for African countries to invest in education in crisis settings, despite the associated challenges in fragile and conflict-affected countries. By doing so, Africa has an opportunity to reset the agenda for education in crisis settings and devise effective strategies to provide quality education for the growing population of children and youth who are affected by armed conflict.
By Wendy Edelberg, Noadia Steinmetz-Silber
Even if policymakers raise the debt ceiling in time to prevent its constraining payments, the economic effects are unambiguously negative. Watchers of scheduled U.S. federal payments and projected tax revenues worry that if the debt ceiling is not raised, Treasury could run short of resources to pay its obligations as early as June 1, the so-called “X-date.”
We find that the relatively large premium being charged now on Treasury securities maturing in June suggests that financial markets are concerned that principal payments will indeed be delayed and more so than in prior debt limit standoffs. The increase in interest rates represents a cost to taxpayers and a lack of confidence among investors. Moreover, the negative effects could be persistent even after the debt ceiling is eventually increased. At the very least, investors would likely anticipate short-term interruptions in federal payments each time the debt limit nears, a significant escalation from their current expectations for negotiations to run right up to the last minute.
Up until now, the U.S. government has enjoyed a borrowing rate that is estimated to be lower by roughly ¼ percentage point, meaning interest savings of more than $750 billion over the next decade. If a portion of this advantage were lost by allowing the debt limit to bind, the cost to the taxpayer could be significant. Already, financial markets are concerned.
For Treasury bills that are scheduled to mature in June, investors are demanding a significant premium of 1.4 percentage points, or about 140 basis points, to shoulder the risk of not being paid on time (figure 1). For example, between mid-April (blue line) and May 22 (dark green line), interest rates on Treasury bills maturing on June 1 rose from 4.4 percent to 5.7 percent. To give a sense of how consequential an increase of this magnitude is, consider the hypothetical that all interest rates for all maturities rose by this much and the premium was persistent: interest costs to finance the federal debt would increase by $4.10 trillion.
The premium being charged is significantly larger and rose significantly earlier than during the last-minute debt ceiling negotiations in 2011 and 2013. As shown in figure 2, in 2011, interest rates on Treasury bills maturing right after the earliest anticipated X-date, August 2, started to rise only in late July. Between July 20 (light green line) and July 29 (dark green line), interest rates on these bills rose nearly 30 basis points. It fell immediately after the debt ceiling was raised in early August (purple line).
In 2013, there was a similar increase in the interest rates on Treasury bills scheduled to mature near the anticipated X-date, October 17. As shown in figure 3, like in 2011, there was a nearly 30 basis point increase in yields on these bills between late September (light green line) and mid-October (dark green line). As discussed in a Hutchins Center Explains post, when Congress waited until the last minute to raise the debt ceiling in 2013, rates rose on Treasury securities scheduled to mature near the projected date the debt limit was expected to bind—by between 21 basis points and 46 basis points, according to an estimate from Federal Reserve economists—and liquidity in the Treasury securities market contracted. Yields across all maturities also increased a bit—by between 4 basis points and 8 basis points—reflecting investors’ fears of broader financial contagion.
Should the debt ceiling bind, the negative economic effects would quickly mount and risk triggering a deep recession. As Edelberg and Louise Sheiner discussed in a recent piece:
There is enormous uncertainty regarding the damage the U.S. economy would incur, as it depends on how long the situation lasts, how it is managed, and the extent to which investors alter their views about the safety of Treasury securities. Would the stock market tumble precipitously the first day that a non-interest payment is delayed? Would the Treasury securities market, the world’s most important, function smoothly? Would there be a run on money market funds that hold short-term Treasury securities? What actions would the Federal Reserve take to stabilize financial markets and the economy more broadly?
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Alexander H. Montgomery, Amy J. Nelson
On May 4, 2023, Ukraine used a U.S.-supplied Patriot battery to down a Russian Kinzhal missile, which Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced in 2018 was a “hypersonic” weapon that could overcome all existing air defense systems. Russia’s state news agency tried to maintain this claim by arguing that the shootdown was a fake report. Yet just 12 days afterward, Ukraine shot down six Kinzhals that Russia fired in an assault on Kyiv. Both shootdowns have been verified by U.S. government sources. Is this story, in which a Cold War-era defense system defeated one of Russia’s most advanced conventional systems, a sign that the hypersonic hype bubble has finally burst?
Initially, in touting the Kinzhal as a hypersonic missile and then using it against Ukraine, Russia set off a misplaced alarm regarding both Ukraine’s air defenses and its own lead over the United States in the hypersonic weapons arms race. When similar alarm bells about related capabilities were sounded during the Cold War, it rang in the myth of a missile gap, amplifying the missile arms race. Today, however, these Ukrainian interceptions have helped to further dismantle the tattered reputation of advanced Russian weapons and their ability to evade defenses. Ukraine’s defense success here may also help to correct perceptions regarding the necessity and value of hypersonic weapons, which have been touted by some as essential at any price. To aid in this, we disentangle five hypersonic myths.
1) Russian hypersonics are already hereThe first part of the hype is Putin’s claim that Russian hypersonics are already here and being used on the battlefield in Ukraine. Hypersonic weapons are a broad category of missiles whose only common characteristic is that they can reach a speed of Mach 5, which the German V-2 achieved in 1944. The term “hypersonic” is now typically used just to refer to two types of weapons that are being developed through contemporary defense programs: hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs). The Kinzhal is neither, as it is an air-launched ballistic missile. Moreover, Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russia’s entire volley of six Kinzhals indicates that the missile’s alleged status as a hypersonic system is at best questionable.
2) Hypersonics cannot be interceptedHGVs and HCMs are, indeed, more difficult to intercept than ballistic missiles using current missile defenses, although hypersonics may be even more difficult to produce in the first place: The U.S. Air Force’s HGV Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon was canceled after multiple failures during testing. The technical challenges of developing HCMs are even greater, posing serious questions about when or if the allegedly deployed Russian HCMs were tested sufficiently or will be useful. Moreover, interception of even these bleeding-edge weapons isn’t impossible. Existing missile defenses can already intercept missiles traveling far faster than HGVs or HCMs, and could be adapted to intercept hypersonic missiles as well. A satellite constellation to track HGVs is planned to be in orbit by 2025. Moreover, as of 2022, the U.S. Aegis sea-based terminal defense system already had a nascent capability to counter hypersonics.
3) The United States is behind on hypersonics developmentThe United States appears to be well ahead of Russia and China in its ability to defend against hypersonics. However, if one measures success by allegedly deployed offensive hypersonic systems, the United States is indeed behind. But that would be like measuring the success of the Chinese military’s adoption of artificial intelligence by announcements made at the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
We do know a great deal about how well-tested China’s and Russia’s HGV systems are since they are launched from easily-detected ballistic missiles; the open-source community alone has reported on numerous Chinese and Russian HGV tests. While some Chinese HGV systems have been tested frequently, the Russian ones have not, and reactions to both have been hyped. For example, some technological developments that have been presented as novel are simply not: Although China made international news in July 2021 by testing an HGV that was also a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS), an “exotic” hypersonic weapon allegedly capable of flying around the world and carrying a nuclear warhead; FOBS is an old technology that was first developed and deployed by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Similarly, while the Russians have tested their Avangard HGV four times (with one failure), it is unclear whether this is (or should be) sufficient to qualify as fielding the system. Russia’s Zircon HCM allegedly has a suspiciously perfect test track record, but also suffers from inherent limitations of existing HCM technologies. Rather than being genuinely “behind,” the United States’ more cautious approach to its own programs and statements about them likely reflects its reticence to field insufficiently tested systems.
4) Hypersonics threaten strategic stabilityThere is also a question as to whether being “behind” in the development of novel hypersonic capabilities actually matters — whether an asymmetry disrupts a fragile stability. China and Russia already possess sufficient intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities to swamp U.S. missile defenses, and so the marginal added value of an additional system that can overcome the same defenses is questionable. Moreover, a recent Congressional Budget Office report found limited roles in which hypersonics would clearly be superior to other extant weapons systems, noted that they are more expensive than other options, and questioned whether hypersonics were more survivable. Determining whether hypersonics will cause a net increase or decrease in incentives to strike first is highly contingent; current plans and deployments do not appear to do so. It is possible that future developments will change this equation but predicting the future of strategic stability is speculative rather than a basis for engaging in another arms race.
5) Arms control for hypersonics is uselessA three-way hypersonics arms race appears to be gathering steam between China, Russia, and the United States. China’s heavy investment in hypersonics appears to be in reaction to the United States’ development of hypersonics, indicating a security dilemma dynamic that is ripe for arms control measures. Given the unclear long-term implications for strategic stability, the technical difficulties with engineering and deploying such systems, the apparent security dilemma dynamics, and the expense of doing so, arms control has a clear role to play here.
Rather than being trapped by narrower notions of arms control, we should think about creative solutions. Simple, easily verifiable measures such as a moratorium on testing hypersonic glide vehicles would help to cool off this race to nowhere; since China believes it is ahead in offensive hypersonics development, this may be a rare issue on which they would prefer to lock in that lead. While Russia is busy tearing up arms control treaties and, therefore, unlikely to participate, it is also subject to severe sanctions and engulfed in a conflict that makes it difficult for Russia to mount a hypersonics program capable of besting the United States’ right now. Confidence-building measures that address deployments which threaten strategic stability, such as clear separation of nuclear and non-nuclear forces, would also be attractive to all parties, since they require no reductions but could nonetheless prove stabilizing. Quantitative limitations, possibly in the form of asymmetric arms control for hypersonics in which parties accept different reductions or ceilings for forces or exchange one weapon for a different kind of weapon, which have a history of success where symmetrical reductions failed, might also be more tolerable and could prevent costs from rapidly spiraling out of control. But none of these measures can have a chance while we remain under the sway of the hypersonic hype.
Thus, reporting of Ukraine’s shootdown of Russian hypersonics tells only a partial truth. Russian hypersonic missiles do not yet pose the dire threat to Western interests that has been so breathlessly reported in the media. This makes it an opportune time to invest in defenses and allocate resources to arms control — before the real Russian hypersonic threat emerges.
By Ijaz Nabi
The floods of August 2022 could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan caught up in deep macroeconomic and political turmoil. A ballooning trade deficit, impending debt service obligations, and fast-depleting reserves had put a lot of pressure on the exchange rate, which had depreciated 24 percent in 21-22. Inflation was at an all-time high (27 percent year on year). Already in an IMF program (the fifth since 2000) with stringent fiscal targets, there was little room to fund large unanticipated expenditure. Nearly $31 billion concessionary capital, which would help create the fiscal space needed to respond to any exogenous shock, was tied up with the continuation of the IMF program. To make things worse, the coalition government that had ousted the previous government in a vote of confidence resisted tough conditionality and the program was on hold. A general election was around the corner and removing the monstrous energy subsidy carried a huge political cost.
The deluge Pakistan receives 70 percent of its rain in the monsoon months of July and August. Low pressure over the Tibetan plateau attracts water-laden winds from the Arabian sea and the Bay of Bengal. The winds travel westward along the Himalayas and shed water mainly in Pakistan’s upper Punjab. The water flows back to the Arabian sea via storm drains and the Indus River system. A good proportion of this water is diverted to the world’s most extensive canal irrigation system, and some of the world’s largest hydroelectric power plants, vital for farming, drinking, and energy needs of the country. Pakistan’s stellar reduction in poverty, now in the single digits, is largely due to the harnessing of this hydraulic system.
In the summer of 2022, as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres put it, “the monsoon was on steroids”: Pakistan received 190 percent of its normal rainfall in July and August. Importantly, Baluchistan in the western part of the country, normally unaffected by the summer monsoon, and Sindh in the south, received 450 percent more rain than normal. With flood basins saturated with water, the natural drainage system was overwhelmed and a vast area of rich farmland and human settlements was flooded.
The consequences were disastrous. The floods submerged one-third of the country in water, 15,000 people were dead or injured and 8 million were displaced. Over 2 million homes, 13,000 kilometers of highways, 439 bridges, and more than 4 million acres of agricultural land were destroyed or damaged. An estimated 9 million more people could be forced into poverty as a direct consequence of these floods. The losses amount to 2.2 percent of GDP; the agriculture sector accounts for the largest decline at 0.9 percent. The recovery and reconstruction needs are projected at 1.6 times the budgeted national development expenditure for the financial year 2023.
Response The immediate response was to provide relief to the suffering. $245 million, raised from the government’s own resources and contributions by private citizens and international donors, was provided in cash support to 2.2 million households and hundreds of thousands of tents, food, water, and medicines were distributed to the displaced. The fund for emergency relief was revised up to $816 million after additional international commitments.
The key, of course, was the massive post-floods reconstruction to avoid longer-term adverse impacts on economic growth and on the livelihood of low-income households. Working with the United Nations system, the World Bank Group, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Union, a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) was prepared, which estimates flood damages to exceed $14.9 billion, economic losses over $15.2 billion and reconstruction needs over $16.3 billion. The core priorities of this Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction Framework(4RF) are the revival of livelihoods and agriculture, the rebuilding of private housing, and the reconstruction of public infrastructure, including roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals.
Metrologists contend that Pakistan’s floods were caused by climate change-induced increase in temperatures for which the rich countries bore responsibility. COP27 discussions at Sharm al-sheik in November 2022, influenced by Pakistan floods, helped towards the consensus that rich countries must compensate the vulnerable poor countries for the suffering from climate change disasters. This resulted in setting up the “loss and damage” fund.
The urgency to respond to Pakistan’s needs, without waiting for the laborious “transition committee” to operationalize the damage and loss fund, led to the International Conference on Climate Resistant Pakistan hosted by the U.N. in Geneva in January. It resulted in a pledge of $10.57 billion by multilateral and bilateral creditors for reconstruction—more than the $8.15 billion Pakistan was expecting. The PDNA target was $16.3 billion, 50 percent from own resources. The breakdown of the pledge is: Islamic Development Bank Group $4.2 billion, World Bank $2 billion (revised up to $2.7 billion), Asian Development Bank $1.5 billion, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank $1 billion, Saudi Arabia $1 billion, France $345 million, China $100 million, US $100 million, EU $93 million, Germany $88 million, and Japan $77 million.
Accessing the funds Accessing concessionary climate funds, before the floods, had been a sobering experience. Accounting for just 0.6 percent of global CO2 emissions in 2018, an important greenhouse gas (GHG), Pakistan ranked 27th among the world’s top CO2 emitters (largely because of polluting technology and large population size). Without new initiatives annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are projected to more than triple by 2030. In the government’s view, any 50 percent reduction below baseline projected emissions should be financed 15 percent from domestic and 35 percent from international sources. However, the volume of global concessionary finance is modest. Of the total CF of $632 billion following the Paris Agreement in 2019-20, $65 billion was concessionary finance by multinationals to East Asian economies and only $20 billion was grants to the poorest countries. Pakistan found concessionary finance criteria to be exceptionally stringent despite several debt swap opportunities (switching to clean energy, massive reforestation program, upgrading harvesting technology to reduce crop residue burning). Ukraine war further clouded prospects for securing such funds.
Accessing funds following the Geneva pledge in response to the floods will have its own challenges. Pakistan’s finance minister revealed that almost 90 percent of pledges made by the international community at the donors’ conference in Geneva for flood-hit Pakistan were project loans that will be rolled out over the next three years. How soon Pakistan gets the money will depend on how quickly mutually agreed projects can be designed and counterpart funds made available.
A preliminary analysis of the World Bank pledge shows that $650 million is re-purposed from previous commitments, $1.3 billion from the overall IDA commitment (part of $3.9 billion, 7 percent of total IDA Performance Based Allocation to Pakistan), and $700 million is additional money from the crisis response window. Similarly, Islamic Development Bank’s $4.2 billion is largely ($3.6 billion) normal trade finance. ADB financing structure is a similar mix of re-purposing and upfronting previously committed allocation and some fresh money.
Pakistan’s complex macroeconomic situation will pose tough challenges for rolling out the Geneva pledge. Central to the ongoing IMF program is a tight fiscal stance requiring the removal of unfunded and poorly targeted subsidies. Reconstruction will need additional fiscal space. To remain consistent with program design, the reconstruction expenditure has to be monitored closely to make sure that the fiscal space is not misappropriated. Recently approved World Bank IDA credits to respond to the floods in Sind and Baluchistan (part of the Bank’s Geneva pledge) is an opportunity to include expenditure tracking instruments to ensure that subsidy reform supported by the IMF program continues even as the government responds to the disastrous impact of the floods on low-income rural households.
Six months after the deluge, an estimated 4.5 million people remain exposed to or living close to flooded areas; about 2.5 million people do not have access to potable water; an estimated 1.1 million people are at risk of sliding from acute food and livelihood crisis (IPC3) situations to humanitarian emergency (IPC4) food security situations due to insufficient support; Malaria outbreaks have been reported in at least 12 districts of Sindh and Balochistan; over 7 million children and women need immediate access to nutrition services; an estimated 3.5 million children, especially girls, are at high risk of permanent school dropout; the Pakistan Floods Response Plan is only 36 percent funded more than halfway through its 9-month duration; much of the infrastructure destroyed by the floods remains to be re-built.
By Ruth Kagia
“It is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments.”
Former President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah’s statement above on the promise of science and technology is as pertinent today as it was in 1963. It is indeed breakthroughs in science and technology, driven by a workforce skilled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), that will enable Africa to overcome crippling development challenges including climate change, food insecurity, inequality, and poverty. And the one-fifth of the global population under the age of 25 who currently reside in sub-Saharan Africa will need STEM skills to drive economic transformation and competitiveness.
STEM education inculcates problem-solving, critical-thinking, communications, collaboration, and digital skills. Young people need these skills to build the resilience to navigate an uncertain future where technological advances will fundamentally alter industries and eliminate about one-half of the jobs today.
The STEM education landscape in Africa is characterized by risk and opportunity. While effectiveness is hampered by resource and capacity constraints, opportunity lies in centers of excellence and promising pathways of policy and practice.
The Science, Technology, and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA) provides the regional STEM policy framework. Centres of excellence such as the Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA), provide implementation support to countries. And with varying degrees of success, at least 10 countries, are implementing a competency-based curriculum (CBC) which emphasizes inquiry-based learning, STEM, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). For example, coding and computer programming is part of the CBC digital learning program in Kenya.
You cannot code without basic numeracy, neither can you innovate if you lack the basic skills to acquire and apply knowledge.
Low education quality is however a binding constraint. And yet, even before the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation, more than 50 percent of children in basic education in sub-Saharan Africa were unable to read and understand a simple age-appropriate story.
A critical first step towards improving STEM education, therefore, is to get the basics right. We can achieve vast improvements in strengthening foundational skills by integrating into teaching and learning: new and exciting knowledge on the science of learning, and recent evidence from neuroscience on how the human mind works.
There are also huge benefits to achieving universal basic skills. It would raise future world GDP by $700 trillion over the remainder of the century which would be transformative for low-income countries.
Recent studies (ADEA and ACET 2022), indicate that the two greatest constraints to STEM education are inadequate facilities and sub-optimal teacher classroom practices. Schools can provide minimum STEM and other facilities if countries allocate at least 20 percent of their budget to education.
In the countries surveyed, STEM and computer labs exist but less than half of them are functional, while a lack of facilities inhibits practical training. Second, the STEM gender gap widens progressively through school in part because of under representation of female STEM teachers. In Ghana, only 5 percent of STEM teachers in the upper grades are female. Less than 25 percent of students pursue STEM-related career fields in higher education in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of a compounding of these issues reduces.
Closing the gender gap in STEM education is a “best buy.” Women are key to addressing the existential challenges that face the continent. They account for 60 percent of the farmers in Africa and are the primary providers of water and firewood. With strong STEM skills, women could be at the vanguard of environmental sustainability and adoption of agricultural technology. A quantum leap in child survival, national health, and education attainment could be achieved if women as the gatekeepers to child health and family welfare obtain at least 12 years of science-driven basic education.
Successful interventions include targeted scholarships, mentorship using role models, and early exposure to STEM based career opportunities. Moreover, through digital technology, students in resource constrained environments can tap into expert STEM training. Rwanda’s One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) flagship program, Kenya’s digital learning program, the university of Colorado science simulation program, PhET, and massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as EdX, have demonstrated the leapfrogging potential of digital learning.
But we can go even further to nurture and build upon these green shoots that are sprouting on the continent by:
- Creating an interactive classroom-industry interface. Kenya has over 1,000 start-ups that could provide such an interface to give students relevant work exposure, sharpen their focus, and raise their ambition in STEM.
- Nurturing and rewarding excellence in STEM. Africa is brimming with creative, home grown innovations. Norah Magero’s Vaccibox, a small, mobile, solar-powered fridge that safely stores and transports medicines, for use in remote clinics and Charlot Magayi’s Mukuru Clean Stoves, which uses processed biomass to create 90 percent less pollution than an open fire, demonstrate the huge reservoir of talent in the continent. These two women innovators from Kenya have recently won international awards. Competitions such as the Young Scientists Kenya (YSK), which aim to catalyze and spotlight the quality of STEM, have proved useful in tapping into the innovative energy of secondary school students.
- And finally, we need to strengthen the training of STEM trainers. We can do so by providing targeted financing incentives to higher education institutions that offer STEM programs. Furthermore, we need to reinvigorate and protect specialization of universities, such as the Technical University of Kenya or Jomo Kenyatta University of Technology and Agriculture, that were originally designed as centers of excellence in STEM.
By David G. Victor, Parker Bolstad
How can the world forge the cooperation needed to manage climate change? Most answers to that question hinge on the challenge of enforcement. It is easy to dream up bold agreements but hard to make them stick.
Over the last decade, there has been a lot of new thinking about how international treaties on climate change, the main mechanisms for cooperation, can be made more effective. Gone is the idea that global treaties reached through consensus, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), can, by themselves, force governments to take actions and marshal penalties on those that drag their feet. Instead, this new theory emphasizes how small groups of highly motivated governments and firms invest in new technologies and business models. In effect, they run experiments and learn quickly which work and which fail. Those experiments, in turn, lay the tracks for new industrial futures and make it costly for other firms and governments to drag their feet.
But what motivates these leading firms and governments to act? Nearly every answer turns, at least in part, to public opinion and thus to the media as the main conduit for shaping public information. Absent focused public pressure, it would be easy for governments and firms to hide and prevaricate. Anecdotal evidence of media attention focusing public pressure abounds — for example, recent exposés (see here and here) about how carbon offsets aren’t working have led many firms and agencies to adjust their strategies. In turn, that is shaping how the leaders that are the engines of international cooperation make investments.
Anecdotes are helpful, but it’s possible to do better. To take the systematic pulse of media coverage, we focus on the annual event that reliably captures the most attention to climate change: the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC. The 27th iteration of the conference, held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, recently concluded this November. For the most part, it was a disaster. But it could have been worse, and all the talk of disappointment has clouded the bigger, more important, and more hopeful story: The public is paying a lot more attention to climate cooperation these days.
Many earlier studies (like here and here) have looked at elite media, such as newspapers of record. That approach is good at reflecting what elites think, but it is prone to bias — especially as more of those papers invest in their climate desks by hiring more reporters and generating, autonomously, more reporting. Focusing on what elites, who pay attention to U.N. conferences, think is a misleading way to measure political interests, especially in countries where political systems become polarized against those elites.
Here we take a different approach, made possible by new data sources that allow a systematic look at a broader swath of media coverage. We focus on the United States and use the database of Media Cloud, a research consortium, to analyze over 11 million news stories from over 10,000 separate U.S. news outlets from 2011 to 2022. It includes elite papers like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal, but most of the database contains the content of more lilliputian and local purveyors of news. (The stories include syndication, and future research might probe, if possible, whether local news outlets are primarily conduits for nationally-curated stories or suppliers of new content. We suspect the conduit role is an important one.)
According to this broader look at American media, as shown in figure 1, coverage has gone up, and much of that coverage is tightly timed with the COPs. We measure coverage by looking at the percentage of all articles that address climate, and wonks will find more fodder in the caption. Two COPs have attracted the most attention — COP21 (2015) in Paris, which produced the landmark Paris Agreement, and COP26 (2021) in Glasgow, which was the first significant update since Paris. These attracted attention because the hosts organized them as major events, and the diplomats delivered. Other trends are also clear, such as a plummet in coverage as other topics rose quickly to capture public attention, such as in early 2020 (the global pandemic) and early 2022 (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). A big rise starting in the fall of 2019 (until the pandemic plunge) is linked to the substantial climate protests which started in September and focused on the U.N. General Assembly meetings that month. (The world is complex, of course; in our assessment, we take a cue from Max Boykoff and his colleagues.)
This rising volume of coverage is important because it’s a sign that the public, increasingly, is paying attention to the marquis moments for international cooperation on climate change. Indeed, there’s a significant body of research that demonstrates the link between the volume of media coverage and the perceived legitimacy and urgency of an event. Examples of this linkage exist in as varied topics as Initial Public Offerings, social protests, and the European refugee crisis. In the field of climate change, specifically, intensified media coverage in general, of protests, and of international conferences is directly linked to heightened public concern for and elevated attention to the issue. In addition, an increased volume of climate-related coverage is linked to support for public policies to address climate change.
All this is encouraging because it also suggests that the enforcement mechanism available to the COP system — public attention — may be working. The public is focused on climate change, increasingly, and many of the spikes in attention are linked to the premier annual global event aimed at boosting cooperation.
Because figure 1 looks at all coverage related to climate change at any time of the year, in figure 2 we look at just the peak coverage of climate change during the period of time when a COP is underway. Here the variation, and trend, in COP performance is striking — with Paris in the clear lead. Every COP since Paris (except one, Bonn in 2017, which dealt almost exclusively with dreary procedural matters) has attracted more coverage than before Paris.
Anecdotally, at least, it seems clear that there is a sharp linkage between the expectations and successes of COP and media attention. Paris and Glasgow were media blockbusters and expected to achieve a lot. By contrast, little was expected to materialize from the negotiations that took place in Egypt during COP27 this year, which notably avoided complete failure by reaching an agreement in the final hours on a “loss and damage fund,” but that victory was far more prosaic than profound since the fund remains empty and there’s little agreement on what it should do.
What’s also interesting is the daily cadence of media coverage as each COP unfolds — day by day (figure 3). The most successful COPs peak on day 1 — merely holding the event, after months of buildup and expectation, is the event. This insight might offer useful guidance to governments who want to host future COPs and are keen for them to play a bigger role in attracting public attention. It is vitally important for each COP to have a purpose. Also crucial is to curate the media engine that pushes public attention — something that the French and British hosts of the two leading COPs did with aplomb. Combining purpose and curation is a months-long activity that generates rewards the moment the COP curtain rises.
Of course, national political debates about climate change are about a whole lot more than just public attention to COPs. In the United States, a central issue is political polarization, and advocates for climate policy need to pay much closer attention to how they communicate information about climate change to different audiences. That’s a big topic and one pockmarked with challenges of linking causes and effects. In figure 4 we show one snapshot: the roughly one-third of news stories about climate change that are published by polarizing news outlets. (Wonks, again, find solace in the caption.)
Both sides of the American political divide are paying attention to climate change at about the same levels, except in 2018 and 2019 when liberals were much more glued to the perils of global warming. Looking deeper into the data, what’s clear is that liberal media sources give about 30% to 40% more attention to the physical harms of climate change. Liberals talk a lot about gloom and doom; conservatives don’t. Whether gloom and doom actually convince the unconvinced to act is another matter, although some studies suggest it’s a bad political strategy, at least when not paired with examples of action.
On average, liberals also pay more attention to COPs. During an average year, left-leaning outlets increased their coverage of climate change by 23% during the two weeks of a COP. Right-leaning outlets saw only a 15% increase.
Looking more closely at media coverage offers the hope of linking new theories of change about international cooperation to the broader public that puts pressure on firms and governments to cooperate. But there’s a lot more research needed that looks at cause and effect and more closely at the content of media coverage and messages. Counting articles, of course, is no substitute for reading them — a task eased with text analysis, which now is readily automated and can be used to assess the content and tone of the media coverage. There’s a role for experiments and learning what works, as well. For instance, a recent study ran survey experiments to identify what types of messaging impacted support for climate-related policies. By pulsing a large sample of voters with different bits of information, they found that emphasizing a policy’s impacts on inequality, emissions, and the survey respondent’s own household sharply affected the respondent’s support for the policy.
A lot is expected from the yearly COPs. For the next one — COP28, in the United Arab Emirates — the organizers are just gearing up and already face many challenges in attracting global public attention. So far, there’s little that’s concrete on the agenda and many other topics in global politics and economics are consuming public attention. But the runup to COP28 is early and the Emirati hosts have a lot they could showcase. With the right nurturing, the global public might also pay close attention to the “stocktake” efforts underway under the Paris Agreement — a major effort to assess how well the Paris process is working.
The Emirati hosts will need a dedicated effort to drive media attention and public interest. One way to do that is to develop messages that resonate with the COP event — in this case, with how an event focused on climate change can benefit from more engagement from the oil and gas industry that has long dominated the country. Finding ways to link conventional fossil fuels to serious action on climate change has long been elusive, but maybe that’s one way that the UAE can combine its strengths as a country with the public’s desire for messages on climate change that resonate.
By Sheri Rivlin, Allan Rivlin
The filibuster—the Senate rule that sets a 60-vote threshold to cut off debate allowing a majority of senators to pass a law—has been intensely debated for many years but had become especially controversial in the last Senate where Democrats held exactly 50 seats (with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break the tie by casting the 51st vote). Some progressive Democrats advocated eliminating the filibuster so Democrats could pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, protect abortion rights, and pass robust legislation to reverse climate change by majority rule, but moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) disagreed, arguing that the filibuster makes the Senate more deliberative and bipartisan.
Alice Rivlin, who passed away in May 2019, wrote a plea for greater bipartisanship in her final book, “Divided We Fall: Why Consensus Matters” published in 2022 by Brookings Institution Press. In it she rejects the view that the filibuster rule makes the Senate more deliberative and bipartisan and calls for complete elimination of the filibuster. She came somewhat reluctantly to the conclusion that the filibuster rule is being abused when it is invoked routinely for nearly all legislation, as it has been since the Obama administration. This has had the effect of raising the Senate threshold for passage to a 60-vote supermajority, which is not what the Founding Fathers intended.
The book, which we completed for our mother/mother-in-law, discusses the filibuster in depth, starting with the perspectives of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton who believed strongly that a simple majority should decide most issues in the Senate. Madison and Hamilton, two of the authors of the Constitution, had been part of the Second Continental Congress that laboriously drafted the Articles of Confederation the new Constitution would replace. They did not want to repeat the mistake of supermajority requirements that made the lawmaking process under the Articles so laborious. The Senate they were designing would be deliberative but also functional and based on majority rule. Madison argued against a supermajority in Federalist 58, saying if there were such a requirement, “the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.”
Hamilton issued a similar warning in Federalist 22: “If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority,” the result would be “tedious delays, continual negotiation,” and “contemptible compromises of the public good.” And when accommodation cannot be reached, Hamilton predicted, “the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated,” and “kept in a state of inaction” and “weakness” bordering on “anarchy.” Sadly, this prediction now seems prophetic.
The Senate, by design, was supposed to be the more deliberative body, but the filibuster was not designed to enhance deliberation, nor to raise the threshold for action in the Senate to a 60-vote supermajority. It was not designed to force bipartisan cooperation to get anything done. In fact, it was not designed at all. It arose totally by accident.
As Sarah Binder, Brookings scholar and colleague of Alice, told the story in a very accessible 2010 Senate Committee testimony, the filibuster was an unintended consequence of an 1806 Senate rules reform advised by Vice President Aaron Burr. In the reform, the senators inadvertently eliminated the rule to “call the previous question”—in other words, to get back to the business at hand. Although the rule had not yet been used this way in either chamber, the House soon learned to use the previous question rule to cut off debate. It would be decades before the senators realized in 1837 that having eliminated their chamber’s previous question motion, any minority of senators, even a single Senator, could block votes just by refusing to end debate, and the filibuster was born.
James Madison had died one year earlier, so none of the authors of the Federalist Papers were alive to object to the Senate that could be ground to a halt by any minority faction. There were objections over the next 80 years, but any proposal to change the filibuster rule died in a filibuster. This changed in 1917 when, on the eve of America’s involvement in the first World War, President Woodrow Wilson pushed adoption of a new rule allowing two-thirds of senators to cut off debate by invoking “cloture,” and for the first time the Senate was governed by super-majorities. There were 96 senators then, so two-thirds set a threshold of 64 needed to move a vote forward. This number climbed to 66 as Alaska and Hawaii became states, and then the threshold was dropped to three-fifths in 1975, which gives us the current 60 vote threshold. But all of this was less important back then because the filibuster was rarely employed.
For the next half century filibusters were reserved for rare times when a minority of senators believed the majority was making a grave mistake, often on the wrong side of history as when Southern Democratic senators like Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of North Carolina (who switched his party affiliation to Republican in 1964) used the filibuster several times in efforts to block passage of civil rights legislation. Through the end of 1970, there was no two-year span of a Congress where as many as ten cloture motions were filed in the Senate.
There were 24 Senate cloture motions filed in the 92nd Congress (1971-1972), an average of one per month. And more routine use of filibusters started in this millennium. When 252 cloture motions were filed in the 113th Congress (2013-2014), it was undeniable that the parliamentary tactic was being abused. As Alice noted, the filibuster has become in practice something it was never intended to be, and it has not been through most of American history: a de facto threshold of a 60-vote supermajority needed to pass legislation through the Senate.
Another Brookings colleague of Alice, Molly Reynolds, wrote a book examining the at least 161 times the Senate has written “Exceptions to the Rule” for filibusters between 1969 and 2014. These include Congressional Budgets, Reconciliation Bills, and “fast-track” processes for trade bills and military base closings. More recently, and quite contentiously, Senate Democrats eliminated the filibuster for presidential executive appointments and lower-level court nominations in 2013. Senate Republicans eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in 2017.
Even if it was not part of the original design, there was a time it could be argued that, in practice, the filibuster encouraged bipartisan cooperation. Laws could be modified to avoid engendering enough opposition to sustain a filibuster from the other party. But as Alice writes, when the filibuster becomes nearly universally employed to raise the threshold for every bill to a 60-vote supermajority, the net effect is to diminish bipartisan cooperation. Alice saw the filibuster in its modern usage as a weapon of hyper-partisan warfare, not a tool to end it.
“Divided We Fall: Why Consensus Matters” outlines some partial measures senators could take such as suspending the filibuster for specific legislation, limiting the types or number of filibusters that can be mounted, or returning to the practice of “talking filibusters,” requiring senators to hold the floor and talk as they did before the 1970s. These half measures would be an improvement, especially as part of bipartisan negotiations that helped reduce partisan polarization and increase cooperation on legislation. But we should not kid ourselves, both parties have weakened the filibuster when they took control of the Senate in recent years, and both must assume the other party will end it the next time they take power. The Senate should eliminate the filibuster now because it would reduce partisan gridlock and allow the Senate to address America’s immediate and long-term problems.
Elimination of the filibuster would not bring in an unfettered opportunity to pass legislation without compromise, because the principal exception to the filibuster rule—the reconciliation process defined in the budget law—has proven to be a challenging road that also requires many compromises. Both parties have experienced frustrating struggles, and in some cases failures, to reach the 51-vote majority threshold to pass partisan bills under reconciliation. There are many examples including the Democrats’ struggles to pass Obamacare and the Republicans’ failure to repeal it. But Alice believed that eliminating the filibuster would allow the Senate to get more done, pass more partisan and bipartisan bills, and return the Senate to simple majority rule as the Founding Fathers intended.
By Elijah Asdourian, Alexander Conner, Nasiha Salwati, David Wessel
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
On-line job postings lead to lower unemploymentIn the last two decades, an increasing proportion of job openings have been posted online. Manudeep Bhuller of the University of Oslo and co-authors find that a Norwegian policy to expand broadband access to all households led to substantial changes for both employers and job-seekers. On the employer side, the duration of job vacancies fell by 9%, while unsuccessful hiring attempts shrunk by 13%. Unemployed job-seekers, meanwhile, found jobs 2.4% more often, and began those jobs with 6% higher wages. The authors hypothesize that these gains came because a higher proportion of the population had access to improved job search technology after the policy was implemented. Finally, the authors find that quicker and better-targeted job searches led to a 14% decrease in the steady-state unemployment level in Norway, suggesting that expanded broadband can have long-term positive effects on the broader economy.
Occupancy fraud common across mortgagesUsing loan-level mortgage data matched to credit bureau information, Aaron Payne of the University of Pennsylvania and Ronel Elul and Sebastian Tilson of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia show that occupancy fraud – when investors falsely claim they are owner-occupants – represents a larger share of the housing market than previously thought. The authors estimate that occupancy fraud accounts for 6% of loans issued from 2005 to 2007 and 3% of loans issued from 2008 to 2017. Fraudulent borrowers pay interest rates 26 basis points lower and have default rates 4 percentage points higher than otherwise similar investors who do not claim to be owner-occupants. Fraudulent borrowers make up one-third of the total investor population. The authors find that the rates of fraud are roughly similar among securitized loans, loans held in portfolios, and loans guaranteed by government-sponsored enterprises. Finally, the authors show that fraudulent borrowers often default “strategically” when their equity becomes negative, which may pose a risk in future business cycles.
High administrative costs make providers less likely to accept Medicaid patientsAbe Dunn at the Bureau of Economic Analysis and co-authors find large administrative burdens associated with getting medical insurance claims paid. Using data on medical bills over the 2013-2015 period, the authors find that physicians incur administrative costs equivalent to a 17.6% loss in revenue in billing Medicaid. The costs associated with billing Medicare and private insurance are much lower, equivalent to 4.7% and 2.4% of revenues, respectively. Medicaid claims are denied more frequently than other forms of insurance. Exploiting the geographic variation in Medicaid billing costs, the authors find that a 10-percentage point increase in administrative costs makes providers 0.8 percentage point less likely to accept Medicaid patients. “We conclude that administrative frictions have first-order costs for doctors, patients, and equality of access to healthcare,” the authors say.
Chart of the week: The number of Americans without health insurance coverage has been fallingChart courtesy of Statista
Quote of the week:“[T]here is clearly a lot of uncertainty around the inflation outlook, and there are definitely scenarios where inflation ends up being more persistent for various reasons. Maybe we don’t see a continued reduction in some of the goods prices we’ve seen recently, or maybe some of these services prices stay elevated. In that case, we would have to be in a situation where we’d have to have somewhat higher interest rates in order to get that sufficiently restrictive stance of policy that we’re looking for to make sure that we’re bringing inflation back to 2%,” says John Williams, President of the New York Fed.
“We can take smaller steps still get to whatever we need to get to. But I think these 25-basis-point steps allow us to both adjust policy based on the new information and what’s going on and get us to our goal as we need to. Obviously, if the situation changed significantly, we would have the ability to move quicker than that or adjust course. But right now, I think the 25-basis-point increase that we just put into place seems like the right size to adjust policy, at least given what I’m seeing today… Of course, if the outlook changes – especially if the outlook for inflation were higher — you would need to have a higher interest rate to make sure that we’re getting that restrictive stance that’s bringing inflation down.”
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By Reva Dhingra
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck the Turkish-Syrian border on Sunday evening has leveled buildings and devastated communities across southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria. While a complete picture of casualties will not be available for weeks, the death toll has already soared past 11,000. Every hour brings news of hundreds of more deaths, even as rescuers work tirelessly to pull survivors from the rubble.
In rebel-controlled northwestern Syria, the earthquake has wrought disaster on communities already devastated by over a decade of civil war. More than 4.1 million of the area’s 4.5 million population are dependent on humanitarian aid. Over 2.8 million people were already internally displaced from other parts of Syria — 1.7 million of whom were in some ways spared the worst of the earthquake by living in camps in situations of abject deprivation. Buildings across northwestern Syria were severely damaged before the earthquake by years of shelling by the Syrian government, and survivors of building collapses are being displaced to city streets and already overstretched IDP camps in freezing temperatures. Since early 2015, the border between Turkey and northwestern Syria has been effectively closed to refugees, meaning that communities displaced by the earthquake have nowhere to go.
Immediate international assistance for northern Syria is crucial, in both rebel-held and government-controlled areas hit by the earthquake such as Aleppo. Yet getting aid to northwestern Syria in particular has been stymied by political dynamics that have wasted crucial time needed to rescue survivors. Russian veto power at the U.N. Security Council has choked the flow of humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria to a single crossing, the roads to which have been heavily damaged by the earthquake and rendered impassable. While other crossings exist, they have yet to be opened three days after the earthquake. And Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s well-documented history of aid diversion has made Western governments wary of bending to pressure from the Syrian government to direct aid for northern Syria through regime authorities instead. Indeed, one of the first statements made by the Syrian government following the earthquake was to demand that all aid for the earthquake response be channeled through government authorities, even aid intended for areas outside of its control. The Syrian government has received support from countries including Russia, Iran, and a host of Arab countries who have sought normalization with the regime, though there is little evidence that this will reach rebel areas soon enough for rescues.
Instead, local humanitarian organizations already on the ground in northwestern Syria have effectively had to fend for themselves. Organizations such as the White Helmets, long accustomed to rescuing victims of bombings, have become largely responsible for rescue efforts, along with family members and friends of those trapped. Without the equipment or vehicles necessary for rescues, however, countless individuals are being lost who might’ve been saved with earlier interventions.
Across the globe, being in a conflict zone creates both heightened exposure to natural disasters and compounds their effects, particularly for already-displaced populations. A 2019 report by the Overseas Development Institute highlighted how communities displaced by violence in Colombia subsequently fell victim to deadly landslides after settling in a highly landslide-prone area. In the aftermath of the disaster, many survivors remained in the area, unable to return to their communities of origin.
In the case of earthquakes, it is impossible to predict exactly when they will strike again. Sunday’s earthquake was the strongest to hit the Turkish-Syrian border in almost a century. But the deep devastation has underscored that residents and IDPs in northwestern Syria will likely remain in damaged buildings and in dire humanitarian conditions because they simply have nowhere else to go. This situation requires concerted international efforts to facilitate assistance for search and rescue efforts and humanitarian aid as well as progress beyond the current disastrous status quo.
Immediately opening additional crossing points for international assistance to reach northwestern Syria is the first necessary step. Analysts have called for two crossings at the Turkish-northwestern Syria border to be opened as well as crossings from Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria. With every minute these borders remain closed, hope diminishes for rescuing earthquake victims alive. Other analysts have called for exploring other aid delivery options, including potentially through regime areas even given the risks of aid co-optation.
Second, while facilitating expeditious search and rescue efforts, these expanded crossings must be used to coordinate shelter and assistance for newly displaced communities. Over 90% of Syrians in the northwest are reliant on humanitarian aid. A single crossing and the paltry level of aid that existed prior to the earthquake are insufficient to meet the population’s humanitarian needs. A widescale emergency shelter construction effort will be crucial in the coming weeks and months, particularly given freezing temperatures across the region.
Third, a concerted international funding effort needs to be made for earthquake survivors in both rebel-held and regime-held areas. Before the earthquake, Syrians were suffering the effects of economic implosion, regime bombardment, sanctions, and the infrastructural destruction of over a decade of war. In 2022, the response plan for Syria was less than 50% funded, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has diverted global attention from other conflicts. Yet in government areas, international support for earthquake survivors will almost certainly be co-opted by the Syrian government, as it has done for a decade of relief efforts. And while the United States and other donors fund humanitarian relief in rebel-held northwestern Syria, analysts have pointed out that the approach was deeply unsustainable even prior to the earthquake disrupting the single humanitarian crossing. Navigating this environment while rapidly assisting earthquake survivors will require a determined diplomatic effort and political will that appear largely absent for the moment.
Finally, newly-homeless earthquake victims in northwestern Syria should be allowed to seek shelter in Turkey. Southeastern Turkey is suffering the devastating effects of the earthquake, with roads destroyed and countless buildings collapsed. But given access challenges to northwestern Syria and the ongoing Syrian regime shelling of earthquake-affected rebel areas, the border area would more easily serve as a hub for mobile and camp shelters and assistance for earthquake survivors of both countries. The Turkish public holds largely negative opinions toward the approximately 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, and politicians across the spectrum have argued that refugees should be repatriated. Erdoğan is also politically navigating the earthquake response within Turkey, and admitting refugees even temporarily would be unpopular. As such, this option may be politically infeasible. Yet the current situation necessitates a dramatic response and the option of safety for communities that have now suffered the devastating effects of both war and natural disaster. While the Turkish government is deeply stretched by the earthquake response in Turkey, it is also responsible to ensure international assistance gets to Syrian communities given its extensive military presence in northern Syria. At a minimum, if refugees are not being allowed into Turkey, Ankara needs to expand access to areas effectively controlled by the Turkish army in the north for displaced communities and support shelter coordination. As the international community responds, the needs of Syrians trapped in northwestern Syria as well as displaced in Turkey cannot be forgotten.
By Jenny Schuetz, Adie Tomer, Caroline George, Joseph Kane, Julia Gill
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a website documenting climate-related disasters that cause over $1 billion in losses. The agency lists 18 such events in 2022, including droughts and wildfires in the Southwest, floods in Kentucky and Missouri, hailstorms in the Upper Midwest, hurricanes in Florida, and tornadoes in the Southeast. The message of the data is clear: All U.S. communities will face disruptions to our daily lives from climate change, but the nature, frequency, and severity of these disruptions will vary widely across places in any given year.
While individual people and communities cannot alter the course of a hurricane or alleviate drought, there are numerous ways for them to lower their exposure to climate risk or mitigate the physical and financial impacts of climate-related events. Actions such as purchasing disaster insurance and building climate-resilient infrastructure should be part of holistic strategies to protect communities. But to take these actions, residents and their local governments first need to know what the relevant risks are. For example, while coastal Floridians know they are at a higher risk of hurricanes than their inland peers, it is much harder for them to assess the relative risk of wind damage and storm surges within their specific counties or neighborhoods. It’s similarly difficult to predict localized risks from more chronic climate stresses such as sea level rise and extreme heat.
And yet, more and higher-quality, higher-resolution data is becoming available for local assessment. At the same time, predicting the impacts of climate events on communities—damages to homes, businesses, and infrastructure—is becoming an ever more important and sophisticated part of the real estate and financial services industries. But two types of consumers who would greatly benefit from local climate risk data—households and local governments—still have limited access to this information.
In this brief, we discuss how households and local governments could use local climate risk data, explore the current availability of that data, and outline several challenges facing public and private data providers.
People and municipalities can use local climate risk data to adjust how and where they build Providing people and local policymakers with geographic climate risk data allows them to alter their investment decisions and personal behavior in a variety of ways depending on what information they are given and their preferences and access to resources.
Take people’s housing choices. In choosing where to live and how much to pay for a home, people want to know the quality of local public schools, crime rates, proximity to parks, and the quality of local transportation. How climate change affects different neighborhoods—now and in the future—should factor into housing choices as well. A recent experiment conducted by the real estate company Redfin and a team of academic researchers found that when potential homebuyers were shown online listings disclosed to have high flood risks, they shifted their search toward lower-risk properties.
Households can respond to climate disclosures like those in the Redfin study in a variety of ways. Some may choose neighborhoods at higher elevation or decide not to live in a coastal community altogether. Others might place higher value on the lifestyle benefits of being near the ocean, but choose to rent rather than purchase a home to limit their financial risk. And awareness of local climate risks isn’t just important for people in the process of relocating. Climate risks have changed and will continue to change over time; people who bought their homes 10 years ago may not have been in areas with a high flood or fire risk at the time, but now face greater risks. Being aware of changes in climate risks helps households decide whether to purchase additional insurance, install a sump pump in the basement, or invest in stronger, wind-resistant windows, to name a few adaptive strategies.
Local governments would also benefit from greater awareness of place-specific variations in climate risk. Which bus stops, homes, and public spaces face the greatest exposure to extreme heat and would benefit from cooling features such as tree canopies or green roofs? Which neighborhoods are most likely to flood during major rain events, and how can cities use rain gardens or sewer upgrades to manage the deluge? Which roadways are the least resilient to major climate events and either need to be fortified or potentially abandoned?
The current state of local climate data needs improvementWhile climate risk data has long been a part of how we plan and build American communities, older information systems are no longer fit for new climate realities. As early as 2011, a landmark publication from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called attention to the need for “widely-accepted approach[es] for conducting vulnerability assessments” and describes available data as “lacking.” Ten years later, the Government Accountability Office found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood hazard maps—which inform the National Flood Insurance Program—no longer “reflect the best available climate science or include information on current flood hazards.” Notably, many properties that do not fall inside these flood hazard zones—and therefore do not carry flood insurance—experienced flooding in large storms such as Hurricane Sandy. Recent wildfires in California and Colorado also revealed how many property insurance policies were misaligned to current risks.
Now, rapid innovations in environmental monitoring and digitized parcel data are helping public agencies, businesses, nonprofits, and community-based organizations modernize climate risk data. This data makes it possible to estimate risks of flooding, drought, wildfires, extreme heat, pollution, or coastal erosion for each parcel of land—if not each 10-square-meter coordinate—in the country. Some datasets develop metrics for specific climate risks or future emissions scenarios, while others produce indexes the general public can more easily understand. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency’s interactive mapping tool allows users to see risk levels for drought, wildfire, sea level rise, and aggregate flood risk for small neighborhoods (census block groups), as well as pollution from multiple sources. This granular data complements larger-scale data, such as the Climate Impact Lab’s county-level impact maps, which our colleagues have used to assess regional vulnerabilities in the U.S.
Improved climate risk data can result in compelling use cases for private investors and policymakers, such as granularly measuring urban heat islands, outlining climate resilience strategies for subsidized housing, developing new risk ratings to fundamentally transform the National Flood Insurance Program, estimating regional economic losses in the event of natural disasters, and tracking environmental justice burdens across disadvantaged communities. The different types of metrics and the geographic scales at which they are available offer flexibility in answering different policy or research questions. For example, while insurance firms may want to know expected damages for a given property across all climate risk categories, a county parks department may be more interested in drought and heat metrics at a neighborhood scale.
Of course, producing new, high-quality data and applications is not cheap. Environmental monitoring agencies such as NOAA will need federal funding to continue investing in equipment and staff expertise. And private data providers will need access to cash flow—whether through paying customers or outside investment—to keep updating and improving their products.
What risks do new data sources present, and how will society address them?For all the potential benefits of more granular climate data, publishing it carries some risks.
One issue is the possibility of false certainty. Even with climate models constantly improving, emerging data sources will still have wide margins of error, particularly around predicting the most uncertain climate events, such as hurricanes. Yet it’s easy to imagine some individuals treating a single data source as gospel, even though there can be significant variation among similar data products and there is limited transparency regarding underlying analytical models. Governments and industry will need to find ways to manage uncertainty with their constituents and customers.
Another concern is how data could impact equity. America’s history of redlining offers a clear example of how mapping perceived risks can lead to disinvestment and discrimination. To the extent that climate risks overlap with racial, economic, and social characteristics, vulnerable communities could face additional barriers, such as higher property insurance rates or a lack of new infrastructure in places of need. Policymakers will need to write regulations that ensure ratings agencies, insurers, government agencies, and others are not discriminating against any people or places.
The price of data could create a barrier to adoption for public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and individuals as well. Datasets that are produced and managed by federal statistical agencies such as the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics are made publicly available at no charge to users. But data products created by private firms are typically sold to individual subscribers such as insurance companies and credit rating agencies—often for substantial fees. Financial institutions are able and willing to pay for these services to mitigate fiduciary risk associated with climate change, but most civic organizations have tighter budgets. One example of using the data for public good comes from the nonprofit Climate Central, which has used their own proprietary data to conduct groundbreaking scientific research on flood risk in order to build global citizen awareness of climate vulnerability. The country’s wealthiest cities and counties may be inclined to spend local tax dollars to buy high-quality climate data, which could lead to wiser investments in infrastructure or the ability to counter predatory real estate practices. But it could also further exacerbate capacity differences between those wealthier communities and poorer ones that can’t afford such data.
Addressing these concerns won’t be easy, and will require experimentation. Processes like the Treasury Department’s Climate Data and Analytics Hub pilot are promising efforts. Finding the right balance between transparency and equity will require cities, states, and the real estate industry to test different approaches to implementation. Adaptation strategies that work for second-home owners in Miami may not work for low-income households in Houston’s flood-prone neighborhoods, so placing diverse voices into the policy discussion is essential.
By Christopher T. Bennett
During the past few decades, there has been substantial growth in graduate school enrollment. In fact, the number of people in the U.S. with a graduate degree doubled between 2000 and 2018.
With rising costs for attending graduate school and the ability to borrow Grad PLUS Loans up to their full cost of attendance (minus any other aid received), graduate students take out a disproportionate share of federal student loans. In 2017-18, for instance, just 19% of federal student loan borrowers were graduate students, but their loans for graduate school amounted to 40% of student debt issued that year.
The overwhelming majority of graduate students are pursuing master’s degrees, and there are now about two master’s degrees awarded for every five bachelor’s degrees. On average, borrowers take out over $55,000 for a master’s degree, roughly twice the amount borrowed for a bachelor’s degree. The scale and cost of master’s enrollment makes it especially important to understand the labor market returns to master’s degrees, which have long been heralded as the “new bachelor’s” degree.
“In 2017-18, for instance, just 19% of federal student loan borrowers were graduate students, but their loans for graduate school amounted to 40% of student debt issued that year.”
In an article recently published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), I examine how employers respond to job candidates with one of the most prominent master’s degrees: a Master of Business Administration (MBA). MBAs make up about one-fourth of master’s degrees awarded.
Using a field experiment to detect employer perceptions of job candidates with MBAsBuilding on prior research at the undergraduate level, I conducted a field experiment to examine the extent to which employers differentiate between job candidates based on the type of institution where they earned their MBA (or if they did not receive an MBA at all). To do so, I created fictitious résumés that were designed to look authentic. I then used the résumés to apply to thousands of real job openings and tracked employer responses. By randomly assigning key information that was shown on the résumés, I was able to assess how employers respond to applicants who differ on those dimensions but are otherwise equivalent.
First, within each set of four applications submitted to a job opening, I randomly assigned the MBA institution type. I decided not to focus on business schools at institutions like Harvard and the University of Michigan, which tend to receive an outsize share of media attention but enroll a smaller share of MBA students. Instead, I chose to list MBAs from three types of broad-access institutions that collectively enroll the vast majority of MBA students: for-profit institutions, other primarily online institutions, and regional institutions. In addition to these three MBA treatment groups, one group (one-fourth of the applications) listed that the applicant had only earned a bachelor’s degree. In all cases, the applicant’s bachelor’s-granting institution was listed as a large, broad-access public university in a nearby state.
Second, based on longstanding evidence of racial discrimination in hiring, I also randomly varied the implied race and gender of the applicant. The names listed on the applications suggested the applicants were Black women, Black men, White women, or White men (for more details on the process used to select these names, see the full paper). For each job opening, all four applicants had names suggesting they were the same race and gender as one another.
Overall, I submitted 9,480 job applications to employers in 16 large U.S. metropolitan areas for a variety of management, marketing, and sales positions that required at least a bachelor’s degree. The experiment took place between April 2020 and November 2020, coinciding with the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this tumultuous period, many applicants would likely expect an MBA credential to help them stand out in the labor market, and calls for racial equity were receiving widespread attention.
MBA recipients fared no better than applicants with only a bachelor’s degree Applicants in the three MBA treatment groups (for-profit, online, and regional institutions) received positive responses from employers (e.g., interview callbacks) at essentially the same rate as one another. Further, as shown in Figure 1, the positive responses for applicants in the MBA treatment groups were not meaningfully different than those for applicants with only a bachelor’s degree. Thus, employers’ response rates did not differ across the treatment groups overall, despite the substantial time and cost required for an MBA. Even for job openings that listed a preference for candidates with master’s degrees, applicants in the MBA treatment groups did not receive meaningfully different rates of positive responses than applicants with just a bachelor’s degree.
Black men received 30% fewer positive responses than White applicants The study also revealed that employers offered 30% fewer positive responses to applicants whose names suggested they were Black men than they did to presumably White applicants (see Figure 2). Since all other résumé elements were randomly assigned, no other applicant characteristics would explain these differential response rates by race and gender. Given that the study mainly occurred during the supposed racial reckoning of 2020, this finding offers stark evidence of ongoing racial discrimination at a time when many employers were publicly proclaiming a greater commitment to equity in their hiring practices.
Implications
These findings offer several key insights about the modern MBA landscape, which is increasingly comprised of online programs and other formats designed to meet the needs of working adults.
“First, for students expecting that an MBA from a broad-access institution will dramatically boost their likelihood of receiving positive responses from a new employer, these results offer reason for caution.”
First, for students expecting that an MBA from a broad-access institution will dramatically boost their likelihood of receiving positive responses from a new employer, these results offer reason for caution. Of course, many students pursue an MBA for other reasons not examined in this study, such as advancing in their career path at the current employer, and concerns about the affordability of, and economic returns to, master’s degrees are not unique to broad-access institutions. Further, it is important to remember that this experiment did not include hyperselective MBA programs or other types of master’s degrees, for which the outcomes may differ.
Second, these findings reinforce the importance of ensuring that graduate students are able to comfortably repay their student loans. Institutions and policymakers concerned about rising student debt will need to work to ensure that borrowing for these programs does not unduly burden students, a formidable challenge for the years ahead.
Finally, the results also reaffirm the persistence of racial discrimination in the labor market across a variety of industries and metropolitan areas. To adequately guard against racial discrimination, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) may require additional investigative or enforcement mechanisms. Only by identifying and addressing the sources of disparate hiring outcomes—such as hiring managers’ evaluations of candidates, algorithmic bias, the use of information outside the application, and employers’ recruitment strategies—will it be possible to achieve racial/ethnic equity in hiring.
By William A. Galston
In a fighting State of the Union address, President Biden made few concessions to public skepticism about his record—and none to his political adversaries. He made it clear that he intends to run on his record and that the American people will respond favorably to it as they experience its benefits more fully. He focused on the economy and downplayed the cultural issues that have become more central to our politics over the past decade.
As President Biden stepped to the rostrum to deliver his address, he faced three key tasks: laying out a credible policy agenda for the 118th Congress, integrating this agenda with his political strategy for winning reelection in 2024, and dispelling widespread public doubts about the impact of increasing age on his fitness for a second term.
The president also faced several important obstacles. First, as my colleague Elaine Kamarck has written, there is a tension between the story of accomplishment he wanted to tell and the public’s perception of how things are going. As Kamarck noted, a recent NBC poll found that 71% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track—a continuation of what the pollsters called an unprecedented level of “sustained pessimism.”
A few days after her article appeared, a new ABC/Washington poll underscored Mr. Biden’s challenge. The poll found that 62% of Americans think that the president has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing” during the first two years of his presidency, compared to just 36% who say he has accomplished “a great deal” or a “good amount.” In a troubling sign, only 32% of Independents gave him credit for significant achievements. Mr. Biden needed to talk about the many significant bills he had moved through Congress—without describing their effects so expansively as to undermine his credibility.
Mr. Biden also faced tension between ambitious new domestic policy proposals and rising public concerns about the budget deficit. In the two years since he took the oath of office, according to a Pew Research Center survey released the day before his address, the share of Americans saying that deficit reduction should be a top priority surged by 15 points, from 42% to 57%. This increase was bipartisan—17 points among Republicans, but also 15 points among Democrats. The president had to choose between pleasing key constituencies pressing for expensive items such as a permanent child credit and responding to broad-based worries about the country’s fiscal course. Everyone expected him to reject Republicans’ efforts to tie an increase in the debt ceiling to big cuts in government spending. But would he open the door to negotiations in what he regards as the correct framework—crafting a budget for fiscal year 2024 and beyond?
Mr. Biden had to decide, moreover, how to deal with issues—such as crime and immigration—on which the public has given him especially low marks. The Economist/YouGov survey released at the end of January found that only 33% of the electorate approved of his handling of immigration and even fewer—30%—of his handling of crime. (His showing among Independents was especially dismal—just 23% and 19%, respectively.)
Finally, the president needed to make important decisions about his tone. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—the two most recent Democratic presidents who faced new House Republican majorities after just two years in office—opened their addresses with warm words for the new Republican Speaker. Would Mr. Biden do the same? Would he emphasize that most of his legislative successes had been bipartisan and urge the continuation of this cooperation in the new congress? Would he use the phrase “extreme MAGA Republicans,” which many Republicans (reportedly including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy) regard as an obstacle to cooperation? How would Mr. Biden deal with the adjective problem: The state of the union is [fill in the blank]? If he declared it to be “strong,” as many of his predecessors had, would most Americans feel that he was out of touch? Would he use more tempered words, or avoid the phrase completely?
As President Biden began speaking, many of these questions were quickly answered. In addition to Democratic leaders past and present, he congratulated the new speaker and—for good measure—his long-term colleague, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He underscored the bipartisan accomplishments of the 117th Congress and expressed confidence that the two parties could work together in the 118th. “The people sent us a clear message,” he declared. “Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere.” Consistent with this theme, he refrained from all references to Republicans as MAGA or extreme. He delivered his speech forcefully if not flawlessly, adding no new fuel to questions about his fitness to serve a second term.
The president made no concessions to public skepticism about his accomplishments. He told the story of what he had done so far, bolstering his case with positive statistics about jobs and the economy. He talked of “progress and resilience,” doing his best to rebut the pervasive belief that the country was on the wrong track.
Mr. Biden spoke, as he often has, about building the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. He characterized his strategy as a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.” As he laid out his plan, his tone turned populist and nationalist. “We should buy America to build America. We’ve been importing foreign goods and exporting American jobs,” he said, trends his proposals will reverse.
Continuing the populist tone, he repeatedly criticized large corporations. He pledged to toughen antitrust enforcement and crack down on abuses of consumers by banks, airlines, and drug companies, among others. To encourage corporations to invest more in their workers, he proposed quadrupling the current 1% tax on stock buybacks.
These and other features of the president’s speech signaled an important part of his reelection strategy—increasing Democrats’ share of the working-class vote, which fell to historically low levels during the 2016 and 2020 elections. He clearly believes that his party’s weakness among these voters reflects economic rather than cultural issues. Many analysts disagree with him, and we won’t know who’s right until November of 2024.
President Biden did not abandon his ambitious domestic agenda. He put back on the table items that a Democratic House and Senate did not enact during his first two years, including paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare, pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds, and the reinstatement of the Child Tax Credit. He pledged to pay for these and the many other programs by increasing taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals who use special-interest provisions of the tax code to avoid paying what the president called “their fair share.” And he proposed a new tax on stock buybacks—a practice that many see as profiting shareholders at the expense of workers. “The math adds up,” he insisted. “We can reduce the deficit by $2 trillion without touching Social Security and Medicare.”
In one of his best moments of the night, Biden went on the attack, accusing “some” Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare. (He was referring to Senator Rick Scott’s plan to sunset all federal programs.) This drew strong objections from Republicans in the audience who heckled him about this, knowing that being associated with Scott’s proposal meant touching the third rail of American politics. Rather than ignoring this interruption, Biden engaged with the objectors and, in a masterful moment of political jujitsu, concluded that they agreed with him not to touch those programs. Time will tell, but he may have won the debt ceiling debate then and there.
The president touched on the issues—crime and immigration—about which the people have given him his lowest marks, but he had nothing new to offer. And to the surprise of some, and the relief of many, he was silent on the issues—including critical race theory and the role of parents—that have roiled public education in recent years.
During the conclusion of his speech, President Biden firmly resolved what I called the adjective problem. “Because the soul of this nation is strong, because the backbone of this nation is strong, because the people of this nation are strong, the State of the Union is strong,” he declared. He left no doubt about the depth of his conviction. The question is whether he persuaded enough of his fellow citizens that he is right.
By Lauren Bauer, Aidan Creeron, Joy Dada, Luiza Macedo
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted major issues in the ways the health care workforce in the United States withstands shocks. Staffing issues put nurses in the headlines. In reaction to the public health emergency, all governors issued executive orders to allow nurses to work across state lines more freely. This action was a nationalization of an existing compact between many states. Those emergency orders have since expired, leaving room for policy interventions that can make labor markets more flexible and benefit workers.
In this post, we summarize changes to licensing requirements for nurses from before and during the pandemic, focusing on the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) and its reforms to interstate licensing. We provide evidence on both the benefits and consequences of licensing changes and outline the current debate surrounding these reforms. We also provide an overview of the current landscape of nurse licensing in the United States and conclude by considering the future of these reforms in four states that do not currently belong to the NLC.
The Introduction and Expansion of the Nurse Licensure CompactThe Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) has grown since its inception in 1999. The compact increases the mobility of nurses nationwide by minimizing barriers to interstate practice. Prior to its implementation, nurses had to be licensed to work state-by-state, creating barriers to geographic mobility and interstate work. In the late 1990s, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) explored a “mutual recognition model” between participating states for licensing of registered nurses (RNs) and practical/vocational nurses (LPN/VNs). This would allow in-person and virtual practice in participating states and would allow nurses to relocate to participating states without relicensing.
In 1997 the NCSBN unanimously endorsed a new model for nursing regulation, laying the foundation for the NLC to be ratified in 1999. Compact membership required Boards of Nursing to report to the newly formed Interstate Commission of Nurse Licensure Compact Administrators (ICNLCA), cease collecting licensing fees from nurses in other compact states, and pay a $6,000 annual membership fee.
Figure 1 shows the timing of the Nurse Licensing Compact adoption across states. The bulk of adoption took place in the first two years of the compact: 2000-2001. This amounted to 14 states. In the next 15 years, by comparison, Some attribute this plateau in new membership to the compact’s insufficient criminal background check requirements. On January 19, 2018, the Enhanced Nursing Licensure Compact (eNLC) was formed to address these concerns through 11 new uniform licensing requirements, aiming to encourage its national adoption. In the following two years, 9 more states joined the eNLC, and all previous member states were grandfathered into the new compact. One exception, Rhode Island, joined the NLC in 2008 but opted not to join the eNLC in 2018. After the incidence of the national pandemic which introduced the State of Emergency quasi-national compact discussed below, 3 more states joined the eNLC, the most recent of which is Ohio, joining the compact on January 1, 2023.
Evidence of the Effects of the Nurse Licensing CompactJust prior to the pandemic, interstate nursing practice was becoming more common in eNLC states. Multi-state licensure take-up has been steadily increasing from 1.6% of NLC nurses working in a compact state in 2008, to almost a quarter of all RNs holding an interstate license (24%) by 2020. Thirty-three percent of nurses cite using their interstate license for travel nursing, with 16% for telehealth and 8% for distance education, yet only 4% cite travel nursing as their main motivation for obtaining this license.
The literature largely corroborates the causal impact of compact membership on greater mobility among nurses. Shakya, Ghosh, and Norris exploit the diversity in states’ timing of NLC adoption, calculating that compact nurses are 11% more likely to move and work in other compact states. Ghani finds that the single-state licensing system causes more rigidity in the labor market, whereas the NLC boosts interstate migration and might divert flows toward non-compact states. Moreover, Johnson and Kleiners’ report on labor migration patterns shows that the NLC both boosts job outflows within the health and social assistance industry by 11% and dampens the number of health workers moving from compact to non-compact states. Conversely, DePasquale and Stange’s research on commuting found no causal effects on labor supply or mobility; nurses living in a metropolitan statistical area that spans multiple states experience only a 1.2% increase in likelihood of interstate work after their state joins the NLC. research on commuting found no causal effects on labor supply or mobility; nurses living in a metropolitan statistical area that spans multiple states experience only a 1.2% increase in likelihood of interstate work after their state joins the NLC.
COVID-19 and the Emergency Licensing Waiver: A Quasi-National CompactThe outbreak of COVID-19 prompted all states to declare a State of Emergency in 2020 and implement an emergency licensing waiver for health care professionals, initiating a functionally national compact to make labor markets more flexible. Nurses could effectively practice anywhere without applying for an additional license or paying additional fees, regardless of a state’s pre-pandemic membership in the compact. In analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on the active nursing population, Chan and collaborators claim that “at no other time in the history of the United States has the NLC been more critical for nurse licensure regulation than the COVID-19 pandemic.”
There was an estimated 35% growth of travel nursing in 2020 and an additional 40% growth in 2021. Wages for those willing to travel skyrocketed to an average of $154 an hour, not including other cash incentives. For nurses willing to relocate on a more permanent basis, signing bonuses reached as high as $13,000.
States began rescinding their states of emergency as early as April 2021, and the majority of states allowed their temporary emergency authorizations to expire by September 2022. Figure 2 shows the timing of exit from the quasi-national emergency compact. States in solid colors exited the national compact into the existing eNLC while states with horizontal lines reverted to nonparticipation in the eNLC. To be clear, however, the historically tight labor market during the recovery from the pandemic has likely been—and continues to be—more consequential to the nursing labor market than changes to licensing.
The Debate Surrounding the Nursing License CompactMany states have reconsidered NLC membership following temporary measures implemented over the pandemic as possible solutions to labor shortages and turnover. The Massachusetts State Legislature has recently considered joining the eNLC. As of February 2023, Bill H.1284 sits with the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, bolstered by support from the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association. During the pandemic, the state’s declaration of emergency permitted out-of-state licensed health professionals to practice in Massachusetts through June 30, 2023. By May 2021, the Board of Registration in Nursing had issued 8,500 temporary licenses. Washington state is also considering joining the compact, with both House Bill 1417 and Senate Bill 5499 in committee as of February 2023. Illinois is reconsidering its licensing practices in the face of looming shortages as well. In response to the public health emergency in early 2020, Governor J. B. Pritzker signed multiple executive orders to allow temporary nursing assistants to perform the tasks typically completed by certified nursing assistants. Out-of-state nurses could also complete the Health Care Temporary Practice Application to receive a temporary Illinois permit. The ability to practice with a temporary permit expired in February 2023.
While participating in the common market may help to alleviate nursing shortages, for a variety of reasons some states pursue a more limited strategy. For example, California and Oregon have considered joining the compact several times. Opposition to NLC implementation from Boards of Nursing have cited concerns over falling nursing board revenues and work standards, a lack of disciplinary oversight, and a loss of sovereignty to the ICNLCA. Some nursing advocacy organizations and affiliated unions highlight worries over diminished bargaining power, as well as wage depression caused by an influx of traveling nurses. If, for example, the removal of licensing restrictions encourages nurses to travel to a state that enjoys elevated wages, then unionized nurses may suffer from declining wages, erasing the above-average wages that the state boasted before joining the compact.
In California, the state of emergency permitted out-of-state nurses to practice without a California-issued license, but authorization expires at the end of February 2023. Oregon has also considered joining the NLC in the past but abandoned this effort in 2016 after facing opposition from the Oregon Nurse’s Association. Temporary emergency licenses for out-of-state nurses were allowed under Governor Kate Brown’s March 2020 emergency declaration; those with such licenses could practice until mid-2023. Oregon’s Nursing Board reports over 11,000 emergency authorizations issued over the two years, and as of June 2022, about one-third of the 9,000 active authorizations had applied for and received an Oregon state license to practice after the state of emergency expired.
ConclusionStates participating in a compact enjoy higher mobility and more interstate practice, with some uncertainty over the magnitude of these impacts. Supporters of the NLC have long envisioned a scaling up of those benefits through a standardized national framework for licensure reciprocity.
The pandemic and concurrent changes to occupational licensing highlighted the need for policy interventions that can benefit workers. Working conditions and burnout have worsened, perhaps exacerbated by significant workforce changes as more nurses temporarily moved across state lines. In addition, turnover and the impending wave of retirements may change post-pandemic workforce projections for nursing. While the current compact focuses on the standardization of state nursing licenses for in-person medical care, the rise of remote medical services before and during the pandemic presents a new challenge to individual state systems, where barriers remain to offering interstate telehealth services.
The flexibility provided to nurses during the pandemic, both in the model of the NLC allowing nurses to move to places of high demand, as well as the easing of requirements around remote medical care, represent possible reforms. In light of changing demographics and geographic disparities in health care access, the need is evident for more flexibility in the structure of medical licensing and provision of care alongside policies that improve working conditions.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Keon L. Gilbert, Carly Bennett, Patrick Edwards
Tonight, President Biden will probably talk about his decision to end the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE). But the Administration still needs a well-defined plan to address existing public health challenges and COVID-related health inequalities.
The end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) will arrive without a well-defined plan to address existing and COVID-related health inequities. We need President Biden to explain how COVID-related testing, vaccines, and treatment will be covered by government and private insurance plans and protect the uninsured. Ending the PHE may lead to out-of-pocket expenses for tests, vaccines, and treatments. Private insurance and government health plans will likely require some out-of-pocket expenses for these health protections. Over 27 million uninsured adults will face challenges with accessing these COVID-19-related screening and health promotion tools. Medicare and Medicaid recipients will continue to receive no cost services and those with private insurance should expect no to low costs. Children who are not insured can receive vaccines either free or at the cost of administrative or clinical fees (e.g. office fees, blood tests, administering the shot) from the Vaccines for Children Program.
One suggestion is for the Biden Administration to connect potential public health challenges to their commitment to health equity as described in Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. This Executive Order aims to improve health for underserved communities by building the capacity of agencies to work towards health disparity gaps. To achieve this the Biden Administration has to reduce growing healthcare costs. Current estimates in health inequities amounts to $320 billion in annual healthcare spending. This can increase to $1 trillion or more by 2040 if not reduced. This cost may be exacerbated by those who will be disenrolled from Medicaid, especially in states that have not expanded Medicaid. Another factor that may increase these costs includes managing long-COVID-symptoms, which is currently $9,000 annually.
The Biden Administration’s strategy to increase access to free and low-cost healthcare among communities of color and low-income Americans is not the only solution. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) created pathways towards universal coverage, which significantly increased healthcare coverage, preventative health screenings, and reforms to private insurance. However, the Medicaid infrastructure cannot be the only health-infrastructure to increase access to health promotion. Ending the PHE will not fix our public health challenges. The Biden Administration needs a plan to diminish fragmentation in service delivery, to enhance health technologies, and lower the barriers and costs of public health and healthcare interventions. Policies to address these issues can extend the quality and longevity of life, especially among those suffering from long-COVID.
By Michael J. Ahn, Yu-Che Chen
The recent release of GPT-3, the state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI, has sparked a renewed interest in chatbot technology. One of the most notable developments in this area is ChatGPT, a chatbot that utilizes GPT-3 to perform a wide range of language tasks, such as text generation, language translation, text summarization, and conversation simulation. In its current form, ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology, offering a wide range of applications from computer coding, customer service, and virtual assistants to language translation and content creation.
One of the key advantages of ChatGPT over traditional search engines is its ability to provide contextualized and processed information. ChatGPT can understand the context of a search query and provide results that are relevant and specific to the user’s needs by using natural language processing techniques. It can also interpret the intent behind a user’s query, even if it is phrased in a casual or conversational way, which makes it easier for users to ask questions and get the information they need.
Traditional search engines have been around for a long time and have a vast amount of pre-existing and real-time data indexed, and their sophisticated algorithms typically provide a ranked and vast list of search results that their users should process themselves. ChatGPT processes a vast amount of information and provides its users with information that is tailored to the users’ needs, intentions, and contexts. The understanding of the context of questions represents a valuable advance that is relatively accurate and, in the short time people have been using it, appears to open a new chapter in information search for the future.
However, one current shortcoming of ChatGPT is its limited datasets. ChatGPT is currently trained to the model to the year of 2021 (according to OpenAI), which means that it lacks information on current events or events that requires real-time data. For ChatGPT to function properly, the sources of data should include pre-existing as well as real-time and current data. That would substantially increase the relevance and timeliness of its applications and enhance the user experience.
Why updated training data mattersWhile it is likely that OpenAI will soon update its database and, in the future, ChatGPT will have processed near real-time data, this points to a future in which data and information describing current affairs, facts, statistics, as well as relevant and insightful perspectives and opinions (found in multiple media of information such as books, articles, blogs, and social media) will be an important segment of the information industry. While artificial intelligence (AI) is making headways in automatically describing pictures in words and processing and summarizing social media information into a coherent description of current affairs, the foreseeable future will continue to require human agents to collect data, information, and opinions and make them available for processing. The value of data, information collectors, and content creators will be an important segment of the new environment.
Additionally, while ChatGPT is great for processing a vast array of pre-existing data and providing a general overview of a topic, it is not strong in producing new insights, knowledge and opinions where human experts already excel. In other words, it can summarize and provide relevant information, insights, and knowledge found in pre-existing data, but is relatively weak in providing new insights, advice, and recommendations on a new phenomenon that lacks pre-existing data and information. This means that to ensure that ChatGPT is providing accurate and up-to-date information, human action may be needed to collect and digitize data.
Currently, we are using a version of ChatGPT that is previously trained in data that OpenAI selected. However, in the future, another potential benefit of ChatGPT could be the ability for individuals to train their own ChatGPTs using their own data. This could lead to a wide range of specialist ChatGPTbots that are tailored to specific fields and industries. This points to a future where people will have their own AI secretaries who understand the nature of their work and what they need.
The pros and consGenerally, ChatGPT technology has the potential to help institutions achieve greater efficiencies. For example, traditional government chatbots are often frustrating and difficult to navigate, functioning more like a search engine than a helpful tool. The technology can improve government chatbots by making them more personalized and efficient. By utilizing ChatGPT, government chatbots will have the ability to understand government services and the specific needs of citizens, providing a more personalized and efficient experience. For example, a ChatGPT-powered chatbot can inform citizens about any pending services they may have, such as a renewal of their driver’s license, and provide them with the necessary information and steps to address it. This would enable citizens to stay on top of their government-related tasks and help them to be more organized.
On the other hand, the increasing reliance on ChatGPT raises concerns about the potential for civilians to become less entrenched in decision making due to potentially heavy reliance on the use of technology. Just as GPS navigation and smartphones have made it easier for us to forget things like addresses and phone numbers, ChatGPT may also contribute to a decline in our ability to remember specific facts and think critically. While ChatGPT can summarize the key storyline of the top ten most significant works in English literature and provide the relevant quotes and symbolism used in each work, reading such summaries is not comparable to reading the original works. What may happen is a simplification and unification of works into simple summaries and people only consume such succinct versions (and only the versions provided by ChatGPT) instead of reading the original works. This simplification, unification, and “dumbing-down” could have a broader impact on society as it may inadvertently change the way we understand and communicate information and knowledge. In the public sector, the government may see ChatGPT as a tool to simplify complex policies and services into easily digestible and tailored summaries and recommendations, making it easier for citizens to understand and stay informed; however, citizens may become overly reliant on policy information and services suggested by ChatGPT and inadvertently lose sight of other potentially important areas of policy and services, not picked up by ChatGPT.
Relatedly, ChatGPT will create both benefits and challenges in learning environments. On the one hand, it can provide contextualized, processed, and summarized information to students. For educators, it can help grade students’ papers and provide relevant feedback for improvements. For researchers, the technology will help with topical research and literature reviews, as well as help translate languages in the future and edit and improve drafts. But these instances create potential issues of plagiarism, including cases where students write via copying and pasting their papers from ChatGPT without their individualized input. Here, schools at all levels will have to discuss how to factor ChatGPT into policies on educational integrity. Are we going to allow students to use ChatGPT to write their papers and answer exam questions, or are we going to prohibit it or come up with helpful guidelines? All while we maximize the benefits of the ChatGPT in education, while minimizing any negative impacts.
ChatGPT and workAnother potential issue is a job loss or replacement, as ChatGPT performs tasks that were previously done by human workers. ChatGPT may replace jobs that are repetitive, routine, and predictable in nature (administrative jobs) and it may impact jobs that require human intelligence and a high level of education – writing, journalism, translation, education, law, computer coding/engineering, and research. Not only administrative jobs but those of writers, editors, journalists, translators, lawyers, programmers, and professors may be impacted by the new technology in the long run. This means that fewer people may be needed to produce the same amount of information, which could have significant implications for the job market.
On the computing side, ChatGPT is capable of writing code in various computer languages such as Python, C++, and JavaScript and it can review and identify errors within written codes. This raises a question regarding the future of programmers and developers. This is unlikely to replace human agents in the affected fields completely, but considering the sophistication of the chat system, it is likely to reduce the number of human agents needed for the same task. Instead of hiring ten programmers, now you may need two programmers who can review, correct, and edit code created by ChatGPT or other similar AI systems. ChatGPT is not perfect, it makes mistakes and at times provides incorrect answers. Also, as mentioned previously, it comes short in providing insightful perspectives on current affairs due to timely data.
ConclusionChatGPT is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we do work, communicate, process information and live. Its ability to provide contextualized and processed information, understand the intent behind a user’s query, and provide results tailored to the user’s needs is an important breakthrough in information search. As OpenAI and other similar companies continue to develop and update its database and improve ChatGPT, it is important to consider the implications of this technology on society, including the potential for job replacement, the importance of data and information collection, and the potential for dumbing down the population. Overall, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that holds great promise, but it is also important to consider needed guardrails.
By Wilson Erumebor
The last seven years (2015–2021) have been tough for Nigerians. During this period, GDP growth averaged 1.1 percent as the country experienced two economic recessions. Unemployment and underemployment rates increased to an all-time high of 56.1 percent in 2020, pushing 133 million Nigerians into multidimensional poverty, according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Likewise, economic growth has not been inclusive, and Nigeria’s economy faced key challenges of lower productivity, and the weak expansion of sectors with high employment elasticity.
Another key feature of Nigeria’s economy in the last seven years has been the shift of economic activity towards agriculture and a slowdown of the manufacturing sector. As a share of GDP, agriculture expanded from 23 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021, while manufacturing declined from 9.5 percent to 9 percent respectively. During this period, non-oil exports as a share of non-oil GDP averaged 1.3 percent while manufactured goods as a share of total exports remained low at 5.2 percent in 2021. Part of the problem facing the economy is the neglect of the manufacturing sector. Essentially, Nigeria is not producing enough, for both local consumption and export. The consequences of having a weak manufacturing base for a country with such a large population are evident in its foreign exchange shortages, limited number of jobs created to accommodate workforce entrants, and an import bill that can hardly be met (nor sustained) by current export earnings.
Worse still, 80 percent of workers are employed in sectors with low levels of productivity—agriculture and non-tradable services. This means that the kind of jobs needed to generate income growth and lift many Nigerians out of poverty are not available in large numbers. As Nigeria approaches the general elections in 2023, there is immense pressure on political leaders to tackle these economic challenges and implement policies that will deliver an inclusive and competitive economy.
As Nigeria approaches the general elections in 2023, there is immense pressure on political leaders to tackle these economic challenges and implement policies that will deliver an inclusive and competitive economy.
The new administration, working with stakeholders, needs to develop an agenda for economic and social inclusion. At the heart of such agenda must be improving the lives of the average Nigerian. This agenda must also include a practical strategy on how to structurally transform the economy, moving labor and economic resources from low productivity sectors to high productivity sectors.
At the top of the productivity ladder is the tradable services sector, which has the potential to improve incomes and raise overall productivity. The challenge with this sector, however, is its inability to accommodate labor in large numbers. Nevertheless, the sector is important, given Nigeria’s young population who are increasingly driving technological revolution across various sectors on the African continent. To leverage the full potential of this sector, the government will need to design and implement national skills programs aimed at upskilling young Nigerians, to ensure many more embrace digital skills and capabilities.
At the middle of the productivity ladder sits manufacturing. The sector has a much higher productivity level than agriculture and can accommodate, in large numbers, the kind of labor that is abundant in the country. Nigeria’s rising population (which is projected to reach 428 million by 2050), the existence of mineral resources, and the adoption of a single market in Africa—the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)—present a case for why manufacturing would thrive in Nigeria. The priority, therefore, for the incoming government must be to address the burgeoning infrastructure deficit and inadequate power supply, which limit the competitiveness of the manufacturing sector. In addition, the government will need to develop an industrial policy that seeks to support the scale, efficiency, and competitiveness of local firms within the manufacturing sector; bearing in mind that developing the sector is key to building economic resilience against vulnerability and future shocks. Such policies must be integrated with Nigeria’s AfCFTA strategy and support transition of small-scale firms that are often the drivers of job creation in the country.
By Bill Baer
In Biden’s first two years competition policy and antitrust enforcement have been aggressive but the focus, as Biden noted in a recent WSJ Op-Ed, now needs to move to Congress. It’s time, indeed past time, for Congress to address abusive behaviors by the dominant tech platforms. The SOTU should reinforce his Op-Ed message: legislators should find common ground around enacting federal privacy protections, reforming Section 230, and leveling the playing field for tech platform competition.
A massive and disingenuous lobbying campaign by the tech giants succeeded in blocking legislation in the last Congress. Biden should remind Congress and the public that monopolies wreak havoc on the economy, take money from consumers’ pockets, expose them to invasions of privacy and deny all of us the benefits of innovation.
Contrary to the claims of lobbyists, preventing Amazon from self-preferencing will not threaten Prime and eliminating Apple’s stranglehold on the App Store will not put our privacy and cyber security at risk. As our colleague Tom Wheeler recently explained, similar rules are now in place in Europe and the tech platforms have found ways to comply and thrive.
The President should call out Congress and ask why US consumers are not getting the benefits from competition and privacy protection that Europeans receive today.
Apple and Amazon are general unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the authors and not influenced by any donation.
By Tara Watson
It is clear to most observers both that immigration policy is in desperate need of reform and that the new Congress is unlikely to act. Meanwhile, we have seen near-record numbers of asylum seekers at the border, immigration-related labor shortages, and backlogs in every corner of the immigration system. What can Biden say about immigration in the State of the Union address?
First, Biden should reaffirm America’s long-standing commitment to immigrants and immigration.Though immigration has long been contentious in the United States, we also have a long and successful history of welcoming people from around the world. Immigrants from a hundred years ago experienced high rates of socioeconomic mobility, and the same American dream is being realized for many more recent immigrants. Immigrants make vital contributions to entrepreneurship and innovation, boost economic growth and wages, and are a critical factor in making sure that the U.S. population doesn’t decline.
Second, he can celebrate a newly expanded humanitarian parole program that has the potential to shift the narrative at the border. There are less surreptitious border crossings than there were two decades ago, but numbers have risen recently, and an additional new challenge has emerged in recent years. It stems from a major shortcoming of our legal immigration system: there is virtually no way for someone with neither high levels of education nor close family ties to enter the U.S. through regular channels. Instead, the only option for those facing instability or violence is to cross the border, turn themselves in to Border Patrol, and request asylum. Hundreds of thousands of would-be migrants have been doing just that, threatening operational control at the border and creating an immigration court backlog approaching 800,000.
The administration has recently expanded the use of humanitarian parole to address this issue. Starting with migrants from Ukraine and Venezuela, and now expanded to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua, the parole process offers a safer and more orderly pathway to come to the United States. Once in the United States, parolees can petition for asylum and receive a temporary work permit. The policy, in conjunction with tougher approaches to asylum at the border, appears to have been successful so far: border encounters with Venezuelan nationals fell by 60% between September and December even as encounters with those from other countries rose.
Third, he can put the ball back in Congress’ court, where it ultimately belongs.Congress has not passed any significant immigration legislation since 1996, and the laws on the books reflect neither current realities nor political consensus. The vacuum is filled by the executive branch. The result is policy whiplash which creates confusion and chaos in the lives of immigrants and undermines the integrity of the system as a whole. The President should set the stage for Congress to take some real action on this issue—if not a comprehensive reform, which currently seems out of reach, then smaller tweaks. For example, it could act to address the disparate fiscal impacts of immigration across states and localities. Or Congress could fix the system for migrant farmworker visas and status for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces during the war. Any of these policies could be crafted to garner bipartisan support, and doing so would show that Congress is not fully abdicating its responsibility to manage the nation’s immigration policy.
By Tom Wheeler
If I were writing Biden’s upcoming State of the Union here’s what I would want to hear:
My fellow Americans, the time has come to act to protect the privacy of Americans, to promote good old-fashioned American competition, and to encourage the dissemination of facts and truth over lies and hate.
It is time to stop being whipsawed by new technology with powers beyond the reach of our traditional governmental authorities. Just as it was necessary a century ago to establish new statutes and structures to oversee the new activities of the industrial revolution, so today has the time come to establish new oversight of the effects of the digital revolution.
Americans’ privacy is being exploited. What was once personal information is collected, often without the individual’s awareness, to become a corporate asset to be rented to the highest bidder. That American citizens must waive their rights through the forced acceptance of dense and obtuse legal terms and conditions before they can participate in the digital marketplace must be put right. The countries of Europe—even China—have adopted rules about personal privacy online; the United States should not be a laggard.
Control of this personal information then allows the companies to dominate the marketplace and quash competition. As FTC Chair Lina Khan has observed, “control over data has enabled dominant firms to capture markets and erect entry barriers.” Those barriers keep new and innovative companies with new and competitive ideas out of the marketplace. There is nothing more American than competition, yet we see little of it in the dominant digital companies. Our antitrust laws were designed for another era; not only must they be updated, but they also must be accompanied by ongoing regulatory enforcement of competitive principles.
The flood of misinformation is a cancer eating away at our democracy. As I said in my inaugural address, “There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and profit.” At the same time, we must respect and protect the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Government has no role in picking what can be said. Yet, the government can create incentives for online speakers to act responsibly. A century ago, the scourge was Yellow Journalism; today it is yellow digitalism. We dealt with the previous problem within the First Amendment, we must show similar resolve to appropriately deal with its successor as well.
To accomplish all of this we must have ongoing oversight that can establish behavioral rules for digital activity. We have a Pure Food and Drug Act to protect the safety of what we physically consume; the time has come for a similar agency to protect the safety of what we digitally consume. Last year Senators Bennet and Welch introduced legislation to create a new Digital Platform Commission.
A great Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, explained, in his 1907 Message to Congress, “centralization in business has already come and cannot [sic] be avoided or undone.” As a result, “the public at large can only protect itself from certain evil effects… by providing better methods for the exercise of control through the authority already centralized in the National Government by the Constitution itself.” He told Congress, “What is needed is not sweeping prohibition of every arrangement, good or bad, which may tend to restrict competition, but such adequate supervision and regulation as will prevent any restriction of competition from being to the detriment of the public.” This meant, he explained, “there should be additional legislation looking to the proper control of the great business concerns engaged in interstate business, this control to be exercised for their own benefit and prosperity no less than for the protection of investors and of the general public.”
I urge the Congress of the United States to recognize that just as the industrial era needed new oversight to protect consumers and competition, so does the digital era.
By Mounir Siaplay, Eric Werker
As West Africa enters 2023, the region faces a new period of instability following recent coups d’état in Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali. These coups are occurring amid continuous conflict in the Sahel region, where violence displaced more than 2.5 million people and was projected to kill some 8,000 individuals in 2022. Hostilities have moved outside the Sahel and closer to previously peaceful areas. For instance, Benin and Togo witnessed deadly attacks in 2021 and 2022, terrifying citizens and contributing to growing evidence of broadening violent activities in the region’s coastal states.
These events can no longer be viewed as isolated incidents chalked up to foreign-funded extremists hiding in the desert. A significant and growing risk of regional instability recalls the calamities of the 1990s and 2000s, when civil wars engulfed Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Côte d’Ivoire—and Mali, Niger, and Nigeria faced insurgencies—which impeded economic growth and development. West Africa’s youthful population of 429 million, growing at 2.5 percent per year (according to the U.N. population division), risks getting stuck in a rut of insecurity and stalled human development.
Two recent changes exemplify the complexity and internationalization of the region’s insecurity: the arrival of the Russia-backed Wagner group in Mali at the end of 2021 (together with a disinformation campaign) and the cessation of France’s decadelong Operation Barkhane—which once saw 5,500 troops across the region—by November 2022. Regional stability has been deteriorating despite the presence of other external military forces, including the United Nations stabilization force in Mali, the European Union Task Force under the French command, and the combined Sahel states’ “Joint Force.”
Coups and bad governanceAccording to the Center for Systemic Peace, a research institute, West Africa’s five successful coups in the last three years is more than what the region has experienced at any time in the last thirty years (see Figure 1). Even though these five coups have occurred in just three countries (Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali), failed coups in Niger, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali—and an alleged coup attempt in the Gambia as 2022 came to a close—underline the breadth of state fragility.
Figure 1. Coups in West Africa, 1990-2022Source: Center for Systemic Peace.Note: Figure data visualized by the authors.
Poor governance is both a cause and a symptom of insecurity, with weak governance driving low government legitimacy and clientelistic politics, and serving as an excuse for coup makers. A look at West Africa’s governance indicators, as measured by the World Bank and reported in Figure 2, shows two important observations. One, West Africa’s scores are low on average, well below zero for an indicator that ranges from -2.5 to 2.5. Two, the subscore that has fared the worst over the past two decades is political instability and violence, including terrorism. Moreover, these governance indicators, particularly instability, are correlated with economic growth.
Figure 2. West Africa’s Worldwide Governance IndicatorsSource: World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators.Note: Data visualized by the authors. Governance performance scores range from -2.5 (weak) to 2.5 (strong).
As a result of the rising conflict and violence in the region, the possibility of conflict spillover to neighboring countries is elevated. Consequently, based on our analysis of data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), countries in the region have increased military expenditure eightfold to combat internal and external threats over the last three decades, which equates to a compound annual growth rate of close to 8-percent net of inflation. While this expenditure may be necessary to manage the threat of instability, it nonetheless represents a diversion from spending on essential social services such as healthcare or education.
Languishing growth and investmentAlso, instability brings political risk, which drives investors away. According to our analysis of World Bank data, West Africa’s GDP grew, net of inflation, at a compound annual rate of 4 percent between 1990 and 2021, but on a per-capita basis, this came out to just 1.3 percent due to rapid population growth. Over that period, foreign direct investment has been minimal, with one exception corresponding to the iron ore price cycle of 2009-14; even when commodity prices picked up in 2020, investment has not seemed to follow. Furthermore, trade has been flat, and net official development assistance has been steadily declining.
The net result of insecurity, including its impacts through worse governance, higher military spending, and foregone investment, has affected West Africa’s average human development index, which as of 2021 had barely passed 0.5, significantly trailing other developing regions.
Changing the trajectorySo, what can the international community do to reverse the trends of insecurity in the region?
First, a comprehensive and politically-informed strategy for intervening to reduce fragility in the most unstable states is required. Rather than focusing on counterterrorism alone, this means investing in both political and economic constituencies to counterbalance the centralized rent creation that enables and encourages autocratic power politics. It also means considering the sociopolitical structures that support some of the highest fertility rates in the world precisely where the coup and coup attempts have taken place (with Niger and Mali taking two of the top three spots).
Second, bilateral and multilateral efforts should focus on containing the insecurity and preventing its spread to border regions and urban centers in neighboring countries. Here, a strategy is needed to invest in both state capacity, including an accountable and professional military, and legitimacy, which comes from functioning government service delivery and democratic mechanisms.
Third, international actors should partner with national and regional bodies to invest in alternative futures for the region. Diversified economies can generate more sustainable growth, broader influences in decisionmaking, and increased resilience in the face of external shocks. Creating gainful employment, particularly for the region’s youthful population and for women, may have a greater impact on reducing insecurity than military interventions. However, the changing climate, associated with a greater risk of conflict and internal displacement, adds another level of complexity.
Tomorrow’s global crisis?West Africa risks being locked into a rut of insecurity and missed opportunities, with war economies spilling into the mainstream and progress reversing. With global attention focused on Ukraine, energy, and inflation, today’s peripheral wars risk becoming tomorrow’s global crises. Development and diplomatic actors cannot afford to abandon the increasingly fragile West African countries to strongmen and mercenaries.
By Elaine Kamarck
Like presidents before him, Joe Biden will almost certainly focus his State of the Union on his accomplishments and on good news. The lowest unemployment rate in 52 years? That will certainly make the list. Inflation coming down? You bet. The public health emergency ending in May? Finally. Manufacturing returning to the U.S. Passage of the CHIPS bill so that the US will not be vulnerable to shortages of computer chips or vulnerable to supply disruptions in the future. The Infrastructure Investment Act which will make the airports sleeker and the roads safer. The Inflation Reduction Act providing money to finally tackle climate change.
And yet Americans are in a really sour mood. An NBC poll asked voters whether America was on a right track or on a wrong track and found that in eight out of nine recent polls over 70% of voters declared America on the wrong track. The most recent poll found that 71% of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track. The NBC News’ poll has never before recorded this level of sustained pessimism in the 30-year-plus history of the poll. This pessimistic mood is found in other polls as well. For instance, Pew found that 78% of Americans were dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
Why? There are, of course, many possible reasons. As Bill Galston and I have written before in these pages, inflation is a particularly tough political problem. Voters are reminded of it every day and the cure (recession) is usually worse than the disease. Decades of low trust in government makes citizens reluctant to believe that government spending can fix many problems. Though fading, the pandemic has left a trail of disruption in its wake. The spike in violent crime has left many citizens feeling unsafe in their own neighborhoods.
But there’s another possible explanation for the country’s negative mood. It goes like this:
America is changing and change makes people uncomfortable. Many Americans complain that they no longer recognize their country. Not all of them are white nationalists or racists; many are just uncomfortable with the changes they have seen in their lifetimes. America is no longer an overwhelmingly white, Christian nation.
At the beginning of the 20th century—1910—88.1% of U.S. citizens were white. Over the next seventy years that number dropped slowly to 79.6% (down 8.5%). But in the next forty years, from 1980 to 2020, the proportion of the population that is white dropped much more rapidly, by 20.8 percentage points. By the 2020 election only 58.8% of the population was white.
There is a distinct generational aspect to this drop. As my colleague and demographer William Frey writes:
“Most noteworthy is the increased diversity in the younger portion of the population. In 2019, for the first time, more than half of the nation’s population under age 16 identified as a racial or ethnic minority. Among this group, Latino or Hispanic and Black residents together comprise nearly 40% of the population. Given the greater projected growth of all nonwhite racial minority groups compared to whites—along with their younger age structure—the racial diversity of the nation that was already forecasted to flow upward from the younger to older age groups looks to be accelerating.”
The “browning” of America has important political and market consequences. While many in these minority groups are still mired in age-old cycles of poverty, prejudice, and powerlessness, others are coming of age and assuming leadership positions. We’ve had a black President and a black female vice president and a black, female Supreme Court Justice. Equally unnerving to many Americans is the appearance of more and more minorities in commercials. Ad-makers are not interested in political correctness. They are interested in building future market share for their product, whether it’s butter or cars. And the future is as brown as it is white.
Older Americans look at younger generations and don’t see themselves. And the younger generations look at many of the people in leadership positions and wonder why these old white guys are still in charge. No wonder that, in a country where things are going pretty well, the population is wallowing in pessimism, with members of each party convinced that the other is out to destroy the America they know. Non-white Americans are generally more optimistic and see the country on a better track than white Americans, yet both groups share a general pessimism towards the future.
There is no policy fix to this problem; it is fundamentally a problem of generations and of cultures. Politicians can try to soften the rough edges, as Biden will try to do, or exacerbate the fear of change, as Trump has done and continues to do. But until this cycle of change is complete two visions of America will coexist locked in pessimism.
By Natan Sachs, Suzanne Maloney, Samantha Gross, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Jeffrey Feltman, Bruce Riedel, Stephanie T. Williams, Reva Dhingra, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Marsin Alshamary, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Daniel L. Byman, Madiha Afzal, Michael E. O'Hanlon, Steven Heydemann, Sharan Grewal, Jeannie Sowers, Shadi Hamid, Shibley Telhami, Amos Harel, Itamar Rabinovich
NATAN SACHS
Two years into the Biden administration’s term, Middle East-focused scholars in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings offer thoughts on some of the policy areas the Biden administration has dealt with thus far.
The Middle East has fit awkwardly within Biden’s global priorities. Biden has sought to focus U.S. attention to other parts of the world, with more success than his immediate predecessors. Yet while competition with China and, later, the war in Ukraine have occupied much of the administration’s focus, the broader Middle East has still commanded considerable time and effort. In its first year, the administration prioritized the withdrawal from Afghanistan, an attempt to unwind U.S. involvement in the civil war in Yemen, and the effort to return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA alongside Iran. It struggled to balance a very critical initial approach to Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, with a subsequent desire to normalize relations with the Gulf, stem the rise in energy prices, and move forward on Israeli-Arab normalization.
Amid all this, the administration faced crises in Lebanon, the Horn of Africa, Iraq, and Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It successfully worked to broker a maritime boundary between Israel and Lebanon and to help maintain ceasefires in Libya and Ethiopia. It has dealt with crises big and small, proving yet again how hard it is for U.S. administrations to divert their attention from the region. Indeed, the administration, has faced the perennial American difficulties arising from the tensions in its own policy priorities: promoting stability and maintaining uneasy relationships with difficult partners while supporting democracy and human rights; and the desire to move on from the region balanced against the necessity to address its myriad challenges and occasional opportunities.
Below, our scholars touch on several of these themes, among others. As always, scholars at Brookings take their own individual perspectives, celebrating differences of opinion among them.
By Helen Shwe Hadani, Juanita Morales
As the urban population continues to grow globally, so too have disparities in economic opportunity and other indicators of wellbeing, including the availability of enriching social and learning experiences for children. The Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) movement represents an evidence-based approach for addressing these inequities by providing new opportunities for learning in everyday public spaces where families spend time.
Interest in PLL has been growing in cities in the U.S. and abroad, but more support and guidance is needed to connect the research to on-the-ground practice and policy. In December 2020, the Brookings Center for Universal Education (CUE) and the Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking launched the PLL City Network to help address this need and create a community of practice for peer learning to support the uptake of playful learning approaches.
Through quarterly virtual meetings, network members have been building connections both within and between city teams to fully realize the potential benefits of PLL, discussing challenges and sharing strategies on how to infuse playful learning principles into the mainstream practices of government, businesses, and other organizations. The network launched with an initial cohort of four cities: Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Tel Aviv, and later added Santa Ana, California and Lima, Peru. Conversations from recent network meetings have yielded several key insights that could help inform other local efforts to enhance playful learning opportunities in their communities:
1. PLL can materialize for different lengths of time—from seasonal or annual events to permanent installations.PLL projects must be adapted to each community’s needs and available opportunities. This often means that the projects don’t always take the form of a permanent installation. The summertime, for instance, is a time of high-need for children—especially those living in low socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods who often aren’t able to participate in the same enriching extracurricular opportunities as their higher SES counterparts.
Philadelphia’s PlayParks are an example of summer programming targeted toward children living in low-income neighborhoods. A collaboration between different city actors and local organizations—including Tiny WPA and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) businesses—PlayParks bring playful learning activities directly to the neighborhoods at set schedules.
Children participate in Philadelphia’s PlayParks activities.
Credit: Philadelphia Office of Children and Families
Similarly, Tel Aviv’s Play Streets provide seasonal, regularly scheduled playful learning, delivered to neighborhood streets via a Play Van. The project began in 2019 with a Playcar pilot, which brought 12 sessions of playful learning activities to parks and gardens in the city. “It was overwhelmingly successful, with more than one thousand children attending these sessions,” mentioned Dana Tennenbaum of Urban95 during a meeting last fall. Playcar’s success evolved into Play Streets and the team has recently created an implementation guide for community leaders in other parts of the city.
Children participate in Tel Aviv’s Play Streets with activities (below) delivered to them by the Play Van (above).
Credit: Urban95
While temporary or movable installations have the benefit of reaching a broad range of communities, permanent, well-maintained installations remain at the heart of the PLL movement. For example, in Santa Ana the Abacus Bus Stop emerged from an extensive community engagement process in which parents reflected on learning to count. Children and caregivers will be able to use the abacus to observe and tally things in their environment while waiting for the bus. The Chicago team created permanent math installations in North Lawndale and Douglass Boulevard. In Little Village, the team worked with local artists to paint murals in laundromats that highlight early math concepts and encourage child-caregiver interaction.
Design for Santa Ana’s Ababus Bus Stop—spearheaded by the city’s Public Works Agency.
Credit: University of California, Irvine
Chicago’s Laundromat Math installation in Little Village provides caregivers ample opportunity to engage with children while doing their laundry.
Credit: The McCormick Foundation
2. PLL events can build momentum and catalyze a city’s movement by sustaining collaborations throughout the year.Behind the scenes, annual events can advance a city’s PLL movement beyond the events themselves. Pittsburgh’s Ultimate Play Day (UPD) brings togethers various actors—Trying Together, CitiParks, the Grable Foundation, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, among others—to plan an annual day of fun for families in the city. Motivated by a joint yearly goal, this unlikely group of partners keeps in regular contact such that their collaboration and impact is sustained beyond that single day. “[UPD] contributes to that continuous relationship building among a multi-sector set of organizations that then find cause and reason to advocate around play and playful initiatives…so it’s that play day that really holds together the coalition and drives all sorts of resulting actions,” shared Gregg Behr, executive director of the Grable Foundation.
Pittsburgh’s children and families enjoy playful learning activities on Ultimate Play Day.
Credit: Trying Together
3. PLL initiatives can reclaim public spaces for children and families, making safe play and playful learning more accessible. Several cities in the network prioritize giving children and families safe spaces for play through PLL projects. For instance, Philadelphia’s Play Parks initiative works to reclaim public parks in the Kensington neighborhood, where violence and open drug usage are prevalent and children have few safe spaces for stimulating outdoor play. However, by clearly demarcating three parks for children and families through the use of regular scheduling, park ranger staff presence, and physical boundaries, Play Parks provides safe and enriching playful learning opportunities for Kensington’s children.
Children participate in Philadelphia’s PlayParks activities.
Credit: Philadelphia Office of Children and Families
Similarly, the Tel Aviv team noted that their Play Streets vision was “for play to occur in public spaces all over the city, in which streets closed for car traffic and became safe for children to play freely in them.”
Children participate in Tel Aviv’s Play Streets activities.
Credit: Urban95
Finally, Lima’s Urunaga Park is a permanent installation that rebuilt the park into an activities circuit for the local kids. Since the park was dangerous to access via local streets, the team created a new pedestrian crossing so that children from the local school had a safer passageway.
4. Public sector roles and responsibilities in facilitating PLL vary from city to city. Designing and implementing PLL ideally involves public sector collaboration, but in practice this can vary. The public sector isn’t currently involved in all efforts. Lima’s efforts, for example, are exclusively led by Ocupa tu Calle, a nonprofit organization. Chicago has advocates in the Department of Transportation and the city’s Make Way for People Program, which oversees some of Chicago’s PLL initiatives, such as new math installations along Douglass Boulevard. However, many of Chicago’s efforts are primarily led by organizations like Enlace Chicago and Metropolitan Family Services. For Ultimate Play Day, the city of Pittsburgh’s CitiParks waives the permit fee every year and provides staffing support. And Santa Ana’s Abacus Bus Stop was spearheaded by the city’s Public Works Agency.
Some city governments are intimately involved in directing the PLL movement in their city. The city of Philadelphia, for example, created a specific role within the city government, dubbed the Playful Learning Fellow, which oversees PLL projects. Moreover, the city is often a main partner in such projects. For instance, Play Parks was brought to life by the William Penn Foundation and Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, and Parks and Rec functioned as the coordinating entity that engaged the many different partners.
Overall, these four takeaways are illustrative of the PLL movement’s adaptability to each city’s goals and context. Undoubtedly, there will be more lessons to share on playful learning as the PLL City Network continues to grow and evolve.
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not reflect the views of the Institution, its management, or its other scholars.
The William Penn Foundation and The Grable Foundation are donors to the Brookings Institution.
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By Vanda Felbab-Brown
Afghanistan in 2023 will be shaped by whether or not the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, retains his tight grip on all decisionmaking. The second crucial dynamic will be terrorism and militancy. The Taliban is unlikely to get a better handle on the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK). But the feeble National Resistance Front (NRF) and other groups seeking to restore the Afghan Republic will not seriously threaten the Taliban’s rule. Two questions remain: Can the Taliban prevent significant defections? And can it contain terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, so external powers stay reluctant to support anti-Taliban groups?
Key 2022 developmentsOver the past year, the Taliban’s rule progressively hardened and became more authoritarian and dogmatically 1990s-like.
The Taliban’s exclusionary Pashtun-centered rule has turned highly repressive toward all forms of opposition. At the national level, it provides few job opportunities, let alone decisionmaking roles, for minorities and those associated with the fallen Afghan Republic.
Individual rights have been eviscerated, and women’s access to education, jobs, and even the public sphere for travel and medical care has been decimated.
The General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) under Sirajuddin “Siraj” Haqqani’s Ministry of Interior, and the Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, have become principal tools of repression.
Repeating the Republic’s mistakes and reversing the Taliban’s prior more decentralized processes, Taliban decisionmaking has become concentrated in the hands of a few – Amir Haibatullah and his Kandahar-based clique.
With nearly absolute power, Haibatullah has repeatedly dismissed input from other Taliban factions, especially more pragmatic, internationally oriented Taliban leaders. The more the West has criticized decisions to strip girls and women of rights or demanded inclusive rule, the more Haibatullah and his Kandahar acolytes have felt vindicated, interlocutors in Afghanistan tell me. Haibatullah has also been impervious to the criticism of other Islamic countries, organizations, and even conversative scholars. He has defined his version of sharia as the only true interpretation of Hanafi Islam.
His December 2022 edict banning women from working for NGOs in Afghanistan, with the excuse that they have been inadequately covered, has had devastating consequences. Along with U.N. agencies, the NGOs have provided vital aid to a starving country. Female workers are the only ones who can access women and often their children.
After the ban, major international NGOs suspended all of their Afghanistan operations – both because their operational capacity was critically hampered and because they hoped the suspension would force the Taliban to reverse the decision. Ultimately, both blinked. The Taliban announced that the ban was not meant to apply to women working in healthcare and education, and the NGOs restored some of their services.
Even so, the humanitarian situation remains excruciating: Almost half of the Afghan population was projected to be acutely food insecure between November 2022 and March 2023, with 6 million on the brink of famine. More than a quarter of Afghanistan’s roughly 40 million people have been receiving food packets and cash stipends from the World Food Program.
To some extent, the Taliban has stabilized the Afghan economy, crushed by banking sanctions, international seizures of Afghan central bank assets, and the end of Western development aid. It firmed up the Afghan currency, reduced inflation, partially recovered imports, doubled exports, and collected customs and taxes far more successfully than the corrupt leaders of the Afghan Republic. But as development economist William Byrd aptly puts it, the stabilization is one of a “famine equilibrium.”
The intensifying repression of women, minorities, and political critics fundamentally jeopardizes even essential Western humanitarian aid. There is little prospect that any future Chinese economic efforts in Afghanistan, very limited as they have been, could compensate for the loss of Western aid. Yet Haibatullah and his Kandahar clique define life on earth, including mass suffering and death, as merely a step toward the afterlife and feel self-justified in their dogma regardless of the humanitarian and economic consequences.
Power change scenariosOther Taliban leaders, however, do not operate according to the same calculus. They want to retain control of Afghanistan for a long time and calculate they won’t be able to do so if the economy altogether buckles, international isolation intensifies, and foreign resources dry up. They include the more internationally-oriented segments of the Taliban – the faces of Taliban diplomacy such as Acting First Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and some very powerful military commanders with potent networks and influence, including Acting Minister of Defense Mullah Yaqub, son of the Taliban 1990s leader Mullah Omar, and Acting Minister of Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Privately, Afghan interlocutors and Western officials have told me that these leaders and other Taliban officials have repeatedly sought to persuade Haibatullah to rescind the bans of girls’ education and women’s employment and other controversial policies. Yet in audience after audience with Haibatullah, they were dismissed. Although chosen in 2016 by the Taliban shura for his assumed weakness in decisionmaking, in addition to his religious credentials, Haibatullah has ruled with an iron fist. Clinging to or rescinding the edicts is, thus, also a matter of an internal power struggle.
Can a power change take place within the Taliban to constrain or remove Haibatullah in 2023?
Orchestrating an obvious internal putsch is enormously risky – entailing the possible execution of its organizers and Taliban splintering. A putsch would require basic unity of action between Baradar, Siraj, and Yaqub – none of whom trust each other – and the co-opting of several other key Taliban military commanders. Today, the likelihood is still small.
A far less risky power change, apparently currently sought by the dissatisfied Taliban leaders, but still difficult to achieve, would reinstate the Rahbari Shura (the prior leadership council arrangement) whereby decisions would be reached by consensus within the shura and then approved by the amir, Haibatullah. But Haibatullah shows no inclination to disempower himself.
The U.S. agreement to release from prison the prominent Afghan drug trafficker Bashir Noorzai and exchange him for an American hostage augments the possibility of an internal power change. Bashir has a large standing in the same important tribal networks as Haibatullah and influence within the Taliban. His support for a leadership reshuffle would add legitimacy and heft to such a move.
An external assassination of Haibatullah may produce a counterproductive tightening around rigid policies, even by the Taliban commanders who don’t actually favor them, due to their inescapable need to demonstrate loyalty. The 2016 U.S. assassination of the former Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was a strategic blunder.
Uncertainties also surround the Taliban leadership succession. Baradar has important internal credentials, but lacks a military power-base and would be strongly opposed by Pakistan. Despite Pakistan’s dissatisfaction with Siraj’s inability and unwillingness to constrain Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from intensifying terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including against Pakistani intelligence targets, Siraj remains Pakistan’s principal Afghan asset. But the Kandahari Taliban, including Yaqub and Baradar, do not want him as a new amir. Yaqub’s rise to power would be a hard pill for the West to swallow, but perhaps easier than living with Haibatullah.
Internal Militancy, External TerrorismAs I detailed in August 2022, since the Taliban takeover, terrorists from across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Pakistan have flocked to Afghanistan, some apparently paid by regional governments, as Western officials have privately told me.
In a stunning display of hubris, Siraj allowed al-Qaida’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to relocate to and live in a central Kabul safehouse – where a U.S. drone strike killed him.
Because of its jihadi credentials, political debts, and need to fundraise abroad, the Taliban was never likely to sever relations with other terrorist groups. All along, the issue at stake has been whether the Taliban would prevent terrorist groups based in Afghanistan from conducting attacks abroad. Apart from the TTP, such attacks have not taken place, and the Taliban mounted a modicum of effort to appease international actors, such as China by relocating Uyghur militants away from the Afghanistan-China border.
But the Taliban has badly struggled to contain the urban terror campaign of its arch-rival, the Islamic State in Khorasan. ISK seeks to ignite a sectarian war in Afghanistan, splinter the Taliban, and cut its external economic resources. It has thus attacked Chinese and Russian assets in Kabul.
The question is: If terrorist attacks by ISK or other Afghanistan-linked groups do take place abroad in 2023, will external actors start providing robust material support to other anti-Taliban armed actors?
The most visible among them, the National Resistance Front, remains weak and lacks tribal support. Its anti-Taliban strikes have so far caused the Taliban only minor irritation.
A real challenge to the Taliban’s power would emerge if significant Taliban factions split off – as a result of a putsch or frustration with the collapsed economy and a steep decline in particular factions’ income, compounded by an eventual firm implementation of the amir’s drug ban.
But in any renewed civil war, the NRF stands little chance of winning. Rather, various Taliban factions and the ISK would carve up Afghanistan.
By Vanda Felbab-Brown
On January 10, Haiti lost its last vestige of democratic representation when the term of its 10 senators, who nominally represent 11 million people, expired. Now there are no elected members of the house or senate. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who assumed office after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, has not been elected either.
Amid a profound political crisis, Haiti remains gripped by vicious gangs who dominate daily life through their warfare, sieges, and extortion. The Haitian National Police (PNH) and Haitian politicians, both deeply interconnected with the gangs, are no longer able to hold the criminals on a leash. Close to 5 million Haitians, nearly half the country’s population, face acute hunger. The country also struggles with cholera, high prices and shortages of food, fuel, and other necessities, while misery and violence drive refugee outflows.
Holding reasonably free and fair elections is an important step. However, even if a broad-based consensus on political transition among the polarized political sides could be reached, the enfeebled state cannot provide security for elections without: a) problematic negotiations with the gangs, b) robust external intervention, or c) both. Despite repeated calls, including from Henry, there is little appetite abroad for staffing an international force which, even more than previous troubled ones, could rapidly become mired. Many Haitians themselves have little enthusiasm for an intervention. Whether or not an external intervention is ultimately cobbled together in 2023, the gangs will remain powerful.
The troubled politics Not since the bloody dictatorship of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier ended in 1986 has Haiti been without any elected representatives. Haiti’s electoral commission and Supreme Court don’t function. The assassination of Moïse, who frequently resorted to illegitimate tools to govern, is not fully resolved although many have been charged. Haitian governance is highly centralized and corrupt, and the mismanagement of Haiti’s resources mostly benefits the urban elite.
Henry is at loggerheads with vast segments of Haitian society. Among his principal opponents is the Montana Accord, a coalition of Haitian NGOs, civil society members, and politicians that has received widespread approval from within Haiti and the Haitian diaspora.
In December, Henry and a rival coalition of businesses and NGOs announced a transition plan to hold elections in February 2024, and create an interim high transitional council, advised by civil society. The transition arrangements would also restaff the Supreme Court, the electoral commission, and conduct constitutional reform.
Other civil society actors and political parties reject the plan as illegitimate.
The vicious gangsThere are some 200 gangs in Haiti, about half in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Currently, the two main gang alliances are between the G9 an Fanmi e Alye, led by the notorious former police officer Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, and the GPèp la, led by Gabriel Jean Pierre, known as Ti Gabriel.
Often numbering hundreds of impoverished young men per group, the gangs control over half the capital and have significant presence beyond. They dictate many aspects of daily life to communities under their rule, including the ability to move across rival territories to access meager jobs, medical help, and schooling opportunities. Increasingly brutal, they engage in extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking (in which various top Haitian politicians are implicated), murders, and prevalent sexual violence.
In 2022, 1,200 kidnappings were reported, though the real number is likely higher. Killings also soared, with 1,349 murders between January and August 2022 and at least 280 in November alone. To demonstrate power and extort rents, the G9, opposed to Henry, took control of the main fuel terminal in September 2022 and seized key highways, preventing basic economic and humanitarian functionality across Haiti. In November, the PNH retook the terminal, amid rumored negotiations between the government and the G9, which the Haitian government denied.
Indeed, the gangs do not exist in isolation. Since the 1980s, all prior administrations, including those of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Michel Martelly, and Moïse, as well as rival politicians, tolerated and used the gangs for their purposes, including to intimidate opposition, justify their policies, and collect money and votes. Through those political arrangements, the gangs learned that they can ignite and manipulate violence to get hefty payoffs.
Prior foreign interventions, including by the United Nations, also featured negotiations with the gangs over access. They also taught the gangs how to convert their battlefield violence into political power and economic dividends. Illegal weapons flows, many originating in the United States, have augmented their firepower.
Despite years of international funding and training, including from the United States, the 9,000-strong PNH is incapable of handling the gangs. The police force is undermanned, underpaid, underequipped, frustrated with Henry’s leadership, and importantly, permeated by the gangs. Police officers often live in gang-controlled areas, and thus risk being killed by them should they try to oppose them. Crucially, various PNH commanders have for years colluded with various gangs for their own illicit collection of revenues and to promote their political bosses’ objectives.
Over time, the gangs’ ambitions have soared, while their organizational structures and battlefield strength increased dramatically. They are no longer satisfied with small bribes such as motorcycles or computers. In fact, they are no longer content to simply do the bidding of the politicians and the PNH. They have slipped the leash, want to dictate their own terms, and their financial and political asks are far greater than ever.
The uncertain foreign interventionIn October, Henry called for foreign intervention to break the gangs’ siege and restore basic functionality. Reiterated by senior U.N. officials at the end of January, the proposal was rejected by the Haitian opposition, as well as many Haitians who have bitter memories of prior interventions exacerbating the country’s problems. The 2014-17 U.N. intervention in Haiti was associated with the spread of cholera and U.N. peacekeepers’ sexual misconduct.
Henry’s call found no ready takers abroad: For the United States, a Haiti mission is a perfect example of the kind of complex nation-building exercise the Biden administration doesn’t want to engage in. Canada has repeatedly refused to carry the intervention water for the United States.
Instead, the United States and Canada sanctioned leading Haitian politicians for their links to the gangs and drug trafficking and sent armored vehicles to the PNH. The two countries and the United Nations Security Council passed sanctions against several gang leaders, including Barbecue.
Brazil has been mentioned as a possible intervener, having led the earlier U.N. intervention. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has tense relations with the Brazilian military, whom he accuses of complicity in the January 8 Bolsonarista far-right insurrection. He may yet want to redirect some forces into a foreign deployment. In late 2022, Kenya, Trinidad, and Rwanda were also proposed to staff the intervention force; Jamaica volunteered in February 2023.
But any intervention, especially a temporary limited one, as the mission was conceptualized abroad in 2022, would face enormous challenges.
If it were used to provide security for elections, assuming that Henry and the opposition would agree on electoral timelines and procedures, the foreign intervention would have to operate in the worst of battlefields: urban slum labyrinths, with minimal knowledge of Haiti’s physical and human terrain and limited strategic and tactical intelligence on the gangs. In the shantytowns, international forces would struggle to distinguish civilians from gang members. The risk of gangs using civilians as shields and thus perpetrating civilian casualties would be high.
If the intervention were to secure only election booths and major highways, to break the gangs’ chokehold on critical infrastructure, the gangs would still control the neighborhoods and thus who could show up to vote. The risks of political assassinations and campaign intimidation would also remain high.
As elections approached, the gangs would be primed for violence – their key money- and power-making mechanism. Even if Haitian politicians attempted to direct the gangs to reduce the violence around elections, they might struggle to induce that behavior. The U.S. and Canadian sanctions are an important tool to break the political-criminal alliances in the long term. But in the short term, sanctions, already weakening Haiti’s politics-crime nexus, may hamper the one functional, if deeply problematic way to reduce violence – negotiations with the gangs – if politicians do not dare bribe the gangs to keep violence down.
If the PNH saturate poor neighborhoods on election day, while an intervention force secures voting sites and major roads, voters could have some security. In the electoral runup, violence might be less, but not eliminated. Under the best circumstances, an intervention of a few months or a year would only partially and temporarily disperse the gangs.
Yet even a robust multi-year force would struggle holding “cleared” territories – the perennial problem of anti-crime operations in Latin America and counterinsurgency forces elsewhere. Under good conditions, not present in Haiti, an effective police reform takes a decade.
The gangs will continue to rule for years. Bringing the state to the slum is a long, resource-intensive, and complex non-linear effort. Even under far more auspicious circumstances, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) processes for gang members have rarely been successful. There is no prospect for a rapid successful DDR for Haitian gangs. The real question is whether the gangs can be shaped to behave less perniciously.
But getting a more legitimate government willing and able to use multifaceted tools to chip away at the gangs’ power and build a better governing state would be a decent start.
By Brad McNally
In 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration strengthened U.S. policy to counter the dangers of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This year, the United States must urgently begin to translate this framework into robust action around the world. To this end, Washington should prioritize establishing anti-IUU partnerships with countries in Latin America and Africa. The existing U.S.-led anti-IUU and Quad partnerships in the Indo-Pacific can serve as important models.
The Threats Posed by Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated FishingBeyond food and economic security and environmental impacts, new geopolitical and conflict threats associated with IUU fishing have emerged. In the fall, reports came out about an interaction during which a U.S. Coast Guard cutter encountered a Chinese fishing fleet off the coast of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands while patrolling for IUU fishing. When the Coast Guard attempted to board several of the ships to ensure they were following internationally accepted fishing practices, the Chinese vessels sped away with one turning aggressively toward the Coast Guard cutter, requiring the U.S. boat to take evasive action to avoid being rammed. This dangerous interaction was a hazardous deviation from international maritime protocol. Ultimately, the Coast Guard found possible violations on two of the vessels it was able to board and referred the matter to the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization, which includes China.
While China is not the sole perpetrator of global IUU fishing, it is increasingly becoming a major one. With dwindling fish stocks near its own shores, Chinese distant water fleets are fishing thousands of miles away from the Chinese mainland and using large processor/transport vessels to get their catch back to China. Estimates put the Chinese distant water fishing fleet at around 3,000 vessels, with nearly 500 fishing in the South Pacific, sometimes for months at a time. Of course, not all of what distant water Chinese fishing vessels are doing is illegal. Outwardly, China says it does not support IUU fishing and it has shown the ability to address specific issues when presented with overwhelming evidence of violations. However, it remains to be seen how much China will clamp down and proactively work on IUU fishing issues to ensure long-term viability of global fish stocks.
The Biden Administration’s Policy FrameworkThe past year saw the Biden administration put renewed emphasis on IUU fishing. In February, the White House released the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States. While IUU fishing was not a major theme, the strategy does recommend improving the Pacific Islands’ resilience and maritime security to safeguard fisheries. There was a clear focus on building partnerships in the region, increasing resilience, and supporting a rules-based order, which all tie back to the IUU fishing threat. However, with more than half the world’s population and 65% of its oceans in the Indo-Pacific region, it seemed odd that the strategy did not focus more on protecting and managing one of the region’s largest food sources and potential for significant civil unrest.
In June, the White House did offer a much more targeted and geographically unrestrained approach on IUU fishing when it released its Memorandum on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses. This document put significant emphasis on the IUU threat from two dimensions: forced labor and human trafficking, and overfishing and fisheries collapse. The IUU memorandum directed multiple U.S. government departments and agencies to use a wide array of tools to address the problem. These included coordination with various foreign governments, the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the G-7, to set tighter controls on fisheries management and to use bilateral maritime law enforcement agreements to enforce existing and future regulations.
Following Biden’s visit to Japan in May 2022, where he met with leaders of the Quad, the White House released a fact sheet recapping the Tokyo summit. This document focused on improving maritime domain awareness (MDA) between the Quad members by harnessing commercially available data, sharing more information, and pursuing future technologies. One of the goals of improved MDA is to protect fisheries essential to providing food security and income to people living across the Indo-Pacific region.
Improved MDA is critical to addressing the IUU fishing threat. Most countries have limited capability to see what is happening on the ocean’s surface more than several miles from their shores unless they have expensive aircraft or surface assets. Even then, such technology is only marginally helpful given the sheer size of the vast Indo-Pacific region. Leveraging increasingly less expensive space-based surveillance and better data sharing could greatly aid in MDA and subsequent surface action, helping countries to address the IUU threat and better manage their fish stocks.
Finally, the National Security Strategy in October discussed food insecurity as a major challenge, although not caused specifically by IUU fishing. The National Security Strategy did however mention illegal fishing as one of the challenges posed by transnational criminal organizations.
What Actions Need to be Taken in 2023 and BeyondIn 2023, the policy framework must be translated into increased and tangible action. With determined and focused U.S. leadership, regional partnerships need to double their efforts to address the problem. A more robust Quad IUU partnership in the Indo-Pacific is a good start, although there is much more that can and should be done. Building new, robust anti-IUU fishing partnerships in South America and Africa is urgent.
At the heart of the IUU fishing issue is the potential for millions of people to lose their primary source of food due to the collapse of global fish stocks. Many of these people live in developing countries. If this alone wasn’t significant enough, IUU fishing connects to forced labor, unsafe labor practices, social unrest, and contributes to transnational crime. As marine life knows no borders and IUU fishing perpetrators are highly mobile, often exploiting the vastness of the world’s oceans, this is truly a global problem. Firm commitment to enhanced partnerships, decisive leadership in supporting countries with limited resources, and dedicated response through enforcement action must be forthcoming to turn the tide on IUU fishing and sustain global fisheries. 2022 was the year of showing this through policy. 2023 needs to be the year of showing this through action.
By Amy J. Nelson
Some of the greatest foreign policy problems and international challenges today concern arms control. This is partly because of how nuclear weapons have shaped the current security environment: Russia’s war on Ukraine has brought the risk of nuclear war to the forefront of international conversation. The conflict evokes multiple arms control ideas and concerns, including the norm of not using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, the norm of refraining from nuclear saber rattling, and the need for an agreement that creates a safety zone around nuclear power plants. Additionally, the current state of arms control is now characterized by its diminished condition: treaty violations, withdrawals and suspensions, abruptly terminated dialogues, and diplomacy voids. New challenges posed by the new security landscape are co-mingling to render the repair and renewal of the arms control enterprise — and indeed, the negotiation of future agreements — anywhere from overwhelming to impossible.
What’s more, fatigue is setting in, which makes for perhaps lackluster efforts to dissect the problem. For a while, there were earnest attempts among scholars and analysts to wrestle with arms control as a solvable problem. Numerous events and articles spoke to the question of the “future of arms control,” or acknowledged that arms control was “at a crossroads,” aiming to discern what could possibly come next. Some have even wondered whether the enterprise of arms control is finished, or have taken the present state of arms control — which appears eroded and ineffective — as evidence that arms control doesn’t work, and was never a good idea.
Others have suggested that the United States can lead the charge in starting anew, creating an entirely novel global governance regime. However, this is not particularly feasible at a time when resources are otherwise prioritized to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Additionally, the tension between engaging in more broadly-aimed arms control negotiations while simultaneously devoting resources to costly modernization and competition-driven weapons innovation programs at home has always been fertile ground for controversy and conflict. In a related vein, others have argued that arms control is a tool better suited to a different security environment. Since the Cold War and its aftereffects (like bipolarity and the nuclear arms racing that grew out of the dawn of the nuclear age) that facilitated arms control’s successes are no longer present, they say, arms control has no future.
These detractors could not be more misguided: arms control still matters. However, finding a way forward requires grappling with four formidable, though not impossible, challenges.
THE CURRENT ARMS CONTROL CRISIS IS THE RESULT OF FOUR CHALLENGESFirst, arms control just appears broken. Whether eroded, outdated, or violated, the frailty of the international arms control enterprise is self-evident. We see it in the impending expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). It’s visible in Russia’s suspension of onsite New START inspections — inspections designed to verify compliance with the treaty’s provisions — which the United States just deemed a violation. It’s in the abruptly terminated U.S.-Russian Strategic Stability Dialogue, which stood to advance the enterprise of arms control by making the U.S.-Russian bilateral component at least fit for purpose in a new era. Even China’s buildup of nuclear weapons and Beijing’s refusal to participate in nuclear arms control stand testament to arms control’s current weakness. And it is evident in the progressive and purposeful destruction of the European conventional arms control architecture that foreshadowed Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and its subsequent demise, as well as Washington’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Open Skies Treaty. All these examples could easily be interpreted as evidence that arms control is no longer worth the effort.
Second, arms control remains controversial. Questions about its value, and how to best use it as a security tool, have always evoked strong opinions. The deep divisions we see concerning arms control today aren’t new. They have grown out of differing views on the role of nuclear weapons in national security, the credibility of deterrence, the ability to place trust in the adversary and in its compliance with a potential agreement, as well as concern about arms control limiting U.S. military options and military flexibility. These views are as old as the nuclear age itself. Fundamentally, strong opinions against arms control as a policy priority are steeped in the deep-seated conviction that it is wrong to bargain away strategic advantage. For decades there has been tension between the desire to effectively use nuclear weapons in a U.S. security strategy, and to simultaneously achieve meaningful arms control outcomes. The divide between viewpoints on arms control and their subsequent politicization, which has only deepened over time, makes the very discussion of how to proceed with arms control — current geopolitical uncertainties aside — controversial.
Third, what we need from arms control going forward is very different from what it was designed for or used to accomplish in the past. During the Cold War, for example, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks codified a balance that was designed to depend on what national security expert Jennifer Sims called a “weapons-stability nexus” — the belief that nuclear weapons’ very existence was necessary to prevent their use. Today, with so many actors and capabilities, what this nexus must look like is elusive. If stability is the goal, then shoring up or redefining this construct for a new geopolitical era poses a formidable challenge. However, truly useful arms control is likely to require much more than the codification of strategic stability through limitations to long-range nuclear weapons and delivery devices, given the rapid innovation of, for example, high-precision conventional weapons and the potential for space-based missile defense. The strategic stability equation is more complex than ever before. Additionally, dual-use technologies are increasingly emerging from the private sector and diffusing, making for a greater number of capable actors worldwide. This forces a reconsideration of export controls (arms control treaties’ sibling mechanism) and their overall significance: We need export controls to carry more weight than they were previously designed for.
Fourth and finally, the United States is currently in an exceptionally difficult negotiating environment. In easier times, it was more realistic to consider broadening the number of participating states in an existing treaty. In principle, this is a lower bar than crafting an arms control treaty from scratch. However, even efforts to bring China into the existing New START Treaty have faltered. To date, China has lacked the infrastructure, institutional capacity, and openness to the very concept of verification — not to mention the strategic imperative — to engage in arms control with the United States and Russia. Moreover, despite Russia’s stated interest in arms control, there is broad disagreement between Washington and Moscow about what systems should be included in a future treaty and how to calculate strategic stability, making agenda setting difficult.
Fundamentally, arms control is a collection of ideas about how to manage weapons and technology in the service of national security. It is a security tool that must complement and influence security doctrine and national security policy. The task at hand must be to understand this evolving set of ideas, align it with the policy objectives it can affect, and use it to further national security objectives.
Despite, or perhaps in light of, these four problems, the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), National Defense Strategy, and National Security Strategy explicitly mention arms control and acknowledge its importance. Per the NPR: “Mutual, verifiable nuclear arms control offers the most effective, durable and responsible path to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our strategy and prevent their use.”
While both documents champion the importance of arms control to U.S. policy and international security, they are also short on details for its current and future use. This ambiguity, as well as the administration’s lack of new public plans and ideas for arms control, may well be due to any or all of the four aforementioned problems. But a lack of vision contributes to the further erosion of arms control by keeping the enterprise — and its continued importance — inconspicuous.
The State of the Union address next week would be an ideal time for President Joe Biden to put some meat on the bones of his vision for an international arms control architecture. The Biden administration should come out strong on arms control now, bolstering the legitimacy of the enterprise and the ideas that support it, while offering new concepts, technologies, and fora to see these aims through. The alternative, an arms control void derived from a wait-and-see posture, is risky and destabilizing. It further exacerbates arms control’s erosion. Now is the time for new ideas for arms control, and the more the administration can say about what comes next, the better.
By David Ton, Naomi Maehr, Molly E Reynolds
With the bruising fight to select a speaker behind them, Republicans have begun executing their oversight plans for the 118th Congress, with a focus on issues like the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the handling of classified documents, and the Biden administration’s border policies.
On some issues—like the House GOP’s plans to investigate Hunter Biden—Republicans will clearly use the chamber’s oversight apparatus towards different ends than their Democratic colleagues. But on other topics, judging the change in direction requires a sense of what Democratic-led committees have focused on over the past two years.
Using data we’ve been gathering on oversight of the executive branch, we can begin to answer that question. Between the start of the 117th Congress in 2021 and September 2022, congressional committees undertook more than 900 actions we’d label oversight—a combination of hearings held, and letters sent—of the executive branch. Roughly 26% of that activity involved national defense issues. Efforts were spread out across a number of House committees, including Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, Oversight, Veterans’ Affairs, Energy and Commerce, Judiciary, Appropriations, and the Select Committee on January 6, as well as several Senate panels, such as Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Judiciary, and Veterans’ Affairs) and generally covered one of four broad categories: homeland security, cybersecurity, veterans’ issues, and military affairs.
While our data can’t tell us why Congress did this much oversight on defense issues (defined broadly, to include homeland security), there were no shortage of related matters high on the national agenda in 2021 and 2022. The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, exposed a series of security and intelligence failures. Major cybersecurity breaches on all levels of government and in private corporations have had far reaching consequences. Developments domestically and abroad have raised various concerns on the state of the military, from sexual assault within the military, to the condition of F-35 jets and their effectiveness. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic also drew continued attention to veterans’ health issues.
Looking first at letters sent by House and Senate committees, we see that panels sent 152 letters related to oversight of defense issues. Almost 60% of these came from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. The committee operated on a largely unanimous, bipartisan basis—a departure from much of the other, letters-based defense oversight conducted by the 117th Congress. Of the remaining letters sent by House and Senate committees, only about a fifth were signed by a panel’s Democratic chair and Republican ranking member.
Hearings, meanwhile, tended to focus more broadly on various military affairs issues; between the House and Senate, there were 47 oversight hearings, examining a broad mix of topics such as the condition and preparedness of the armed forces, both domestically and abroad, and American operations in countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.
Veterans Affairs was also another common area of focus, with both chambers holding 14 hearings on this issue. In these hearings, committees focused on the quality, accessibility, and effectiveness of resources the government is providing to our veterans. More specifically, committees examined how servicemembers transition back into civilian life, healthcare for veterans amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and improving the VA (Veterans Affairs) health care system. In addition, six oversight hearings were held on cybersecurity concerns.
We know the oversight landscape will look different as the 118th Congress continues; in addition to focusing on new areas, they have indicated plans to take existing investigations, like the one into the January 6 insurrection, in different directions. Other issues—like those related to military families –have proven to be fertile ground for bipartisanship in the past, but whether an appetite for that still exists under divided party control remains to be seen.
By Ember Smith
On January 23, the Brookings Center on Children and Families hosted an event where leading education experts discussed the factors that contribute to college enrollment disparities and ways to improve access to higher education.
First, Sarah Reber, senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings, presented findings from her new report with Ember Smith. Although college enrollment rates vary significantly by socio-economic status (SES), gender, and race or ethnicity, they find that disparities are much smaller among students with similar academic preparation. Reber suggests that policymakers interested in addressing college enrollment gaps should address disparities in academic preparation, which are influenced by opportunities both in and out of school.
Following Reber’s presentation, Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Brookings Brown Center on Education Policy, moderated a conversation with three education researchers. Panelists addressed obstacles to educational opportunity, approaches to improving K-12 education, changes in college admissions policy, and what policymakers and researchers should focus on going forward.
Preparing for college: K-12 obstacles and interventions A student’s educational trajectory is largely determined before they apply to college, and admissions-focused interventions alone are not sufficient to address disparities in higher education, panelists agreed. They considered obstacles students face in successfully transitioning to college and what K-12 policymakers and educators might do to address them.
For one, panelists discussed, educators should work to create inclusive educational environments. As Sade Bonilla, Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out, many students of color, students from immigrant families, and students from low-income families are culturally underrepresented in their schools’ curricula and textbooks. Richard Reeves, senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings, also argued that boys may be harmed by the lack of men in the teaching workforce. Representation in schools — especially with increasingly diverse student bodies, they added — promotes student engagement and sense of belonging at school. It is also actionable: Bonilla’s work shows that students who took an ethnic studies course in ninth grade were more likely to graduate high school, had higher rates of attendance, and were more likely to enroll in college.
Panelists also agreed that policymakers should be cautious about one-size-fits-all approaches to increasing college enrollment, especially those focused specifically on increasing advanced course enrollment (one of the measures Reber and Smith use to measure academic preparation in their report). Lindsay Page, associate professor at Brown University, described her recent review of the economic literature on addressing non-financial barriers to college access. One of her primary takeaways is that substantially increasing enrollment in advanced courses in high school is unlikely to improve students’ educational outcomes. In large part, that’s because students who are inadequately prepared may be discouraged if they lack support to succeed in those courses.
Panelists discussed earlier-in-school interventions to keep students on track. Page pointed to evidence from a program that assigns “high-achieving” students, determined by a standardized test in elementary school, to a program with high value-add teachers and advanced curricula. Participating students — especially students of color — had higher high school graduation and college enrollment rates years later. Bonilla added that regardless of whether courses are considered “advanced” or not, educators should prepare students for college by emphasizing critical thinking, reading, and writing across the curriculum. The panelists agreed that the disparities in academic preparation start early and compound over time. Education is a cumulative process, and by the time students apply to college, Page said, the “cake is already baked.” Reeves cautioned against using this type of evidence to let colleges (or K-12 schools and policymakers) off the hook: “The cake is always baked earlier. If you go to the high schools, they’ll say … look at the middle schools. You go into the middle schools, they’ll say the cake’s baked in elementary school.” The panelists agreed that policymakers and educators need to take responsibility for addressing education gaps at each stage of the process.
Panelists highlighted research showing that it is not too late to intervene in high school. Page pointed to evidence that dual enrollment programs, which allow students to enroll in community college courses while in high school, have been quite successful in increasing educational attainment. In addition to providing students with the opportunity to engage in actual college courses, Page called attention to a key element of many successful programs: high-quality and accessible guidance counsellors. Reeves also pointed to the success of vocational education programs that have a strong connection with employers.
Test-optional policies, the Supreme Court, and college resources Meyer asked the panelists to comment on how ongoing shifts in admissions policy are influencing opportunity in higher education and what we might expect in the future.
Many colleges have made standardized admissions tests (SAT or ACT) optional; some have gone further, eliminating consideration of test scores from the process altogether. Reeves predicted the test-optional trend will continue and that renewed attention to admissions might put pressure on colleges to eliminate legacy preferences. Page added that practices for admitting athletes might also be a focus of the “reckoning on college admissions.”
The panelists were skeptical that the move away from standardized tests will have a major impact on the SES and racial enrollment disparities noted in Reber and Smith’s report. This is largely because, as the panel pointed out, test scores capture educational inequality also reflected in other measures reported on college applications. Reeves pointed to evidence suggesting that test-optional policies benefit girls relative to boys, which would widen the gender gap somewhat. Test-optional policies further complicate the already-complex college admissions process. As Meyer put it, the “gamesmanship” necessary to navigate decisions like whether to submit test scores benefits students whose families or schools have resources to help. “Complexity is the friend of the privileged,” Reeves remarked. Without exam scores, Bonilla explained, admissions officers will rely on other signals that reflect similar differences in opportunity.
As Meyer described, the Supreme Court’s expected decisions in two cases related to affirmative action policies would considerably limit colleges’ ability to consider race in admissions. Page suggested that the shift will particularly impact public flagship universities. And the change is likely to affect racial disparities in higher education. Bonilla pointed to California Proposition 209 — which prohibited public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in admissions — as a bellwether for U.S. college enrollment patterns in a world without affirmative action. She explained that the California policy caused a reallocation of students in the postsecondary system: Black and Hispanic students shifted from selective to less-selective universities, while Asian students became more likely to attend selective institutions. A national move away from considering race in admissions, Bonilla anticipates, will reduce Black and Hispanic students’ access to well-resourced institutions.
Community colleges and less-selective four-year colleges play an important role in supporting social mobility, the panel explained, while selective and elite colleges often garner disproportionate attention in public discussions. Community colleges and less-selective four-years serve many more students from disadvantaged backgrounds but have fewer resources than selective and elite colleges. “We spend the most money on the most advantaged students, and the least … on students who could probably use a lot more support,” Bonilla stressed. The panel agreed, with Page expressing particular concern about for-profit institutions saddling students with debt and failing to provide adequate training or credentials.
What next?To close, Meyer asked each of the panelists to comment on their top policy and research priorities for issues related to college enrollment. Drawing on themes in his latest book Of Boys and Men, Reeves called for more research on the obstacles facing boys, particularly low-income boys and boys of color, in education. Page supported renewed investment in guidance counseling for students and their families. Bonilla emphasized the need to understand obstacles to community college completion and advocated for continued investment in making K-12 schools inclusive for marginalized communities: “Students have potential, and we want them to realize that potential.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Jeanine Milly Cooper
In Liberia, we hold one truth to be self-evident: If one has not eaten rice on any given day, then one has not eaten. Well, at least that is the conventional theory that has driven food policy and planning for the last 60 years.
Rice is Liberia’s staple food, and our contemporary history has been completely shaped by rice: Its availability on the local market, price, and, to a lesser extent, quality. Since 1979, when government plans to raise tariffs on imported rice caused deadly riots, and eventually a coup d’état, public policy has favored imports over locally produced rice.
Fast forward to 2022, and it’s 4Cs: COVID-19, Climate, Conflict, and Commodity price escalations. Four simultaneous and intensifying shocks, at a time when we have not fully recovered from the previous shock of Ebola.
And here is another incontrovertible truth: Liberians’ dogged reliance on imported food is not sustainable. The looming food security crisis is an opportunity to finally tackle rice availability on three main fronts: Boosting smallholder production; taking agribusiness micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to scale; and attracting commercial agri-food enterprises.
Since we have ostensibly been doing just these things for years, now is the time to innovate the “how” of agri-food production. The “innovation” is simple: Enhance what is working, what is familiar and help farmers and businesses to produce more, faster, cheaper—and get surpluses to market. The technologies exist to do this.
Rice is Liberia’s staple food, and our contemporary history has been completely shaped by rice.
Take rice. President Weah has set up a National Rice Stabilization Task Force to ensure constant availability of rice in our markets. We have set a national goal to grow 75 percent of what we consume in four cropping seasons: A 150 percent increase in production over what we are doing now.
In setting these targets, we considered the production realities of our smallholders. Realizing the adoption of yield improving technologies has been poor, and rarely sustained past project-end, we are resolving some of the challenges brought on by limited capital and labor for any given piece of land: Improving weed and pest management on farms; post-harvest processing capacities at village level (to optimize use); and access to markets and digital buying platforms. Couple these with solutions that enhance food and nutrition security, water, and energy at community level.
We work with MSMEs along the value chain to grow or build and service and maintain the seeds, tools, and equipment needed to produce, package, transport, and market rice to urban consumers. The Liberia Agricultural Commercialization Fund is providing critical financing to innovations that service food markets and helping rice processors to scale up operations.
We are building our knowledge base and creating business profiles to attract private investments.
The global food security crisis compels Liberia to draw on its legendary resilience and creativity. We are intentional about getting rice right. And we will.
By Taylor Redd, Norman Eisen, Colby Galliher
Next week President Biden will give his annual State of the Union address. The address will take place against the backdrop of an ongoing special counsel investigation. Although Biden’s document mishandling is unlikely to lead to charges, (it is more like former Vice President Mike Pence’s situation and unlike former President Donald Trump’s) it raises the question—how will he treat it? Other presidents have delivered the State of the Union address against background controversies. In predicting what to expect in Biden’s speech next week, a look at how Presidents Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Richard Nixon dealt with their own (far more serious) controversies is instructive.
At the time of his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump faced a looming investigation by the House Oversight Committee, which was looking into his tax returns, and an ongoing one by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was probing Trump’s alleged dealings with Russia during the 2016 election. During the 1999 State of the Union, Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial, prompted by his alleged perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice (in an effort to conceal his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky), was well underway. By the time of his 1974 State of the Union address, Richard Nixon was navigating the wake of the Saturday Night Massacre of October 1973 and had been at the center of a Senate committee and a special counsel investigation for months.
All three former presidents referenced their respective controversies during their speeches, though in different ways. Clinton took the lightest touch. He did not address his political adversaries’ efforts directly. Rather, he alluded at the end of his remarks to overlooking “controversy” in favor of “a new dawn for America.” Trump was more overt, lamenting “ridiculous partisan investigations,” seemingly in reference to the House and Mueller probes. Nixon, whose problems were the most severe, dealt with them at the most length. He dedicated multiple paragraphs to dismissing “the so-called Watergate affair” and asserted that he would not be going anywhere.
To the extent history guides what Biden should and will do, it counsels the Clinton approach. That was and continues to be regarded as a political triumph. Trumps was met with mixed reviews. Nixon’s dismissal of Watergate aged poorly with the impeachment proceeding and his subsequent resignation. Biden, like Clinton, should use this year’s State of the Union address primarily as a means of promoting policy, avoiding Trump’s angry tone and Nixon’s extended treatment of the investigation.
Indeed, Biden could go Clinton one better by using the documents controversy as a springboard for policy promotion. Document mishandling will not stop with Biden (or Pence or Trump) unless the rules are changed. One of the authors of this blog, Eisen, served as a drafter of Executive Order 13526, which governs the current classification regime, and has recently written about several reforms to it. They include requiring that the National Archives review documents and other items that presidents and vice presidents take with them when they leave office. Steps should be put in place to ensure that no documents belonging to the government—classified or not—remain in those locations or get mixed in with personal belongings at term’s end.
How will Biden handle this controversy? The most likely prospect is that classified documents are not mentioned at all, since his controversy hardly rises to the level of his predecessors. But he should consider taking at least the Clinton approach, keeping any reference to the controversy short and to the point. And for extra credit, he should consider offering a policy solution to the classified document handling problem that his situation, and that of Pence and Trump, demonstrates exists.
By Cameron F. Kerry
In 2012, I chose to delay release of the Obama administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in hopes that President Obama’s State of the Union speech could set the stage for its release by calling for legislation. The privacy policy was released afterward with a cover letter and the President’s signature declaring that “[m]y Administration will work to advance these principles and work with Congress to put them into law”—the first time a U.S. president called for comprehensive privacy regulation for the commercial sector, but without a personal plug from the rostrum of the House of Representatives.
A decade later, legislation to provide baseline protection for Americans’ information privacy is still unfinished business. But President Biden has weighed in personally. In last year’s State of the Union address, he brought Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to the House gallery to underscore his surprise statement that “It’s time to strengthen privacy protections; ban targeted advertising to children; demand that tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.”
The Congress Biden addressed then made significant progress on strengthening privacy protections for all individuals and adding to those for children. Three out four leaders of the Commerce committees in each house reached bipartisan agreement on what became the American Data Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA), which was ultimately reported out of the House Energy & Commerce Committee in July by a 53-2 vote. Nonetheless, it never came to the House floor because of opposition by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other California officials because the bill would preempt significant aspects of that state’s first-in-the-nation privacy law.
This year, President Biden will give his address with another California Speaker on the rostrum behind him—Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who did not join the California contingent opposing the ADPPA and, in 2019, called on Congress to adopt “a clear privacy framework that sets one standard for the country ….” in the New York Times. In the meantime, the President has made privacy legislation and a tech agenda a centerpiece of staking out bipartisan ground. His January 11, 2023, op-ed in The Wall Street Journal made a target of companies’ use of personal data and called for “serious federal protections for Americans’ privacy,” with clear limits on how companies can collect, use, and share highly personal data with restrictions on targeted advertising including banning it for children. Sounds a lot like the ADPPA.
Against this backdrop, it would be a small, logical, and concrete step for Biden to reiterate his support for comprehensive privacy legislation in this year’s State of the Union, saying something like:
“Last year, I said we need to strengthen privacy protections for all Americans, especially kids. The last Congress made strong and bipartisan progress on that front. This year, let’s finish job by enacting nationwide legislation that limits the personal information companies collect, use, and share and protects kids and teens from behavioral advertising. It’s long overdue.”
That President Biden’s op-ed was placed in the Wall Street Journal behind a paywall, with its more Republican-oriented readership, suggests his bipartisan outreach is genuinely aimed at producing results. And, with the delicate balance in Congress, no partisan bill can pass both houses. It is too early to tell whether Speaker McCarthy and his caucus are willing to reciprocate, but the op-ed bookends and the foundation laid by the ADPPA makes comprehensive privacy legislation a promising path for bipartisan accomplishment. The State of the Union can be another step on this path.
By Elijah Asdourian, James Lee, Nasiha Salwati, David Wessel
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Deficit-financed government transfers have trickle-up effects Americans saved much more than usual in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, largely as a result of government transfers to households in the bottom 80% of the income distribution. Adrien Auclert of Stanford, Matthew Rognlie of Northwestern, and Ludwig Straub of Harvard find that these excess savings are likely to “trickle up,” landing in the savings accounts of rich households over time. Though lower-income households are the recipients of most government transfers, they also spend a higher percentage of the money they receive. As the money they spend circulates through the economy, richer households receive it and save more of it than their low-income counterparts. The findings suggest that government transfers, even if targeted toward the lowest-income households, can increase wealth inequality in the long run once the money circulates to high-income households.
Contractionary monetary policy reduces the share of low- and moderate-income homebuyers Using data on mortgage applications, Daniel Ringo of the Federal Reserve Board finds that low- and moderate-income households are less likely to purchase homes in response to a contractionary monetary policy shock than high-income households. Specifically, a monetary policy shock that raises mortgage rates by 1 percentage point results in a 7.5% decrease in the share of homebuyers who are low- to moderate-income. The effects are particularly strong for first-time homebuyers from these income groups. Liquidity-constrained households are more likely to be bound by limits on how much they can borrow relative to their income, making them more sensitive to mortgage rate increases. The findings suggest that “[w]hile low-wealth households may not experience an immediate appreciation of financial assets when the stance of monetary policy is expansionary, that stance can allow them to get their foot in the door of homeownership.”
Fiscal spending increased inflation and aggregate demand Julian di Giovanni of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and co-authors estimate the impact government spending had on inflation between December 2019 and June 2022. According to the authors, the surge in aggregate demand generated two-thirds of recent headline inflation. Of this, fiscal stimulus accounted for roughly half of the total increase in aggregate demand. Sectoral supply shocks, measured as deviations in the total hours worked, and sectoral demand shocks, measured as deviations in consumer spending, also contributed to overall inflation.
Chart of the week: Compensation gains are slowing Quote of the week: “Economic growth proved surprisingly resilient in the third quarter of last year, with strong labor markets, robust household consumption and business investment, and better-than-expected adaptation to the energy crisis in Europe. Inflation, too, showed improvement, with overall measures now decreasing in most countries—even if core inflation, which excludes more volatile energy and food prices, has yet to peak in many countries … The inflation news is encouraging, but the battle is far from won. Monetary policy has started to bite, with a slowdown in new home construction in many countries. Yet, inflation-adjusted interest rates remain low or even negative in the euro area and other economies, and there is significant uncertainty about both the speed and effectiveness of monetary tightening in many countries,” says Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Chief Economist, International Monetary Fund.
“Where inflation pressures remain too elevated, central banks need to raise real policy rates above the neutral rate and keep them there until underlying inflation is on a decisive declining path. Easing too early risks undoing all the gains achieved so far. The financial environment remains fragile, especially as central banks embark on an uncharted path toward shrinking their balance sheets. It will be important to monitor the build-up of risks and address vulnerabilities, especially in the housing sector or in the less-regulated non-bank financial sector. Emerging market economies should let their currencies adjust as much as possible in response to the tighter global monetary conditions.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Nicolas Kazadi
The COVID-19 pandemic hit at a time when the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had already initiated its program for structural change and transformation. In that respect, 2019 was a year to remember—the elections led to the first-ever peaceful change of leadership, which was an important step in the political history of the country. Very early on, the new course was set by the elected government, and priorities were identified: Protect the most vulnerable by increasing investments in health and education; strengthen growth prospects by capitalizing on a vibrant mining sector while increasing efforts towards diversification (both vertical and horizontal); build fiscal buffers to improve the external situation; and increase domestic revenue mobilization and improve spending quality to finance deeply needed infrastructure.
Despite the pandemic, the Congolese economy remained dynamic, achieving positive economic growth in 2020 even while growth in sub-Saharan Africa turned negative. This exceptional growth was due to good performance and windfalls in the mining sector, which remained resilient through the crisis, growing at almost 10 percent in 2020. However, growth in the secondary (manufacturing) sector turned negative, while the tertiary (services) sector coped only marginally due to restrictions introduced across the country in reaction to the global health crisis. Unlike these other sectors, no major mines closed owing to the limited spread of COVID-19 to the mining regions.
Thinking long term: Strengthen fundamentals, implement structural policies, and build buffersThe DRC has been working on strengthening the fundamentals to achieve sustainable and lasting results. It aims to accomplish this through a systematic method—identify the bottlenecks, find solutions, and bring everyone together to implement action plans. A striking example is the recent efforts by the Ministry of Finance to accelerate revenue mobilization, which benefited a lot from the implementation of performance contracts that set up clear and ambitious targets. On the external side, international reserves reached approximately $4 billion in August 2022, from around $900 million in 2019—an increase of 344 percent.
In addition, this ambitious agenda and strong performance has been achieved thanks to the renewed engagement of DRC with international stakeholders. The government’s reform mindset is anchored by the IMF’s $1.52 billion Extended Fund Facility program, which also acts as a catalyst for additional financing from other donors. Moreover, the DRC is working on strengthening its communication with international stakeholders, bilateral partners, and investors to improve the level of information on the dynamism of DRC. For example, a conference was organized in September 2022 in Kinshasa around country risk (the DRC Country Risk Conference) to discuss the risks and opportunities of the Congolese economy. We aim at having such interactive and engaging discussions on a yearly basis, giving us the opportunity to identify challenges and design solutions.
Preparing for future shocksThe continent has experienced a succession of shocks throughout the past few years, which has been both an eye-opener and a call for action. Our pre-crisis shared goals remain valid, but both the external and domestic situations have changed. Past development progress has been eroded because of the crisis, and a significant share of our population has been pushed into poverty. Nevertheless, inclusive and sustainable growth remains a priority. Moreover, as countries embark on a clean, renewable energy transition, we see a world where increasingly; the dynamics in terms of supply and demand—and more specifically regarding energy resources—have changed. Several countries in the region have an important role to play in that respect. DRC, thanks to its massive endowment in natural resources, remains at the forefront of this chance to harness the green transition. It is now urgent to seize this opportunity.
By Isabel V. Sawhill
President Biden’s address to the nation provides an opportunity to educate the public on the issue of the debt ceiling in a way that will help to counteract Republican rhetoric. That rhetoric is superficially plausible and thus politically potent but often just plain wrong. Here are seven specific myths about the debt ceiling that need to be debunked.
Myth 1: Keeping the lid on debt will reduce government spending.The national debt is the consequence of actions already taken by the Congress. It represents the bill for past wars, past tax cuts, and spending that has already occurred. To not honor such debt because of an arbitrary limit would produce uncertain but likely disastrous consequences for financial markets and the economy. It would increase not reduce future government spending due to the likely rise in interest rates. Additionally, any slowing of the economy in response to a threatened or actual default would automatically balloon deficits.
Myth 2: The debt that’s been accumulated over the past several decades is because of runaway government spending.Both parties are at fault. At the end of the Clinton Administration in 2000, the federal budget was in surplus and the national debt was in decline. But since that time, about half of the increase in debt was due to laws enacted under Presidents Bush and Trump while the other half was the result of measures enacted under Presidents Obama and Biden. Republican tax cuts were a significant contributor to the red ink. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and their later extension added almost $6 trillion to the debt while the Republican tax cut of 2017 added close to $2 trillion with virtually none of the promised benefits to the economy. But much of the problem of growing debt is not the result of legislative action; it is the consequence of the automatic growth of entitlement spending which Democrats have been unwilling to curtail.
Myth 3: The new Congress is the party of fiscal responsibility.In bargaining with their new Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans put some budgetary limits on spending but none at all on further tax cuts. Instead of Pay-as-you-go, we now have Cut-as-you-go. The old budget rule applied to both spending and taxes. The new one affects spending only. That means no restraint on further tax cuts and thus much less restraint on rising debt.
Myth 4: The Biden Administration doesn’t care about deficits and debt.To be sure, the Biden Administration could have done more; his student loan proposal would have ballooned deficit to the tune of $300 billion over a decade. At the same time, the Inflation Reduction Act, included new resources for the Internal Revenue Service to help it collect the $7 trillion in taxes that it estimates will be due but not paid over the next decade. House Republicans are trying to rescind most of this new funding for the IRS. That would hamper its ability to collect those taxes, overwhelmingly owed by the very wealthy. The problem isn’t tax avoidance; the problem is tax evasion.
Myth 5: We can balance the budget in ten years by cutting nonessential programs without hurting seniors or other vulnerable groups. Some of the House conservatives extracted a pledge from Speaker McCarthy to balance the budget in 10 years. But to do so without tax increases and without cutting social security, Medicare, veterans programs, and defense would almost eliminate the rest of government, requiring cuts of 85 percent in all other programs.
Myth 6: The federal government is bloated and out of control; the “deep state” is the problem. The number of federal civilian government employees has not increased since the 1960s, despite a more than five-fold increase in federal spending. That spending has increased primarily because the population is aging and the costs of Social Security and Medicare have risen, accounting for most of the growth. The popularity of these programs has motivated even former President Trump to argue for their protection while the budget math has led many Democrats to see this pledge as a backdoor threat to these same programs.
Myth 7: Republicans have a realistic plan to control spending. They just need to get Democrats to go along with their plan.The truth is that today’s Republicans are all hat and no cattle. They talk a big game without having the courage to even specify the programs that they want to cut. The President must submit a very detailed budget in March. Perhaps Republicans will produce something equally detailed but until they put their cards on the table, their fiscal credibility remains questionable.
By Mark MacCarthy
On January 4, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta €390 million ($414 million) for violating Europe’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and directed the company to bring its data processing operations into compliance within 3 months. Shortly thereafter, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which consists of all the European data protection authorities, released the text of its binding decision that dictated the Irish DPC’s ruling. The key finding is that Meta cannot rely upon its contract with users as providing a sufficient legal basis for processing user data for personalized ads. If upheld on appeal, this decision might require social media companies and other online businesses to significantly revise their data-focused advertising business model in the name of protecting privacy.
I want to discuss the EDPB’s decision in two parts. In this post, I will first analyze its legal basis and assess its likely business implications. In the next part, I will consider whether this decision holds some lessons for policymakers as they seek to revise U.S. laws to protect privacy more adequately.
The European Privacy ApproachThe European Union’s GDPR became effective in 2018. It requires companies to have a legal basis for data processing, the European term of art for collecting and using personal information. “Processing shall be lawful,” says Article 6 of GDPR, “only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies,” and includes a list of legal bases for data processing.
The key bases are fulfillment of a contract, consent, and legitimate interest. Under fulfillment of a contract, processing is lawful only if it is “necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract.” Under consent, processing is lawful only if “the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes.” Under legitimate interest, processing is lawful only if it is “necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party…”
The interpretation of these key legal terms of contractual necessity, consent, and legitimate interest is complex and contested. But for the purpose of understanding the broad outlines of the EDPB’s decision, the uses of the different legal bases can be simplified as follows.
Contractual necessityContractual necessity applies when the company needs personal information to fulfill a contract that they have made with you to provide service. An online retail stores clearly needs users’ contact details in order to send the items they have purchased. The store can rely on contractual necessity in this case as the basis for collecting and using this information.
ConsentConsent is the legal basis to use if a company wants to process personal information that is not needed to provide service to the customer. If a company wants to collect users’ zip codes at the point of sale, it must ask the customers’ permission and tell them why it wants the information (understanding the company’s customer base for instance, or direct marketing). If the customers refuse, the company must still sell them what they want to buy. If the customers provide the store with their zip codes in these circumstances, they have consented, and the company can claim that as its legal basis for collecting the information.
Legitimate interestLegitimate interest applies when neither of the other two apply. If a company wants to collect and use user information for direct marketing but has not obtained consent and does not need the information to provide a service, it can nevertheless obtain it and use it if it can show that it has a real business need for the information, an urgent need that overrides any interest the consumers have in protecting their privacy. The comment on legitimate interest in GDPR Recital 47 says that fraud prevention and direct marketing could be justified under legitimate interest. Neither consent nor contractual necessity would be required for data use justified under legitimate interest.
Further, Article 21 of GDPR limits the use of legitimate interest as a basis for direct marketing. This article provides users with an absolute right to object to direct marketing. A company can assert its legitimate interest as a basis for direct marketing, but as soon as a user objects it must honor this request to stop direct marketing. This right to object overrides any claim of business interest.
The European Data Protection Board’s Meta DecisionThe Irish Data Protection Commission’s (DPC) January 4, 2023 announcement was the product of a complex process. Meta claimed to the Irish DPC that its legal basis for processing user data for personalized social media services and for advertising purposes was contractual necessity. The Irish DPC essentially agreed, but its decision was challenged by other European data protection authorities, which triggered a process of negotiation to seek a resolution of that dispute. The dispute resolution procedure failed and, pursuant to procedures set out in the GDPR, the issue was referred to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), a body that consists of all the European Union’s data protection authorities. The EDPB is authorized to issue binding decisions to ensure that the national data protection authorities apply the provisions of the GDPR in a correct and consistent manner.
On December 9, 2022, the EDPB announced that it had “settled” the question of whether or not the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract is a suitable legal basis for social media behavioral advertising. In conformity with that binding decision, the Irish DPC announced in January, that it was reversing itself and rejecting contractual necessity as the basis for Meta’s processing of personal data for advertising purposes. While this decision is formally one made by the Irish DPC, it effectively was determined by the collective body of European data protection commissioners. A few days later on January 11, the Irish DPC released the text of its decision, and the following day the EDPB released the text of its binding decision that had dictated the Irish DPC’s ruling.
The EDPB ruling is the key one for understanding the basis of this decision. It finds in the record it reviewed in coming to its decision information that reveals “the complexity, massive scale and intrusiveness of the behavioural advertising practice that Meta IE conducts…” (Par 96). This indicates immediately its suspicion of Meta’s data practices, revealing that it will need substantial evidence to indicate that this “massive” collection of data for personalized ads is needed to provide social media service.
“This reassertion of the fundamental premise of European privacy law that privacy is prior to business interests is a guiding principle of the decision.”
On the basis of the “objectives” and “normative context” of GDPR and of earlier European court decisions the EDPB concludes that GDPR “treats personal data as a fundamental right inherent to a data subject and his/her dignity, and not as a commodity data subjects can trade away through a contract.” (Par. 100, 101). This reassertion of the fundamental premise of European privacy law that privacy is prior to business interests is a guiding principle of the decision.
The EDPB recognizes that while data subjects cannot arbitrarily trade away their privacy, they are permitted under GDPR Article 6 to provide personal information needed to obtain a service. So, the EDPB turns to the question of “whether behavioural advertising is objectively necessary for Meta” to provide its service. (Par. 111). If it is, then Meta may claim contractual necessity; if it is not, then Meta may not.
EDPB then argues that personalized advertising is not needed to provide social media services. It asserts that if “there are realistic, less intrusive alternatives, the processing is not “necessary”. (par. 120). It considers that there are such alternatives including “contextual advertising based on geography, language and content, which do not involve intrusive measures such as profiling and tracking of users.” (Par. 121). Meta has found it useful for it business purposes to generate revenue through personalized ads. But that is not contractual necessity, since there are realistic alternative funding mechanisms. EDPB concludes that personalized advertising “is useful but not objectively necessary for performing the contractual service, even if it is necessary for the controller’s other business purposes.” (Par. 121).
EDPB also argues that processing for the purposes of personalized adverting cannot be necessary to provide social media services in light of the data subject’s “absolute right” to object to data processing for purposes of direct marketing under Article 21 of GDPR. Data processing for the purposes of personalized ads “cannot be necessary to perform a contract if a subject has the possibility to opt out from it at any time, and without providing any reason.” (Par 122).
EDPB notes that an important consideration in its rejection of Meta’s contractual necessity justification is that “the main purpose for which users use Facebook and accept the Facebook Terms of Service is to communicate with others, not to receive personalised advertisements.” (Par 124)
Next StepsThe consensus among analysts is that for the immediate future Meta will be able to continue to fund its operations through personalized ads. Matt Perault at New Street Research, for instances, considers that the EDPB judgment “won’t affect its ads business in the short run.” Meta’s reaction to the decision bears out this analysis. In a company-issued blog post, Meta says it thinks its legal justification of contractual necessity “respects” GDPR and complains about the lack of “regulatory clarity” on the issue. The company said it would appeal both the ruling and the size of the fines, noting that the European courts may yet reach “a different conclusion altogether.” Presumably, it would also ask a court to stay the implementation of the ruling during the pendency of the appeal, which would allow its personalized ad business to continue uninterrupted, potentially for years.
Even if Meta fails to obtain a stay, it is open to the company to revise its legal basis and to present an alternative justification for its data processing. This could be consent, but Meta seems uninterested in pursuing this option. In the same blog post, it says that the EDPB decision does not “mandate the use of Consent” as a legal basis for its data processing. It rejects the idea that it can no longer offer personalized ads unless each user’s agreement has been obtained. And it holds out the prospect of “another available legal basis under GDPR” for personalized advertising.
But the only plausible alternative legal basis other than consent or contractual necessity would be legitimate interest. Legitimate interest is a complex legal basis that would require Meta to show its legitimate interest in personalized advertising overrides “the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data.” If Meta pursues that route, it could submit a justification to the Irish DPC based on legitimate interest and try to satisfy the heavy burden involved in defending that legal basis.
The Irish DPC order says that Meta must “bring its processing operations into compliance with GDPR” within three months. Meta could argue, however, that it had complied with the ruling by providing this alternative legal basis of legitimate interest and should be allowed to provide personalized ads until the Irish DPC has had a chance to evaluate this new claim, which could take months or years. The Irish DPC may very well accept this argument, which would provide a significant delay in any operational changes. It is worth remembering that the objection to Meta’s contractual necessity justification was filed four years ago and will likely continue several more years with appeals.
In the longer term, however, Meta faces a seemingly insuperable hurdle in maintaining its personalized ad business in its current form, even if it succeeds in its legitimate interest justification. This is because Article 21 of GDPR provides an absolute right for users to object to the processing of their personal information for direct marketing, which would include personalized ads on social media. Even if Meta successfully invokes legitimate interest to justify the use of personal information for personalized ads, it must still honor this absolute right for users to object.
Will Meta change its existing ad model to comply?Observing this right to object is likely to mean that Meta would have to offer its users the alternative of receiving the personalized social media services without also receiving personalized ads. Providing users with a choice, however, is extraordinarily risky for Meta’s personalized ad business. When Apple gave its app store users a yes or no choice on whether they wanted apps to track them for purposes of serving ads, 96% of U.S. citizens rejected personalized ad tracking. It is for this reason that analysts are concerned that in the long run Meta’s personalized ad model is in trouble. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, for instance, thinks that the ruling could put “5 to 7 percent of Meta’s overall advertising revenue at risk.”
The alternative to a social media service paid for by personalized ads might well become an increasingly important part of Meta’s business model. The company could seek to fund this alternative through contextual ads alone. But it could also offer users an alternative of paying a fee to receive a personalized social media service free of targeted ads, a model that is widely followed in other services such as streaming music. Whether the fee could be set so high ($100 a month, for instance) that as a practical matter it forced users to accept personalized ads would be a question for the Irish DPC to address when it approves or rejects Meta’s proposal for coming into compliance with GDPR. Assessing the commercial necessity of Meta’s rates would force the agency into the new and uncomfortable position of economic regulator supervising the rates that Meta could charge its users.
“The ruling imposes no limitation on algorithmic amplification based on personal information.”
Despite the potentially far-reaching nature of the ruling for Meta’s personalized ad business, it is also worth remembering that it might not mean that the company will collect any less personal information or no longer construct detailed profiles of its users. The ruling simply says that Meta cannot collect information or construct profiles for the purpose of serving personalized ads under its contractual necessity basis. The ruling seems to allow Meta to continue to collect and use personal information on the basis of its terms of service for the purpose of providing personalized social media services. So, users who accept Meta’s terms of service will still be allowing the company to collect and analyze information derived from their use of the social media platform for the purpose of ranking, prioritizing, and recommending material posted by other users. Nothing in the decision appears to mean that Meta will have to stop offering algorithmically driven social media service. It would not, for example, be required to provide a chronological feed as one or the only alternative for its users. The ruling imposes no limitation on algorithmic amplification based on personal information.
Moreover, the ruling does not say that Facebook or Instagram must be ad-free. The ads that appear on these services that many find to be annoying and intrusive will likely continue and might even increase. But now these ads would not be personalized. They would be static ads that would be shown indifferently to all users or targeted contextually to all users in a certain location or who speak a given language. Even a fee-based service might contain these non-personal ads.
ConclusionPrivacy advocates might then wonder what they have concretely gained from this apparent victory. Social media surveillance likely will not diminish, nor will the bombardment of users by distracting and confusing commercial advertising. Still, an important precedent has been set, one that vindicates the primacy of privacy rights. The decision delivers a message to all social media companies and other digital companies that they must respect the privacy interests of their users first. Their commercial interests are secondary. To paraphrase the great philosopher of human rights, Immanuel Kant, businesses must first be certain that they are respecting people’s fundamental rights, including their privacy rights. Only then are they entitled to look around for ways to satisfy their economic interests.
In a forthcoming blog, I will look at whether U.S. policymakers should reimagine for the U.S. context the European privacy requirement to demonstrate a legal basis for personal data use and if so, what the implications might be for the data practices of social media companies and other digital companies in the U.S.
Meta is a general unrestricted donor to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and are not influenced by any donation.
By Pam Harder, Greg Wright
There is ample evidence that talent considerations have come to dominate the selection criteria of companies when deciding where to place job-creating business investments. For instance, “availability of skilled labor” has climbed to first on the list of factors companies care about most when making their site-selection decisions. This growing emphasis on talent has led to a much-needed reconsideration of local economic development strategy, which has traditionally focused on the provision of tax incentive packages that largely benefit a small set of firms. Research has found that these narrow tax incentives are largely ineffective at spurring local employment growth in part because they do little to attract new firms to the area. This stands in stark contrast to incentives that are directed at local skill development, which have been found to lead to far higher returns for communities. The good news is that policymakers have taken notice of these facts, leading to a shift toward economic development strategies that focus on investments in talent.
Virginia is an example of a state that took a big bet on a talent-forward approach to economic development. In 2018, the state launched an unprecedented, state-wide $1.1 billion performance-based Tech Talent Investment Program, which ultimately became the centerpiece of Virginia’s successful Amazon HQ2 bid.
Quote from an Amazon leader:
“We were particularly impressed by the dedication to higher education and the K-12 talent pipeline (in Virginia). The investments the local community and the state are going to make are really going to augment the great talent pipeline, which is a primary reason why we chose the Commonwealth for this new headquarters.”
– Holly Sullivan, Head of Worldwide Economic Development, Amazon. Source: Virginia EDO
The CEO and President of Virginia’s EDO at the time, Stephen Moret, led the charge in a close partnership with the President of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, Peter Blake. At the time, Virginia was taking a big gamble by shifting so markedly from the norm in economic development strategy.
Through Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program, more than a dozen higher education institutions across Virginia will collectively produce 32,000 graduates in computer science and related fields, more than doubling the number of grads each year.
Figure 1. Overview of Tech Talent Investment ProgramSource: Virginia EDO
As a result, hundreds of tech employers across Virginia will benefit from a more-skilled labor force, including but not limited to Amazon. This stands in contrast to the narrow benefits produced by cash and tax incentives for individual firms.
Now, three years into the most historic state-level investment in tech talent, how is Virginia’s big bet paying off? The answer: surprisingly well.
Now, three years into the most historic state-level investment in tech talent, how is Virginia’s big bet paying off? The answer: surprisingly well. The Tech Talent Investment Program just finished its third year out of its 20-year lifespan, and already results are strong. Cumulatively, the 14 participating four-year public institutions in Virginia, plus two masters-level institutions, plus Virginia’s community college system have graduated over 7,400 eligible Tech Talent Investment Program grads in just the first three years. This is ahead of plan, despite COVID disruptions to higher education enrollment and retention. And in terms of net new degree production the state is at 148 percent of planned levels. These graduates are fueling a diverse and growing ecosystem of tech companies that are increasingly choosing Virginia as their home base. Boeing’s recent announcement to relocate its global HQ to Virginia is just the latest of many.
Figure 2. Illustrative examples of tech headquarters and centers in VirginiaSource: Virginia EDO
Other states and regions are watching Virginia—and taking notes. With this in mind, the Workforce of the Future initiative at Brookings has developed a tool–the Smart Growth Strategies tool–that can help regional policymakers identify the investments in talent that are most likely to pay off for their region as a whole. The tool first guides policymakers toward industries that are locally underdeveloped but are highly complementary to existing local capabilities. Next, the tool characterizes those industries according to their potential for growing a skilled, well-paid workforce. Finally, the tool provides a detailed description of the additional talent that a local area would need to develop in order to attract, and scale up, those industries.
It’s time to promote regional economic development strategies that move away from zero-sum, incentive-based business attraction and, instead, foster innovative investments in people, in education and training systems, and in resources that will benefit the economy as a whole. Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program is hopefully just the first of many talent-forward investment strategies that we’ll see in the years to come.
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not reflect the views of the Institution, its management, or its other scholars.
Amazon is a donor to the Brookings Institution.
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By Matt Kasman, Ross A. Hammond
State public health departments are on the front lines of ensuring effective responses to challenging problems. In order to be successful at this, accurate information about which activities are supported by relevant evidence must be available to and used by decisionmakers. The extent to which this occurs is driven by a complex interplay of organizational structure, capacity, culture, and priorities. Adjusting any of these can be costly, time-consuming, and risks unintended negative consequences. Thus, in conjunction with our colleagues at the Prevention Research Center at Washington University, we used a sophisticated computational simulation model to identify ways that state public health departments can make changes that increase their effectiveness.
State public health departments serve an essential role in responses to myriad issues, from the ongoing opioid crisis to chronic diseases such as diabetes. However, recently they have faced increasing challenges both in terms of the magnitude of the problems that they confront as well as the politicization of their work; this has been especially highlighted by the recent “stress test” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the United States works to invest in and support critical public health infrastructure to face current and future challenges, there are opportunities to revisit how such departments are structured and managed. Empirical evidence from the last decade shows significant room for improvement in allocation of resources due to what we refer to as “mis-implementation,” i.e., the ending of activities whose effectiveness is supported by evidence or the continuation of activities that are not. In a study recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, we examine why this might occur and how incidences of mis-implementation might be meaningfully reduced as part of the rebuilding of public health capacity in our country.
Research by ourselves and others indicates that premature termination of activities supported by evidence is primarily due to lack of funding. Overall funding is largely beyond the control of public health officials in the short to medium term. The reasons underlying continuation of ineffective programs are less clear, and a central focus of our new study. Discontinuing ineffective activities can free up room in budgets for things that have positive impact and make public health more efficient.
We developed a computational simulation of a representative public health department, examining how organizational structure, training, information sharing, and leadership practices shape decision-making around which programs to continue. This animation illustrates the computational model that we use and its key findings:
Based on computational simulation results, there is only minor motivation to invest in evidence-based assessment training or collaborative communication strategies beyond the levels of these currently found in health departments. However, a large increase in the effectiveness of active programs and interventions can be obtained by changing the way that leadership makes continuation decisions. Most of this gain comes from simply removing intervention longevity from consideration during the decision-making process. That is, beyond other considerations, there is a tendency to continue programs that have been active for longer based on an implicit or explicit assumption that this is itself evidence of effectiveness. Instead, it would be useful for leadership to always view interventions with “fresh eyes” when they decide whether to continue them.
Fortunately, there is an expansive array of training resources that can help leaders avoid the “sunk cost fallacy” when making decisions that drive inefficient organizational inertia. Based on our research, we recommend that health departments allocate time and resources to this relatively easy and potentially highly impactful adjustment.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Sarah Reber, Nora Gordon
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) directs funds to local school districts as a function of the number or percentage of economically disadvantaged children living in the district. In fiscal year (FY) 2021, Congress appropriated $16.5 billion through Title I. Congress also relied on the distribution of Title I funding from earlier years to determine the amounts of COVID relief districts received from nearly $200 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding. The use of Title I allocations to distribute so much money through ESSER shone a light on the substantial differences in allocation amounts even among school districts with similar poverty rates, both within and between states.
In a series of three reports, published by All4Ed, we explain each of the program’s four formulas and take a deep dive into how Title I funds are allocated.
Title I started with a single simple formula in 1965, but it now uses four separate formulas to allocate funds, and it can be difficult to understand why some districts get more funding than others. How the Formulas Work explains the process by which Title I funds are allocated to school districts overall, the history of the four formulas, and how they differ from each other.
Changes to the formulas that allocate Title I funds require a reauthorization of ESEA, which is supposed to happen every five years but has taken much longer in recent decades. However, with each year’s appropriations, Congress can influence which types of districts receive more or less funding by changing how new Title I funding is divided among the existing four formulas. How the Formulas Benefit Different Types of Districts shows which types of districts would benefit most from additional funding through each of the four formulas.
The Education Finance Incentive Grant—one of Title I’s four formulas—is meant to encourage state governments to spend more on education overall and to allocate funding more fairly across districts within states. Title I’s Education Finance Incentive Grant Program Is Unlikely to Increase Effort and Equity in State Policy explains how EFIG works and why the incentives in the EFIG formula are unlikely to achieve the stated goals.
The research described in this article was commissioned by All4Ed, a 501(c)3 nonprofit advocacy organization. The authors did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or, other than the aforementioned, from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. The authors are not currently an officer, director, or board member of any organization with a financial or political interest in this article.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Shadi Hamid
When it comes to the failures of Islamist movements during and after the Arab Spring, the case of Morocco’s Justice and Development Party (PJD) has often been treated as a success story. This success, of course, is relative, and the bar is low. But compared to, say, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the PJD seems to offer a much more promising model of how an Islamist party can adapt and evolve in challenging circumstances. Not only did the party survive, but it also reached an accommodation with the Moroccan monarchy and even rose to power. PJD leaders promoted this narrative as well, with one party official proudly telling a Western researcher in the wake of Egypt’s coup: “Now people should study us.”
While there were always weaknesses to these claims of Moroccan exceptionalism, they have only become more evident with time. Recent developments, including the PJD’s spectacular electoral defeat in 2021, suggest the need for a more careful assessment of what went right — and what went wrong — with Morocco’s Islamist experiment. To the extent that there still remains a Moroccan “model,” it may be better understood as a model of what not to do.
The PJD’s survival and (electoral) successThe PJD came out of the detritus of the Arab Spring intact, which is more than can be said for many of its Islamist counterparts elsewhere in the region. More than that, the PJD won large pluralities in consecutive parliamentary elections, both during and after the Arab Spring. Despite an electoral system designed to prevent any one party from dominating, the PJD won 27% of the seats in parliament in the November 2011 elections, with the center-right and pro-palace Istiqlal Party a distant second with 15%. And so began an unusual experiment: Morocco is one of a very small number of Arab countries to have ever had a democratically-elected Islamist prime minister — and the only Arab country where the experiment lasted as long as 10 years.
The PJD had been working towards this goal, slowly expanding its electoral reach while taking care not to threaten the king. This was important, as Morocco isn’t a democracy but an authoritarian monarchy that allows for electoral competition under clear constraints. For some time, the PJD took great care to avoid even the appearance of confrontation with the royal court. One might even say it took this nonconfrontational posture to an extreme (if such a thing as extremism in the name of nonconfrontation is possible).
Consequently, for years, the party had “lost on purpose,” something that various Islamist parties were known to do in the pre-Arab Spring period. Michael Willis was one of the first scholars to note the PJD’s peculiar electoral behavior in an article titled “The strange case of the party that did not want to win.” That was in 2002. When the PJD finally tried to win an election in 2011, it won. In the 2016 elections, it increased its share of the vote, winning 31.6% of the seats, before losing and returning to the opposition after the September 2021 elections. But is success primarily about winning elections — or does success, especially for a party with a distinct ideological or religious orientation, entail other things?
As Avi Spiegel, a leading scholar of Moroccan Islamism, notes with some frustration:
“We love measuring and tracking “democracy,” focusing on winners and losers, on horse races, victories, and defeats. We study these things, I suspect, because we are guided by the belief, perhaps even the zeal, that these outcomes matter — that the winners of elections actually win something. Yet, in authoritarian contexts — even post-Arab Spring contexts — does electoral success translate into success writ large?”
In other words, what does it really mean to “win” democratic elections in a country that isn’t even a democracy to begin with?
A decade in governmentAfter 10 years as Morocco’s “ruling party,” the PJD had little to show for its trouble. Ostensibly in power, the party was powerless when it came to what mattered most: national economic strategy, international relations, defense, and internal security. On Islam, the very thing that animated the PJD’s founding, the party was similarly constrained. As Spiegel notes, “PJD officials still evoke religion, but almost never in opposition to the state.” In effect, the country’s largest opposition party stopped being an opposition party. This basic bargain — access, survival, and legalization in exchange for obedience — has been replicated to various degrees across the region, but Morocco is where the experience played out at length, reaching its natural conclusion.
Ultimately, the PJD was a casualty of its own success in more ways than one. The bargain with the monarchy wasn’t much of a bargain at all. In the 2021 elections, the party lost nearly 90% of its seats, one of the more remarkable electoral reversals in recent years anywhere in the world. The story of what went wrong is a long one, but a few factors are worth highlighting. The palace, growing concerned with Moroccan Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane’s folksy popularity, used the pretext of the PJD’s delay in forming a new government in 2017 to dismiss Benkirane and replace him with Saad Eddine Othmani, a markedly less popular and charismatic PJD figure. The PJD obliged under pressure from the king, but this capitulation triggered an internal crisis within the party. As Mohammed Masbah notes, “the PJD’s loyalty to the palace went so far that it was in the end fully coopted by it and thus alienated itself from its voters.” As a result, “on many occasions the PJD was on the verge of implosion.”
Morocco also faced a period of mounting economic crisis from 2017 to 2021, which put pressure on the PJD-led government to proceed with controversial subsidy cuts and raising the retirement age. The COVID-19 pandemic only made matters worse. For its part, though, the monarchy was insulated. The PJD was a convenient buffer. To the extent that the populace was angry, it had an easy target for its anger. The PJD was, after all, the titular head of government. And since direct criticism of the king and the institution of the monarchy is prohibited by law, Moroccans could instead express their dissatisfaction in the next elections. Another party would win, and then voters would have a new target, and so on. Masbah points out that, for the monarchy, this has been a longstanding and effective strategy: “The palace puts successive governments and other elected institutions, such as local and regional councils, at the frontline of public blame, and replaces them once they fail this function.”
Domestic policy was difficult enough. But the PJD was also blamed for foreign policy choices it had little control over. The decision to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Trump administration-brokered Abraham Accords came from the palace. It was simply the government’s job to execute — or at least accept — what had already been decided. For the rank-and-file of the PJD, a party that had long prioritized the Palestinian cause, this was tantamount to a betrayal. Yet PJD leaders were trapped. To oppose normalization would have meant resigning from government en masse. And this, in turn, would have necessitated a breach with the very king whom they had committed to obey.
The future of the Moroccan modelToday, the PJD, despite its success or perhaps because of it, is one of the region’s weakest Islamist parties (at least in electoral terms). Before the Arab Spring, it lost on purpose. After the Arab Spring, it lost by winning. This means that, for the time being, the monarchy has succeeded not only in neutralizing the country’s largest political party but rendered it irrelevant. The PJD was a useful buffer because it could provide the illusion of democratic progress without the substance. What happens, though, when the illusion is revealed for what it is?
This is not to suggest that Morocco will soon experience some sort of spontaneous mass uprising outside of the reach of the legal political parties — all of whom depend on the palace for their survival. But it does raise difficult questions about what Morocco’s experiment with managed electoral competition is meant to lead to, if anything at all. Or maybe it’s just this: more of the same, a cycle repeating itself, with nothing in the way of actual answers.
By Tom Wheeler
On February 21 and 22, 2023, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in cases involving the content moderation practices of social media platforms. The Court has also indicated that it could later address the First Amendment issues involved in conflicting Court of Appeals decisions regarding content moderation laws passed by Texas and Florida. The February oral arguments will, no doubt, be revealing. At this point, however, the fact that the Court has bifurcated the content moderation issue into questions of platform behavior and state authority could be telling as to the intentions of at least some of its justices.
About two percent of appeals to the Supreme Court are granted certiorari and heard by the justices. That the February cases have made it over that hurdle suggests at least some members of the Court might have something to say on an issue that has become a fixture in the culture wars (and the trigger for the Texas and Florida laws).
Although only one of the February cases explicitly mentions it, at the heart of the content moderation issue is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. For almost 30 years, Section 230 has been the foundation governing expression on digital platforms. The provision was enacted in 1996 at a time when the online experience was dominated by America Online (AOL), Prodigy, Compuserve, and similar services that ran commentary bulletin boards. The goal of Section 230 was to protect online platforms like these from liability for the third-party content that they distribute. In the intervening decades, technology has changed online experiences dramatically, and the U.S. Congress has failed to re-address existing and emerging policy issues considering those changes. It now falls to the Supreme Court to grapple with the statute based on the practices of 21st century social media.
Famously labeled “The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet,” Section 230 did not “create the internet” but rather allowed for the creation of the economic model of social media platforms. What the statute “created” was the protected monetization of users’ personal information through the application of software algorithms to target both advertisements and information and to sell access to those targets. This is a legitimate online activity. The question is whether technology and marketplace changes, since 1996, have also changed what society has a right to expect from the online platforms engaged in that activity.
The Section 230 Life cycleThe societal effects of Section 230 have gone through three stages. The original intent of Section 230, according to its authors, was to clarify the liability of online services for material published by others on their platforms. As online services evolved from bulletin boards to social media, however, the new social media companies took advantage of strict construction judicial interpretations to turn Section 230 from the protection of speech to the protection of a business model that profited from unfettered controversy. In its third phase, Section 230 has become a fixture in the culture wars.
Particularly when it comes to the culture wars incarnation, federal elected officials have used Section 230 as a tool for performance politics, but have done very little substantively. Concurrent with the lack of congressional action, the rigidity of Section 230’s black letter law has been interpreted by courts to short circuit the judicial capability to assess the application of common law principles, such as liability in light of new developments.
The Supreme Court appears primed to go where Congress and lower courts have feared to tread – and to do it in a bifurcated manner.
The February CasesScheduled for February arguments are two cases in which private citizens are challenging the behavior of social media companies. Both February cases involve social media’s relationship to terrorist activity.
In Gonzalez v. Google, the family of Nohemi Gonzalez alleges Google was complicit in the November 2015 ISIS attack in Paris that killed 130 people – among them Ms. Gonzalez. The plaintiffs submit the Google-owned service YouTube was used by ISIS to recruit and radicalize combatants in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) and Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). In addition, they allege that, because YouTube sold advertising on the ISIS videos and shared the revenue with ISIS, the platform provided material support to terrorists. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suit, finding that Section 230 protected YouTube from liability for videos produced by someone else, and that the sharing of revenue was simply the normal course of business and not in support of a specific group or ideology.
In Twitter v Taamneh, relatives of Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in a 2017 ISIS attack in Istanbul, take a related, but different approach to assigning culpability. They allege that by allowing the distribution of ISIS material without editorial supervision, companies such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook (now Meta Platforms) aided and abetted ISIS’ activity in violation of the ATA and JASTA. Interestingly, the issue of Section 230 is not a part of the Taamneh appeal. Although it was raised by the companies, the lower court never reached a conclusion and thus assessment of Section 230’s applicability was not part of the Ninth Circuit’s decision. The Taamneh plaintiffs did raise the shared revenue issue, however. The appeals court reversed the district court’s dismissal, finding that Twitter (along with Google and Facebook) could face claims that by failing to identify and remove the ISIS video, their actions played an assistive role.
The decision of the Supreme Court to hold the state action cases in abeyance while moving forward with the cases dealing with online behavior perhaps suggests a judicial strategy. Specifically, will the Court seek to deal with the topic of online content in a manner that is orthogonal to the absolutist debate that habitually surrounds Section 230?
Do Algorithms Change the Nature of Liability?It is asserted by the Gonzalez and Taamneh plaintiffs, and the United States Department of Justice in its brief, that the Section 230 assumption that the “provider or user of an interactive computer service” is simply transporting the work of a third-party does not reflect how the companies have utilized advances in digital technology.
In 1996, at the time of Section 230’s enactment, online platforms such as Prodigy or AOL operated bulletin boards that hosted information posted by third parties. Today, the major online platforms have built their business around algorithms that utilize data collected from each user to select which postings to share with which users. This algorithmic recommendation, it is argued, transforms the platforms from a Section 230-protected “interactive computer service” to an unprotected “information content provider.” The platform companies argue that “recommending” is actually “organizing” and there is no other way to present information to users.
The co-authors of Section 230, Senator (then-Rep.) Ron Wyden (D-OR) and former Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA), filed an amicus curiae brief with the Court in which they, among other things, assert that Section 230 anticipated recommendation algorithms and the ability to “filter, screen, allow, or disallow content” as well as “pick, choose, analyze, or digest content.” The authors explain, “[r]ecommending systems that rely on such algorithms are the direct descendants of the early content curation efforts that Congress had in mind when enacting Section 230.”[1]
The brief of the United States Department of Justice argued that the recommendation constitutes the site’s own conduct and is thus outside the protections developed for third-party content. “If YouTube had placed a selected ISIS video on a user’s homepage alongside a message stating, ‘You should watch this,’ that message would fall outside Section 230 (c)(1),” the brief argues. “Encouraging a user to watch a selected video [e.g., by placing it on the “Up Next” sidebar] is conduct distinct from the video’s publication (i.e., hosting).”
“In contrast, social media, although constructed on an open platform, is a closed business in which algorithms are programmed to maximize revenue by selecting points of view and targeting their audience.”
Whether or not algorithmic promotion changes the nature of an online platform, and thus its liability protection, will no doubt be one of the major issues addressed by the Court in the Gonzalez case. While there are credible arguments on all sides, one thing is certain, that such recommendation within a closed and controlled platform moves today’s online activities away from the metaphorical open public square.
Such algorithmic promotion also differs from the idealized public square in that it is a compensated service. The internet per se is a public square in which anyone can set up their soapbox and in which all the world’s information and opinions are readily available. In contrast, social media, although constructed on an open platform, is a closed business in which algorithms are programmed to maximize revenue by selecting points of view and targeting their audience. How such construction affects the liability protections of Section 230 will, no doubt, be a major question before the Court.
Tea LeavesChoosing to hear the two terrorist-related appeals before jumping into the state authority issue perhaps provides the Court with the opportunity to redefine the debate on its own terms with its own solutions prior to dealing with the state legislation.
It is not as if some members of the Court have been shy about expressing their thoughts on the topic, including proposing their own ideas. Justice Clarence Thomas has been the most vocal in sharing his opinions. “We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms,” he wrote in 2021.
But no one really knows how the Court might act. There are multiple directions in which the Court could go on the content moderation issue. Among the multiple possibilities are two that have been put forward by Justice Thomas; the other is going into practice in the European Union.
Paring Back ImmunityIn a 2020 case in which the Court refused to hear an appeal whether Section 230 protected a software company against claims of anticompetitive conduct, Justice Thomas observed, “many courts have construed the law broadly to confer sweeping immunity on some of the largest companies in the world… Paring back the sweeping immunity courts have read into §230 would not necessarily render defendants liable for online misconduct. It would simply give plaintiffs a chance to raise claims in the first place.”
Should the Court adopt this approach, it would allow the business model of advertising-supported online platforms to continue. At the same time, however, it could necessitate pre-clearance activities that, while technology such as artificial intelligence might help achieve, would nonetheless add to costs, delay time to display, and impose other constraints that could change the user experience and corporate returns.
Common Carrier StatusJustice Thomas has also championed another approach. “There is a fair argument,” he concluded, “that some digital platforms are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation as to be regulated in this [mandatory non-discrimination] manner.” How, and whether, the Court could “legislate” platforms to be common carriers is problematic. The fact that in both the Gonzalez and Taamneh cases the plaintiffs assert the platforms are a part of the communications infrastructure could, however, provide an opening to argue for this communications concept traditionally applied to telephone companies.
A challenge to this approach, however, might come from Justice Kavanaugh who, as a member of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, dissented from the decision affirming the 2015 Obama FCC’s net neutrality order declaring internet service providers such as Verizon or Comcast to be common carriers, in part because “the net neutrality rule violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” The judge who argued, “The rule transforms the Internet by imposing common-carrier obligations on Internet service providers and thereby prohibiting Internet service providers from exercising editorial control over the content they transmit to consumers,” could possibly have a difficult time prohibiting those that use the internet pathways from exercising editorial control.
European UnionIn 2000, the European Union adopted the Electronic Commerce Directive. Like Section 230, the eDirective protected online platforms from liability for the passive retransmission of third-party content. In 2022, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), while leaving the eDirective undisturbed, established a “duty of care” for online platforms, with the most expansive duties reserved for the largest platforms.
At the heart of the DSA are disclosure and transparency requirements, including disclosure of both algorithmic and human content moderation. In the case of recommendation algorithms, all platforms must describe how they work, and the largest platforms must provide a recommendation system that does not use individual profiling as its basis.
The DSA also establishes an ex-post “notice-and-action” requirement that upon receiving notice asserting illegal content, the platform must rapidly assess the claim and take appropriate action. For large platforms, the DSA also requires an ex-ante effort to assess the risks “stemming from the design, functioning and use of their services” and “deploy the necessary means to diligently mitigate the systemic risks identified.” Under the DSA, this could include content that may not be illegal but is deemed harmful (which could be problematic under the First Amendment).
The Game is AfootRegardless of what the Court decides, it can be counted on to ignite a firestorm of public debate and a call for congressional, rather than judicial decision-making. The Court’s decision(s), therefore, could end up as a challenge to Congress to overcome its fragmentation to deal with the matter.
Google, Verizon, Comcast, and Meta (formerly Facebook) are general unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and are not influenced by any donation.
[1] Interestingly, and somewhat quizzically, the authors’ brief contains a footnote that seems to suggest there could be “good” and “bad” algorithms that could affect the application of Section 230: “The discussion in this brief pertains only to the algorithmic recommendation systems at issue in this case. Some algorithmic recommendations are alleged to be designed and trained to use information that is different in kind than the information at issue in this case…to cause harms not at issue in this case.” (Back to top)
By Ben Backes, Michael Hansen
Teach For America (TFA), the staffing organization that selectively recruits recent college graduates and midcareer professionals to teach in high-need schools for a two-year commitment period, has shrunk by nearly two thirds from its peak just 10 years ago. TFA has long attracted its share of criticism for its operational model, with allegations that it reinforces disadvantaged students’ low access to qualified teachers and accelerates staff turnover in settings that need stability. On the other hand, the organization has also been praised for bringing individuals from elite backgrounds into the classroom, filling critical vacancies, and even initiating a new cadre of leaders in the nation’s education system.
In light of the pandemic and warnings of crises among the teacher workforce, how should we view TFA’s shrinking footprint? In this post, we update the evidence on TFA’s impact in public schools and situate the organization in the context of broader trends in the teacher workforce. We also include discussion of our own study of TFA in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. We argue that TFA has clearly had a positive impact on students and worry that its diminished stature creates space for less-rigorous and less-tested alternative certification programs to expand, possibly undermining teacher quality.
Reviewing TFA’s recordTFA’s history spans more than 30 years, famously born out of founder Wendy Kopp’s senior thesis at Princeton. From its founding cohort of nearly 500 corps members in 1990 to its peak at nearly 6,000 in 2013, the organization had only experienced meteoric growth. Since then, TFA’s retreat is hard to overlook.
These declines are happening despite the plethora of evidence documenting TFA’s efficacy. Multiple random assignment evaluations have been done on the program, showing TFA corps members are at least as good as—and in math, often better than—peer teachers in the same high-need schools. Several other studies have used rigorous empirical methods on administrative data across many different settings (and subjects). They all tell a similar story.
Our own study in Miami showed similar TFA performance advantages against peer teachers in the same schools in math and in English Language Arts, the latter of which is atypical in the TFA literature. TFA corps members also showed a modest improvement in other outcomes beyond test scores, such as students of TFA teachers being less likely to miss school from absences and suspensions. These improvements persisted one year after exposure to TFA, showing students may benefit in a variety of ways.
Principals in schools employing TFA corps members consistently report satisfaction at 80% or higher in recent waves of national surveys, including during the pandemic. Also, one survey found that 86% of these principals would hire another TFA corps member if they had a vacancy at their school. This squares with findings from our interviews of school administrators in Miami, where all expressed satisfaction and most would consider hiring TFA corps members again.
Some scholars have tried to open the black box of TFA’s operations to better understand what might be driving their performance advantage and concluded that it is primarily a story about the selection process. One examination found TFA’s highly selective screening process did a good job of selecting candidates prepared for both teaching in challenging settings and future leadership. Another found that much of the TFA advantage in math can be explained by measures such as college selectivity and teacher licensure scores. Another recent study found that a revamp of TFA’s selection process in 2005 created a stronger performance advantage among later cohorts.
Retention is still TFA’s Achilles HeelThe primary drawback to TFA is the limited two-year commitment. National estimates indicate just over half of TFA corps members leave their placement school once it’s fulfilled and about 15% remain in place at the five-year mark.
This low retention brings two disadvantages. First, teachers improve rapidly in the initial years of their careers, and the two-year commitment means that being in a TFA classroom is strongly associated with being exposed to a novice teacher. However, several different studies have found that the TFA advantage is large enough to offset the lack of experience, including ours in Miami, where post-commitment retention rates among corps members (around 25%) was significantly lower than national rates. Additionally, our analysis showed that corps members who stay beyond the two-year commitment were especially effective in their first two years.
Second, high turnover rates burden school administrators and students. Turnover imposes costs on schools both in the form of searching for replacements and in disrupted instruction, exacerbating inequalities. TFA’s retention rates are also lower than other teachers in high-poverty settings, though turnover in these settings is high even without TFA. New teachers also require support from school leaders and peer teachers, though TFA’s local offices provide considerable induction support to mitigate the burden on school personnel. Indeed, in our interviews, administrators did frequently cite low retention as the primary drawback of hiring TFA. However, this did not prevent these same administrators from reporting satisfaction with their overall TFA experience. Further, not all corps members leave after two years, with those who are older when they start being more likely to stay in schools long term, often eventually moving into school leadership roles.
Caution warranted for programs filling TFA’s voidMany principals have struggled to hire teachers in recent years, as schools have gone into overdrive to counter pandemic learning losses. Those in low-income schools have disproportionately experienced the most trouble filling vacancies–and especially in the STEM subjects in which TFA teachers appear to excel. The circumstances might be expected to represent a growth opportunity for TFA, but instead it is shrinking.
Why is that? Recent reporting on TFA points to recruiting challenges being the primary drag, with fewer candidates willing to undergo the selection process for a position in a relatively low-paying occupation in a high-need setting. Reports of stress and burnout during the pandemic have likely stymied interest, too. The article also notes TFA’s recruiting struggles are not unique, as other teacher residency and university-based alternative teacher preparation programs have faced similar drops in interest during recent years. Traditional university-based training programs have seen enrollment declines for more than a decade.
Who is filling the gap in teacher preparation if TFA and other legacy preparation programs are faltering? Often, a principal’s alternative to hiring from TFA is not a fully credentialed, traditionally trained teacher but rather one from a different (and much less selective) alternative route. Indeed, other alternative certification programs, especially for-profit programs, have been scaling to meet schools’ staffing demands, even as TFA has been shrinking (see figure 1). This is an important development, foreshadowing what may become a permanent shift in the workforce’s composition.
In contrast to TFA, however, many of these other programs are only minimally selective in their recruitment, and there is little evidence on how effective graduates are once they reach the classroom. For example, the rapidly expanding Teachers of Tomorrow program is the country’s largest for-profit alternative certification provider. Its growth accounts for most of the surge observed in Figure 1, and it has continued to expand in recent years (though the Title II data in Figure 1 do not extend beyond 2018 to provide exact figures). It is completely online and has received criticism for low program completion rates and academic rigor. We know of no evidence on how graduates of this program fare once they reach the classroom.
The experience of for-profit college students offers a cautionary, if imperfect, parallel to the rise of for-profit alternative certification. Leading up to and during the pandemic, for-profit college enrollments similarly surged even while more traditional institutions faced enrollment declines. These increases came despite the lower documented student outcomes for the sector, including lower graduation rates, lower employment outcomes, and higher student debt.
A warning sign that should prompt a policy responseIs the news of TFA’s diminished stature something that should be celebrated or dreaded? Many critics have long wished for TFA’s downfall, in favor of increasing professionalism among the teacher workforce. Though we, too, wish for a different teacher policy environment that would increase professional and financial rewards for those who lead our nation’s classrooms, we worry that TFA’s retreat may signal a turn for the worse as untested providers rush in.
Public perceptions of and young people’s interest in the teaching profession are near or at historic lows (spanning five decades). We suspect these new developments among alternative certification providers will only further these trends. Despite its drawbacks, TFA is an alternative certification model with an impressive record that we should be learning from, not shunning.
By Irv Katz, Hailey M. Gibbs
Play is an important part of children’s learning and development. While it generally evokes a picture of a small child running, jumping, and shouting, the benefits that play offers in promoting early development and better health outcomes extend far beyond childhood. In fact, playful learning—an area of research that examines how children learn best through playful exchanges—shares many of the same core foundations as the study of intergenerational learning—a body of research involving older and younger generations coming together in the service of mutually-beneficial learning experiences.
As the COVID-19 pandemic introduced new layers to our understanding of the importance of social connection for a range of outcomes, researchers have an opportunity to look to the future of the playful learning and intergenerational learning movements together—what they share and how they can be leveraged jointly to support social interactions that foster well-being throughout life.
Playful Learning Landscapes support enriching interactions and promote learningAs a natural medium for fostering rich interactions, play creates opportunities for children to develop language skills, engage in collaboration, test theories about how the world works, and even develop better self-regulation. Child development experts, recreation and play professionals, and educators have long examined the connection between play and learning—and, more recently, how the kinds of enriching interactions that take place during play can be fostered through the built environment.
Enter Playful Learning Landscapes: a growing movement of community-based research partnerships across a number of cities in the U.S. and abroad, including in Brazil, Israel, and South Africa, that morph public spaces in places that foster interaction, learning, and joy (see illustrative photo below). By reimagining everyday environments in ways that encourage play while embedding a targeted learning goal, the movement fosters a learning model known as playful learning, in which children build content knowledge while simultaneously playing freely. Playful learning research has not only generated improvements to children’s language and literacy, numeracy, spatial reasoning, and executive functioning—all skills that set the foundation for later development and school readiness—but also strong civic engagement, increased ownership of communal spaces, enriched interactions between children and their caregivers, and a deeper understanding among caregivers of the role of play in their children’s learning.
This PLL installation, which is located in Philadelphia, is called Urban Thinkscape.Photographer credit: Sahar Coston-Hardy Photography.
But the benefits are not for children alone—playful interactions can also be a boon for older adults, supporting better health and social engagement, staving off cognitive decline, and creating multigenerational learning opportunities with intergenerational impacts.
Intergenerational research showcases benefits to, and contributions of, older adultsA century ago, multiple generations lived, worked, and played together. Today, much of our society treats young children and older adults as fundamentally different from one another—and, more likely than not, we live apart, sometimes a great distance, from even the closest generations of our own families. We now each belong to a separate “named generation” that reinforces generational differences, which may contribute to the persistent and widespread problem of ageism, that has well-documented negative effects on physical and mental health, economic well-being, and access to critical support services. Though the developmental literature acknowledges that many of our needs evolve as we age, the benefits we experience from rich social connections, learning opportunities that support cognitive function, and activity that promotes physical health remain constant throughout life.
The intergenerational movement, which has emerged over the past several decades and gained momentum in recent years, emphasizes the benefits of enriching interactions in mitigating social isolation—which became all the more critical in periods of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic—creating health and learning opportunities for older adults, and promoting powerful community connections. Social service leaders, academic researchers, public officials, and others demonstrated that there are reciprocal benefits to children and older adults as a product of interacting and engaging with one another. In a 2021 review of intergenerational programs, Generations United and the RRF Foundation for Aging identified benefits of intergenerational programs for children at several different developmental periods, parents, and older adults—even those aged 100 and older.
Among the many positive outcomes, researchers found that children in preschool partnered with older adult volunteers show better socio-emotional outcomes (e.g., empathy and acceptance); elementary school children partnered with older adults show increased learning, reading comprehension, and improvement in writing; and older adults report less social isolation and a sense of connectedness and community when engaged with children and youth. This connectedness is a critical component for supporting both physical and mental health and well-being in older adults and for staving off some age-related declines in cognitive functioning.
Play is not just for the kids: Intergenerational learning has lifelong benefitsBy bringing these two areas of study together—one based in a long history of intergenerational research, the other in a rich and growing playful learning movement—researchers and advocates can integrate and build on opportunities to engage adults and children in their day-to-day environments in ways that promote enriching and mutually-beneficial learning and health outcomes. This could include, for example, puzzles embedded in bus stops or at local parks, featuring iconic references from a grandparent’s generation that can promote both shape language that supports foundational math skills and storytelling that helps boost rich language interactions and gives older adults an opportunity to share their experiences. It could look like grocery store games, where older adults are prompted to discuss favorite foods and recipes from their childhood, or it could look like story fragments printed on the sidewalk outside of an elderly home that prompts older adults and young children to take it in turns to build out narratives together. Redesigning playful learning spaces with an intergenerational framework in mind can facilitate these kinds of rich interactions between young and old and lead to improvements in their respective well-being, bridge generational divides at the earliest stages of children’s lives, and strengthen community resilience across the lifespan.
Photographer credit for cover image: Saxum.
The authors thank Sarah Lyttle, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Jennifer Vey for their reviews of this blog.
By Bright Simons
In Davos, many of the assembling elites had circular economy on their mind and lips, and the program was replete with its implications. “Circular economy” is a concept described by its supporters as the biggest economic opportunity since the industrial revolution. They peg its scale at $1 trillion by 2025 and $4.5 trillion by 2030.
As both an economic means and an end, circularity is about “designing waste out of the system.” According to its proponents, by reusing resources, repurposing end-of-lifecycle items, recycling garbage, refurbishing the broken, and rewiring the torn, we can build a more sustainable world reset from the current course of depleting nature at rates unprecedented in millions of years.
It is estimated that if circularity gathers steam, global consumption of new materials could be reduced by 32 percent in 15 years and by 53 percent in 30 years. On the other hand, business as usual will see the human population increase by 20 percent by 2050 but waste expand by a far more staggering 70 percent.
A bonanza for Africa?Considering Africa’s status as one of the most marginalized continents, circularity is expected to have massive positive impacts. Modelers relying on Cambridge University’s FRAMES tool who have undertaken deep dives into the prospects of several African countries report substantial gains should the principles of circularity take root. Below is a sample summary of circularity’s benefits to Ghana by 2030 in one such report:
All well and good, and some of the earliest examples of economic circularity target supply chains with a strong presence in Africa, such as minerals. Tons of these minerals in their refined form end up in electronic waste (e-waste). Last year, the scale of e-waste was said to dwarf the Great Wall of China.
Experts say this is tantamount to dumping $57 billion worth of precious minerals into landfills around the world. Unsurprisingly, European companies like Umicore and Ecomet (much beloved by the Vatican) are leading the charge to recover these precious substances from the waste heaps of the world.
It is to be expected that those regions that consume the most electronics and have the best technologies will be able to safely recover the most value without causing further harm to health and the environment. In low-technology contexts, such as West Africa, initiatives to manually recycle e-waste pose additional pollution and health hazards.
Furthermore, minerals usually concentrated in Africa in their raw form have the greatest commercial attraction to international recyclers. Take discarded printed circuit boards, one category of e-waste. For them, 85 percent of the value of recovery is in gold and palladium, Africa’s most prominent minerals besides petroleum. It is obvious that in a world where circularity in mineral processing is run full cycle in mineral processing, far less minerals would be required from Africa.
Poorer prospects for income-poor, resource-rich DRCIn a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where minerals generate 99.3 percent of exports and nearly 50 percent of government revenue, just two minerals and their derivatives, copper, and cobalt, bring in 90 percent of mineral income. DRC accounts for three-fourths of the world’s cobalt supply. These minerals are vital for the battery components of the emerging green power transition.
While many Western companies have been renewing their interest in the DRC’s riches because of the green wealth boom, others like Canada’s Electra (formerly “First Cobalt”) are choosing to recycle cobalt from discarded lithium-ion batteries as well.
It is not difficult to imagine a world where such recovery technologies mature exponentially, recovery rates soar, and source countries like DRC see their importance in the equation fall. Compounded by the intensification of an ongoing decline in demand for minerals and materials due to miniaturization of systems and components in the electronic industries.
Yet, the official development strategy of Africa’s mineral-rich countries is to add value to their resources as the primary precursor to industrialization. How would that be possible in a world where those who consumed the final forms of the most minerals in the past—the Global North—will produce the most going forward?
Not all of Africa is like the DRCBut the economic significance of minerals in Africa is exaggerated. It is also true that since Harvard’s Atlas of Economic Complexity gained popularity, most analysts have realized that traditional value addition theories based on vertical integration and so-called “beneficiation” are not how industrialization happens nowadays. Rather than foster linkages, many national value-addition strategies have deepened “enclaves”.
Industrialization today principally involves the lateral expansion of production scope as a country extends capabilities from one value chain to an adjacent one by building general innovation capacity. Hence resource-rich Western countries like Australia, Canada, and Norway still export massive amounts of raw resources even as they boost R&D spending for strategic innovation capacity.
Still, resource-based industrialization policies have been triggers and catalysts for countries in tackling barriers in the way of innovation generally. By using lessons from resource-based industrialization, both Malaysia and Chile have with varying but consistent levels of success diversified from resource-dependence.
There is thus a real risk of abrupt transitions to high-tech-enabled resource circularity denying currently resource-dependent African countries from getting onto the ladder of industrialization if their mines become stranded assets.
Traceability and repeated royaltiesOne solution to this dilemma of encouraging circularity without deepening poverty in the Global South is to use traceability solutions. By efficiently tracking the lifecycle of precious minerals throughout the value chain, African countries could earn “royalties” each time a quantity of minerals originating in Africa is recycled.
The idea is not outlandish. Such thinking is now respectable in the market of intangibles, through concepts like intellectual property. Furthermore, Africa is a global pioneer of traceability (this author has operated in this field for a decade and a half) and can illuminate its end of the chain.
Traceability has other benefits. If not coupled with modern traceability technologies, the growth of local recycling could create an entry point for shady, conflict, and other dodgy minerals masquerading as recovered materials. In that sense, lifecycle traceability is a fundamental requirement for effective circularity anyway.
Circular royalties and reparations earned through “track and trace” have to be re-invested through multilateral arrangements into innovative circular industries in Africa in order to build resilience. For this, African nations have to improve government accountability. Otherwise they will suffer the fate of traditional royalties that in many countries are being squandered due to poor governance.
By Russell Wheeler
This post provides metrics of Biden judicial appointments in the two years since Inauguration Day and updates an earlier post on Biden’s four-year prospects.
Biden’s pace of nominations and confirmations slowed in his second yearAt the end of his first year, Biden had more appointments than any recent predecessor (and of any predecessor except Kennedy). At the end of two years, his 96 appointments lag well behind Clinton and slightly behind George W. Bush (and Kennedy).
TABLE A—RECENT PREDECESSORS’ FIRST-AND SECOND-YEAR CONFIRMATIONS
| 1st year | 2nd year | % increase | Two-year total | | Reagan | 40 | 47 | 18% | 87 | | H.W. Bush | 15 | 55 | 267% | 70 | | Clinton | 27 | 99 | 267% | 126 | | W. Bush | 27 | 72 | 167% | 99 | | Obama | 12 | 48 | 300% | 60 | | Trump | 22 | 61 | 177% | 83 | | Biden | 41 | 55 | 34% | 96 |
- Counts Roger Gregory (Fourth Circuit court of appeals) as a 2000 Clinton recess appointee rather than a 2001 Bush confirmed appointee.
Biden’s appointees increased his proportion of all district judges from four to 10 percent of the 674 statutory judgeships and from seven to 15 percent of the 179 circuit judgeships (Obama appointees are 34% of district judgeships; Trump’s are 30% of circuit judgeships.)
Democratic district court appointees outnumbered Republican appointees when Biden took office, and the gap has grown: Democratic appointees now occupy 48.7% of district judgeships, versus 41.8% for Republican appointees and 9.4% vacant.
By contrast, Table B shows that Republican court of appeals appointees still outnumber Democratic appointees, although both numbers have declined since Biden took office as more judgeships have become vacant.
TABLE B—179 COURT OF APPEALS JUDGESHIPS
| As of: | Rep. Appointees | Dem. Appointees | Vacancies | | Jan. 2017 | 71 (39.7%) | 91 (50.8%) | 17 (9.5%) | | Jan. 2021 | 96 (53.6%) | 81 (45.2%) | 2 (1.2%) | | Jan. 2023 | 91 (50.8%) | 77 (43.0%) | 11 (6.2%) |
Republican appointees are creating few vacancies for Biden to fillTrump in his four years enabled Republican appointees to occupy a majority of the statutory judgeships, something Biden likely won’t reverse by 2025. Biden, for example, could achieve a bare Democratic-appointee majority of the 179 judgeships only if he filled all 13 current and announced future vacancies and no Democratic appointees leave active (full-time) status.
In Biden’s first two years, four of his 28 appointees replaced Republican appointees. In Trump’s first two years, 11 of his 30 appointees replaced Democratic appointees. Republican appointees created both vacancies that Biden inherited (one by death), but since his inauguration, only five Republican appointees have created vacancies, versus 31 Democratic appointees. (Not surprisingly, the comparison was reversed in Trump’s first two years: 16 Republican appointees versus seven Democratic appointees created vacancies).
Of the 13 appellate courts, five (in the Fifth through Eighth, and Eleventh, circuits) have Republican appointee majorities among active-status judges; all are solid majorities that will not change anytime soon. The number was seven two years ago, when the Second circuit’s court had seven Republican and six Democratic appointees; that’s now reversed, and the 14-judgeship Third Circuit’s court will have seven, each Republican and Democratic appointees with the confirmation of a pending nominee. (Some make too much of these figures, by overlooking the participation of senior status and visiting judges on the randomly selected three-judge panels that decide almost all cases, and inflating the real but modest relationship between party of appointing president and judicial decisions).
Appointees continue to reflect unprecedented demographic and vocational diversityBiden’s second year saw a continuation of his unparalleled demographic diversification of the federal judiciary. Eleven of his 28 circuit appointees are Black woman, compared to eight for all his predecessors. Only five of his 96 circuit and district appointees are white males, leading to a drop in that demographic’s proportion of active status judges from 51.4% on Inauguration Day to 46.5% now. (By my count, however, 11 of his 53 pending nominees are white males.)
Biden’s second year also continued his frequently cited appointment of judges with experience as lawyers representing criminal defendants unable to hire counsel. A previous post noted that of Biden’s predecessors, only Obama’s percentage of appointees with public defender experience was in double figures—14%, with 11% having substantial experience (three or more years). Over two years, 27% of Biden’s circuit and district appointees had substantial public defender experience; 31% had at least some.
Nominations got submitted comparatively quicklySeveral factors help explain Biden’s impressive, albeit not record-breaking, two-year confirmation numbers.
Biden submitted his 39 circuit nominations in 146 median days after vacancy creation or future-vacancy announcement. He submitted his 113 district nominations after 253 days. That’s faster than recent predecessors—Obama and Trump submitted circuit nominations in 259 and 164 median days, respectively, and 345 and 335 median days for district nominees.
Endemic in the judicial appointment process is White House negotiations with home state senators eager to protect their patronage, institutionalized in Senate leadership’s not processing nominations unless home state senators (of either party) affirm their acceptance of the nominee by returning a favorable “blue-slip”. Current Senate leadership has continued the variation established during Trump’s four years–honoring home-state senators’ objections for district but not circuit nominees. But the results of the practice are not clear-cut.
No doubt to avoid extensive bargaining with home-state Republican senators over district nominations, Biden nominated largely to vacancies in courts with no Republican senators—100 of 113 district nominations. Those nominations got in place much sooner than did the thirteen nominations in red and purple states (four each in Ohio and Pennsylvania and one each in Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, and Wisconsin). Median days from vacancy to nomination for the 100 were 253, versus 399 for the 13.
But time to nomination was also slightly longer for nominees to circuit vacancies with Republican senators, even though home state senators lost their blue slip veto for circuit nominees in 2017. Of Biden’s 38 circuit nominations, nine were to red or purple states—200 median days—versus 129 median days for the other 29.
The district judge nomination strategy has left litigants in red and purple states with comparatively fewer full-time judges. Of the 58 current and announced future vacancies, over two-thirds (39) are in red and purple states, even though judgeships in those states are almost exactly half of the 674 statutory district judges. Moreover, those 39 are now 355 median days old, versus 239 for the other 19. Sixteen of the 39 are in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana.
The Senate approved Biden’s appointees quicker than it did those of recent predecessorsTime from nomination to confirmation started to increase appreciably in Clinton’s second term, but has declined recently, partly because in 2019 the Senate lowered the maximum hours of pre-voting floor debate on nominees from 30 to two. The median days to confirm circuit nominees went from 253 in Obama’s first two years to 179 in Trump’s to 123 in Biden’s; the median days for district judges were 140 (Obama) to 225 (Trump) back to 139 (Biden). (Biden nominees have also had Judiciary Committee hearings sooner than did those of Trump, and of Obama’s circuit nominees.)
Unlike time to nomination, time to confirm Biden’s district nominees did not vary by Senate delegation. Biden’s four red and purple state circuit appointments took longer to confirm than the 119 median days for the other 24 appointments, but generalizations are risky. Two red state nominees with home-state Republican senator approval (Indiana and Louisiana) moved to confirmation faster than the two who lacked that support (Pennsylvania and Tennessee, 253 and 295 days respectively). And a nominee, from blue-state Georgia has been waiting over a year for a floor vote.
Strong but Apparently Not Universal Party Unity in the Face of Strong Opposition“Nay” floor votes on judicial nominees have become routine in recent administrations. Table C shows, for example, that none of Obama’s 16 circuit confirmations in his first two years encountered over 40 “nay” votes, while roughly two-thirds of Trump’s and Biden’s did.
TABLE C— “NO” VOTES, FIRST TWO YEARS
| COURT OF APPEALS | DISTRICT COURTS | | “Nay” Votes | “Nay” Votes | | All votes | Median | >40 | None | All votes | Median | >40 | None | | Obama | 16 | 12 | 0 | 11 (69%) | 44 | 0 | 1 (3%) | 40 (91%) | | Trump | 30 | 44 | 20 (67%) | 2 (7%) | 53 | 0 | 4 (8%) | 35 (66%) | | Biden | 28 | 43 | 18 (64%) | 0 | 68 | 43 | 41 (60%) | 2 (3%) |
Despite this now-routine opposition, no Democratic senator or Democratic-caucusing independent voted against any Biden judicial nominee, which helps explain his confirmation record despite a 50-50 Senate division (Democratic absences caused one nominee to fail in her initial floor vote (47-50), followed by confirmation a week later, 50-47.)
On the other hand, one circuit and six district nominees—all from blue states— have been waiting for confirmation for over a year, four of them over 400 days. All have had hearings, so it’s likely that the majority leader lacked sufficient votes for successful floor action.
Implications for Years Three and FourJimmy Carter holds the record for most district and circuit appointments in four years—262 (aided by Congress’s 1979 creation of 202 additional judgeships). Trump’s 231 appointments in four years are a record among recent predecessors—as are his 54 circuit and 177 district appointments.
TABLE D—THIRD- AND FOURTH-YEAR CONFIRMATIONS
| After 2 years | After 4 years | % increase | | Reagan | 87 | 165 | 90% | | Bush | 70 | 191 | 173% | | Clinton | 126 | 201 | 60% | | Bush | 99 | 203 | 105% | | Obama | 60 | 171 | 185% | | Trump | 83 | 231 | 178% | | Biden | 96 | N/A | N/A |
Several factors will affect Biden’s ability to match Trump’s four-year record.
First, Biden enters his third year with 13 more confirmations than Trump had at the same point but only 53 pending nominations, compared to Trump’s 71.
Second, Republicans had a 53-47 edge in the 2019-20 Senate, slightly stronger than the current Democrat-Independent majority of 51. At least some of the 20 or more Democratic and Independent senators who are or may be seeking reelection in 2024 could be less willing than they were in Biden’s first two years to vote for nominees whom opponents will blast as judicial extremists.
Third, Biden’s 28 circuit appointments are 26 shy of Trump’s four-year 54. Confirmation of the eight pending circuit and two likely circuit nominees, and of nominees for the three current nominee-less circuit vacancies would produce only 41 appointments. (And those 13 confirmations are not sure things.)
The most likely place to look for additional appointments are among the 16 Democratic circuit judges who are in active status but eligible under a statutory “rule-of-80” formula to retire while retaining their judicial salaries (almost all vacancies come about this way). Whether a sufficient number–14 in this simplified scenario–will do so in time for Biden to replace them is iffy at best. Five have been eligible for at least ten years. A few—but not 14—vacancies could occur by death in office, resignations prior to retirement eligibility, or retirement by some of the 25 active status but eligible Republican appointees. (Trump was in somewhat the same boat: his 52nd and 53rd circuit confirmations in June 2020, left the courts of appeals vacancy-less, even though 25 Republican appointees were retirement eligible. He got his 54th appointment by filling the late-October vacancy created by Indiana-based Amy Barrett’s Supreme Court appointment.)
Fourth, Biden’s 68 district appointments are 109 short of Trump’s 177, and confirmation of the 43 pending nominees—hardly a sure thing—would still leave him 66 short. Filling the current vacancies that still lack nominees will require Biden to increase sharply the proportion of nominees to red and purple state vacancies, which to date have constituted only about a tenth of his district nominations; 39 of the 58 nominee-less vacancies are in states with Republican senators. And he will need to speed up those nominations. In his first two years, it took 399 median days to get nominations in place in red and purple states (versus 253 days for other nominations). In this simplified scenario, were Biden to get nominees in place and confirmed for all 58—not likely—he then could look for additional vacancies to fill, mainly from the current 21 retirement-eligible active status Democratic appointees.
To sum upBiden was quick off the block in his first-year appointments and slowed somewhat in his second year. To achieve record numbers of confirmations in four years he will need some luck in the form of a vacancy influx and more, or at least more successful negotiations with home-state Republican senators over district nominees.
By Melanie W. Sisson, Emily S. Weinstein, Darrell M. West, Xavier Freeman-Edwards
For several decades, many American companies have shifted manufacturing to countries such as China and India. The idea was to integrate the global economy, allow various nations to focus on different sectors, and build global supply chains that used components from many different places. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in 2020, it wreaked havoc on this model. Shortages developed and strained companies’ ability to get the components needed for their products. At the same time, worries over national security and international competitiveness led many to rethink this approach, pushing many to support onshore manufacturing in the United States or near-shore in neighboring countries.
Decoupling continues to move forward in the tech space, particularly in computer chips manufacturing. With the American government investing billions in bringing manufacturing capabilities back to the United States, it has indicated a clear mission to compete with China. Can the United States find self-dependency and how would it affect systems already in place?
On this episode of the TechTank Podcast, co-host Darrell West is joined by two distinguished experts to discuss if economic decoupling is possible for the United States. Melanie Sisson is a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where she focuses on national security in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. Emily Weinstein is a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology where she focuses on U.S.-China technological competition.
You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the TechTank podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.
By Megan Kuhfeld, Karyn Lewis
Concerns about students forgetting what they learned in the school year across a long summer break date back approximately 100 years. This phenomenon of losing academic skills during the summer, which is often referred to as “summer learning loss” or “summer slide,” is widely reported each summer. Additionally, there are long-standing concerns that summer slide is concentrated in high-poverty areas, as more affluent students may have access to certain types of enriching summer opportunities that students experiencing poverty may not have access to. The ubiquity of concern around summer learning loss and its perceived contribution to educational inequities has led many educators and parents to go to great lengths to provide academic opportunities to students during summer break.
However, a 2019 Education Next article by Paul von Hippel highlighted the lack of consensus in the field, calling into question how much we actually know about summer learning loss. The article focused on attempts to replicate a finding from a famous early study, the Beginning School Study, that showed unequal summer learning loss between low- and middle-income students in elementary school explained more than two thirds of the 8th grade socioeconomic achievement gap. von Hippel was unable to replicate these findings using two modern assessments and concluded that a major limitation of much of the early summer learning loss research was how the older assessments were scaled across grade levels (e.g., students were asked questions about 2nd grade content at the end of 2nd grade and then asked about 3rd grade content in the fall without accounting for the more difficult content).
In summary, von Hippel wrote, “So what do we know about summer learning loss? Less than we think. The problem could be serious, or it could be trivial. Children might lose a third of a year’s learning over summer vacation, or they might tread water. Achievement gaps might grow faster during summer vacations, or they might not.”
Here, we revisit the concerns raised in the Education Next article. In the context of pandemic-era school shutdowns and test score declines, “learning loss” has taken on new meaning—and perhaps new importance. We draw on recent research published since 2019 to address three big questions about summer learning:
- Is it possible to “lose” learning?
- Do summer learning loss patterns replicate across modern assessments?
- To the degree there are test score drops, are they concentrated among high-poverty students and schools?
It is possible (and natural) to “lose” learningOne might wonder whether it is possible to have “lost” knowledge/skills over a short period like a summer break. A common argument is that if learning can be lost over the span of a few months, there may not have been any real learning in the first place.
However, a long line of research on learning and cognition has shown that procedural skills and those that involve a number of steps tend to rapidly deteriorate in the absence of practice or other reinforcement (see summary in chapter two of this monograph). Furthermore, it is considered normal and healthy to forget a good deal of what one has learned and experienced. In fact, forgetting may also assist the development of procedural knowledge (skills) through a process of automatization, as individuals become less dependent on explicit knowledge and rely more on procedural skills.
All to say, (some) forgetting can be an important part of learning and not an indication that learning did not occur. But how much forgetting is normal during a summer break? And when does forgetting cross the line between “normal” and problematic? These are the million-dollar questions we’re still trying to answer.
Multiple assessments indicate that test scores flatten or drop during the summerWhile our initial understanding of summer learning loss dates back to studies conducted in the 70s and 80s, a flurry of recently published studies now allows for a comparison of summer learning findings based on three modern assessments with large national (though not always nationally representative) samples. Unlike many earlier assessments, these three assessments (ECLS-K cognitive tests, MAP Growth, and i-Ready) are all built using item response theory (IRT) methods that allow for (a) better matching of item difficulty to student performance and (b) cross-grade linking which enables researchers to compare test scores across grade levels.
Across these studies, test scores flatten or drop on average during the summer, with larger drops typically in math than reading. This finding is highlighted in Figure 1, which compares summer learning estimates in standard deviation (SD) units from three large analyses of student test scores. Studies using test scores from ECLS-K:2011 show that student learning slows down but does not drop over the summers after kindergarten and 1st grade, while research using interim and diagnostic assessments (MAP Growth and i-Ready) has found far larger summer drops across a range of grade levels.
These studies consistently show that summer learning patterns are starkly different from school year learning patterns. However, there is wide variation across assessments, with estimates ranging from inconsequential to alarming in magnitude. How is it possible that one test indicates an average gain of .02 SD over a summer while a different test indicates a huge drop of .50 SD? The answer is unclear. While the modern assessments are not subject to the limitations of the older approaches highlighted by von Hippel, they still differ in their purpose, design, content, and administration. For example, ECLS-K tests are administered one-on-one with a test proctor sitting with each child and measure a broad range of early math and literacy skills, while MAP Growth is administered on a tablet/laptop (with audio supports in younger grades) and measures the skills specified by the state’s content standards. Additionally, analysts use different strategies to estimate summer test score drops, from simply subtracting a fall score from the spring score to more complicated modeling approaches that adjust for the weeks in school elapsed before/after testing. The i-Ready analysis demonstrated that different analytical approaches can yield very different results (for example, a gain of .02SD versus a drop of .22SD).
It is important to note, however, that focusing on average drops hides an important finding: there is a huge amount of variability across students in test score patterns over the summer. One study found that a little more than half of students had test score drops during the summer, while the other half actually made learning gains over summer break. Students’ race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status only explain about 4% of the variance in summer learning rates, and we still have only a limited understanding of the mechanisms that explain the remaining variability.
Contrary to prior research, recent data does not show that summer test score drops are concentrated among students in povertyA meta-analysis of summer learning studies from the 1970s to 1990s found that income-based reading gaps grew over the summer. Researchers theorized that many high-income students have access to financial and human capital resources over the summer, while low-income students do not. However, a multi-dataset study conducted just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic indicated that gaps between students attending low- and high-poverty schools do not appear to significantly widen during the summer. Additionally, we recently examined differences in summer learning patterns by school poverty level using MAP Growth test score data collected just prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Figure 2 shows that the test declines for students in high-poverty schools were either statistically indistinguishable or less extreme than those for students in low-poverty schools in both summer 2019 and summer 2022. In other words, there is little evidence from recent data to support the earlier finding that the summer period contributes meaningfully to widening test score gaps across poverty levels.
SummaryWhat have we learned since von Hippel asked in 2019 whether summer learning loss is real? While the story is still pretty mixed in the early grades, we consistently observe average test score drops during the summer in 3rd through 8th grade. However, differences in the magnitude of test score drops across studies imply that we still cannot say with certainty whether summer learning loss is a trivial or serious issue. This is particularly true in reading where the magnitudes of test score declines during the summer are smaller than in math (which may be attributable to more exposure to opportunities for reading during the summer months compared to math). Additionally, researchers need to pay more attention to the considerable amount of variability across students in summer learning patterns, with many students showing test score gains during the summer. That is to say, summer test score declines are not destiny, but we still know little about who is most vulnerable to forgetting academic skills during the summer. However, these new data show us that, contrary to popular belief, we can say that test score drops do not appear to be concentrated among students experiencing poverty.
Educators may be wondering what the right path forward is in the meantime until the debate is settled. Whether summer learning loss is real or if learning simply stagnates in the summer, we believe it is less harmful to assume the former and act accordingly (e.g., offering high-quality summer learning opportunities to students) than it is to assume the latter and do nothing. In short, despite the ongoing debate, we will continue to advocate for additional summer opportunities and prioritizing these opportunities for students who would most benefit.
By Aloysius Uche Ordu
On Monday, January 30, the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative (AGI) will launch its annual flagship report, Foresight Africa.
Since we launched the previous edition of Foresight Africa in January 2022, our world has changed remarkably. Russia invaded Ukraine—an unanticipated event that roiled the global economy and sent food, fuel, and fertilizer prices sky high. Sanctions on Russia resulted in trade and logistical bottlenecks, which added more pressure on already strained supply chains. The U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ unrelenting efforts to tame inflation ushered in a new era of high interest rates and aggravated several countries’ ability to settle their international financial obligations. Meanwhile, the uneven recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic continued to feature in headlines across Africa and elsewhere. The combination of fragility in parts of the African continent and adverse weather conditions dampened economic growth in the region in 2022.
With these external and internal headwinds, it is easy to be pessimistic about Africa’s prospects. Yet, time and time again—as we have seen in the case of the Ebola crisis, HIV/AIDS crisis, and now the COVID-19 pandemic—Africa has proved resilient. We must be conscious of the danger of a single story—especially as many African countries will continue to fare well, despite the odds. Indeed, even though the region is unlikely to be fully out of the woods in 2023, the Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts overall growth of 3.2 percent. Medium-sized economies, such as Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya, will drive much of this growth—with predicted growth rates of 5 to 7 percent in the year ahead. On the other hand, the region’s economic powerhouses (South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt) are expected to record slower growth.
Despite these obstacles, I open this year’s edition on an optimistic note, bearing in mind Africa’s resilience and demonstrated capacity to weather severe headwinds. This optimism is buoyed by several factors: an enhanced collaboration that culminated in operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA); the coming together of African institutions (the African Union, Africa CDC, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Export-Import Bank, and others) to secure funding for vaccines; and the region’s rapid adoption of technological innovations to address practical problems—as evidenced by the innovative digital services that boomed during the pandemic.
Being cognizant that there have been few moments in history where the world has experienced such a multitude of successive shocks, going into 2023, we see renewed solidarity and collaboration emerging across Africa to address the confluence of crises. I and the Africa Growth Initiative team are therefore excited to feature Africa’s newfound solidarity on this year’s cover. This is visually represented by ribbons flowing together and moving in the same direction, underpinned by a common purpose. The vibrant colors and ethnic texture in the ribbons embody the continent’s diversity, dynamism, and action toward a future together for the greater good of all Africans. Moreover, in sharp contrast to previous editions, this year’s report includes brand new themes based on feedback from policymakers on education and skills and cities and urban development. We are also proud that women account for a significant proportion of our contributors—and as we did last year, we have dedicated a full chapter to gender, specifically the gender dimensions of Africa’s economic recovery, and what strategies policymakers should be attuned to in order to close the gender gap.
As with every iteration of Foresight Africa, we aim to capture the top priorities for the region in the year ahead, offering recommendations for supporting Africa at a time of heightened global turbulence. We hope that Foresight Africa 2023 will promote dialogue on the key issues influencing development policy and practice in Africa throughout this year. Such ideas will ultimately provide sound strategies for expanding the benefits of economic growth to all Africans in the years ahead.
We will continue to incorporate the feedback we receive from our readers and lead the debate on Africa’s priorities through high-level convenings, impactful research, actionable policy briefs, and timely commentaries.
You can use #ForesightAfrica to follow the debate on Twitter or send your thoughts to @BrookingsGlobal to be part of the conversation.
Finally, we hope that you will join us for our launch event on Monday, January 30.
By Vanda Felbab-Brown
Two key interlinked dynamics will define developments in Somalia in 2023. The first is the scale of starvation in the country. The second is how the Somalian government and the jihadi military and political organization al-Shabaab will respond to anti-al-Shabaab clan uprisings. Since mid-2022, these uprisings have been backed by the new government of Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, with far greater resolve than his predecessor Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo” mustered.
However, many of the deep political fissures that defined Farmaajo’s rule persist and will resurface in 2023. Moreover, the clan-government military operation against al-Shabaab has enormous weaknesses that could easily hollow out the campaign, while al-Shabaab remains entrenched. Calling the clan uprisings the beginning of the end of al-Shabaab is vastly premature.
The devastating humanitarian crisisAt least 6.7 million Somalis, almost half of Somalia’s 17.1 million population, face acute food insecurity, with 300,000 expected to experience famine this spring. More than half a million Somali children suffer severe malnutrition, 173,000 more than during the 2011 famine. More than one million Somalis have been internally displaced due to the lack of food and water and seek to relocate to areas where they can access international humanitarian supplies.
Yet, the vast areas controlled by al-Shabaab receive only a trickle of aid, if any. One reason is that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) fear that al-Shabaab will attack aid deliveries. The second reason is NGOs’ anxiety that they will face international legal action on charges of material assistance to terrorist groups, since al-Shabaab seeks to control and tax humanitarian aid. Concerns that the Obama administration would prosecute NGOs during the 2011 famine delayed and hampered humanitarian assistance for months, likely causing tens of thousands of extra Somali deaths, before the U.S. government worked out legal exceptions and parameters. In December 2022, the United Nations sought to assuage concerns among NGOs by passing resolution 2664, exempting humanitarian deliveries from U.N. sanctions.
Somalia’s massive starvation crisis, not yet officially termed “famine” by the United Nations, a label its government opposes, has long been building. Compounded by global warming, drought has battered Somalia for years. Five consecutive rainy seasons failed to bring sufficient water, each having a more devastating impact on agriculture. The impacts have been multifaceted and go beyond human starvation. Over three million livestock — three quarters of the country’s total — have died. Livestock is not only essential for household survival, but also a key source of revenue for the Somali economy.
Clan uprisings amidst hungerAs the endless drought intensified in early summer 2022, the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabaab reacted with typical brutality — increasing taxes on local populations amid economic downturns and natural disasters to compensate for revenue losses, despite its fat coffers of $100 million yearly revenues. Its unwillingness to calibrate tax collection better with fluctuating economic conditions and its indifference to people’s plight, including not allowing humanitarian aid without taxation during the 2011 famine, was a critical reason why it lost formal control over Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia in 2011.
This time, local clan militias known as “macawisley” rebelled. Al-Shabaab retaliated by poisoning and destroying water wells. Undeterred, the clans did not give up: The uprisings spread, and clan militias were able to wrest large portions of Hiraan, Hirshabelle, and Galmudug from al-Shabaab.
The new government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud seized this opportunity and reinforced the clans with its own offensive against al-Shabaab, deploying elite Turkish-trained Gorgor forces. It also persuaded the United States to expand anti-Shabaab clearing operations using the U.S.-trained Danab, an elite counterterrorism force.
After six years, this was a major punch. Since 2016, no significant offensives against al-Shabaab had taken place. The international forces of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) were hunkered down at their bases, plagued by massive problems. The Somalian government was distracted by dangerous near-civil-war tensions between Mogadishu and Somalia’s federal member states (FMS), while the Somali National Army (SNA)’s capacities languished abysmally, despite years and millions of dollars of international training assistance.
The wicked challenges of 2023But persistent problems will become manifest in 2023.
The most immediate is the lack of a holding force for retaken areas. The new African Union force that replaced AMISOM — the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) — has provided some medevac, but remains mostly garrison-locked and is supposed to wind down by 2024.
Many macawisley are exhausted. Out of fear, lack of resources, and inter-clan rivalries, many clans have not risen up against al-Shabaab, despite government prodding. Meanwhile, al-Shabaab has been reaching out to clans, offering bargains and coercing clan elders.
Although the SNA did not split along factional lines in spring 2022 as the cloud of civil war between Farmaajo, opposition clans, and politicians hovered, it’s still too weak to even hold territory. The more robust Gorgor and Danab — the latter having embedded U.S. special operations forces — provide operational teeth. They are not geared toward holding territory.
Frustrated with U.S. drone strike restrictions in Somalia and resentful of the continual U.S. and international weapons embargo, the Somali government has allegedly begun buying and deploying Turkish drones on the battlefield (though the Somali government denies it). But like Danab, drones don’t resolve the holding challenge.
The Somalian government is aware of the problem. It has sought the return of 5,000 Somali troops sent to Eritrea for training during the Farmaajo years, but has had little success due to logistical and legal challenges and the diplomatic maneuvers of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. Instead, improved relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Mogadishu have produced a new deal for the UAE to train well over 10,000 Somali soldiers and police officers.
Shrouded in secrecy, the deal would eviscerate the vestiges of the so-called Somalian national security architecture worked out between Mogadishu, FMS, and the international community in 2017. The unsettled relations between Mogadishu and FMS, and among Somalia’s key clans — the dominant vector of politics and daily life — could easily become explosive. Mohamud allegedly plans to appease state presidents by offering to delay state elections, arbitrarily extending the incumbents’ rule by two years. But that will not sit well with local opposition clans and politicians. Delays in elections in Somaliland, a more stable Somalian region long seeking independence and not reconciled to a mere FMS status, already set off a local crisis.
At the core of Somalia’s instability is bad governance. Arbitrarily extending what often amounts to exclusionary and unaccountable rule ensures that such dysfunction will persist.
Clan and political rivalries haven’t gone away. Like in previous Somalian governments, relations between the president and the prime minister, who represent different clans, remain fraught, though nowhere as bad as during the Farmaajo years.
Mohamud came back to power promising the Hawiye clans, intensely dissatisfied with Farmaajo’s rule, to prioritize their interests — including by improving security against al-Shabaab’s taxation in Mogadishu and Benadir. Yet with the Hiraan-Hirshabelle-Galmudug offensives, Mohamud doesn’t have enough forces to protect the center.
Predictably, al-Shabaab responded to the rural offensives by mounting deadly urban terrorist strikes in Mogadishu and other cities, including the deadliest attack since 2017. Apart from the human horror, such attacks undermine Mohamud’s security assurances to the Hawiye.
The United States would like to see yet another battlefront open — in southern Juba. Concerned about its porous border with Somalia and long propping up Juba’s strongman president, Ahmed Madobe, the Kenyan government would welcome this. But the front would trigger complex Mogadishu-Juba politics, including over deployments of local and federal forces.
What kind of governance will follow in retaken areas is also crucial. Somalia’s entrenched patterns revolve around poor governance, inter-clan conflict, and marginalization. Al-Shabaab’s resilience and entrenchment comes from its adroitness at taking advantage of corrupt governance and clan rivalries, exploiting clan disputes, and offering support to marginalized clans.
Somalia’s clan militias also have a long history of predation on local communities, generating deep resentments.
Yet insufficient planning has gone into preventing renewed misgovernance by militias, clan elders, and state and national politicians and government officials in the liberated areas. Eschewing large rural offensives for now, al-Shabaab is waiting for the uprisings to go sour, anticipating that renewed clan rivalries will provide reentry points.
Bringing in acceptable governance and easing local tensions should become a core 2023 priority. But it will be difficult, requiring bargaining with clan elders, communities, and state politicians, as well as local dispute resolution mechanisms.
Finally, there is the large unresolved issue of negotiating with al-Shabaab. The International Crisis Group strongly called for it months ago; the Somalian government has wobbled; and the United States remains opposed.
But beginning dialogue does not mean making a final problematic deal, à la the 2020 deal with the Taliban. Instead, the start could be to negotiate humanitarian access, so hundreds of thousands of Somalis in al-Shabaab-controlled areas don’t die this year.
Al-Shabaab has frequently, though not always, rejected negotiations with the Somalian government. In early January 2023 it denied asking for and engaging in negotiations. Large, visible, formal negotiations are unlikely to take off quickly or produce a good deal rapidly. But at minimum, NGOs and elders should not be hampered and punished for attempting to negotiate humanitarian access and perhaps local deals.
By Bruce Riedel
In the almost decade-old civil war in Yemen, the adherence to a cease-fire that began in April 2022 by the Shiite Zaydi Houthi rebels suggests they are now prepared to live with a political outcome to the war that leaves them in control of most, but not all, Yemenis. The Houthis seem prepared to settle for less than complete control of the country. They are in no hurry to reach a deal, however, and the truce could easily break down and return Yemen and Saudi Arabia to combat during 2023.
TheCease-fire and Its LimitationsBeginning in 2014, the Houthis rebelled against the Saudi-backed government that emerged in Yemen from the 2011 Arab Spring. They were joined by former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh until he broke with them and was killed in 2017.
In April 2022, the United Nations negotiated a cease-fire between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government and militias affiliated with it, opening the key port Hudaydah to bring fuel and food into the Houthi-controlled north, and the airport in Sana’a for commercial flights to Egypt and Jordan. The truce was extended twice in 2022, but was not extended in October when it lapsed. Nonetheless, both sides are still adhering to the cease-fire for the most part, and to the other terms of the truce like commercial flights to Amman.
The Unresolved External DimensionsYemen remains a crucial battleground for external powers. The Shiite Houthis have been supported by Iran and its ally Hezbollah. There are 40 Iranian advisors in Yemen.
Supporting the Yemeni government and various anti-Houthi militias, the Saudis have seen none of their policy preferences accomplished, despite tremendous expenditures. When the truce began last April, they ditched interim President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, whom they installed in power a decade ago to replace Saleh. Hadi is now under house arrest in Riyadh. He was replaced by a seven-man political council that represents the various groups still loyal to Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates also backs anti-Houthi militias, especially in the southern port city of Aden.
The U.S. policy in Yemen has recently been somewhat successful in conflict management, but not sufficient to halt the crisis and humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Saudi war and the blockade of the north. Shortly after his inauguration, U.S. President Joe Biden gave a major foreign policy speech in which he said the war in Yemen must end. Prioritizing the conflict’s end in U.S. policy is praiseworthy, and by backing the U.N., Biden has achieved some success. He named Tim Lenderking, an experienced diplomat and Middle East specialist in the State Department, as the American envoy for Yemen. More specifically, Biden promised an end to American support for “offensive” military operations by the Saudis, but he did not define what an offensive military action is or whether his admonition applied to the Saudi blockade of Yemen.
Nor did Biden call for a new United Nations Security Council resolution to serve as the basis for his peace initiative. Written in 2016, UNSCR 2216 called on the Houthis to withdraw from all territories they occupied in the civil war including Sana’a, recognize the sitting government, turn over their weapons to the U.N., and end drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia. After six years of fighting, not even one of these demands has been met by the Houthis. Biden did not mention that the resolution was deliberately tilted against the rebels by the Obama administration.
The United States Navy also continues to intercept vessels, usually small dhows, which it claims are smuggling arms from Iran to the rebels. In December 2021, for example, the Navy reported it had intercepted a vessel with 1,400 AK-47 assault rifles and 226,600 rounds of ammunition. Another was in January 2023. In effect, the United States is a partner in the Saudi blockade of Yemen.
Learning to Live with the HouthisThe tragedy of America’s relations with Yemen is now catastrophic. Two American presidents supported with varying degrees of enthusiasm a deadly Saudi-led war to defeat the Houthis. Tens of thousands of Yemenis have been killed by the blockade, including thousands of malnourished children. A third U.S. president is now finally trying to end the conflict.
The Houthis are virulently anti-American, but they have done little if any actual harm to Americans or our vital interests. Instead, the Saudi war has allowed them to play the role of patriotic defenders of a small country fighting a rich neighbor with the backing of Washington and much of the Western world. The Houthis are organized along the lines of Hezbollah, their role model and a proven longtime terrorist danger to Americans and American interests. They could evolve into another Hezbollah especially if the truce collapses.
It is time to bring this tragedy to an end. The truce could easily collapse, and the Houthis could resume attacks on Saudi targets, including Riyadh, with their missiles and drones engineered with Iranian help.
Dealing with the Houthis will not be easy even after the war. Their anti-American posture is deeply rooted in the origins of the movement. It is a lingering after-effect of the disastrous decision to invade Iraq in 2003 which led to the Houthis’ creation, now compounded by more than six years of American support for a war led by a neighbor most Yemenis hate. Air strikes, blockades, and intentional mass starvation are the characteristics of a war the United States has supported.
On the ground, the Houthis have created a functioning government in the area they control, which includes representatives of other groups. Their Prime Minister Abdel Aziz bin Habtour is from the south and was Hadi’s governor of Aden in 2014-15. Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf was in several governments starting in 2011. Neither are Houthis. Some 80% of Yemenis live under the Houthis’ control.
The population of Sana’a has grown substantially to seven million people from fewer than three million in 2019 and two million in 2010 because of the relative security and food safety the Houthis provide there. In terms of personal freedoms, however, the Houthis have enforced strict laws on women traveling, requiring written male approval, another reflection of their Iranian patrons’ own policies.
We have lived with other countries with virulently anti-American policies in the Middle East for decades. Unlike Hezbollah and Iran, however, the Houthis have not carried out acts of violence against American interests outside of Yemen. It will not be a friendly relationship, but it does not need to be violently hostile. The urgent imperative is to halt the blockade entirely and get aid to the Yemeni people. A new U.N. security resolution should call for the complete end of the blockade and freedom of movement for Yemenis. That should be America’s priority.
By Steven Heydemann
In Syria’s civil war, now entering its 12th year, the state/nonstate divide has become increasingly blurred. Nowhere is this more evident than in the practices adopted by ruling elites in regime- and opposition-held areas to ensure access to resources. Over time, both state actors and nonstate armed groups have produced parallel, interconnected, and interdependent political economies in which the boundaries between formal and informal, licit and illicit, regulation and coercion have largely vanished. Border areas in Syria now constitute a single economic ecosystem, linked by dense ties among networks of traders, smugglers, regime officials, brokers, and armed groups. Competing zones of political control have had little effect on economic collaboration across conflict lines. When it comes to trade, pragmatism reigns.
Regime-held areas, Turkey, and to a smaller extent the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq now function as the economic hinterlands that sustain the economies controlled by armed actors across northern Syria. Trade across conflict lines and international borders brings unrefined oil from northeast Syria to regime refineries along the coast. Syrian-owned factories in southern Turkey, many relocated from northern Syria, supply a vast range of household goods to opposition-held areas. Medicines and other essential supplies travel from regime areas into opposition zones of control. Trade has also influenced patterns of conflict. Cross-line and cross-border checkpoints have become areas of particular volatility, where outbursts of violence may have less to do with efforts to secure military advantage than with economic disputes.
These trends deepen civilian populations’ vulnerability to predation, extortion, and abuse. Mitigating civilian harm and strengthening human security must be core criteria in assessing humanitarian provision and engagement with both the regime and rebel groups in Syria.
The consolidation of an interconnected economic ecosystem also has important implications for any post-conflict transition. Typically, nonstate actors face uncertainty about their longevity. However, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strategy of economic governance converges with that of nonstate armed groups, the likelihood increases that nonstate actors will survive a settlement that restores regime authority over contested areas of the country. A settlement that does not address systemic and structural criminality will do little to improve social, economic, and security conditions for the civilian population.
STATE-MAKING, STATE DECAY, AND PREDATORY ECONOMIESIn both state and nonstate areas, ruling coalitions have either captured or established formal institutions to legitimate their authority. They assume the mantle of stateness by providing rudimentary social services and regulating local markets and cross-line, cross-border exchange. They manage the distribution of essential commodities and humanitarian aid and impose elaborate systems of formal and informal taxation. These efforts are underpinned by and enable predatory, criminal, and coercive practices that provide for the economic survival of warring factions and the enrichment of their leaders. Both state and nonstate actors engage in forced detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing to suppress dissent, maintain their authority, and protect their economic privileges.
In regime-controlled areas of Syria, these conditions are the product of long-term processes of state devolution since Assad took power, amplified and accelerated as his regime adapted to the exigencies of conflict, extensive sanctions, and, more recently, Lebanon’s economic collapse. Devolution has unfolded along two main lines. One is the capture of state institutions and state functions and their transformation into instruments of regime predation. The other is the massive expansion of regime-led illicit economic activities that constitute an increasingly important source of regime revenue. These range from large-scale production of illegal drugs like captagon, to smuggling, racketeering, informal taxation of cross-line trade, extortion, and other forms of illegal profiteering. Senior military figures like Assad’s brother, Maher al-Assad, and the 4th Battalion of the Syrian Armed Forces he commands are centrally implicated in every level of this “parallel economy.”
In areas held by opposition armed groups, an inverse form of extractive-predatory political economy has emerged. If in regime-held areas organized crime exploits and permeates existing state structures, conditions in rebel-held areas can be seen as a form of “state-making as organized crime.” In keeping with sociologist Charles Tilly’s characterization of war-making and state-making as “quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy,” nonstate actors across northern Syria have worked systematically to endow themselves with attributes of stateness. They have transformed themselves from insurgent armed groups into governing authorities that exhibit many of the institutional forms and legalistic features of full-fledged states, including investments in activities to generate local legitimacy.
CONFLICT AND COOPERATION IN A PREDATORY ECOSYSTEMDespite broad commonalities in their economic practices, formal frameworks of economic governance reflect the area’s fractured geopolitical context and differences among armed groups in how they envision what the states they are constructing should look like and function. Such differences are evident in the formal institutions that oversee how local economies are regulated and taxed, how social provision is organized, and how revenues that accrue to formal governments are allocated — creating a thin veneer of legalism that does little to conceal the informal, predatory, illicit, if not criminal economic practices that drive economic activity across all three zones of control.
In areas controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Islamist political and military organization, and those nominally under the control of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG), armed groups and their affiliated political wings have acquired the institutional frameworks of full-blown states, with elaborate governance structures that include presidents, cabinets, ministries, regulatory bodies, executive agencies, and so on. Operating as the Syrian Salvation Government, HTS has expanded its capacity to regulate, tax, and provide limited services to civilian populations. Yet as recent studies have shown, these institutions are mechanisms that empower and enrich senior figures within ruling coalitions.
In Turkish-occupied and controlled areas of northwest and north-central Syria, the SIG is the nominal governing authority. Its writ formally extends to HTS’s zone of control where it has been marginalized by HTS and the Salvation Government. Within Turkey’s zone of control, a Turkish-backed coalition of armed groups, the Syrian National Army (SNA) — not to be confused with Assad’s Syrian Armed Forces — is more powerful than the SIG, which it routinely ignores or overrides. Both, in turn, operate under the de facto authority of Turkey. Turkey’s presence brings a measure of stability, but its reliance on undisciplined local proxies, its inability to overcome factionalism among the dozens of armed groups affiliated with the SNA, and its tolerance of their abuse and exploitation of civilian populations has made its zone of control the least secure and most brutally governed in northern Syria.
In Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Hasaka provinces, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed militia, the People’s Protection Unit (YPG), govern the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) through an affiliated armed group, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an ethnically mixed militia led by Kurdish commanders. Civilian governance is managed by Syrian Democratic Councils in the PYD’s zone of control encompassing some 19,000 square miles. In theory, the Autonomous Administration sets overall policy and controls executive bodies that oversee key aspects of the economy, including the oil and gas sector that represents the AANES’ most important source of revenue, while local actors organized as communes set local economic policies. In practice, however, as reflected in one analysis of the political economy of the AANES, “signs of its authoritarian legacy are notably felt in its governance and economic management.” As in other zones of control, it is the dominant political actors in the YPG, their security affiliates, and influential business actors who exert ultimate control over the economy, enabling the illicit activities of private sector traders who maintain extensive smuggling networks across zones of control, regime-held areas, and into Iraq through ties with the KRG.
ARMED ACTORS AND THE CHALLENGES OF HUMAN SECURITYAcross Syria, a decade of conflict has led to state devolution in regime-held areas alongside the emergence of proto-states in opposition-held areas. Both processes have converged around shared strategies of economic governance as forms of organized crime. In both regime- and opposition-held areas, authoritarian ruling coalitions dominated by armed actors have captured or created formal institutions that nominally regulate an interconnected and interdependent economic ecosystem based on predation, extortion, smuggling, bribery, and violence.
As the categories of state/nonstate lose meaning on the ground in Syria, and economies become more deeply interconnected across conflict lines, the shape of a potential transition to post-conflict becomes both clearer and more disturbing. External actors look to a political settlement, however remote this might appear, as an opportunity to reform institutions, improve governance, and reduce criminality. It seems more likely, however, that it will legitimate and further entrench existing economic arrangements. Such an outcome becomes even more plausible under scenarios in which the normalization of the Assad regime advances without a settlement.
For practitioners and policymakers, the principal lesson to take away from Syria’s experience is the need to prioritize human security in both the delivery of humanitarian assistance and in negotiations around Syria’s transition to post-conflict. Without a commitment to mitigate the civilian harms caused by predatory economic orders, any political settlement in Syria will be fragile and a return to armed conflict more likely.
By Daniel L. Byman
Despite fears that the 2022 U.S. midterm elections would see a reprise of January 6-like political violence, the elections occurred with no mobs storming state capitals or other attacks. Improved law enforcement deserves much of the credit: January 6 was a shock, and both federal and state officials were far more vigilant this time around. In addition, no national figure tried to whip up mobs, as President Donald Trump did in 2020. Violence could return in 2024, especially if Trump or another figure willing to incite violence is on the ballot, but law enforcement, if it remains vigilant, will be better prepared to reduce the scope and scale of any threat.
The High 2021 Threat EnvironmentSince a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the prospect of further political violence has loomed over America. Before the 2022 election, government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center warned of the risk of election-related violence. Polls found that one in 10 Americans believed violence was justified right now, and that figure rose to one in five of Republican-voting men. Threats against members of Congress skyrocketed, and even local school board races became far more threatening. The brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at his San Francisco home seemed to confirm many people’s fears.
Making all this worse, hundreds of election deniers were on the ballot, creating worries that losers at the polls would incite violence rather than accept political defeat. In addition, the contests for Senate, governor, and other races were close, often coming down to small numbers of votes in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and other states.
Yet November 8 came and went, and the United States did not see significant election-related violence despite the many warnings and an ominous environment. It’s always hard to understand why something didn’t happen, but this vital question is worth exploring, given the dire predictions and continuing concerns about future violence.
Why Low Election Violence in 2022?To begin with, it is important to understand what contributed to the January 6 violence that shocked many Americans. Trump, along with several lieutenants and leading supporters in the media, pushed the idea that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. Many other Republican leaders stayed silent rather than openly stand against a president popular among the Republican electorate. In the leadup to January 6, election deniers organized relatively freely, both at face-to-face gatherings and online, where they often used Facebook to push misinformation and prepare for violence. Although some of the violence was spontaneous and involved bystanders who gathered on the mall simply to show support for Trump, it is now clear that organized groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers prepared for and planned violence before January. Despite many indicators that violence was brewing, law enforcement and intelligence agencies did not focus on the problem, leading them to be surprised when the storm broke.
Some, but not all, of these contributing factors have changed for the better. Starting at the top, Trump himself was not on the ballot this last midterm election. As a result, he did not encourage his cultish followers to march on the Capitol or otherwise whip up their fears and anger as he did before the January 6 insurrection. He did champion several Republican candidates who lost races where Republicans had seemed well-placed to win, such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, among others, but rather than serve as inspiration for violence this actually discredited the former president. Even before the election, leading Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cited “candidate quality” as a reason why Republicans might not win back the Senate. When this concern proved valid, he and other Republicans lambasted Trump for the loss, joined by Fox News and other conservative media outlets.
Some candidates did raise doubts about the validity of elections, notably Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, who claimed she lost due to voter suppression, an allegation that appears to have little evidence behind it. It appears that without Trump’s involvement, individual races did not capture the national imagination or inspire the same level of passion among voters: his charisma and national reach was unique.
Social media companies also took several positive steps, though their efforts remained incomplete and the impact of these steps is not clear. Trump, of course, was banned from Twitter and Facebook, reducing his reach. Companies like Facebook sought to combat the incitement of violence and voting-related misinformation. Studies of major companies, however, showed that false information remained widespread on their platforms.
Aggressive law enforcement is perhaps the biggest change from the 2020 election. Whereas in 2020 many plotters believed they could count on a degree of government complicity, that sense of security is gone. As the official warnings before the election suggest, government agencies are aware of the risk and trying to head off problems before they manifest. More concretely, the U.S. government charged almost 1,000 people with crimes related to January 6 so far, in the largest investigation in the FBI’s history. Organized groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were hit hard, with leaders convicted of felonies and the groups themselves under tremendous scrutiny.
Prospects for 2024Election violence, of course, could return in 2024. Part of this depends on whether Trump is on the ballot and how much support he has from others within the conservative political and media ecosystem to again whip up violence. The former president has shown he will push conspiracy theories and encourage violence should he lose, and there is no reason to expect that to change. For now Trump’s star appears to be falling, but he has proven resilient, and he has many die-hard supporters. In addition, new Twitter owner Elon Musk has welcomed the former president back to Twitter, and in general social media remains awash in dangerous conspiracies.
But there is good news as well. Many GOP leaders seem to recognize that election denialism and support for violence is a losing strategy. Perhaps more important, Trump is not president, and the FBI and other federal law enforcement will be aggressive in trying to stop election-related violence. Indeed, even without direction from political officials, January 6 was a wakeup call, and both federal and state government officials are far less likely to be caught by surprise in future elections.
None of this suggests violence is impossible, or even highly unlikely. Many politicians and ordinary Americans alike seem too willing to consider violence, should elections not go their way. As long as law enforcement remains vigilant, however, it will be more difficult for politicians to incite violent mobs and for dangerous groups to organize: important factors in reducing the scope and scale of the danger, even if it remains a strong concern.
By Stephanie T. Williams
As we look ahead to 2023, it is easy, indeed facile, to predict the worst in Libya. Political and societal divisions persist, human rights are flagrantly violated, weapons are aplenty, negative foreign interference continues, the list goes on. Yet, the October 2020 ceasefire agreement remains intact, though not fully implemented, and the prospect of return to the kind of large-scale warfare witnessed in 2019-20, while not inconceivable, appears unlikely. This relative calm offers an opportunity for the United States and like-minded allies — in addition to working on the seemingly intractable political process — to build on pre-disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) efforts launched last year to start tackling Libya’s hybrid armed group quandary.
This is a generational challenge that should take into account several factors which set Libya apart from other post-conflict contexts: 1) Libya is a rentier state in which the majority of the population on all sides of the conflict draws a salary from the state; 2) the hybrid armed groups are vertically-integrated enterprises that have fully infiltrated official bodies; 3) sustainable DDR and sector security reform (SSR) requires justice, accountability, and a decentralized approach; 4) direct incorporation of armed actors into the political process should be avoided; and, 5) Magnitsky-level sanctions should be on the table for those who abuse human rights and perpetrate the blatant theft of the Libyan people’s patrimony. Above all, DDR and SSR efforts must continue to honor the Libyan people’s demand for civilian control over the military.
The Hybridity Spectrum in LibyaNearly 12 years ago, Libyans rose up against Moammar Gadhafi, the man who had brutally ruled them for 42 years. Though the United States had learned much from the 2003 regime change debacle in Iraq, those lessons sadly were not translated on the ground in post-revolution Libya, much to the detriment of the Libyans and the international coalition that had brought Gadhafi to his knees. Perhaps the greatest challenge since Gadhafi’s overthrow has been the inability of successive Libyan governments to exercise the monopoly over the use of force.
In his book “All Necessary Measures?”, Ian Martin, the first United Nations (U.N.) special representative, has comprehensively detailed the key decisions taken by international actors and Libyans during the critical window following Gadhafi’s downfall. On the issue of what to do with the plethora of armed groups that had emerged, Martin comments on the “failure to understand the armed groups and tackle the full security sector. Here the greatest responsibility lay with the governments that had supported, armed, and directed the rebel battalions and who were needed to provide a strong coordinated ‘diplomatic quorum’; they made no effort to do so, and it was far beyond the capacity of the U.N. to create this.”
By the time I arrived in Libya as the deputy U.N. special representative-political in the summer of 2018, the number of hybrid armed group actors in western Libya had mushroomed by several orders of magnitude from the approximately 30,000 on the books following Gadhafi’s ouster. While the number of Tripoli-based armed groups had decreased, those that remained had consolidated their power in a vertically-integrated model running from senior government offices to the young men toting guns on the street. Hybrid armed groups across the country exacted their pound of flesh from the state in the form of acquiring arrest, detention, surveillance, and intelligence-related authorities, all the while conducting mafia-style activities including the smuggling of people, fuel, drugs, and weapons.
In the east, a larger armed actor, General Khalifa Haftar, was busy with his own project, having by 2018 defeated most of the eastern extremist militias and absorbed into his forces various armed groups and many of the remnants of Gadhafi’s erstwhile army. A Libyan caudillo, Haftar had long set his sights on ruling the country of his birth along the lines of the “army with a state” model favored by more than a few Arab autocracies. Haftar took his best shot in April 2019, in an ill-fated bid to capture Tripoli that ended in defeat after the decisive entry of the Turks on the side of the U.N.-recognized government in Tripoli.
Moving toward Stabilization and More Effective State-buildingThere is no one-size-fits-all approach to the complex and inter-related DDR and SSR files in Libya, but such efforts must above all honor the Libyan people’s demand for civilian control of the military. The October 2020 U.N.-brokered ceasefire agreement offered an opportunity to tackle Libya’s hybrid-armed group dilemma. Ground has already been laid with official Libyan actors, including the Joint Military Commission and civilian authorities in Tripoli, to advance pre-DDR efforts, notably during a meeting hosted by the Spanish government in May 2022. Those efforts should continue with the United Nations, the United States, and like-minded allies taking the following factors into account:
- Libya is a rentier economy with a weak, even practically non-existent, private sector and a “state” bursting with over-staffed and negligibly efficient institutions (in 2020, for instance, the prime minister’s office alone boasted over 900 employees). Over 80% of Libya’s working age population draws a salary from the public coffers. Therefore, any DDR effort should factor in the likelihood that armed group members will be integrated into existing “state” structures — in other words, into the very entities that many but not all of them have pillaged over the last decade.
- To the extent possible, the DDR/SSR process should be devolved from the center to local communities. With the national political process frozen, there should be a push for genuine decentralization which can open opportunities for armed group actors to fold more appropriately into the areas and communities from which they hail and which they purport to (and in some cases indeed do) provide protection. Local communities, including municipal councils, civil society organizations, elders’ councils, and women’s groups should be consulted on security arrangements, including the much-needed withdrawal of heavy and medium-sized weapons from urban areas. Local communities will know better than centralized authorities how to reintegrate armed group actors into their milieu, forsaking the gun for more peaceful occupations.
- Caution should be exercised before proceeding with the proposal put forward by some actors, mostly in western Libya, to establish a separate “national guard” in which to absorb armed group actors. Libya does not need a national guard as much as it needs competent border guards and a well-trained and less predatory critical infrastructure protection force. A national guard, with a separate budget and weapons’ arsenal, could evolve into a competitor to rival the national armed forces. This could be a recipe for more, not less, conflict.
- Sustainable peace requires justice. The DDR/SSR exercise should be guided and complemented by a focus on human rights training for those heading to the military, police, and security sectors. There should be individual vetting, rather than the absorption writ large of whole groups into these sectors. Anyone implicated in human rights abuses should be selected out, with a separate accountability process that is part and parcel of an overall national reconciliation package. Armed actors throughout the country have committed terrible abuses over the last decade, from the mass graves in Tarhouna, to the targeted assassinations and the forced disappearance of Libyan women activists and politicians, to everyday preying on their fellow citizens as well as the sickening treatment of African and Asian migrants — all with zero accountability for the perpetrators. Magnitsky-level sanctions should be on the table for all actors who abuse human rights and plunder the state.
- How armed group actors are included in the political process requires careful deliberation — and a caveat emptor. The approach the U.N. took under the Berlin process, with its three inter-related Libyan tracks, was to use the military track — the Joint Military Commission — as the format in which armed actors would be formally represented. General Haftar selected five officers from his forces, while the then-U.N.-recognized government in Tripoli appointed five officers representing the major urban areas in western Libya: Tripoli, Misrata, Zawiya, and Zintan, as well as an officer from the city of Gharyan. In the political track, and in keeping with the Libyan demand that there be civilian oversight of the military, armed actors were permitted to dispatch civilian representatives. Since then, however, armed groups have pushed their way more directly into the political process, with the help of foreign actors who have hosted “secret” meetings between the western Libyan armed groups and Haftar’s military and civilian representatives. When in January 2022 I met in Libya with the armed group representatives who had attended such a meeting in Morocco at the end of 2021, it was clear to me that they were enjoying their elevated status inside the political tent, openly boasting that the civilians would do as they were instructed — hardly a good omen for civil-military relations, let alone a process free from threats and intimidation.
By Vanda Felbab-Brown
Four factors will critically shape the landscape of nonstate armed actors and illicit economies in 2023 and beyond:
- the new geopolitics;
- persisting structural weaknesses of government responses to nonstate armed actors, amplified by the lasting effects of COVID-19;
- the synthetic drugs revolution sweeping global crime markets; and
- the reshaping of criminal actors and their power and allegiances in Russia and Ukraine.
This opening commentary for the yearly briefing book of the Brookings Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors details the first two.
The overall picture is one of an augmented, if reshaped, threat of nonstate armed actors — even as global powers have abandoned many elements of the post-9/11 global fight against terrorism and focused less on combating militants and organized crime outside their homelands. Yet the power of nonstate actors vis-à-vis the state has grown, including their capacity to embed themselves in official government structures as hybrid actors, rather than merely informally governing territories, economies, and institutions.
Great Power CompetitionThe effects of great power competition on nonstate armed actors go beyond reduced attention to nonstate threats outside the homelands, and beyond the U.S. pullback from large-scale military deployments and state-building abroad. Great power competition makes efforts to combat nonstate armed actors far more difficult, yet newly significant.
A core characteristic of the post-9/11 counterterrorism regime was global acceptance of the notion that nonstate armed actors must be countered everywhere. The means differed across localities and global acquiescence was never perfect: For example, Iran adroitly sponsored militias in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite intense U.S. pressure and expansive buyoffs, Pakistan never ended its vital sponsorship of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Governments and political parties in Latin America, Jamaica, Brazil, India, Nepal, and parts of Africa co-opted and used criminal actors for their own political ambitions. Yet, when their policies deviated in practice, governments found it necessary to cloak the subterfuge in a veneer of compliance.
The world is now back to the Cold War-era tenet that one country’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. One manifestation is not merely the proliferation of private security companies and militias outside the West — often proxies for rival powers — but also attitudes toward foreign fighters. While much of the post-9/11 regime was defined by efforts to stop the stream of foreign fighters, they now head to Ukraine — not just brought in by Russia from Syria and Central Asia, but also thousands from the West to support Ukrainians, sometimes in violation of their countries’ laws but without prosecution in the West.
Similarly, efforts to stop terror being financed through Islamic hawalas and money-laundering became a super potent pillar of the post-9/11 order. Yet online fundraising and hundi informal money-transfers now fund arms purchases by the anti-junta resistance in Myanmar, with Western governments appropriately rejecting the Myanmar junta’s demand they be labeled terrorist, and not aggressively countering the financial flow.
Meanwhile, as the United States prioritizes narrower foreign policy objectives — strengthening the Asia-Pacific region against China’s dominance, and countering Russian aggression in Europe and beyond — China and Russia are far more extensively inserting themselves into local conflicts in distant places. Beijing does so not merely through diplomatic and economic sway, but also by offering a vision of China as a peacemaker and a stabilization alternative to the West. It explicitly embraces governments without insisting on policies of inclusiveness, nondiscrimination, and equity. It is also selling its often-authoritarian law enforcement capabilities, including cyber, in the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.
Through its proxy, the Wagner Group that operates in various African countries and Ukraine, Russia is selling an alternative vision of counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN). It centers on crushing militants through sheer brutality, replicating Russian scorched-earth COIN policies in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Syria, and embraces indifference to civilian casualties and torture. Wagner’s approach makes no pretense of seeking to win local populations’ hearts and minds, but rather to crush their will as much as the will of the militants.
From Mozambique to Libya to Mali, Wagner’s approach is already showing deficiencies: failing to defeat insurgents and exacerbating local militancy and jihadi threats. Such failures reveal that Wagner frequently focuses on different goals — namely, access to local resources such as gold and minerals, and even antiquities as Libyan officials told me in February 2022, to prop up the Russian regime.
Wagner’s deployments to Ukraine have further depleted its most valuable assets and elite capabilities, as the group operates over wider and disparate geographic areas with little local knowledge. Though few Wagner operatives appear to have been pulled out of Africa, the quality and training of new recruits have suffered dramatically. And Wagner’s performance in Ukraine, such as in the Bakhmut battle, remains lackluster and characterized by high casualties.
Yet despite Wagner’s visible COIN and CT deficiencies, its pitch remains potent and the group remains entrenched in Africa and Venezuela, where Latin American law enforcement officials told me in spring 2022 that Wagner now has a presence and role in gold smuggling. What Wagner is selling beyond COIN and CT is serving as a praetorian guard to foreign governments, whether elected or juntas, and a tool for subduing political opposition.
On January 20, the United States announced it would designate the Wagner Group as a significant transnational criminal organization, an indictment based among others on Wagner’s weapons purchases from North Korea. Beyond Wagner and its support networks, the United States and other governments will also be able to impose sanctions on actors hiring Wagner or allowing its activities on their territory. But the United States will be able to choose who it wants to sanction, and which governments, such as in Africa, to allow off the hook.
Persistent weakness of government responses to militancyThe reprioritization and reshuffling of countries’ responses to militancy abroad is taking place in the context of continual local government weaknesses.
In Africa, two arcs of instability persist. One runs from Nigeria across the Sahel and West Africa, with intense instability in Mali, Cameroon, Chad, and Burkina Faso. In Nigeria, instability is driven by many groups other than jihadis, but the Islamic State in West Africa Province remains the most dangerous and is expanding into wider parts of the country.
The other arc of instability runs from the Horn through southern Tanzania to Mozambique.
In many of these countries, COIN and CT efforts have struggled for years, yet militants’ capacities are increasing. This closely mirrors the problems of COIN efforts in Afghanistan and stabilization efforts in Colombia. Eventually, often with external support, governments partially clear the militants from select areas, but the “hold” phase becomes a mire, and effective “building” of a legitimate state addressing local needs rarely takes place. Thus, conflicts drag on, and militants perhaps mutate, but persist.
COIN efforts in Mozambique are the latest case in point. After the much-heralded “success” of the Rwandan and Southern African Development Community (SADC) in clearing al-Shabaab from the Cabo Delgado region in the fall of 2021, militancy dispersed to other parts of the country and southern Tanzania. Local human security remains precarious, and nothing significant has been done to address the real marginalization, disparities, and grievances that feed the conflict.
COVID-19 amplified many national governments’ deficiencies and unwillingness to mount effective and multifaceted policies to counter militant and criminal groups, from badly needed and difficult-to-achieve police reform to anti-crime socio-economic programs to address root causes of instability. Government budgets have not recovered, even as hundreds of millions of people were thrown into poverty, illicit economies, and the hands of nonstate armed actors.
Worse still, local governments often fight the militants half-heartedly: unwilling to devolve power, be accountable, share resources more equitably, and make the necessary expenditures to truly end conflict. Many governments benefit materially, diplomatically, and politically from simmering violence. Wagner’s partial, brutal solution is sufficient for their purposes.
In the West, the dominant terrorism threat now is far-right extremism. In the United States, as Dan Byman outlines, law enforcement and justice agencies scored important investigation and prosecution successes in 2022, including of perpetrators of the January 6 insurrection. As Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware point out, among the prosecutions that promise to have significant incapacitation and deterrence effects have been leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
The far right’s dangerous agitation persists. In my December 2022 interviews with Trump’s supporters and County Supremacy adherents in Montana and Idaho, I found not only a virulent rejection of federal government institutions, but also a firm belief that the idea of a United States of America was finished. To them, white people suffered intensifying repression, freedom and rule of law had ended, a civil war — perhaps around the 2024 elections – was inevitable, and preparing for self-defense was necessary. While espousing such ideas is different from acting them out, I also heard supporters speaking of stockpiling weapons. Perhaps most significantly, I heard systematic and determined efforts to shape all local and state elections, from local school boards to sheriffs. Indeed, the infiltration of radical, insurrectionist ideas into U.S. local law enforcement remains perhaps America’s greatest vulnerability.
By Carlos Arteta, Steven Kamin, Franz Ulrich Ruch
All interest rate increases are not created equal. Interest rates can go up due to expectations of improving economic prospects. Alternatively, they can be pushed up by rising inflation expectations. Or they can also increase due to expectations of more aggressive central bank policy. Interest rate increases in advanced economies—especially the United States—can create financial pressures in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Our work indicates that the types of shocks that have driven U.S. interest rates upward during 2022 are especially likely to trigger financial crises in the developing world.
Shocks behind rising U.S. interest ratesIn a recent paper, we distinguish between three potential drivers of rising U.S. interest rates:
- “Real shocks,” which are prompted by improved prospects for U.S. economic activity;
- “Inflation shocks,” which reflect expectations of rising U.S. inflation;
- “Reaction shocks,” which reflect investors’ assessments that the Federal Reserve’s reaction function has become more hawkish.
We find that, over the past year, rising U.S. interest rates have been driven mainly by reaction shocks, as the Fed has pivoted toward more aggressive action to rein in inflation (figure 1).
Figure 1. Drivers of two-year U.S. interest rate yields in 2022 Note: Shocks are estimated from a sign-restricted Bayesian vector autoregression (VAR) model with stochastic volatility. Real shocks raise U.S. interest rates, inflation expectations, and equity prices (a proxy for economic prospects). Inflation shocks raise U.S. interest rates and inflation expectations but lower equity prices. Reaction shocks raise U.S. interest rates but lower inflation expectations and equity prices. Figure shows cumulative change in underlying shocks and yields since January 2022.
Rising crisis probabilities in developing countriesWe then estimate the impact of these shocks on the probability of EMDE financial crises. We explore three types of financial crises: sovereign debt, banking, and currency. We find that rising U.S. interest rates driven by real shocks lead to small changes in the likelihood of a crisis. In contrast, reaction shocks (the anticipation of more hawkish Fed policy) substantially boost the probability that an EMDE will experience a financial crisis (figure 2).
Figure 2. Impact of increase in 2-year U.S. interest rate yield on EMDE crisis probabilityNote: Based on results from panel logit model with random effects. “0” indicates the probability of a crisis in a given year when there is no change in the underlying shock and all other variables included in the model are at their sample means. “+0.25%”, “+0.50%”, and “+1.40%” indicate the crisis probabilities in the hypothetical case of 25, 50, and 140 basis point increase in the 2-year U.S. treasury yield driven by the underlying shock.
What is worse, our results suggest that a doubling of the size of the reaction shock leads to a more-than-doubling of the increase in financial crisis probability. An increase of only 25 basis points in U.S. two-year yields driven by a reaction shock raises the probability of a financial crisis in a given EMDE moderately, from 3.5 percent to 6.6 percent. But during 2022, reaction shocks have boosted two-year yields by about 140 basis points, which has resulted in an increase of 51 percentage points in the probability of EMDE financial crisis, to almost 55 percent.
Further increases in U.S. interest rates can result in more widespread currency distress, given the increase in EMDE debt and the depletion of foreign currency reserves that has taken place of late.
More currency crises may lie aheadThe impact of reaction shocks on the probability of a currency crisis is even larger—reaction shocks in 2022 have pushed the likelihood of currency crises to 78 percent. In 2022, seven EMDEs experienced a currency crisis, and 21 EMDEs reached agreements with the IMF for additional financing. Further increases in U.S. interest rates can result in more widespread currency distress, given the increase in EMDE debt and the depletion of foreign currency reserves that have taken place of late.
By Philip Kenworthy, Patrick Kirby, Dana Vorisek
Small states—countries with a population of 1.5 million or less—were hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve also had a much slower recovery than other emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Small states have several features that make them especially vulnerable to global economic and climate-related developments. To make matters more difficult, these countries have fewer policy tools at their disposal than larger countries.
A deep contraction during the pandemic, and a prolonged recoverySmall states are forecast to grow 3.5 percent in 2023, slowing from an estimated 5.2 percent in 2022. At the projected pace of growth, small states will regain their aggregate 2019 level of activity only this year, while other EMDEs exceeded this threshold in 2021 (Figure 1). Small states face long-term economic damage related to the shocks of the previous three years, including skills and education losses, a lower capital stock, and damage from the protracted downturn of tourism.
Figure 1. GDP compared to pre-pandemic levelsSource: World Bank.Note: Sample includes 34 EMDE small states (excluding Guyana), 115 EMDEs excluding small states, and 37 advanced economies.
The costs of the pandemic were much more severe for small states than other EMDEs. Economic activity shrank more than 11 percent in 2020, compared with 1.5 percent in other EMDEs. The depth of the contraction in small states was largely due to the collapse of global travel, which disproportionately affected the three-fifths of small states that are highly reliant on tourism. The contraction in tourism during the pandemic was truly unprecedented: During the four global recessions prior to 2020, the largest annual decline in global tourist arrivals was about 4 percent in 2009, while in 2020, arrivals fell by more than 70 percent (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Tourism arrivals during global recessionsSource: Haver Analytics; national statistical agencies.Note: Lines show one year before (t-1) to four years after (t+4) the year of the recession, except where data are not yet available for the 2020 recession.
High vulnerability to external shocksSmall states share attributes that make them all vulnerable to external shocks and contribute to greater growth volatility. For example, food and fuel imports are equivalent to about one-sixth of GDP in small states, substantially more than in other EMDEs (Figure 3). Steep rises in food prices brought on by war-related disruptions to grain, energy, and fertilizer markets in 2022 have squeezed living standards, increased inflation, and worsened terms of trade.
Figure 3. Food and fuel importsSource: U.N. Comtrade; World Bank; World Development Indicators.Note: Bars show simple averages of 2019 data. Food imports sample includes 22 EMDE small states and 95 EMDEs excluding small states. Fuel imports sample includes 18 EMDE small states and 78 EMDEs excluding small states. Energy exporting EMDEs were dropped from the fuel imports sample.
Small states face large and growing risks from climate change. The frequency of weather-related natural disasters in these countries has increased in recent decades, and small states face severe—in some cases even existential—threats from rising sea levels and coastal erosion. Small states suffer disaster-related damages and losses of close to 5 percent of GDP per year, about 15 times the amount in other EMDEs (Figure 4). In extreme cases, damages from a single disaster can be several multiples of the country’s GDP. Estimated damages and losses from Hurricane Maria in 2017 in Dominica and Hurricane Ivan in Grenada in 2004, for example, amounted to more than 200 percent of GDP.
Figure 4. Damages and losses from natural disasters, 1990-2021Source: EM-DAT; World Bank; World Development Indicators.Note: Bars show the sum of damages in each group of countries in each year divided by the sum ofnominal GDP in each group of countries, weighted by country-level nominal GDP. Disasters include storms, floods, droughts, earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic activity.
Limited government capacity means more international support is necessaryIn addition to their vulnerability to the effects of climate change, small states tend to have limited government capacity, be highly indebted, and rely heavily on external financing (Figure 5). Small states in East Asia and Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa tend to have weak digital connectivity, and many small states in the Pacific are geographically distant from other economies. Accelerating growth while building resilience to future shocks will require extensive domestic efforts, but these are unlikely to be sufficient without support from the global community.
With international assistance, small states can diversify their economies more, improve digital connectivity, enhance disaster risk management, lessen dependence on imported fossil fuels. There are also benefits to be derived from reducing trade costs and collaborating with each other and with major trading partners to achieve economies of scale (Figure 6). These measures can improve short-term stability and, just as importantly, long-term growth.
Figure 5. Government debtSource: International Monetary Fund; World Bank.Note: Sample includes 36 EMDE small states and 113 EMDEs excluding small states.
Figure 6. Trade connectivity and costsSource: World Bank; World Development Indicators.Note: Simple averages of countries in each group. Liner shipping connectivity is an index based on number of ships, their container-carrying capacity, maximum vessel size, number of services, and number of companies that deploy container ships in a country’s ports; data for 2020. Tariff rate is the weighted mean import tariff on all products. Data for 2018.
By Vanessa Williamson
In their first act of legislative business, the new House Republican majority voted to cut funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The vote was a symbolic effort to repeal the $80 billion increase in funding the revenue agency received last year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Cutting IRS funding is a terrible idea. A well-funded IRS can distribute emergency aid quickly, serve taxpayers efficiently, and help ensure that millionaires have to follow the tax laws just like everyone else. It’s an essential investment in good government.
The IRS has been persistently underfunded for decades, but the years since 2010 have been particularly tough. Tax law expert Chye-Ching Huang notes that the enforcement budget of the IRS dropped by nearly a quarter in less than ten years. In 2017, the IRS employed less than 10,000 revenue agents—the last time that was true was 1953: the Brooklyn Dodgers were in the World Series, the median housing price was about $8,000, and the IRS was handling over 100 million fewer individual income tax returns a year. The IRS is also “overwhelmingly reliant” on antiquated technology, the U.S. Taxpayer Advocate notes, “systems that are at least 25 years old, use obsolete programming languages (e.g., COBOL), or lack vendor support, training, or resources to maintain.”
It is worth noting how much the IRS has managed to achieve despite its perpetually inadequate resources. When COVID struck, for example, only the IRS had the capacity to send millions of emergency checks to keep American households afloat. As my Tax Policy Center colleague Howard Gleckman has said, the IRS “did an extraordinary job in getting these checks out in very difficult circumstances.”
But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. Actually, the IRS desperately needs employees to process refunds and answer tax filers’ phone calls. Out of the 282 million phone calls the IRS received in 2021, only 11% or 32 million were actually answered. Nearly half the new IRS money is going to taxpayer services and modernization, which will make the agency more responsive and efficient for taxpayers.
About $45 billion of the $80 billion in new funding is going to enforcement, and that is great news. For the wealthiest and most sophisticated tax filers, a cash-strapped IRS has meant a tax evasion free-for-all. Currently, the tax gap, which is the amount in taxes that are owed but not paid, comes to nearly $7 trillion over a decade. Three fifths of the tax gap is due to underreporting of income by the top 10% of taxpayers, and more than a quarter comes from the top 1%.
But the IRS has been left without the resources to hire and support the kind of tax experts who can catch wealthy tax cheats. The lack of staff was highlighted recently when it was revealed that the audit of former president Donald Trump was staffed by exactly one revenue agent. But Trump wasn’t the only one whose taxes were going without thorough examination. Audits of millionaires have dropped 61% in less than a decade. For those making more than $5 million, the audit rate has dropped 87%.
At the same time, responding to a push from Congress, the IRS has focused instead on a much cheaper form of audit, targeting recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit—i.e. low-income, working families. As a result, the EITC recipients are audited at the same rate as the top 1% of earners. As law professor Dorothy Brown explains, the consequence of high levels of EITC audits is a serious racial disparity in tax policing.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has insisted that the new funding not be used to increase audit rates on those earning less than $400,000 a year. So, the new funding will help rebuild the capacity of the IRS to audit the wealthy, making the tax system far fairer. And, of course, closing the tax gap raises revenues—it’s a policy that more than pays for itself. The IRS investments are expected to raise $124 billion.
The Republican effort to repeal the IRS’s $80 billion funding increase will not move forward in the Democrat-controlled Senate. But the IRS might yet see its funding decline, if the House Republicans negotiate a cut in the budget fights later this year. If that happens, it is bad news for the millions of American households who pay their taxes honestly, and great news for the country’s richest tax evaders. Funding the IRS will shore up an essential government service, making tax filing easier and tax enforcement fairer.
By Elijah Asdourian, Alexander Conner, Nasiha Salwati, Louise Sheiner
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Students benefit from higher loan limits Between 2007 and 2009, the amount that college students could borrow in federal loans increased substantially. Sandra Black of Columbia and co-authors find that the increased access to liquidity benefited borrowers, raising graduation rates by 4 percentage points and earnings after graduation by 3% to 5%. Students affected by the higher limits were also less likely to have paid employment while attending college. Though increased loan limits raised average debt burdens, students had lower default rates and were equally likely to have mortgages and car loans as those who borrowed when loan limits were lower, suggesting few negative spillovers from the increased availability of credit. The findings suggest that students may be underborrowing to attend college, not overborrowing, and that potential reductions in student loan limits “may actually serve to lower educational attainment and negatively affect later-life outcomes for many undergraduate borrowers.”
Lower wage competition between employers contributed to low inflation pre-pandemic The persistent decline in the U.S. unemployment rate over the 2010-2019 period was not accompanied by a rise in inflation rates, which remained below long-run expectations. Renato Faccini at the National Bank of Denmark and Leonardo Melosi at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago find that low wage competition between employers explains why the tightness in the labor market did not raise price pressures. Using survey data from the 2014-2019 period, the authors find a decline in the willingness of employed workers to search for a different job during this period. Employers thus faced fewer requests for higher wages to compete with outside offers. The decline in on-the-job search rates also made workers less likely to find jobs well-suited to them, making it cheaper for employers to poach workers who were poorly matched. The authors estimate that the increase in employed workers’ propensity to look for new jobs during the pandemic contributed to inflation, raising it by 1 percentage point in 2021.
Faster-than-expected decline in inflation could limit rise in unemployment John Roberts, formerly of the Federal Reserve Board, uses a modified version of the Board’s large-scale macro model (FRB/US) to explore how the economy might respond to rate cuts if inflation is lower than expected in 2023. Although Roberts considers the Fed’s current inflation projection the most likely outcome, he argues that unanticipated supply chain improvements, higher-than-expected price sensitivity to drops in aggregate demand (especially among core goods), and a downward shift in the Beveridge Curve could all cause inflation to retreat more quickly. If core PCE inflation falls to 2.5% in Q2 2023 and the Fed responds by cutting the federal funds rate target to 2.5% by Q3 2023, Roberts finds that the 10-year Treasury yield would decline by 60 basis points and unemployment would rise only to 4.2% by mid-2023 (rather than the 4.6% projected in the baseline scenario) before falling to 4.0% by the end of 2024. Even more aggressive rate cuts would have similar effects on the 10-year, but unemployment would peak at 4.1% early in 2022 before falling to 3.8% by the end of 2024. Roberts says his results may alleviate some concerns about overtightening: “These scenarios suggest that a prompt response of the monetary policy to good news on inflation could eliminate much of the run-up in the unemployment rate that many forecasters are expecting.”
Chart of the week: Employment of temporary workers has been falling
Chart courtesy of the Wall Street Journal
Quote of the week: “[T]here is too much uncertainty in the economy to unconditionally pre-commit to a specific policy course. There is uncertainty on the evolution of the war, on energy and food commodity prices and their pass-through to retail prices, on the reopening of the economy and its effects on supply chains, on the global economy (think of China and the United States), on the domestic economy (will we have a recession?), and on the impact of these developments on productive capacity,” says Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank.
“We should provide clarity on, and be guided by, our reaction function, which is rooted in our price stability mandate and consists of two main elements. The first is the economic and inflation outlook: we will react to medium-term inflation remaining above our target. The second is the risks surrounding this outlook, today mainly related to the possible emergence of second-round effects: we want to prevent a de-anchoring of inflation expectations or the start of a wage-price spiral. It will be the economy, of course, and how its evolution will affect the two elements of our reaction function. Depending on this assessment, we may decide that more or less tightening is needed compared to what we envisaged in December. We should thus not be surprised that investors adjust their expectations of future rates as new data emerge. But we need to make our own reading of these data clear to them.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Wendy Edelberg, Louise Sheiner
Once again, the debt ceiling is in the news and a cause for concern. If the debt ceiling binds, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the ability to pay its obligations, the negative economic effects would quickly mount and risk triggering a deep recession.
The debt limit caps the total amount of allowable outstanding U.S. federal debt. The U.S. hit that limit—$31.4 trillion—on January 19, 2023, but the Department of the Treasury has been undertaking a set of “extraordinary measures” so that the debt limit does not yet bind. The Treasury estimates that those measures will be sufficient at least through early June. Sometime after that, unless Congress raises or suspends the debt limit before June, the federal government will lack the cash to pay all its obligations. Those obligations are the result of laws previously enacted by Congress. As our colleagues Len Burman and Bill Gale wrote in a recent Brookings piece, “Raising the debt limit is not about new spending; it is about paying for previous choices policymakers.”
If the debt ceiling binds, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the ability to pay its obligations, the negative economic effects would quickly mount and risk triggering a deep recession.
The economic effects of such an unprecedented event would surely be negative. However, there is an enormous amount of uncertainty surrounding the speed and magnitude of the damage the U.S. economy will incur if the U.S. government is unable to pay all its bills for a time—it depends on how long the situation lasts, how it is managed, and the extent to which investors alter their views about the safety of U.S. Treasuries. An extended impasse is likely to cause significant damage to the U.S. economy. Even in a best-case scenario where the impasse is short-lived, the economy is likely to suffer sustained—and completely avoidable—damage.
The U.S. government pays a lower interest rate on Treasury securities because of the unparalleled safety and liquidity of the Treasury market. Some estimates suggest that this advantage lowers the interest rate the government pays on Treasuries (relative to interest rates on the debt of other sovereign nations) on the order of 25 basis points (a quarter of a percentage point) on average. Given the current level of the debt, this translates into interest savings for the federal government of roughly $60 billion this year and more than $800 billion over the next decade. If a portion of this advantage were lost by allowing the debt limit to bind, the cost to the taxpayer could be significant.
How will the U.S. Treasury operate when the debt limit binds?
One cannot predict how Treasury will operate when the debt limit binds, given that this would be unprecedented. Treasury did have a contingency plan in place in 2011 when the country faced a similar situation, and it seems likely that Treasury would follow the contours of that plan if the debt limit were to bind this year. Under the plan, there would be no default on Treasury securities. Treasury would continue to pay interest on those Treasury securities as it comes due. And, as securities mature, Treasury would pay that principal by auctioning new securities for the same amount (and thus not increasing the overall stock of debt held by the public). Treasury would delay payments for all other obligations until it had at least enough cash to pay a full day’s obligations. In other words, it will delay payments to agencies, contractors, Social Security beneficiaries, and Medicare providers rather than attempting to pick and choose which payments to make that are due on a given day.
Timely payments of interest and principal of Treasury securities alongside delays in other federal obligations would likely result in legal challenges. On the one hand, the motivation to pay principal and interest on time to avoid a default on Treasury securities is clear; on the other, lawsuits would probably argue that holders of Treasury securities have no legal standing to be paid before others. It is not clear how such litigation would turn out, as the law imposes contradictory requirements on the government. Treasury is required to make payments, honor the debt, and not go above the debt limit: three things that cannot all happen at once.
Treasury may have the legal authority to mint and issue a “collectible” trillion-dollar platinum coin and deposit it at the Federal Reserve in exchange for cash to pay the government’s bills. However, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted recently that the Fed, reluctant to intervene in a partisan political dispute, might not accept the deposit. Others argue that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution—which says that “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned”—would allow the Treasury to ignore the debt limit. But those actions would certainly be viewed as circumventing the law that establishes the debt ceiling, and they would likely not prevent havoc in the debt market and many of the ill effects on the economy described below.
How much would non-interest federal spending have to be cut?
If the debt limit binds, and the Treasury were to make interest payments, then other outlays will have to be cut in an average month by about 20%. That would be necessary because over this period as a whole, the Congressional Budget Office expects close to 20 cents of every dollar of non-interest outlays to be financed by borrowing. However, the size of the cuts would vary from month to month because infusions of cash to the Treasury from tax revenues vary greatly by month. Tax revenues in July and August tend to be fairly muted. Thus, the required cuts to federal spending when an increase in federal debt is precluded are particularly large during these months. If Treasury wanted to be certain that it always had sufficient cash on hand to cover all interest payments, it might need to cut non-interest spending by 35% or more.
How would a binding debt limit affect the economy?
The economic costs of the debt limit binding, while assuredly negative, are enormously uncertain. Assuming interest and principal is paid on time, the very short-term effects largely depend on the expectations of financial market participants, businesses, and households. Would the stock market tumble precipitously the first day that a Social Security payment is delayed? Would the U.S. Treasury market, the world’s most important, function smoothly? Would there be a run on money market funds that hold short-term U.S. Treasuries? What actions would the Federal Reserve take to stabilize financial markets and the economy more broadly?
Much depends on whether investors would be confident that Treasury would continue paying interest on time and on how long they think the impasse will persist. If people expect the impasse will be short-lived and are certain that the Treasury will not default on Treasury securities, it is possible that the initial response could be muted. However, that certainty would in part depend on whether there are swift legal challenges to the Treasury prioritizing interest payments and subsequent rulings.
Regardless, even if the debt limit were raised quickly so that it only was binding for a few days, there could be lasting damage. At the very least, financial markets would likely anticipate such disruptions each time the debt limit nears in the future. In addition, the shock to financial markets and loss of business and household confidence could take time to abate.
If the impasse were to drag on, market conditions would likely worsen with each passing day. Concerns about a default would grow with mounting legal and political pressures as Treasury security holders were prioritized above others to whom the federal government had obligations. Concerns would grow regarding the direct negative economic effects of a protracted sharp cut in federal spending.
Worsening expectations regarding a possible default would make significant disruptions in financial markets increasingly probable. That could result in an increase in interest rates on newly-issued Treasuries. If financial markets started to pull back from U.S. Treasuries all together, the Treasury could have a difficult time finding buyers when it sought to roll over maturing debt, perhaps putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to purchase additional Treasuries in the secondary market. Such financial market disruptions would very likely be coupled with declines in the price of equities, a loss of consumer and business confidence, and a contraction in access to private credit markets.
Financial markets, businesses, and households would become more pessimistic about a quick resolution and increasingly worried that a recession was inevitable. More and more people would feel economic pain because of delayed payments. Take just a few examples: Social Security beneficiaries seeing delays in their payments could face trouble with expenses such as rent and utilities; federal, state, and local agencies might see delays in payments that interrupt their work; federal contractors and employees would face uncertainty about how long their payments would be delayed. Those and other disruptions would have enormous economic and health consequences over time.
Given that those disruptions would likely occur when the economy is growing slowly and perhaps contracting, the risk that the crisis would quickly trigger a deep recession is heightened. Moreover, tax revenues, the only resource the Treasury would have to pay interest on the debt, would be dampened, and the federal government would have to cut back on non-interest outlays with increasing severity.
In a worst-case scenario, at some point Treasury would be forced to delay a payment of interest or principal on U.S. debt. Such an outright default on Treasury securities would very likely result in severe disruption to the Treasury securities market with acute spillovers to other financial markets and to the cost and availability of credit to households and businesses. Those developments could undermine the reputation of the Treasury market as the safest and most liquid in the world.
Estimates of the effects of a binding debt limit on the U.S. economy
It is obviously difficult to quantify the effects of a binding debt limit on the macroeconomy. However, history and illustrative scenarios provide some guidance.
Evidence from prior “near-misses”: As discussed in this Hutchins Center Explains post, when Congress waited until the last minute to raise the debt ceiling in 2013, rates rose on Treasury securities scheduled to mature near the projected date the debt limit was projected to bind—by between 21 basis points and 46 basis points, according to an estimate from Federal Reserve economists—and liquidity in the Treasury securities market contracted. Yields across all maturities also increased a bit as well, according to the Federal Reserve economists’ study—by between 4 basis points and 8 basis points—reflecting investors’ fears of broader financial contagion. Similarly, after policymakers came close to the brink of the debt limit binding in 2011, the GAO estimated that the delays in raising the debt limit increased Treasury’s borrowing costs by about $1.3 billion that year. The fact that the estimated effects are small in comparison to the U.S. economy likely reflects that investors didn’t think it very likely that the debt ceiling would actually bind and thought that if it did, the impasse would be very short-lived.
Evidence from macroeconomic models: In October 2013, the Federal Reserve simulated the effects of a binding debt ceiling that lasted one month—from mid-October to mid-November 2013—during which time Treasury would continue to make all interest payments. The Fed economists estimated that such an impasse would lead to an 80 basis point increase in 10-year Treasury yields, a 30% decline in stock prices, a 10% drop in the value of the dollar, and a hit to household and business confidence, with these effects waning over a two-year period. According to their analysis, this deterioration in financial conditions would result in a mild two-quarter recession, leading to an increase in the unemployment rate of 1.25 percentage points and 1.7 percentage points over the following two years. Such an increase in the unemployment rate today would mean the loss of 2 million jobs in 2022 and 2.7 million jobs in 2023.
Macroeconomic Advisers conducted a similar exercise in 2013. It assessed the economic costs of two scenarios—one in which the impasse lasted just a short time and another in which it persisted for two months. Even in the scenario in which the impasse was resolved quickly, the economic consequences were substantial—a mild recession and a loss of 2.5 million jobs that returned only very slowly. For the two-month impasse, which included a deep cut to federal spending in one quarter, offset by a surge in spending in the next quarter, the effects were larger and longer lasting. In the analysis, such a scenario would lead to the near-term loss of up to 3.1 million jobs. Even two years after the crisis, there would be 2.5 million fewer jobs than there otherwise would have been.
In 2021, when an impasse among policymakers once again threatened Treasury’s ability to pay its obligations, Moody’s Analytics concluded that the costs to the U.S. economy of allowing the debt limit to bind then would be severe. In Moody’s simulation, if the impasse lasted several months in the fall of 2021, employment would decline by 5 million and real GDP would decline almost 4% in the near term before recovering over the next few quarters.
Conclusion
While greatly uncertain, the effects of allowing the debt limit to bind could be quite severe, even assuming that principal and interest payments continue to be made. If instead the Treasury fails to fully make all principal and interest payments—because of political or legal constraints, unexpected cash shortfalls, or a failed auction of new Treasury securities—the consequences would be even more dire.
The workarounds that have been proposed—the platinum coin, borrowing anyway, prioritizing payments—either bring significant legal uncertainty or are not sustainable solutions. These unlikely workarounds do not avoid the chaos that is inherent to the debt ceiling binding. The only effective solution is for Congress to increase the debt ceiling or, better yet, abolish it.
By Gabriel R. Sanchez
Gun violence continues to be a major public health crisis across the country with the rise of mass shootings. There were more than 600 mass shooting events that took place in 2022 alone, and 2023 is so far unfortunately following the same trend, with an astonishing 36 mass shootings having already taken place across the country. In fact, over the past weekend, two mass shootings occurred, including an incident in Monterey Park, California that left 10 people dead, and a separate shooting at a night club in Louisiana resulting in numerous serious injuries.
The 2022 Midterm Voter Election Poll made clear that voters want Congress to address mass shootings and support a host of public policies aimed at addressing gun violence. When asked to identify the most important issues that they want Congress and the President to address, 17% of voters identified “mass shootings and gun policy” as one of their top priorities. Mass shootings were sixth among all priorities mentioned by voters, coming in higher than education or immigration. Mass shootings and gun policy are a high priority for voters regardless of whether they live in rural, suburban, or small or large urban areas of the country—voters from all geographical areas named gun policy as a key priority at either 16% or 17%.
Although gun violence and mass shootings are a high priority for voters across all demographic groups, younger voters are more likely to view mass shootings and gun policy as a priority for Congress relative to older Americans across all racial groups. For example, a fourth (24%) of Latino and Black voters in the 18 to 29-year-old range found gun violence to be the most important issue for Congress to address, which is a higher share than older voters from these same communities.
The significance of gun violence among young adults is indicative of the generation that grew up in a challenging era in the United States where mass shooting events have been far too common, requiring regular mass shooting drills in schools to be employed. Young voters who prioritize gun policy reform are exasperated by the lack of movement from Congress to address gun violence in this country. They have since taken the matter into their own hands and have come together to create organizations aimed at gun violence prevention, with the most notable being March For Our Lives and Students Demand Action.
Race is also an important source of variation for voters when it comes to prioritizing mass shootings and gun violence as a policy issue. Mass shootings were particularly salient for voters from Latino, Black, and Asian-American communities, each of which ranked this issue fourth across policy priorities, just behind economic oriented issues and access to abortion and reproductive health.
This is likely a product of greater experience with mass shootings and gun violence among these communities. For example, a recent survey of Latino families with children between the ages of zero and five conducted by Abriendos Puertas found that nearly a fifth (18%) of Latino parents or their children have personally experienced gun violence at school or another public place. Given the surprisingly high rate of exposure to gun violence among Latino families, greater concern about mass shootings and gun violence among Latinos is unsurprising. As reflected in the figure below, over 80% of Latino parents are concerned that their child could be a victim of a mass shooting at some point in their life—with 62% admitting that they felt extremely concerned. This helps explain why two thirds of Latino parents believe it is very important that policymakers in their state “take more aggressive steps to address mass shootings.”
Latino parents are much more likely (+31%) to believe that laws covering the sale of guns in their state should be stricter than to believe that people should be able to own firearms without limit or restriction. Nearly all survey respondents who believe there should be mandatory universal background checks for all firearms sales and that there should be a 10-day waiting period to purchase a firearm.
Regarding policy preferences, 68% of all 2022 voters support banning AR-15 style rifles. Similar to issue salience, there are significant differences based on race on this item. As reflected in the figure below, support for banning assault rifles is much higher among Black, Asian-American, and Latino voters. At 64% respectively, support for banning AR-15 style rifles nationwide is supported by a strong majority of both white and Native American voters as well.
Support for banning AR-15 style rifles varies by where voters live. Support is significantly higher in large urban areas, with 82% of voters who live in large cities expressing support for banning AR-15 rifles, compared to 70% of suburban residents and 59% of residents of small towns. Voters who live in rural areas are less likely to support banning AR-15 style rifles nationwide at 47% support.
Federal and State Level Policy Interventions are Needed Now to Address Escalating Gun ViolenceBanning assault rifles like AR-15s is a policy intervention being considered across the country. For example, at the federal level, Representative Cicilline (D-R.I.) introduced H.R.1808, the Assault Weapons Ban, in March of 2021. The bill is currently being reviewed by the Committee on the Judiciary, and then the Senate will vote on it. At the state level, eight states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York), as well as the District of Columbia, have laws that generally ban the sale, manufacture, and transfer of assault weapons within their borders. However, there are active attempts to block this type of legislation. This includes gun rights activists in Maryland who have submitted a second filing with the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against the assault weapons ban in their state considering the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. This decision opens up the door for challenges to the constitutionality of these bans, which may prove to be problematic for the future of H.R.1808.
The Biden administration has plans to implement long-term strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of gun violence, including community violence intervention programs . These programs will take time to combat gun violence, so more immediate policy interventions will be needed to address the growing demand among the public to address mass shootings, which have skyrocketed over the past two years.
By Nicol Turner Lee, Darrell M. West
After the longest election for Speaker of the House since 1859, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has finally taken the helm of a slim Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, potentially heralding a new era for congressional action on technology policy. With a White House and Senate under Democratic control, passing sweeping legislation may be a challenge for the GOP, but it’s likely that they will apply pressure on the current and forthcoming tech policy goals of the Biden-Harris administration.
Regarding the latter, President Biden recently published a rare op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for “bipartisan action from Congress to hold Big Tech accountable”—perhaps one issue where there appears to be some consensus. Partisan differences may lie in how Republicans are likely to use their new power over several House committees to ramp up oversight of recent government investments in infrastructure and their long-standing call for a more accurate broadband coverage map generated by the split-vote Federal Communications Commission (FCC). McCarthy has also signaled heightened interest in global supply chain issues related to China as evidenced by a newly formed House committee that plans to investigate competition, as well as supply chain resilience and sustainability.
These factors provide some insight into what to expect in the 118th Congress, particularly in the areas of big tech accountability, broadband infrastructure, relations with China, and the global supply chain.
Big Tech AccountabilityAs the Biden administration gets tougher on antitrust and conservative politicians continue to allege liberal bias in social media platforms’ content moderation, cracking down on big tech companies may be a course toward more bipartisanship around tech regulation. President Biden’s recent op-ed also called for expeditious privacy protections to limit the collection of sensitive data with a total prohibition on targeted advertising to children. In line with his grand plan for stronger antitrust and competition policies, the president reiterated his interest in leveling the “playing field” in the tech sector, echoing his administration’s play toward stricter scrutiny over the review and approval of mergers and acquisitions like Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision.
President Biden’s op-ed also dived into the need for actionable reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which both insulates online platforms from liability for their users’ posts while reinforcing their right to moderate that content. Not since former President Trump has the White House opined on this issue; at the time, two commissioners objected to Trump’s direction to the FCC to initiate a rulemaking proceeding without appropriate authority, which was never implemented. How Biden proceeds may finally encourage some movement among congressional Democrats, but his efforts may still be stalled by House GOP members.
BroadbandTo date, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce has distributed initial planning funds for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, a broadband expansion initiative created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s (IIJA) which allocated $65 billion to close the digital divide. Separately, the FCC has been updating the national broadband maps and adjusting to the congressional timeline that seeks updated maps to guide the appropriate allocations of BEAD funding. But members of the 118th Congress have started to lodge concerns around the accuracy of the FCC maps and, earlier this month, Senators Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) sent a joint letter to the Commission urging additional actions. Further, Republicans have expressed frustration with the Biden administration on its big spending, and efforts are underway by the House majority to examine the spending and oversight of the IIJA’s broadband investments. Under Speaker McCarthy, the House will further scrutinize broadband expenditures, as well as the FCC’s coverage maps.
Despite Republicans’ concerns with the current administration’s spending, closing the digital divide should be an area of opportunity for bipartisan action, especially since many Republicans have constituents in severely underserved rural areas. In September 2020, the Senate Republican Policy Committee published a policy paper outlining Republican efforts to close the digital divide and improve the accuracy of FCC broadband availability data. In September 2022, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called for more coordination between tribal, state, and federal governments to expand broadband access in native communities. Although Democrats and Republicans differ on approaches to greater broadband deployment and digital inclusion activities, there should be consensus in this area due to its national import.
ChinaInterestingly, one area where lawmakers have already coalesced is around the U.S.’s stance on China. Speaker McCarthy secured a bipartisan victory to form the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. The committee has been authorized to investigate and submit policy recommendations concerning the status of the economic, technological, and security progress of China. Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) will chair the new committee, comprised of nine Republicans and seven Democrats, pending assignments. In a joint op-ed with Speaker McCarthy, Rep. Gallagher wrote that the committee would focus chiefly on concerns of supply chains, economic dependence, defense, and data privacy. While these powers are largely investigative rather than legislative, the bipartisan move signals that the 118th Congress may have the political capital required to escalate the intensifying power competition between the U.S. and China.
Legislatively, the focus on advancing U.S. technology leadership may turn out to be a prominent focus of this Congress. In the 117th Congress, lawmakers passed the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS) with bipartisan support, providing monies for research and development for advanced technologies. Notably, these initiatives were designed to provide unique opportunities for rural America and economically marginalized communities to fully participate in the changing economy. The new Congress may opt to build on this momentum and ensure robust appropriations of the CHIPS Act, while also seeking out emerging investment opportunities that strengthen global competitiveness. Accordingly, an important question for this Congress will be whether the House GOP will search for legislative cooperation to further the U.S.-China great power competition or leverage the investigative and attention-grabbing nature of the new select committee on China. Regardless, how Congress and President Biden position U.S.-China relations will be an animating policy issue in 2023.
Although bipartisanship exists around the new select committee, it’s worth noting that lawmakers like Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-CA) hope that this effort does not contribute to the xenophobia discriminating against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) populations, who are likely to be villainized as Chinese business practices are further scrutinized. Going forward, it remains to be seen how both parties will make the interrogation of Chinese business practices constructive to deliver substantive policies that strengthen the U.S. economy.
Global Supply ChainOver the past few years, global supply chains buckled under pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical crises such as the war in Ukraine, and even an avian flu. While the worst of this crisis may be behind us, supply chains have yet to fully stabilize, emphasizing the need for increased resiliency and sustainability—points that will be brought in the new Select Committee on China. In September 2022, Speaker McCarthy also published a suite of policy proposals from the GOP Jobs & the Economy Task Force, which may forecast the steps that the House, under his leadership, will take to secure U.S. supply chains, including technology. The report emphasizes U.S. dependence on foreign nations for energy resources and critical minerals, calling for tax deductions for “mining, reclaiming, or recycling of critical minerals and metals from the United States” and decrying President Biden’s easing of oil restrictions on Venezuela as “unacceptable.” A consistent theme throughout the task force’s proposals is that of cutting red tape, whether loosening the SEC’s climate regulations or lifting restrictions on infrastructure projects and truck deliveries, which likely previews the strategy the GOP will adopt for confronting the supply chain crisis.
5GThe future of 5G technology may be another critical policy area that the new Congress will likely focus on. Some analysts expected this issue to make an appearance in Congress’s omnibus spending bill last month, but it largely went unaddressed. One exception is the FCC’s authority to hold spectrum auctions, which was afforded a brief extension through March 9, 2023. However, how these auctions will be managed for 5G is still an open question. The American wireless industry has been lobbying lawmakers to reserve spectrum bands between 3.1GHz and 3.45GHz to be auctioned for 5G use under exclusive licenses. This proposal has been met with opposition from the military, which uses that band to operate radar operations. Where Congress falls in support of the reallocation of government spectrum, especially from the U.S. Department of Defense, will drive how this issue lands on the full list of other priorities of Democratic and Republican leaders.
While these and other policy considerations are likely to percolate on Capitol Hill, numerous congressional leadership positions have been filled. New committee chairs on tech-related issues include Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who will chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, overseeing healthcare, energy, and technology policy. Within a few days of assuming the new role, the House passed her Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, which would block the sale of crude oil from the SPR to China. The powerful Appropriations Committee will be chaired by Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX) whose implementation of McCarthy’s planned cuts to government expenditures could affect continued investment in broadband infrastructure. Another key leadership announcement was the renomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC to break the current 2-2 deadlock, which has stalled movement on key Biden initiatives at the agency. The lack of a Democratic majority has also limited the ability of the FCC Chair, Jessica Rosenworcel, to codify her legacy while advancing the goals of expanded broadband infrastructure under the IIJA. Sohn’s name has been floated by the Biden administration for the last two years, but with a majority Senate, she may face fewer obstacles to a formal appointment.
Biden’s recent op-ed appears to be an attempt to throw out several “white flags” to build consensus around his tech policy agenda items. But Republican leaders in the House are thinking otherwise when it comes to what his administration started, and Speaker McCarthy faces the challenge of appealing to the concerns of the Freedom Caucus in his new role. With two years left in the White House, President Biden may have to choose a couple of areas to impact while relying on his Senate majority to secure his legacy through political appointments.
The authors acknowledge the research support of CTI’s Jack Malamud and Brady Tavernier.
By Bruce Riedel
In light of the problems that have been encountered first by President Trump and now by President Biden over handling of classified documents, many are wondering about the system. This piece is an explanatory note on the classification system.
The federal government has a fairly simple process for classifying documents. The originator of a document, usually a foreign policy or national security staff member, decides if it needs to be classified. In almost all cases this is a simple decision. Has its predecessor’s been classified? If so classify. Each federal agency has a central repository that employees connect with when producing a classified document which gives the document a number so it can be identified later, and the actual originating component contacted.
Critics of the system have argued that too many documents are classified. However, that is an endemic problem because bureaucratically it is safer to classify than not.
The most sensitive documents are Top Secret Codeword documents. Almost every product of the National Security Agency is Top Secret because the Agency engages in intercepting and decoding sensitive communications of foreign countries and individuals.
Also highly classified are documents regarding operational activity of human intelligence collection (spies) by the Central Intelligence Agency and the various military intelligence services. The raw intelligence produced by such means is usually classified SECRET but occasionally a sensitive case will be TOP SECRET. In very sensitive cases the originator will specify by name who can read the report.
TS (Top Secret) material must be stored in a SCIF office which stands for (sensitive compartmented information facility.) Only personnel with a TS clearance can enter the SCIF. When not in use the room is locked. Presidents often have a temporary SCIF on their property or vacation homes. Presidents and VPs travel with a large communications team so they are always in constant contact with the Situation Room including when abroad.
Most State Department cables are SECRET. Some are CONFIDENTIAL, the lowest classification. Many of the most sensitive State documents are marked NODIS, which stands for No Distribution, meaning that they can only be read by a named individual or by selected positions.
A frequent classification is NOFORN, meaning the document cannot be shared with any foreign government or individual. In most cases this does not apply to the Five Eyes group: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. NATO allies, Japan, South Korea, and others get considerable access as well.
Routine cables that deal with travel arrangements and personnel issues are often classified Limited Official Use for short periods of time so that once the travel is complete the cables are declassified.
The office of the President has access to all classified material. The Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing is the focal point for receiving reports from across the government and distributing them to appropriate people in the White House complex—usually electronically. Created by John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Situation Room is manned by CIA officers 24 hours every day. It is in constant communication with its counterparts like the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon and the Operations Center at the CIA.
The President and Vice President are cleared for all classified information but often see only a small number of documents due to their intense schedules. The National Security Adviser usually selects the most important reports for the President.
When the CIA briefer delivers the PDB (president’s daily brief) each morning to the Oval Office or wherever the president is, the National Security Adviser’s office is responsible for retrieving it at the end of the day and securing it in their SCIF in the West Wing or in the Situation Room. If the President or VP write a question or comment in the book it goes back to Langley for a response. In my experience the President did not keep classified material, if he wanted to have it available then the Situation Room held onto it.
All classified documents are subject to periodic review for declassification. TS reports may take decades to be reviewed. Some will be reviewed and remain classified. Most will be declassified in part or entirely.
The President has the authority to declassify any document. In 1999, for example, President Bill Clinton used the conclusion of a TS report from the President’s Daily Brief prepared by the CIA in a meeting on July 4th with the Pakistani Prime Minister. He asked permission from the Deputy Director of the Agency just before he used it. In my eight years in the White House with four presidents it was the only time I witnessed a President declassify a report to use with a foreign official.
That time it helped avert a nuclear war.
By Sarah Reber, Ember Smith
College graduates earn more, are healthier, and have more stable employment and marriages. Although young adults today are twice as likely to have a bachelor’s degree as they were fifty years ago, there are still sizable differences in enrollment by gender, race, and socioeconomic status. In our latest paper, we report new data on college enrollment gaps and explore how they relate to students’ high school academic preparation.
More than two-thirds (68%) of students enroll in college soon after high school; 44% of students attend a four-year college.[1] Figure 1 shows college enrollment rates by the highest institution level where students enrolled within 18 months of expected high school graduation. We focus on gaps across three categories: socioeconomic status, gender, and race.
College enrollment rates vary greatly depending on the socioeconomic status of a student’s family. About 89% of students from well-off families go to college compared to 64% of students from middle-class families, and 51% of students from low-income families. [2] Socioeconomic gaps are especially large in four-year enrollment, with students in the top 40% significantly more likely to go to a four-year college than students in the bottom 60%.
Girls are also more likely than boys to go to college: About 73% of girls and 64% of boys enroll in either a two-year or four-year college. This gender gap is driven by enrollment in four-year institutions. There is virtually no gap in the share of students who enroll in a two-year college, but 49% of girls enroll in a four-year college compared to 40% of boys.
Asian students are significantly more likely to enroll in college than any other race or ethnic group; 83% of Asian high school students enroll in college, compared with 72% of white, 63% of Hispanic, and 62% of Black students. Asian, Black, and white students are all more likely to enroll in a four-year than a two-year institution. Hispanic students, on the other hand, enroll in two-year institutions at a higher rate.
What role does academic preparation play?High school students with high GPAs and test scores and who took more rigorous coursework are more likely to enroll in college. Academic preparation varies significantly by socioeconomic status, gender, and race. To what extent do gaps in academic preparation explain gaps in college enrollment?
In the report, we assess the role of group differences in academic preparation in explaining group differences in college enrollment. We find that, for students with similar academic preparation, college enrollment rate gaps are much smaller than the unconditional gaps shown in Figure 1. For example, Black, Hispanic, and Asian students with similar high school grades, test scores, and course-taking all go to college at about the same rate — a rate about five percentage points higher than white students with similar academic preparation by those measures. Similarly, boys and girls with the same high school grades go to college at about the same rate.
The most socioeconomically advantaged students are 38 percentage points more likely to go to college than the most disadvantaged students.
But the same is less true for differences in college enrollment by socioeconomic status. Holding constant high school performance, students from the most socioeconomically advantaged families (the top quintile) are 11 points more likely to go to college than students from the most disadvantaged families (the bottom quintile). Even though there are significant differences among students who had similar academic preparation depending on socioeconomic status, the differences are much smaller than the unconditional gaps by socioeconomic status shown in Figure 1: the most socioeconomically advantaged students are 38 percentage points more likely to go to college than the most disadvantaged students.
Our analysis cannot speak to the reasons for disparities in academic preparation, but it is important to note that academic preparation depends not only student actions, but also on factors not in their control, including the opportunities available to them. For example, a student might not take advanced coursework because it is not offered at their school, because they did not have strong instruction earlier in school, or because they had to work and had little time to study. Structural racism or discrimination in and out of school influences academic preparation, which in turn may explain disparities in college enrollment. Similarly, differences by gender may, in part, arise due to differences in how boys and girls are socialized.
Policymakers: address high school preparation gapsPublic discussions about inequality in access to college often center around admissions and cost. While these issues are important, our findings suggest that policymakers should also pay careful attention to disparities in academic preparation earlier in students’ educational careers, which are important determinants of college enrollment. Closing academic preparation gaps is particularly important to address gaps in college enrollment by race and gender. The same is true for socioeconomic status, though non-academic factors like cost or lack of information are also important given that large socioeconomic enrollment disparities remain among students with similar academic preparation. A fair educational and economic system would ensure that all students who want to attend college have the academic preparation necessary to do so.
Read the full report.
Footnotes:[1]: The HSLS of 2009 is a representative sample of US 9th graders in 2009, not necessarily the graduating class of 2013 or young adults in following years. We restrict our analytic sample on data availability. See the full report for details.
[2]: We use quintiles of socioeconomic status (SES) constructed by the NCES based on parent or guardians’ education, occupation, and income. Here, “well-off” refers to students in the top quintile of the SES distribution, “middle class” refers to students in the middle quintile, and “low-income” refers to students in the bottom quintile. See the full report for details.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Mireya Solís
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s first visit to Washington as leader on January 13, 2023 marked a major transformation in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Japan’s new security reforms and Tokyo’s proactive response to the Ukraine crisis have been warmly received in Washington. They underscore a Japan more determined to strengthen its own defense capabilities and contribute to regional deterrence, and reveal new potential to leverage the bilateral partnership to address serious challenges to the international order.
Not surprisingly, U.S.-Japan relations moved at a fast tempo in the weeks and days prior to the arrival of the Japanese leader, with major policy announcements and bilateral agreements. At the end of 2022, the Japanese government revised its National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defense Strategy, and Defense Buildup Program. A major pledge ran through the revised strategic documents: that Tokyo is ready to marshal its comprehensive national power to meet the challenges derived from the most severe security environment of the past 70 years.
Early in the new year, Yasutoshi Nishimura, head of Japan’s Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry, traveled to Washington to sign agreements to strengthen cybersecurity cooperation with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and to collaborate in eradicating forced labor from global supply chains with the U.S. trade representative. Just a fortnight before Kishida’s arrival, the Security Consultative Committee (2+2 foreign and defense ministers) issued a joint statement praising a modernized alliance attuned to the current era of strategic competition and ready to move in lockstep to implement a shared commitment to integrated deterrence. A week of U.S.-Japan high-level diplomacy yielded commitments to improve allied defense posture in Japan’s southwestern islands and to cultivate a more agile U.S. Marine littoral regiment in Okinawa. It also extended Article 5 of the security treaty to apply U.S. defense commitments to space and cemented the bilateral partnership on space exploration. Agreements materialized on defense R&D and supply chain security as well.
To cap it all, the Biden-Kishida joint statement immediately following the summit noted not only that the “security alliance has never been stronger,” but that the allies “strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion, anywhere in the world,” (emphasis mine). This captures an ongoing and portent transformation: While bilateral security commitments remain the anchor of this partnership, the United States and Japan increasingly regard the alliance as an instrument to project their combined influence to promote stability and rule of law in a turbulent international system. This includes efforts to preserve peace in the diplomatically choppy waters of the Taiwan Strait. The shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dramatically expanded the geographical boundaries of U.S-Japan strategic coordination, since Tokyo was among the first to publicly condemn the violence and join the international coalition to punish Putin’s war of aggression. Ukraine left an indelible mark on the Japanese public mindset and its government during the precise year that the country’s overall security and defense policies were under review. It imbued a strong awareness that only nations prepared to defend themselves can expect to muster wide and sustained international support.
The Biden-Kishida summit reaffirmed the strategic convergence between the two nations. The specter of three revisionist powers has helped focus their agenda: North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats; China’s use of coercion, not international law, to advance expansive territorial claims; and Russia’s large-scale war in Europe. Even so, Japan’s response to the adverse international environment stands out. Of America’s allies in Asia, Tokyo has been the most willing to explicitly call out Chinese behavior that undermines the rules-based order, and the newly revised National Security Strategy went further, naming China as Japan’s biggest strategic challenge. A key objective for Kishida in coming to Washington at this juncture was to explain, and gain support from Japan’s core ally, how his administration intends to operationalize a far more ambitious strategic agenda on defense, diplomacy, and development.
Not surprisingly, bilateral talks focused on defense. Under Kishida, Japan has done away with the decades-old informal ceiling on defense expenditures at 1% of GDP. Instead, in the next five years, Japan’s defense expenditures will aim for the 2% mark both by revising what can be included in the defense budget (e.g., Coast Guard operations and protection of critical infrastructure) and through an expansion in core defense expenditure of 50% — a sizable increase. A key innovation in the new NSS was Japan’s adoption of counterstrike capabilities, providing for the first time in the postwar era authorization for its Self-Defense Forces to respond to an attack by hitting deep in enemy territory. The bar on the use of force remains high — Japan’s survival must be at stake, no other means of response must be available, and only the minimum use of force can be employed. But Japan’s ability to wield a spear to defend itself will both strengthen deterrence and transform the alliance. American intelligence and reconnaissance support will be essential to the success of a Japanese missile counterattack. More importantly, greater integration of command and control structures will be required as Japan’s power projection capabilities grow. This has yet to happen and will be a true test for alliance modernization.
Given the novelty and strategic implications of Japan’s security reforms, they received top billing in the assessment of the Biden-Kishida summit. But other equally important priorities came through in Kishida’s policy speech delivered at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). For one, Japan’s enhanced defense posture will beget more proactive diplomacy in ways that make Japan a more valuable ally for the United States. Kishida’s Washington trip was part of a G-7 tour with visits to the five member countries in preparation for Japan’s hosting of G-7 leaders’ summit in May. The G-7 has emerged rejuvenated from its response to the Ukraine crisis, and Japan’s engagement with Europe has reached new heights. Last year, Kishida was the first Japanese prime minister ever to attend a NATO summit. In his diplomatic tour this month, Japan and the U.K. reached a landmark reciprocal access agreement to facilitate troop deployments for joint training and exercises, adding to Japan’s network of defense partnerships. In his address at SAIS, the prime minister previewed a strong diplomatic push in Japan’s own neighborhood with both an updated Free and Open Indo-Pacific policy and a special summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at the end of the year, and greater reassurances of his administration’s will to resolve bilateral issues with South Korea in the near term. These will be the new yardsticks by which to measure the success of Japan’s diplomatic outreach in this new political era after the premiership of Shinzo Abe.
The visiting prime minister was keen to appeal to the Global South, driving home the message that diverse values do not overshadow the common goal of protecting a world order based on rules, not naked power. But to earn their trust, Japan and others must deliver on developing world priorities on food and energy security, debt sustainability, and healthcare. The question for like-minded nations is whether they can deliver on development and economic engagement. And so Kishida directed one important message to an audience of one: a call for the United States to return to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) project. Kishida noted that even a successful Indo-Pacific Economic Framework will fall short in meeting regional demands for comprehensive economic engagement. This admonishment is certainly not new. Japanese officials have delivered it repeatedly and American counterparts feel they have heard it ad nauseum. But the fact remains that trade liberalization is the one area where the United States and Japan have not been able to move in sync. Their closer alignment on defense and diplomacy only makes this contrast starker. The context of Kishida’s TPP entreaty matters, for here is one leader having vanquished a longstanding policy taboo (expanding defense expenditures), asking his counterpart to unlock possibilities that would ensue from accomplishing a similar feat (actualizing trade leadership).
This new chapter in U.S.-Japan relations is just starting. The hard work of developing a more effective command and control structure, and of planning for an effective division of labor among the allies to address regional contingencies, is still ahead. A shared determination to confront the growing challenges that authoritarian powers pose to the rules-based system does not solve the myriad complications of a coordinated approach going forward. A case in point is technological competition with China. Notably, there was no word during Kishida’s visit about Tokyo’s willingness to strengthen export controls on China to emulate the U.S. new restrictive approach. And Kishida did point out that sustaining an open free trade system remains the last frontier in the U.S.-Japan alliance.
By William A. Galston
During the past four decades, the two major political parties have steadily moved farther away from each other and are now as deeply divided as they have been for more than a century. For most of this period, analysts agree, Republican elected officials have moved more to the right than Democratic officials have to the left.
But there’s a paradox: since the early 1990s, according to Gallup, Democratic voters have shifted more to the left than Republican voters have to the right. In 1994, the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, 25 percent of Democrats thought of themselves as liberal and the same share—25 percent—called themselves conservative. A strong plurality of Democrats—48 percent—identified as moderate.
By 2022, the second year of Joe Biden’s presidency, the picture had entirely changed. An outright majority of Democrats—54 percent—now called themselves liberal, while the share of conservatives fell to just 10 percent. Moderates, who once outnumbered the party’s liberals by 23 percentage points, now trailed them by 18 points.
The Republican Party has changed far less during this period, largely because it has long been more ideologically homogeneous at the grassroots. In 1994, 58 percent of Republicans were conservative, a figure that rose to 72 percent in 2022. During these three decades, Republican moderates fell from 33 to 22 percent while Republican liberals (already an endangered species in the early 1990s), declined from eight percent to just five percent.
For Democrats, the ideological changes have varied significantly along racial and ethnic lines. In 1994, White, Black, and Hispanic Democrats were equally likely to think of themselves as liberal. But during the next three decades, the share of White Democrats who identify as liberal rose by 37 points, from 26 to 63 percent, while Black and Hispanic Democrats rose by less than half as much, to 39 and 41 percent, respectively.
The outcome: unlike three decades ago, the Democrat Party is now a coalition of White Liberals and non-white voters the majority of whom think of themselves as moderate or conservative. It is not a coincidence that the majority of Whites who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 rarely if ever attend church, while more than 90 percent of Black Biden supporters attend monthly or more. Nor was it an anomaly that the mostly Black primary voters in South Carolina backed Joe Biden, the most moderate Democratic candidate in 2020, propelling him to victory in the 2020 contest for the presidential nomination.
The analysis for Hispanics is more complex. Most attend religious services regularly, but Hispanic Catholics are more likely to identify with Democrats than are Hispanic evangelicals, whose share of the Hispanic vote has been increasing significantly. We also know that Hispanics are skeptical of parties they regard as increasingly liberal and conservative. In a survey released on January 18, 2023, 46 percent of Hispanic voters said that the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, compared to 41 percent who said that the Republican Party has moved too far to the right. These figures mirror the electorate as a whole—more evidence that Hispanics are becoming a swing vote rather than a reliable pillar of the Democratic base.
This analysis of ideological change within the parties leaves several questions unanswered. Many voters are liberal on economic issues but conservative on cultural issues, or vice versa. When such voters identify themselves ideologically, it is not always clear which element of their outlook is taking priority. Nor is it clear that the meaning of ideological labels has remained constant over time.
Still, there is a close and enduring relationship between ideological self-identification and voting patterns. Almost all liberals will vote for Democrats and conservatives for Republicans, while moderates are more likely to shift between parties based on the specific choices they confront. Hillary Clinton received just 52 percent of the moderate vote in her 2016 defeat while Joe Biden garnered 64 percent in his 2020 victory. Because almost 4 in 10 voters are moderates, their votes are often decisive.
Although the analysis of party coalitions through the lens of ideology is imperfect, it helps reveal the structure of party competition, and it explains why going too far in one direction or the other can diminish a party’s chances of winning, as it did in 2020 and in key state races in 2022.
By Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Ph.D
After a highly stable first year in office, the Biden administration experienced a substantial increase in senior staff turnover. The significant uptick in “A-Team” departures moved from five individuals departing in year one to 21 in year two. Though the increase itself is not surprising — all administrations but one since 1981 experienced an uptick in second year “A-Team” departures — the magnitude of the increase is noteworthy.[1] The second-year turnover in the Biden “A-Team” was the second highest (32%) behind Ronald Reagan at 40%. Combining year one and year two, the Biden turnover rate (40%) is the third highest behind Presidents Trump (66%) and Reagan (57%).
The year, 2022, was challenge-filled for the Biden administration: rising inflation, continued struggles with COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a preternaturally slow confirmation process and fears of a “red wave” rolling over the midterm elections. At the same time, the administration lay claim to important legislative victories on gun safety, semi-conductor manufacturing (CHIPS), prescription drug costs, climate change, and the historic swearing-in of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. In addition, the Biden administration’s coalition-building efforts in support of Ukraine have remained robust so far despite the Russian onslaught. None of Biden’s successes could have occurred without the efforts of presidential appointees. This study focuses primarily on turnover in the president’s “A-Team,” defined as 66 senior executive office positions within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). These individuals occupy highly influential positions and do so at the pleasure of the president. Examining the comings and goings of these staff members teaches us something about the functioning of the presidency.
Thinking about Senior Staff TurnoverCounting staff departures is a tricky, painstaking endeavor. For the purposes of my research, turnover refers to vacancies created through promotion, resignation, or firing. Any of these movements cause disruption and reduce efficiency since they require White House resources (e.g., hiring, vetting, training, on-boarding). In addition, there is the added burden on staff members who remain, but often take on additional work when staff members depart. High-level staff departures may also have ripple effects and result in lower-level departures within a single office. Junior staff members may depart because they were specifically brought in by their departing boss, or the successor may wish to “clean house” and start with a favored set of individuals. Organizational fallout, in short, may extend well beyond a single departed individual. Those who serve on the “A-Team” are, by definition, critical participants in the working of the presidency, such that any departure affects presidential operations.
Perhaps more importantly, “A-Team” members possess important relations across the government, among key constituents, interest groups, the media, party organizations and others. Broadly speaking, the central role of the modern White House is promotion and coordination, illustrating the importance of external professional relationships. These relationships are simply invaluable. Any successor will need to devote time to re-establish these critical relationships — essentially reinventing the wheel and ultimately reducing the efficiency of White House operations.
MethodologyInitially, I relied on a single source to determine who among the many White House staff members are most influential: “Decision Maker” editions of the National Journal. From 1981-2009, the National Journal published a special edition at the start of each new administration titled “Decision Makers”. They assigned a group of reporters to identify the most influential staff members in the new administration. Once published, the volume included formal titles, short biographies, and headshots of most of these staff members. The five editions published over the course of 28 years included an average of 60 staff members from the Executive Office of the President (“EOP”), and identified individuals working in the White House Office, the National Security Council, Office of Management and Budget, Council of Economic Advisers, members of the vice president’s office and the U.S. Trade Representative Office, among other entities. Of course, there is variation across administrations in terms of positions selected, but most were recurring. Using this data set of high-ranking presidential staff, I then relied on a variety of web resources, personal interviews, and journalistic accounts to track tenure.
The National Journal stopped publishing this special edition after the Obama administration, at which point I partnered with Bloomberg journalist Madison Alder. In 2017, we collaborated to identify “A-Team” members in the new Trump administration. We systematically compiled every job title in the five editions, noted the frequency with which it was included, and then analyzed the Trump appointments based on the criteria (noted above). It is also important to note that the National Journal’s successive editions included new positions (19 on average), so we added 19 unique positions among the Trump presidential staff. Such a development is not surprising since new presidents like to put their own imprint on the institution or respond to a new crisis or issue by establishing a new office or senior adviser position.[2] I utilized the same approach to create a list of “Decision Makers” for the Biden administration in 2021: matching staff positions to those identified by the National Journal and identifying significant new positions.
A look at the dataLooking at the cumulative turnover after 24 months in office, turnover among the Biden advisers (40%) ranks a distant third behind Ronald Reagan at 57% and Donald Trump at 66%. In sharp contrast, the Obama team had a 24% turnover rate after the first two years in office, and President George H.W. Bush had a 25% turnover rate.
Analyzing turnover from a different vantage point by focusing solely on year two, turnover among the Biden presidential advisers was 32% (or 21 individuals) and ranks second highest behind Ronald Reagan with 40%. Close behind President Biden was President Trump’s second year turnover at 31%, a four percent drop from year one’s record-shattering 35% turnover. Of the 21 individuals contributing to the turnover figure, 17 resigned for a variety of reasons, three were promoted and one resigned under pressure (Office of Science and Technology Director, Eric Lander). This forced resignation may have been the most dramatic of the lot since he resigned, apologizing for verbal abuse of subordinates. His forced resignation was the second of this type under Biden.[3]
A closer look at the 21 Biden “A-Team” departures revealed big names like White House Counsel, Dana Remus; Counselor to the President and Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response, Jeff Zients; Press Secretary, Jen Psaki; and National Climate Advisor, Gina McCarthy. Other critical departures included Assistant to the President and Director of Management and Administration, Anne Filipic. This role has been described as the “administrative backbone” of the White House, and despite the non-policy nature of this position, strong leadership in this office is critical to an administration’s success.
While most of the departures were spread throughout the White House and in key offices of the EOP, there was a significant exodus of senior lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office. Though key departures began in January of 2022 with the departure of Jonathan Cedarbaum, Deputy Counsel to the President and Legal Advisor to the National Security Council, the subsequent departure of White House Counsel, Dana Remus, may have precipitated the departure of two of the three remaining Deputy White House Counsels (Jonathan Su and Danielle Conley). The Remus resignation allowed for the promotion of remaining Deputy White House Counsel, Stuart Delery, to become White House Counsel. Though news accounts did not provide a specific reason for the White House Counsel’s departure after 17 months, her role during the presidential campaign, the contested election battle after the 2020 election, and almost a year and a half in the White House likely took their toll.
Explaining the uptickRecall that first year turnover among Biden’s key advisers was one of the lowest, which may have indeed laid the groundwork for a larger uptick than normal during the second year. The reasons for departures are varied (e.g., burnout, more lucrative opportunities in the private sector, a need to move back to one’s home state or a promotion within the executive branch among other reasons), but departures are often the result of cumulative exhaustion (e.g., a hard-fought campaign, a contested election battle, a truncated transition and a challenging first year).
With the better-than-expected midterm election results in the rearview mirror, the new White House preoccupation will be the president’s quest for reelection. No doubt, this quest will be front and center in the mind of the president and many senior advisers, as it has been for prior presidents.[4] Every presidential movement and word will be evaluated with an eye toward its impact on the reelection campaign. In addition, 2022 news stories about the potential departures of three high-level advisers — Ron Klain (Chief of Staff), Cecilia Rouse (Chair, Council of Economic Advisers) and Brian Deese (Director of the National Economic Council) — suggest that the level of turnover will be on the rise. The intensified focus on politics at the cost of policy may encourage some policy-oriented staff members to move on. At the same time, those focused on political outreach (think Office of Public Engagement and Political Strategy and Outreach) often move to the reelection campaign where their political skills can serve the president well (e.g., the 2018 departures of Political Director Bill Stepien and Public Liaison Director Justin Clark, the 2011 departures of Senior Advisor to the President David Axelrod, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs). The bottom-line is that with cumulative staff turnover at 40%, there is a good chance that by the end of year three, over 50% of the “A-Team” will have moved on. Time will tell and speculating is always risky, but given the experience of the six prior presidents, the White House Presidential Personnel Office may want to begin vetting so they can fill some high-level vacancies.
[1] The one exception was President Trump whose first-year turnover rate was an outlier (35%), and while there was a decline in the second year, it was only down four points (31%).
[2] For example, a new addition at the start of the Biden administration was the emergence of a “Covid-19 Response Team” to oversee vaccine implementation, federal prevention efforts and other pandemic-related tasks designed to develop a comprehensive government response.
[3] The other resignation under pressure was Deputy Press Secretary, TJ Ducklo, in February 2021.
[4] See Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the President’s Campaign, NY: Routledge, 2003 (paperback).
By Izzy Taylor
In 2022, experts at Brookings Global studied myriad issues affecting the global economy and development. In our first ever Global Lookback, I sat down with and recorded 14 fellows as they discussed the research, events, and publications that had the most impact—as well as their insight on the most meaningful work to come in the new year.
Vice President and Director Brahima S. Coulibaly kicked us off with an overview of the challenges Global scholars sought to address in 2022—from guiding post-pandemic economic recovery and avoiding a sovereign debt crisis to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and transforming education.
As we count down to 2023, Brookings Global is looking back on our accomplishments.
Vice President @bsangafowacoul kicks off our #GlobalLookback2022—join us in the coming weeks as our scholars recap their proudest moments in 2022. pic.twitter.com/ZpRyMFfq4C
— Brookings Global (@BrookingsGlobal) December 19, 2022
Africa Growth InitiativeThis past year, scholars from the Africa Growth Initiative emphasized the importance of including African voices in global debates. Director Aloysius Uche Ordu reflected on convening with senior policymakers from select African countries on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF’s annual meetings, while Landry Signe lent his expertise on trade policy to the United States Congress and the World Trade Organization, among others. Keep an eye out for the upcoming 2023 edition of Foresight Africa, which will provide more insight from these scholars and more concerning the most pressing policy considerations on the continent.
The Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings had a remarkable 2022. @Aloysiusordu looks back on a high-profile convening, speaks about the importance of featuring diverse African voices, and teases the new edition of #ForesightAfrica coming in 2023. #GlobalLookback2022 pic.twitter.com/0NoAia4jvA
— Brookings Global (@BrookingsGlobal) December 20, 2022
Center for Sustainable DevelopmentIn 2022, the Center for Sustainable Development saw major success in Tony Pipa’s work on rural communities in the United States and the Reimagine Rural podcast. Climate change also took a prominent place this year—both Homi Kharas and Amar Bhattacharya focused their research efforts on climate policy, particularly the central role of developing countries and the urgent need for climate finance. Their upcoming edited volume, releasing this year, will shed more light on this increasingly vital subject. Center Director John McArthur discussed furthering progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the 17 Rooms initiative. With 2023 marking the midpoint of the SDG timeline, many of our scholars pointed to the necessity of a renewed, global focus on the SDGs in 2023. McArthur also highlighted the center’s deepened focus on gender equality as a core task of sustainable development.
.@mcarthur—director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings—reflects on the #17Rooms initiative, the importance of gender equity in sustainable development, and looks ahead to 2023. #GlobalLookback2022 pic.twitter.com/KX3rb0PuWz
— Brookings Global (@BrookingsGlobal) December 22, 2022
Center for Universal EducationAs the Center for Universal Education celebrated its 20th anniversary, Deputy Director Jennifer O’Donoghue stressed the value of collaboration with stakeholders of all levels and localities in transforming education systems. The year’s successes reflect this holistic view: Helen Hadani worked to make cities worldwide centers for accessible learning, while Omar Qargha’s work on financial literacy in Jordan emphasized local involvement for sustainable scaling to the national level. In 2023, Emily Morris looks forward to the conclusion of a 15-year study following students in Zanzibar, Tanzania, to identify sources of and barriers to their success.
Last year, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings celebrated its 20th anniversary.
As part of our #GlobalLookback2022, @jennodjod recaps the important lessons learned from two decades of work that the center is bringing into 2023. pic.twitter.com/DEgO7UOSIr
— Brookings Global (@BrookingsGlobal) December 21, 2022
Elsewhere in Global, fellows narrowed in on specific areas of interest. Danielle Resnick continued her work on food systems transformation in Africa. Zia Qureshi analyzed how technological change is shaping economies and policies. And Carol Graham delved into the benefits of investing in brain capital for public health and economic growth.
Our scholars collaborated across policy areas to produce over 350 works in 2022 focused on enhancing global development. We’re looking forward to an even better 2023.
Find the full set of interviews on Twitter using #GlobalLookback2022.
By Elijah Asdourian, James Lee, Nasiha Salwati, David Wessel
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Saved commute time provides substantial benefits to those working from homeIn a survey of workers and employers across 27 countries, Cevat Giray Aksoy of King’s College London and co-authors find that workers saved an average of two hours of commute time per week in 2021 and 2022. These savings were concentrated among people who had the option to work from home, who saved an average of 72 minutes per day. Workers reallocated 40% of their saved time to working, 34% to leisure, and 11% to caregiving activities. In the United States, the highly educated saved the most commute time, though they also had the longest commutes to start with. Employers reported that work from home will be cut in half when the COVID-19 pandemic ends, bringing the average saved commute time down to one hour per worker. Still, the authors estimate that even this amount of time saved will be worth 2.2% of after-tax earnings for the average American worker.
Measurement error does not fully account for the slowdown in construction productivityAustan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago find that several measures of productivity in the U.S. construction sector have declined over the 1970-2020 period, challenging the view that the recorded productivity declines have been solely due to measurement error. Using physical measures of residential construction activity such as housing units per worker, the authors find that productivity in the residential construction industry has been stagnant in recent decades. Real output in the construction sector has not kept up with its use of intermediate goods, suggesting a decline in the sector’s ability to transform intermediates into finished products. The authors also find that U.S. states with more productive construction sectors do not experience growth in their share of total construction activity, suggesting that misallocation (where inputs do not flow from low-productivity to high-productivity places) may be further contributing to the slowdown in aggregate productivity.
Fiscal support led to inflationFiscal support during the early stages of the pandemic led to inflation, according to Galina Hale of the University of California, Santa Cruz, John Leer of Morning Consult, and Fernanda Nechio of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Using data from 10 different advanced and emerging economies, the authors show that a fiscal support package totaling 10% of GDP increased inflation by 40 basis points 3 months after announcement. This effect rose to 60 basis points if consumer sentiment was rising at the time. Fiscal support measures to consumers had inflationary effects while those to firms did not, the authors report. The authors’ results do not explain the high levels of inflation occurring from mid-2021 onwards, as fiscal support announcements took place when economies were largely shut down.
Chart of the week: Global trade no longer rising as a share of overall economic activityChart courtesy of the Wall Street Journal
Quote of the week:“[M]y own view is that we’re going to have to get the funds rate above 5% in order to get inflation, really on a sustained downward path to 2%. 2%, of course, is our long-run goal … That doesn’t mean we have to keep increasing interest rates until inflation reaches 2%. Because we have to realize that our policy actions do affect the economy with some lag. But we’re just at the start of a restrictive policy stance and I think we need to be higher than current levels in terms of the funds rate,” says Loretta Mester, President of the Cleveland Fed.
“I do take encouragement for the fact that we’re starting to see policy actions affect demand, right, because — what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to set our monetary policy to get demand into better alignment with supply. We know that both in product markets and labor markets demand has been well above supply. We’re starting to see that, we’re starting to see some slowing, especially in the mortgage market, the housing market, because of higher mortgage rates. We’re seeing it in some manufacturing conditions are easing off. We still have some ways to go. And that’s why I think we’ve made a lot of progress on the funds rate. I do believe we need to keep going a little bit more to get to a sufficiently restrictive stance so that we can get that inflation really sustaining — on a sustainable path to 2%. But at least we see now that policy is having the intended effect.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Leonard Burman, William G. Gale
There is a legal maximum on how much debt the federal government can accumulate—often called the “debt ceiling” or the “debt limit.” According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the government will hit the current limit in a few days. Using a variety of accounting tricks (like temporarily diverting government pension funds), the government can postpone the day when it cannot pay its bills but only for a few months. Congress and the administration therefore face the following questions: whether to raise the debt limit, by how much, and what, if any, conditions to attach.
Citizens and the media misunderstand the issues surrounding the debt limit. Policymakers often fuel this misunderstanding with misleading statements that distort the debate.
The issue is really quite simple. The debt limit doesn’t cause the debt any more than a thermometer causes a fever. Debt grows when spending exceeds revenues. That’s it.
Congress should abolish the debt limit and replace it with the simple, common- sense rule that automatically authorizes any borrowing necessary to implement any fiscal legislation that affects the federal deficit. This “Gephardt rule” was in place at various times in the past.
Raising the debt limit is not about new spending; it is about paying for previous choices policymakers legislated.
Here are seven things to understand about the debt limit and why it is unnecessary and obstructive.
- The debt limit has been raised continually for more than a century. The first debt limit was established in 1917 to make it easier to finance mobilization efforts in World War I. Before that, Congress generally had to authorize each bond issue. The limit has been raised 78 times since 1960, including 20 times since 2001. Congress usually raises (or suspends) the debt limit before it is reached. Along the way, the party out of power demagogues the debt limit, blaming the other party for its profligacy.
- Raising the debt limit is not about new spending; it is about paying for previous choices policymakers legislated. Voters often incorrectly assume—and lawmakers often incorrectly assert—that a vote to raise the debt ceiling is a vote for more red ink. In fact, raising the debt limit is about paying for past choices. Debt limit debates are about whether Congress should authorize the government to borrow to pay for spending that Congress has already authorized. Oddly enough, when Congress authorizes new spending and new taxes, it does not automatically authorize the borrowing needed to make up any difference. Arguing about increasing the debt limit is like having a person charge vacation expenses to his credit card and then debate whether he should pay the credit card company when the bill comes due.
- The uselessness of a debt limit is exhibited by the fact that only one other advanced country—Denmark—has a separate debt limit rule like ours. And they don’t use it as a political football.
- The limit (inappropriately) applies to gross federal debt. The debt limit applies to gross debt: the sum of net debt plus intragovernmental loans. Net debt is what the government owes the public—including investors, pension funds, and domestic or foreign central banks. It is the measure that economists consider to be important. Intragovernmental debt is what one part of the government owes another part. Because it is akin to your right pocket owing your left pocket money, intragovernmental debt is irrelevant to the nation’s fiscal health. Thus, gross debt is a legal concept with little economic significance. Sadly, the popular discussion—even among many so-called experts—sometimes focuses on gross debt, because the bigger number is more eye-catching (although net debt, at around $24.5 trillion, is still pretty big). At the beginning of 2023, about $6.8 trillion (approximately 22% of debt subject to the limit is intragovernmental debt.
- If debt hits the ceiling, the Treasury Department uses several accounting gimmicks to postpone the day of reckoning, but these typically last only a few months. At that point, the government would have to default on interest payments or other obligations—for example, military pay, Social Security and Medicare, tax refunds, or other safety net payments. The law is unclear about which claims are senior. Nor is it clear who has the right to determine seniority. Legislation could set priorities, but any such prioritization would be tested in court. And even if bondholders were paid, not paying all the claims would constitute default, just with a different name, and incur costs for the government.
- If the debt limit were not raised, the amount of spending cuts or tax increases that would be required would equal $1.5 trillion this year and $14 trillion over the next 10 years. For perspective, these figures are larger than total defense spending over the same periods of time. And if there were a default, interest rates would rise, increasing deficits and requiring even larger tax and spending changes.
- The economic consequences of a large-scale, intentional default are unknown, but predictions range from bad to catastrophic. In 1979, an inadvertent temporary partial debt default occurred because of an administrative error; it raised U.S. borrowing costs by $40 billion (in today’s dollars). This was an accidental default on a small batch of Treasury securities, but it spooked investors enough to raise interest payments significantly. An intentional, large-scale default has never happened because in the past it has been unthinkable. To do so now would be to play with fire and risk the United States’ charmed position as a “risk-free borrower” in global credit markets.
The debt limit debates of recent years raised interest rates. Higher interest rates would make solving the long-term fiscal problem harder, not easier, and have ramifications across many sectors of the economy. Net interest payments are already expected to explode over the next 10 years and beyond. Because government bond rates are used, contractually, to determine other interest rates, other interest rates would rise as well. More generally, Treasuries might never again be considered a safe haven. This could generate a variety of additional issues. Banks might classify Treasury holdings as non-performing assets. Some Money Market Mutual Funds would “break the buck”—i.e., fall in nominal value—which could create havoc (as it did in 2008). Some or all federal entities could lose their AAA borrowing status. In general, the disruption to the cornerstone of modern financial markets could have ramifications for the global economy, just as the financial crisis of 2008 spread to the overall economy. With the economy currently teetering on the brink of recession, it would be foolhardy to risk a new worldwide financial panic now.
ConclusionA desire to change the course of fiscal policy should be manifested in new Congressional initiatives to change the course of future spending and taxes, not in Congressional refusal to pay bills that have arisen from previous Congressional action.
Congress should abolish the debt limit and reinstate the Gephardt Rule so that when new legislation adds to the federal deficit, Congress automatically approves the borrowing needed to finance the new legislation.
Since we know we are going to have to address the limit anyway, why not do it without creating economic damage?
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Rachel M. Perera, Melissa Kay Diliberti
As U.S. criminal justice policies came to reflect the “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1990s, so too did school discipline policies. The “broken windows” philosophy—which encouraged harsh punishments for even minor infractions to dissuade individuals from committing more serious offenses—characterized schools’ use of zero-tolerance policies. These policies required educators to suspend or expel students for certain types of infractions, often including low-level, nonviolent offenses.
In this context, schools’ use of suspensions and expulsions—practices commonly referred to as exclusionary discipline—grew, particularly in secondary schools and schools serving higher shares of Black and Latino youth. Notably, the sharp increase in suspensions observed in the 1990s and early 2000s was driven by increases among students of color. As a result, racial inequalities in student discipline widened significantly.
Over the last decade, a flurry of policy activity has aimed to curb schools’ use of exclusionary discipline practices in favor of less punitive approaches that keep kids in school. Some states (e.g., California, Arkansas, and Oregon) and school districts (e.g., Los Angeles Unified, School District of Philadelphia, and Chicago Public Schools) have revised policies to limit the use of suspensions for certain low-level, nonviolent offenses (especially in elementary grades). And growing numbers of schools have adopted alternative discipline practices like restorative justice programs and behavioral interventions (e.g., Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports).
These are positive developments. Research has shown that some of these alternative approaches can reduce the prevalence of exclusionary discipline. (Although, research is mixed as to whether these approaches can reduce racial inequalities.) Moreover, other work suggests that some alternatives to exclusionary discipline can have positive effects on student and teacher perceptions of school safety.
How widespread are recent efforts to reform school discipline? Because public education in the U.S. is highly decentralized, our understanding of the landscape of schools’ discipline policies and practices is limited. Do zero-tolerance policies remain prevalent today? And how common have alternative approaches to student discipline become?
To find out, we and colleagues at the RAND Corporation surveyed 1,080 public school principals across the U.S. in November 2021 using RAND’s nationally representative American School Leader Panel. Among other topics, we asked principals whether their school had zero-tolerance discipline policies and whether their school’s policies allow them to suspend students for low-level offenses like willful defiance. We also asked principals about their use of alternative approaches to exclusionary discipline. Because we know that schools’ disciplinary approaches have historically varied by grade level and schools’ racial/ethnic makeup, we consider how principals’ responses to our survey differed by their school context.[1]
Zero-tolerance policies remain prevalent, but only for the most serious offensesA majority (62%) of U.S. public schools had zero-tolerance policies—or mandatory penalties for students who break certain rules—in place during the 2021–2022 school year (see Figure 1). Overall, zero-tolerance policies remain more common in secondary (middle/high) schools than elementary schools. At the elementary level, schools with different racial/ethnic populations were roughly equally likely to have zero-tolerance policies. But at the secondary level, stark differences emerged. Relative to secondary schools with mostly white populations, schools serving mostly Black students were much more likely to have zero-tolerance policies (82% compared to 68%). This concerning pattern is consistent with prior research.
Among schools with zero-tolerance discipline policies in 2021-2022, most only applied to more serious offenses like bringing a weapon to school. This is unsurprising given that zero-tolerance policies were originally intended to quell drug and gun possession in schools. Almost all schools (98%) with zero-tolerance policies said the policies covered infractions involving guns, and 80% said their policies covered knives. Meanwhile, 85% said their zero-tolerance policies extended to possession of illegal drugs. Importantly, however, among schools with zero-tolerance policies, a small share (6%) continues to include low-level, nonviolent offenses like willful defiance.
Suspensions for willful defiance and disobedience remain commonWillful defiance and disobedience are categories of low-level, nonviolent offenses that can include misbehaviors like talking back to a teacher or not listening to a teacher’s instructions. Despite recent policy movement in some areas of the country, most schools (76%) continued to allow educators to suspend students for these types of offenses in 2021–2022 (see Figure 2). Overall, this practice was more common in secondary schools than in elementary schools. This pattern is consistent both with our understanding of the policy activity around student discipline (which has been focused more on limiting suspensions for students in elementary grades), and with prior work showing heightened levels of discipline in middle and high school grades.
There were also interesting differences by schools’ racial/ethnic makeup. Schools with student populations that were neither majority white nor majority Black in 2021–2022 were less likely to allow suspensions for willful defiance and disobedience than schools that were either majority white or majority Black.
Large shares of schools have adopted alternative approaches to exclusionary disciplineFinally, we gauged the prevalence of four popular alternative approaches to exclusionary discipline in U.S. public schools. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, is a program that aims to define schoolwide behavioral expectations and norms. It rewards students who meet those expectations while providing supports to students who do not meet them. Restorative justice programs and practices aim to cultivate a more inclusive and equitable school climate by supporting students and educators in developing conflict resolution skills. Social emotional learning (SEL) programs and multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) are programs broadly related to improving school climate and preventing student behavioral challenges.
Interestingly, principals reported that all four alternative approaches were widely used in U.S. public schools in 2021–2022 (Figure 3). However, the prevalence varied by school context. All programs except restorative justice practices were more common in elementary schools than in secondary schools. At the secondary level, the prevalence of these programs relates to the racial/ethnic composition of the school. For example, SEL programs were far less common in secondary schools with majority Black student populations in 2021–2022.
More work is needed to document schools’ disciplinary policies and practicesResults from our national survey of school principals suggest that the “broken windows” era of school discipline may be waning. Where zero-tolerance policies remain, they tend to cover only the most serious offenses like bringing a gun or other weapon to school. Still, though, large shares of schools continue to allow educators to suspend students for low-level, nonviolent behaviors. Importantly, it remains unclear from our work whether suspensions for these types of offenses remain prevalent. More work is needed to understand how schools’ disciplinary practices have shifted during this period.
What schools replace punitive discipline approaches with matters, especially since we know that managing student behavior and discipline are aspects of teaching that most educators struggle with. Our data suggest that most public schools are investing in alternative approaches to exclusionary discipline.
Given what we know about the harmful outcomes associated with suspensions and the racially disparate impact of exclusionary discipline policies and practices, it is imperative that researchers continue to track how schools are approaching student discipline and how various approaches impact student outcomes and equity.
Conflict of Interest
Rachel M. Perera is an alumna of the Pardee RAND Graduate School and a past employee of the RAND corporation during which time she completed the majority of her contribution to this project. Perera remains an adjunct policy researcher with the RAND corporation and received financial support from RAND to complete this project. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions or policies of the RAND Corporation, Brookings Institution, its officers, employees or other donors. Brookings is committed to quality, independence, and impact in all of its work.
Footnotes:
[1] In addition to the questions about school discipline policies and practices we discuss in this post, our survey included potentially sensitive questions about respondents’ racial attitudes. To ensure that individuals could not be identified in our survey data, we obtained only limited information about schools’ student demographics and contexts. Therefore, we report our results by school racial/ethnic composition using a categorical variable with three groups: “Mostly Black,” “Mostly White”, and “Neither” (where the “Neither” category represents schools that are neither majority Black nor majority white). Because “Mostly Black” schools represent a small share of U.S. public schools, we note that our sample sizes for this subgroup—at both the elementary and secondary levels—are smaller than for the other subgroups. Thus, we encourage readers to interpret these results with some caution. While we do not know the specific racial/ethnic breakdown among students in the schools categorized as “Neither,” we estimate this group is comprised of roughly half schools that are majority Latino and half schools in which none of these racial/ethnic groups comprise a majority based on patterns we observe among the national population of U.S. public schools. (Back to top)
By Brad McNally, Marcos Melendez, Jason Wolff
It has been nearly 50 years since the United States moved away from drafting members into military service. Since the Vietnam War ended, an all-volunteer force has kept America safe at home and abroad. During this period, volunteer numbers for military service have seen ups and downs, but recent reports indicate we may be near a historical low point for interest in military service.
Although some services report more significant challenges in recruiting than others, all need help to recruit enough members to sustain active duty and reserve numbers. The Army is the worst off, missing its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goal by 25%, and may need to cut its overall force size by 10,000 personnel in 2023 due to a lack of accessions. The Navy did better, falling short by only several hundred personnel. The Air Force and Marine Corps met 2022 numbers but only by dipping into pools of deferred candidates who would have typically entered service in 2023, putting both services at a deficit to start the new year. Compounding all of this is the fact that Reserve and National Guard forces, which augment the active-duty force, are also struggling to recruit.
With little intervention, numbers will decrease even more due to the lack of qualified candidates willing to volunteer for military service. Fewer qualified candidates will have significant implications for national security and fixing the problem will require significant changes.
The time to act is now, and there are two options. One is instituting nationally required service, like in other countries worldwide. Service could take several forms, from compulsory military service, akin to previous drafts, to compulsory civil service, with military service being one option. While national service of any form should be encouraged, two data points should lead us away from the required service option. Periods when the United States forced people into military service during previous conflicts, and the impacts on both the military forces and the public’s support of the military, should cause concern. To be clear, many Americans drafted into the military served honorably and rightfully deserved recognition from a grateful nation but never received it in some cases. However, sending military members compelled to serve into harm’s way is much different from sending people that are volunteering to serve.
Second, it would be unwise not to take notice of the recent challenges on the battlefield and domestically in Russia, as Russians are forced into military service in Ukraine. Although direct comparisons between the United States and Russia are challenging and each situation unique, people could expect comparable results with forced military service in any country. From a practical standpoint, compulsory military service is extremely likely to have significant pushback from the general population, become highly divisive, and is unlikely to be implemented nationally. Should the United States be involved in a major war, reinstating the draft may be necessary. Short of total war, the all-volunteer force, which has ensured safety and prosperity for the past 50 years, should be maintained at all costs.
We must revamp military accessions and recruiting based on practicality and necessary force effectiveness. With only 25% of the target population for military service able to meet accession standards, the services compete with each other and private industry for the same talent. There are two ways to address this issue: either change the requirements so more people are eligible or make more people able to meet the requirements. Pursue both in short order.
To be clear, do not lower the standards arbitrarily to increase accessions. However, the military services should more frequently review the standards. Examples of this include the Navy recently raising its age limit and the Air Force revisiting if a failed drug test is an ultimate disqualifier. In both cases, current dismissed candidates could become viable candidates with additional screening. Adjusting the standards in both directions should be an ongoing process.
The military has historically relied upon available eligible candidates and has not done much to make candidates eligible. This approach no longer works, and a key component to saving the all-volunteer force will be finding ways to make ineligible candidates who still want to volunteer become eligible. Body weight and aptitude are two areas where motivated candidates with help have now met the requirements through the Army’s Future Soldiers Preparatory Course, a pilot pre-boot camp course designed to address these issues. The services must consider these added costs for an all-volunteer force with volunteers in short supply.
Initial assessments of the Army initiative are positive, and expanding this program should be done nationally. The Department of Defense could run this program more efficiently than having every service run a separate program. Successful graduates would still proceed to service-specific accession points. For members facing body weight issues, implementing a program through a national fitness chain using in-person or virtual coaching might also reduce costs associated with housing and transportation.
A significant impact of the pandemic diminished access to potential recruits and the visibility of recruiters in the community. High schools and public gatherings closed or moved to virtual environments, making it harder for recruiters to attend school and community events. Rebuilding recruiting networks will require additional time, resources, personnel, and access to high schools, colleges, and public gatherings. The COVID-19 restrictions have eased, but all the services appear slow to send more recruiters to the field and open more recruiting offices. Recruiters need more locations than they currently have. If the nearest recruiting office is an hour away, it will impede recruiters from connecting with communities and building quality relationships. Overcoming this will require more people in the field and more field offices. One solution could be having Guard, Reserve, and active duty service branches in the same offices and establishing more recruiting centers driving down overall costs.
While GI Bill benefits are a tremendous incentive for military service, many private entities are now offering education assistance to their employees. GI Bill benefits do little for potential recruits who have already incurred student loans before joining the military. The Navy offers up to $65,000 in student loan repayments for new recruits. The other services could follow this approach. Enlistment bonuses are up to $50,000 in some cases, which may help get more volunteers interested in military service, but this cannot be the long-term solution to military recruiting challenges.
Military recruiters must find new ways to market the benefits of military service better. Historically, this involved recruiting videos and posters appealing to a sense of adventure and camaraderie. We should not completely abandon this approach. However, the benefits the military recruiters must emphasize are medical care, educational opportunities, and the blended retirement system’s post-service financial benefits, short of full military retirement. People care about these things, which have been historically underappreciated in our society and not marketed well.
In 2019, Congress granted the service secretaries the authority to award career credit to highly qualified civilians and enable lateral entry into service as a mid-grade officer. Each service will approach this authority differently by the nature of its differing missions. However, the lateral entry initiative illustrates the types of solutions and flexibility necessary to address the current recruiting challenges.
Last, the military services should, in parallel, look at ways to retain more members in the service, both active and reserve. These are members who have already volunteered and in whom the United States has invested significant resources to train and equip. Every member who remains in the service decreases the need for new recruits and defers the cost of training a recruit. The most vivid example of this “recruit and replace” model is the Marine Corps, which annually discharges roughly 75% of first-term enlistment Marines, driving a yearly recruiting goal of more than 30,000 personnel for a 172,000-person force.
Making continued service more attractive is difficult, as no single issue causes members to leave the military. While recent 2022 midyear housing allowance adjustments and 2023 pay raises are helpful, more than pay alone is needed to win the retention battle. The military must also continue efforts to improve housing, provide childcare, address sexual assault, and make educational benefits more accessible. Initiatives acknowledging evolving demographics and generational expectations through extended parental leave, offering career intermission options, and reduced frequency of military moves also deserve consideration. There is much that can be done to improve military service satisfaction by reducing time consuming administrative burdens, decreasing cumbersome procurement requirements, and facilitating easier access to family and medical care. Although hard to quantify, these issues go a long way in improving quality of life and giving members more reasons to join or stay in the military. Military and civilian leaders at all levels impact recruiting and retention and now is the time for bold action to save and sustain the all-volunteer force.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government or the Brookings Institution.
By Scott Englund
Shortly after sunset on Saturday, December 3, 2022, two electric transformers in Moore County, North Carolina were repeatedly shot, leaving nearly 40,000 people without power. The local utility estimated that several thousand customers would remain in the dark for days, as nighttime temperatures fell below freezing. In a similar attack on April 16, 2013, the Metcalf Pacific Gas and Electric substation in Coyote, California was disabled when unidentified snipers fired more than 100 rounds at transformers and a container storing oil used to cool equipment, cutting power to thousands of people and causing an estimated $15 million in damage.
A motive for the December 2022 attack has not yet been established. Yet, it offers important lessons about the persistence of domestic terrorism, the vulnerability of U.S. infrastructure to attacks, and the need for imaginative counterterror efforts against a diversifying threat that includes new perpetrators and targets. The new 2021 National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism has been a promising development.
The logic of terrorismThe concept of “terrorism” seems straightforward, yet a precise definition is the subject of debate. It is widely accepted to include violence or the threat of violence, toward some political, social, or religious end. Though terrorism is coercive, the targets of an attack are not necessarily the intended targets of the coercion. Targets of terror frequently did nothing to become a target, and could not avoid being a target. If people begin to question the state’s competence in protecting the public, or change their behavior in an attempt to avoid being targeted, those reactions are part of the logic of terrorist violence.
A recent online publication by an “accelerationist” group (white supremacists who wish to hasten the downfall of the current socio-political structure) encouraged readers to select targets “that do the most damage to the system and spark revolution and chaos. So long as the power turns on, the status quo, the downward decline of our race, and the increase in nonwhites in our lands will carry on unhindered.” The intention is to hasten social collapse.
The White House’s first National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism assesses that the current threat comes from, in part, “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” whose ideologies are “rooted in a perception of the superiority of the white race that calls for violence in furtherance of perverse and abhorrent notions of racial ‘purity’ or ‘cleansing’.” The inevitability of a coming purification of society, and a restoration of fundamental truths leaves no space for half measures. This apocalyptic narrative has been espoused by groups as diverse as the Shining Path of Peru, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan.
Infrastructure vulnerabilityU.S. infrastructure is vulnerable, and effective attacks need not be sophisticated. The December 2022 attack on the North Carolina power grid could have easily been accomplished by one person with a legally-procured rifle and ammunition. The resulting damage, while not permanent or even long-lasting, was disruptive and dangerous. Though ultimately determined by the FBI not to be an act of terror, a Christmas 2020 bombing in Nashville severely damaged an AT&T transmission center that disabled cellular telephone networks throughout the central and southern United States for several hours.
Over the past 50 years, U.S. infrastructure has been consistently subject to attack, though at a relatively low number of incidents per year. According to the Global Terrorism Database, between 1970 and 2020 there have been 102 attacks on U.S. infrastructure, at least 60 of which targeted the electrical grid. Since 2009, there has been a period of increased attacks on all targets in the United States — and infrastructure, specifically. Infrastructure attacks rose 70% in 2022 compared to 2021, according to Politico.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) monitors 16 critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, food and agriculture, critical manufacturing, and financial services. CISA prioritizes critical infrastructure by weighing five considerations: 1) the safety and well-being of individuals in the community; 2) the value of an asset in the context of a community, region, or nation as a whole; 3) the effect of the loss of an asset on operations and dependencies, 4) the economic impact of a disruption of a service or asset, and 5) the general impact of the loss of a service or asset on a community or larger critical infrastructure sector. The loss of power transformers would rank very high in this risk framework and touch multiple critical infrastructure sectors.
The accelerationist handbook cited above encouraged attacks against the energy infrastructure sector as being “sitting ducks, worthy prey” and “largely unprotected and often in remote locations.” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper summarized the situation: “If someone with a firearm can do this much damage and get power out to tens of thousands of people, then obviously we need to look at the different layers of infrastructure and hardening and make better decisions here.” The Duke Energy facility in North Carolina had sensibly prioritized keeping people safely away from the dangerous equipment on site. However, inexpensive pre-formed concrete barriers would have protected it against a relatively simple attack like the one that occurred in December 2022. On December 15, 2022 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to study physical reliability standards at the nationwide power grid and determine if improvements were necessary.
The legacy of 9/11According to the Global Terrorism Database, between 2014 and 2020, there was an annual average of 20 terror attacks worldwide in which a vehicle was the primary or secondary weapon. In that same period, vehicles killed 277 people in terror attacks. Before 2014, such attacks averaged less than two per year. Since at least 2010, terror groups have encouraged the use of vehicles to attack civilians. Just as the 9/11 commission concluded that a “failure of imagination” blinded the U.S. national security enterprise to the September 11, 2001 terror attack vector, we risk repeating those failures. Like using a truck to run pedestrians down in a crowded place, the December 2022 attack against an electric grid in North Carolina is notable by its simplicity, accessibility, and effectiveness.
This evolving threat has implications for counterterrorism and homeland security. Unfortunately, the United States has a long history of violence toward African-American and Jewish religious institutions. As illustrated in the chart above, religious institutions are the second-most targeted facility in the United States, followed by a general category of “businesses,” which includes places such as the Walmart attacked in El Paso, Texas in 2019, and the Pulse LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016. These targets are notable for the specificity of patrons, as indicated in comments by assailants, and the fact that they were relatively defenseless. In the Global Terrorism Database, the “private citizens and property” and “businesses” categories often includes attacks against these targets because of their perceived association with certain groups, most often people of color, the Jewish community, and LGBTQ community.
Domestic counterterrorism is, by design, difficult to detect. A low-profile effort does not provide the same exhilarating satisfaction of a bunker-busting bomb, but is nevertheless effective. In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration released a policy document focused entirely on countering domestic terrorism. First, it set out a four-point counterterrorism strategy. Second, it unequivocally stated that right-wing, racially motivated, and anti-government violent groups present the biggest threat. Finally, it recommended that the federal government address inequality experienced by marginalized U.S. populations.
This final feature presents two challenges. One, a campaign to resolve structural injustices felt by marginalized groups could further alienate those who identify with right-wing white-grievance politics, but do not endorse violence. Two, in the United States, local, state, and federal governments have a long history of directly engaging in, and later tolerating, domestic terror against people of color or other marginalized groups. Given that history of state terror, attempts to address inequality may be met with mistrust in these communities, no matter how well-intentioned.
ConclusionThe Biden administration’s decision to publish a domestic counterterror strategy shows how much the U.S. government’s response to the threat of terrorist violence has changed since 2001. While countering domestic terrorism has risen as a national priority, transnational terrorist threats against Americans and U.S. interests remain. Properly defining and understanding a threat is essential to developing countermeasures. Protecting the public against domestic terrorism requires an approach very different from the approach used against transnational terror organizations such as al-Qaida or the Islamic State. Patient law enforcement activity, coupled with well-crafted communication efforts, could help achieve this goal.
This is the opinion of the author alone and does not represent official policy of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or the United States Government. The United States Government does not endorse or warrant any links embedded in this article and is not responsible for the content there found.
By John Villasenor
Earlier this month, Germany’s Digital and Transport Minister Volker Wissing met with Twitter CEO Elon Musk to discuss disinformation. As reported in Ars Technica, following the meeting, a ministry spokesperson said that “Federal Minister Wissing made it clear . . . that Germany expects the existing voluntary commitments against disinformation and the rules of the Digital Services Act to be observed in the future.”
Twitter is one of several dozen signatories to the European Union’s (EU) “2022 Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation,” a self-regulatory framework for addressing disinformation. In light of the massive staff cuts at Twitter in recent months, it’s clear that there is concern in EU governments regarding whether Twitter will be in a position to meet commitments made prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk.
The 2022 Disinformation Code contains a series of 44 “Commitments,” some of which are further subdivided into “Measures.” When a company becomes a signatory, it submits a subscription document identifying which Commitments (and, more specifically, which Measures) it is signing up for. Twitter’s June 2022 subscription document indicates that Twitter has committed, among other things, to: “defund the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation,” “prevent the misuse of advertising systems to disseminate misinformation or disinformation,” and “put in place or further bolster policies to address both misinformation and disinformation.”
Given all of the recent staffing cuts and management changes at Twitter, it is unsurprising that it is in the spotlight regarding disinformation. But all the signatories—a list that includes not just Twitter but also Google, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok—face potential challenges in meeting their commitments under the 2022 Disinformation Code.
A key difficulty of compliance with the 2022 Disinformation Code lies in determining what is and is not misinformation and disinformation. The 2022 Disinformation Code uses definitions from the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP), which defines misinformation as “false or misleading content shared without harmful intent though the effects can still be harmful, e.g. when people share false information with friends and family in good faith.” Disinformation is defined in EDAP as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm.”
These definitions sound simple enough. And, at the extremes, they are easy to apply. Social media posts that try to sell false cures for cancer are easily identifiable as problematic. But consider this now-deleted tweet posted in February 2020 by the then-Surgeon General of the United States: “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Sent in the early days of the pandemic, this tweet mixes incorrect information (the assertion that masks aren’t effective to reduce COVID-19 transmission among the general public) with correct information (the assertion that a shortage of masks for healthcare providers creates risks for them and others). With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to make the argument that this tweet should have been quickly subjected to some sort of content moderation, such as a label indicating that it contained inaccurate information regarding the utility of masks. But February 2020 was a time of high uncertainty regarding COVID-19, and social media companies under pressure to identify misinformation quickly don’t have the luxury of waiting until that uncertainty resolves.
To take another example, consider a hypothetical tweet sent by a political candidate on the evening of an election day alleging voting fraud in a particular jurisdiction. With the passage of time, the accuracy of that allegation can be investigated. But in the immediate time frame—that is, the very time frame when the tweet can do the most damage if it is false—there isn’t yet enough information to know that it is false.
The paradox of disinformation is that it can be harmful over the short-term time frames during which it is not yet possible to confidently label it as disinformation. This isn’t a paradox that social media companies can solve through clever AI, or that governments can resolve through regulation.
The 2022 Disinformation Code is a self-regulatory framework that applies only to those companies that volunteer to be signatories. Relatedly and more generally, companies that provide “intermediary services”—including social media companies and search engines—to people in the EU are obligated to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a regulatory framework that, among other things, has extensive requirements regarding identification and handling of “illegal content.”
The DSA entered into force in November 2022 and becomes fully applicable in early 2024 for all but the largest companies. “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOP) and “Very Large Online Search Engines” (VLOSE) face an accelerated schedule, with DSA compliance required four months after the EU makes a VLOP or VLOSE designation. That designation will likely occur in the first half of 2023, and will apply to online platforms with “a number of average monthly active recipients of the service in the Union equal to or higher than 45 million” (e.g., companies such as Alphabet, Apple, and Meta). There is also an interesting question regarding whether the European Commission will designate Twitter as a VLOP. Recent communications from the Commission have hinted that this designation may be forthcoming, though the Commission hasn’t yet formally made that decision.
The upshot is that 2023 promises to be a very active year in terms of engagement between social media companies and the EU. In 2023, the EU’s strong stance against disinformation will need to be reconciled with the inherent uncertainty that can arise when rapidly vetting social media postings for accuracy. However well that vetting is performed, there will always be some false negatives and false positives.
This in turn means there will be a degree of subjectivity in evaluating whether a social media company has complied with its obligations and/or commitments to address disinformation. In short, the real test for disinformation regulatory frameworks will lie in their application, not in their promulgation.
Google, Meta, and Microsoft are general unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the authors and are not influenced by any donation.
By Dick Startz
In recent years one of the most often heard quotes from Dr. King has been:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Some parties focus only on the second part of the quote, using it as support for color-blind policies—including ending affirmative action. Perhaps less discussed is whether the dream has come to fruition.
While only 2% of the adult U.S. population holds a doctorate, those that do wield considerable influence on education, from early childhood through postsecondary studies. About 10% of public school principals hold a doctorate as do more than half of superintendents. On college and university campuses, who teaches students especially matters–research shows that students of color benefit from having a professor, law school instructor, or teaching assistant “like me”, with associated improvements in student performance and persistence in educational attainment. Outside of education, racial match affects health outcomes for children and their families, with Black patients reporting longer and more participatory appointments from a same-race doctor.
Yet the racial composition of those earning doctorates looks very different from the racial composition of the general population, raising questions of whether the benefits of racial representation in doctorate-level professions can be realized. Here I focus on whether American doctoral programs have yet achieved rough racial and ethnic parity. (For a report that university faculty have not reached parity, see “Faculties So White” in Inside Higher Ed)
The short answer is “no.” Figure 1 shows the shares of doctorates (among Americans) going to different groups relative to the same group’s share in the resident population (age 25 and over). If the relative share is 100, then the group has parity.
Before going into detail, some caveats are in order. Discussions of diversity in universities center on the term “underrepresented minorities,” abbreviated here as URMs. This usually means Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans, and excludes Asian-Americans even though they are also a minority. Historically, no multiracial data was collected, although sometimes it is now. These groups are all so broad that treating them as homogenous often makes little sense. Not only is there heterogeneity within a group, there is also considerable heterogeneity across time—particularly because of changes in immigration patterns. The data counts doctorates for American citizens and permanent residents, excluding those studying on a student visa. And while I am using the official government data, that data is surely imperfect.
So, with these caveats in mind, we should be looking for large differences between groups and for large changes over time; small differences might not signify much. As you can see in Figure 1, the differences are not small, unfortunately.
Remembering that a score of 100 means parity, the unsurprising result is that the relative share of doctorates going to the white majority group (in blue) has been consistently just over parity for decades. Asian-Americans earn doctorates at a rate much higher than their share in the population (i.e., they are clearly not underrepresented among doctoral earners).
What about URMs?Decades back, Native Americans (yellow line) received only three quarters of the number of doctorates one might expect. That rate improved greatly over time, even meeting parity for about a decade, and then fell back to half the number needed for parity by 2020. Native Americans make up a small fraction of the U.S. population, which means that small numbers might lead to some data inaccuracies but not a factor of two.
Hispanics (navy blue line) receive far less than a parity share of doctorates. There has been some small, slow improvement with the Hispanic ratio going from about two fifths to about three fifths of the parity rate.
Decades back, Black doctoral earners (dark orange line) also amounted to only about two fifths of parity. There has been significant but incomplete improvement in the share of doctorates awarded to Black people, now at about four fifths of what one might expect.
So, both Black and Hispanic Americans receive well below their share of doctorates, but the share is increasing. We can ask: “How long will it take for URM groups to reach parity, given historical rates of improvement?” As a rough calculation, the Black share rose from 43% to 79 %in 39 years—a rate of almost 1 percentage point a year—with a remaining gap of 21 percentage points. Thus, if we assume similar trends in doctoral attainment and in demographic growth in the coming years, the answer is another 22 years for Black doctorates. The same calculation among Hispanics suggests it would take 90 years to reach parity. These outcomes cut against arguments for abandoning affirmative action today.
I turn now to a more focused look at doctorates that are most relevant for the nation’s research mission and for staffing universities. In Figure 2, I focus on research doctorates—i.e., professional degrees like Juris Doctors and Doctors of Medicine are excluded. I show the distribution across STEM fields (science technology, engineering, and math), education, social sciences, the humanities, and all others, with the proviso that the government counts economics and psychology degrees here as social sciences even though many degrees in these fields are officially classified as STEM. (I have omitted Native Americans because the numbers are so small.)
Two related facts about URM doctorates stand out in Figure 2. Black research doctorates are much less likely to be in STEM fields than is true for other groups. In particular, Black research doctorates are disproportionately in education. Black doctoral candidates earn about 16% of the research doctorates in education and about 16 percent of the research doctorates in STEM fields. Compare this to the fields chosen by Asian candidates, who earn only 5% of the degrees in education but more than half of the STEM degrees.
URM doctoral degrees are particularly sparse in social science fields, a pattern that also holds in my discipline, economics. The American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession (CSMGEP) reports that in the most recent year only 12% of STEM doctorates awarded to Americans went to URMs. In the most recent year on record, out of the 1,219 economics doctorates awarded in the United States, two went to Native Americans. And five went to Black women.
One explanation for the dearth of URM doctorates is the “pipeline.” The claim is that it is difficult to recruit URM doctoral students because there are few URM students earning bachelor’s degrees. There is some truth to this: In the most recent data, URMs received 21% of STEM bachelor’s degrees and make up about 29 percent of the adult population, yet they receive just 12% of STEM doctorates. In other words, it is true that URM bachelor’s degrees are below their population share, but URM doctoral degrees are much lower. Much progress has been made on URM bachelor’s degree attainment in recent decades, but only some of this progress has carried over into doctoral degree attainment.
One explanation sometimes offered for low representation numbers is that it takes time for the pipeline to grow. The idea is that as there are more minority undergraduate degrees, then more doctoral degrees will be earned too, but with a bit of a lag. However, there continues to be greater attrition along the path from undergraduate to doctorate for URMs than for others. In Figure 3, I show the ratio of doctorates to bachelor’s degrees granted 6 years earlier, using 6 years as roughly the time it takes to earn a doctorate (time-to-degree varies considerably across disciplines, and of course not all doctoral candidates proceed directly from college to a graduate degree). If the pipeline argument explained all, then the data in Figure 3 would be along the 100-point horizontal line. The URM data is below that line—and upward progress is difficult to discern. The downward sloping trendline for American Indians is especially discouraging and should raise alarms for higher education institutions serving native student populations. This means that improvements in the pipeline will not mechanically bring us to doctoral parity.
We need to stop blaming the pipeline, as it’s evident that representation in the pipeline is not the primary bottleneck in doctoral degree completion, but it’s attracting racially diverse individuals into doctoral programs. However, there are interventions and policies that can increase doctoral diversity. Money and attention matter. Larger fellowship packages and financial support significantly increased Black applications and enrollment in one education doctoral program. At the City University of New York (CUNY), administrators focus on exposing undergraduates to graduate school opportunity and providing them with application preparation support and access to research opportunities to develop their potential graduate interests. Focusing on education doctorates, “Grow Your Own” programs focus on building the diversity of prospective school leaders through coordinated pathways and mentorship. In economics, the American Economic Association has long run a successful summer training program to help undergraduates prepare for graduate admissions and for graduate school.
The representation of underrepresented minority groups at the doctoral level has improved—indeed, it has improved substantially. However, representation remains well below parity in the population and there seems to be little reason to believe “benign neglect” will resolve the issue. Regardless of any future Supreme Court decisions, affirmative steps to attract underrepresented groups into programs at the highest levels of education—especially in STEM areas—continue to be needed.
By Darrell M. West, Nicol Turner Lee, Xavier Freeman-Edwards
The 118th Congress is now in full swing after a long and contentious vote for the Speaker of the House, which ultimately was earned by House Republican Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in a slim majority from his party. In addition to his election, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) became the first Black, Democratic House Minority leader, whose role will be challenged by the Republican takeover of the House. While the U.S. Senate and White House have remained largely Democrat, some recent key departures, like Tim Wu who drafted Biden’s stance on anti-trust, and re-nominations, like that of Gigi Sohn, whose name was resubmitted by the White House for the fifth position at the Federal Communications Commission after an earlier, unsuccessful attempt may impact the overarching tech agenda for this administration.
Unlike former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker McCarthy has not drafted an aggressive path toward big tech accountability, but his committee appointment of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) to Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as well as other key committee appointments, may provide some insight into what issues will be introduced and how they will be debated.
Co-hosts Darrell West, a senior fellow in Governance Studies and Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation, discuss the future of tech policies under the 118th Congress. They also predict how certain issues may be handled by a GOP-majority Congress, including anti-trust enforcement, big tech, broadband expansion and spending, the digital divide, China, and national security.
You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the TechTank podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.
By Shanta Devarajan
Resource-rich countries have weaker governance (Figure 1). This widely documented finding has led to the suggestion that the people in these countries may be better off if the government transferred the oil revenues directly to the citizens (see here, here, and here.) But this raises the question: Why would the elites in government, who are clearly benefiting from these resource rents give them up as cash transfers to the people?
Figure 1. Resource-rich countries have weaker governanceIn a recently published paper, Quy-Toan Do and I provide a partial answer to this question. We start by noting that, in addition to weak governance, resource-rich countries also have lower levels of taxation (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Resource-rich countries also have lower levels of taxationBy definition, resource-rich countries do not need to rely on fiscal revenues because they have resource revenues. But this also may be why these countries have weak governance. Taxation has traditionally been a way for citizens to hold governments accountable for public spending. In resource-rich countries, where the oil revenues (say) go directly from the oil company to the government without passing through the hands of the citizens, the government officials have more control in spending the money, including on their own family and friends.
We formalize this intuition in a game-theoretic model where the choice of good governance is costly: government can choose to be accountable (so that public projects are successful, but it earns little as kickbacks) or corrupt (where projects are less successful but the government gets greater “private” benefits from the projects). In addition to resource revenues, the government can earn fiscal revenues by taxing the citizens. Citizens can choose to pay taxes (if they believe the government will be accountable) or not (if they think the government will be corrupt). Therefore, good governance is a necessary condition for citizens to comply with their tax obligations.
With this simple framework, we derive four possible scenarios, each of which is a unique equilibrium, depending on certain parameters.
- The resource curse: The resource revenues are so large that the government does not need tax revenues to finance public projects. In this case, the government chooses to be corrupt and build poor-quality public projects but ones with private benefits. Knowing this, citizens refuse to pay taxes. The result is an equilibrium with low taxation and weak governance—not unlike many of the resource-rich countries at the bottom of the two figures above.
- Credibility trap: Either because of decreased revenues from lower prices or declining reserves or because of increased expenditures due to a growing and aging population, the government can no longer rely exclusively on resource revenues to finance public projects. It needs to raise taxes. But the citizens will only pay taxes if they are confident that the government will not embezzle the money. Given its reputation for corruption, the government cannot credibly commit to being accountable. Once the citizens pay the taxes, the government, having promised to be accountable, has an incentive to steal the money. So taxation remains low and governance weak, even though everybody will be better off with high taxes and accountable government.
- Cash transfers: Caught in the credibility trap, the government transfers some of the resource revenues as cash transfers to citizens. Now the government’s incentives have changed. If it is corrupt, citizens will withhold future tax payments, and the government would have forgone both the tax revenue and the cash transfers. This makes the cost to the government of being corrupt too high, and it decides it will be accountable. Realizing this, citizens pay their taxes, and the economy achieves the high tax/strong governance combination. This is the situation where even a corrupt government will find it in its interest to give cash transfers to citizens as a way of increasing the costs to itself of being corrupt. This signal has the effect of inducing citizens to pay their taxes.
- Poverty trap: If, while in the credibility trap, the government does not transfer cash to citizens, it will remain in the trap, with less productive projects. The result could be that resource revenues continue to decline (because of unproductive investments) and the economy reaches a point when, even if the government wanted to, there are not enough revenues to transfer to citizens to build credibility. In this case, the economy is destined to remain in a poverty trap.
Transferring resource revenues to citizens always made good economic sense, but it was not clear whether it made good political sense. When governments need tax revenue and cannot credibly commit to being accountable (especially given their track record when resource revenues were plentiful), then cash transfers can provide the government with incentives not to be corrupt—and citizens with a signal that, in fact, the government will now be accountable. As fossil fuel prices decline because of carbon taxation, and government expenditure needs rise from population growth or the desire to build a new capital city (to take an example), the credibility trap scenario is likely to become common among resource-rich countries. Cash transfers are an economically and politically feasible way of escaping the trap.
By Madiha Afzal
1. Political instability, polarization, and an election yearPolitics will likely consume much of Pakistan’s time and attention in 2023, as it did in 2022. The country’s turn to political instability last spring did not end with a dramatic no-confidence vote in parliament last April that ousted then Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan from office. Instability and polarization have only heightened since then: Khan has led a popular opposition movement against the incumbent coalition government and the military, staging a series of large rallies across the country through the year.
The struggle for power in Pakistan continues into 2023. While the incumbent government has not ceded to Khan’s demand for early elections, country-wide elections are constitutionally mandated to be held by October this year. It benefits the government politically to hold them off as long as it possibly can as it tries to dig itself out of Pakistan’s urgent economic crisis and its lackluster domestic performance (its diplomatic foreign policy approach has fared better, but that may not matter for elections). The last year has cost it precious political capital, and Khan’s party did very well in a set of by-elections held in July and October. The state has tried to mire Khan and his party in legal cases, relying on a familiar playbook used against opposition politicians in Pakistan, albeit to limited effect, with the courts’ involvement.
Khan’s party still controls two of Pakistan’s four provinces, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and the incumbent federal government’s (extra-legal) efforts to try to wrest power from it in Punjab, the largest province, have been unsuccessful (thanks to the courts). The year is off to a dramatic start, with Khan’s party initiating the process to dissolve the Punjab and KP assemblies this month to pressure the federal government into early elections.
For politics-obsessed Pakistan, the biggest question remains who will win the next general election. Will former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (brother of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif) return to Pakistan to run as the head of his party, the PML-N? Can Imran Khan win on the strength of his popular support, despite his confrontation with the military? Regardless of the outcome, we can say this much given the histories of the main contenders: The direction of the country is unlikely to change.
2. A precarious economic situationPakistan’s economy has been in crisis for months, predating the summer’s catastrophic floods. Inflation is backbreaking, the rupee’s value has fallen sharply, and its foreign reserves have now dropped to the precariously low level of $4.3 billion, enough to cover only one month’s worth of imports, raising the possibility of default.
An economic crisis comes around every few years in Pakistan, borne out of an economy that doesn’t produce enough and spends too much, and is thus reliant on external debt. Every successive crisis is worse as the debt bill gets larger and payments become due. This year, internal political instability and the flooding catastrophe have worsened it. There is a significant external element to the crisis as well, with rising global food and fuel prices in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The combination of all these factors has spelled perhaps the greatest economic challenge Pakistan has ever seen. Yet the government has been mired in politicking, and the release of a $1.1 billion loan tranche from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remains stalled as Islamabad has pushed back on the IMF’s conditions. The government has now resorted to limiting imports and shutting down malls and wedding halls early, small measures that fail to adequately address the problem.
Pakistan may end up avoiding default for the time being with IMF help and loans from friendly countries, especially Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. But those won’t address the clear underlying malaise of the economy – and the fact that something fundamentally will need to change, in terms of how much the economy produces versus how much it spends, to avoid default down the road. But none of Pakistan’s political parties seem to have the political will or ability to bring about such change.
Pakistan must reportedly pay back $73 billion by 2025; it won’t be able to do so without debt restructuring.
3. Flood recoveryA “monsoon on steroids” – directly linked to climate change – caused a summer of flooding in Pakistan so catastrophic that it has repeatedly been described as biblical. It left a third of the country under water – submerging entire villages – killed more than 1,700, destroyed homes, infrastructure, and vast cropland, and left millions displaced.
More than four months after the worst of the flooding, nearly 90,000 people are still displaced from their homes, and the floodwater is still standing in some areas. It would be enormously difficult for any country to recover from such a disaster and rebuild lost infrastructure, including roads and schools, let alone a government dealing with a cash crunch like Pakistan’s.
But the Pakistani government – in particular the foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who has visited the United States twice since the summer, and the minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman – has done an admirable job bringing awareness of the flooding catastrophe to the world stage. A donors’ conference Sharif co-hosted with the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Geneva this month raised pledges for more than $9 billion for flood recovery over the next three years (the money is mostly in the form of project loans). Pakistan has also played an important role in discussions about the devastating effects of climate change on developing nations, spearheading the effort to place loss and damage on the agenda at COP27 for the first time, and pushing for COP delegates in Egypt to agree to a loss and damage fund.
With billions of dollars in help promised, the government has passed one hurdle. But the road for recovery ahead will be tough: Displaced people are still sleeping under open skies in Sindh province. Implementing a sustainable recovery will require enormous capacity, resources, and transparency in a country already mired in other troubles.
4. Mounting insecurityThe Pakistani Taliban (or TTP), the terrorist group responsible for killing tens of thousands of Pakistanis from 2007 to 2014, have been emboldened – predictably so – by a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and once again pose a threat to Pakistan, albeit in a geographically limited region (for now). The group engaged in at least 150 attacks in Pakistan last year, mostly in the northwest. Because the TTP have sanctuary in Afghanistan, the Pakistani state increasingly finds itself out of options when it comes to dealing effectively with the group. The state’s negotiations with the TTP have failed repeatedly, as they are bound to, because the group is fundamentally opposed to the notion of the Pakistani state and constitution as it exists today. The Afghan Taliban have, unsurprisingly, also not proved to be of help in dealing with the TTP – and Pakistan’s relations with the Afghan Taliban have deteriorated significantly at the same time over other issues, including the border dividing the two countries.
At this point, Pakistan’s first preference will be to strike kinetically at TTP targets within its borders, but that will be limited by TTP movement across the border into Afghanistan. That movement is what leaves Pakistan with the difficult-to-resolve TTP issue and complicates things beyond the military operation it launched against the group in 2014. Still, the Pakistani Taliban at this point is not the biggest threat Pakistan faces, given the country’s major political and economic challenges – but left unchecked, it could morph into a significant crisis.
5. Civil-military relationsPakistan has a new chief of army staff as of November 29 last year. General Asim Munir replaced General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who had held the all-powerful post for six years (due to a three-year extension). The appointment of the army chief was a subject of considerable political contention last year; a major part of the reason Khan was ousted from power was his falling out with the military on questions over the appointments of top army officials.
All eyes are now on how civil-military relations shape up under Munir. Under Bajwa, the military solidified its control over all manner of policy behind the scenes. Bajwa presided over a close “same-page” relationship with Khan; when that frayed, the PML-N was eager to take Khan’s place as the military’s ally and head of the civilian government. Bajwa left office saying the army would no longer be involved in political matters; few in Pakistan believe him. With politics set to dominate the agenda this year and an election imminent, Munir has a chance to show the country whether he will follow in his predecessor’s footsteps, or chart a new course for civil-military relations in Pakistan. Pakistan’s history indicates the former.
By Richard V. Reeves
Many boys and men are struggling. There is a strong case for government institutions that focus on the issues that are disproportionately impacting boys and men, and which can be usefully considered through a gender-specific lens. One attractive option is to create Commissions on Boys and Men, at the federal, state and local levels. These would complement the ones that already exist in most states and many cities to work on issues related to women and girls.
Currently, there are no governmental Commissions working on behalf of boys and men in any U.S. states. But a bill just filed in Washington state would create the first one. This could set an important precedent.
Why focus on Boys and Men? In my latest book from Brookings Press, Of Boys and Men, and other related publications, I describe many of the challenges facing boys and men, especially those with least economic power. Important issues exist in the domains of education, employment, family life and health. There is a growing recognition that these problems need to be taken seriously, not only for the sake of boys and men, but also for the sake of women, children, the economy, and even the health of our political life. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in the New York Times, in response to my book:
“It’s possible to believe that sexism remains a major impediment to women’s flourishing and also believe that for many boys and men life is much harder than it should be. . . Even if you’re not inclined to care much about men’s welfare, their growing anomie and resentment is everyone’s problem, fueling right-wing populist movements around the world. People who feel unmoored and demeaned are going to be receptive to the idea that the natural order of things has been upended, the core claim of reactionary politics.”
Of course, it only makes sense to create institutions charged specifically with working on issues for boys and men if there is evidence of significant challenges that skew very strongly by gender. And there are. On a wide range of fronts, there are wide gender disparities disfavoring boys and men. For example:
Education
There are gender gaps at all levels of education, with boys and men trailing women and girls, often by wide margins. Black and low-income boys and men are falling farthest behind. Some of the headline statistics are:
- Girls are 14 percentage points more likely than boys to be “school ready” at age 5, controlling for parental characteristics.
- In the average school district, boys lag girls by three-quarters of a grade level in English (but are equally proficient in Math).
- Boys account for two thirds of high schoolers with the lowest grades, and a third of those with the highest grades (i.e., bottom decile and top decile).
- Male students are at a significantly higher risk of dropping out of college than women after taking into account other factors, such as test scores, family income, and high school grades.
- For every 100 bachelor’s degrees awarded to women, just 74 are awarded to men. (This is a wider gender gap than in 1972, when Title IX was passed – but the other way round).
- These disparities vary by place, with wider gaps at different stages of the education system in different places. For more, see my paper with Ember Smith, “Boys left behind: Education gender gaps across the US”.
Work & Wages
There are long-standing concerns about declining male labor participation from policymakers and scholars of all political stripes: for example from Harvard’s Jason Furman, former Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, and Nicholas Eberstadt, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. These worries are being rekindled now with signs that some groups of men, especially those of middle age, are not returning to the labor force as quickly as expected following the pandemic.
Some of the headline statistics on men’s work and wage are:
- In early 2022, more than one in ten prime-age men (25-54) were neither working nor looking for work.
- The inflation-adjusted wages of most men in 2019 were lower than the wages of most men in 1979.
- The wages of a typical American man who completed his education with a high school diploma were 14% lower in 2019 than in 1979.
- “Essentially all of the income gains that middle-class American families have experienced since 1970 are due to the rise in women’s earnings”, according to the Council of Economic Advisors.
- Men who entered the workforce in 1983 will earn about 10% less, in real terms, across their working life than those who started out in 1967.
As I argue in Of Boys and Men, male employment has not fallen because men have suddenly become feckless or work-shy, but because of shifts in the structure of the economy. Male jobs have been hit by a one-two punch of automation and free trade.
Family & Fatherhood
Family life has been transformed in recent decades. Many fathers do not have a positive role in their children’s lives. Some of the important facts and trends here include:
- Forty percent of children are born outside marriage, up from 11% in 1970, with especially high rates among parents with less education.
- Among fathers who did not complete high school, 40% live apart from their children, compared to just 7% of fathers who graduated from college.
- Within 6 years of their parents separating, one in three children never see their father, and a similar proportion see him once a month or less.
- Father presence in the home for adolescent boys is associated with a 5.1 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of engaging in delinquent behavior compared to those without a father figure.
- Helping fathers to be engaged in their children’s lives is an important goal for policymakers, especially given profound changes in family life. I argue in Of Boys and Men that what matters most is not the marital status of parents itself, but the relationship between parents and children.
Mental and physical health
Poor health reflects and reinforces many of the trends described above, and there are some health challenges that particularly impact men. For example:
- Nationally, boys and men are at four times higher risk of suicide than girls and women.
- Male suicide rates rose by 25% from 2006 to 2019.
- Men account for 71% of deaths from opioid overdoses.
- Men were at a much higher risk of death from COVID-19: so far 110,000 more men than women in the U.S. (without age adjustments) have died from the virus.
- Men are 31% more likely than women to be without health insurance (13.8% v. 10.5% of the nonelderly). In many states the gap is much wider. (In Tennessee, for example, 17.4% of men are uninsured compared to 12.4% of women, a 40% gap).
This is not of course intended to be a comprehensive list. Importantly, the extent of these problems varies greatly by social class and by race, with Black boys and men at a particular disadvantage. But also, by place: In different cities, counties and states, boys and men will have different challenges. So, it is likely to be valuable to have Commissions for boys and men at these levels of government – just as there are for women and girls.
Washington State could lead the wayA bill to create a Commission on Boys and Men in the state has just been pre-filed in Washington state, with bipartisan sponsorship. The new Commission would be “tasked with addressing the well-being of Washington’s boys, male youth, and men”. Supporters hope the bill will be brought up by the Government & Tribal Relations Committee for consideration in the new legislative session. If the bill is passed, it will create the first state-wide Commission on Boys and Men in the nation.
The bill as it stands includes an initial mandate to focus on five areas in particular:
- Education
- Fatherhood, Family, & Relationships
- Jobs, Careers, & Financial Health
- Mental & Physical Health
- Experiences of Males in Criminal Justice and other Court Systems
Of course, the bill may be amended. But these seem like the right focus areas based on current trends, not only in the U.S. but in Washington state. The case for the new Commission is strengthened by some key facts and trends in the Evergreen state, including:
- Across grades 4 to 8 in the state, boys are a full grade level behind girls in English (and slightly ahead in Math). Seattle has the second-highest gender gap in English among the 25 largest cities in the U.S.
- Only 49% of boys are meeting expected standard in English in middle school grades, compared to 60% of girls.
- Boys account for 75% of school suspensions.
- Between 2018 and 2021, men accounted for 67 percent of drug overdose deaths.
- Men and boys account for 77% of suicide deaths in the state.
- Nine in ten (91%) of inmates in juvenile rehabilitation facilities are male.
The bill also proposes that the new commission be “tasked with developing strategies to encourage men and male youth to consider careers in teaching, mental health care, social work, nursing, and other professions where the workforce severely lacks male participation.” This is a goal that is often overlooked by policymakers. It is vitally important to get more men into HEAL professions (in health, education, administration and literacy, not only to help meet thein those occupations but to provide better services in these fields for boys and men. This is an argument my colleague Isabel Sawhill and I made in the New York Times in 2015, in an essay headlined “Men’s Lib”.
In Washington state, only one in four K-12 teachers are men (26%), similar to the national share. Just over one in three psychologists in the state are male (37%), and men accounted for 23% of the doctoral degrees awarded in the state in 2015 (and these are a requirement for professional practice). Only 18% of social workers are male – and just 15% of students who received a master’s in social work in the state in 2015 were men.
Learning from Commissions on Women and GirlsIt is not necessary to start from scratch. Good models for any potential Commission on Boys and Men are provided by the existing ones for women and girls. That includes the Washington state Women’s Commission, which was created in 2018 to “address issues relevant to the problems and needs of women, such as domestic violence, childcare and support, sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace, equal compensation and job pathways in employment, and the specific needs of women of color.”
The Washington state Women’s Commission has nine external commissioners and four legislative advisors, a staff of two, and a budget of around $250,000. The Executive Director sits in the state cabinet. The Commission has established committees to work on four priorities for women in the state: Economic Opportunity, Economic Security, Safety and Health. The Commission describes its main activities as Legislative Advocacy; Information Gathering and Research; Public & Private Partnerships; Community Outreach; and Resource Referral.
The proposed Commission on Boys and Men in the state would have a similar governance structure, with nine voting members, appointed by the governor and leaders from both sides of the aisle in the legislature, and two members of both the state senate and house of representatives (from both parties) serving in an advisory capacity.
There are similar Commissions for women and girls in most other states. Out of the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, 39 currently have a statutory body focused on women’s issues. (See the Appendix Table for a full list plus links). These Commissions vary in their scope, name, resources, specific areas of focus, and position within the state government hierarchy. The California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls is comprised of seventeen members, with “nine Public Members, six Legislative Members and two Statutory Members”, and has a staff of seven. Utah’s commission has 13 members, including legislators, administrators and external stakeholders. The Illinois Council on Women and Girls is unusually large, with 32 members including 16 appointed by legislators and key department heads. While the specifics vary state by state, the majority of Commissions have the following core tasks:
- Publishing an annual report on the condition of women (and girls) in the state, with key facts and trends on employment, health, family life, education, domestic violence, and leadership.
- Advising policymakers (typically both the Governor and state legislators) on programs, policies and initiatives that impact women and girls. Advocating for policies and programs that will improve the lives and life chances of women and girls in the state.
- Convening key stakeholders, including businesses, community leaders and non-profits to address critical issues for women and girls.
Many major cities also have a Commission on women and girls, including in some of the states without a state-level body. For example in Arizona there are Commissions in Phoenix and Tucson and in Colorado, there are Commissions in Denver and Fort Collins.
In North Carolina, as well as the state Commission, there are commissions for women in five cities and counties in the state. In California, according to the Association of California Commissions for Women and the National Association of Commissions for Women, there are women’s commissions in all the major cities and counties in the state. Policymakers in these cities ought to consider a similar Commission on boys and men.
It is necessarily hard to measure the impact of these Commissions, not least because a significant part of their role is simply to raise awareness and highlight existing resources. But it seems clear that they do have some influence on policy. From 2018 to 2022, the Washington state Women’s Commission, for example, worked with a legal firm to create template workplace policies on sexual harassment, which are now freely available to employers; advocated to increase the share of women on company boards, including by publishing data on board diversity for all major firms in the state; and championed a new law to improve childcare provision.
Is it Time for Commissions for Boys and Men?As far I have been able to discover, there are almost no equivalent bodies for boys and men in any state, city, or county government. Nor are there any at the federal level. The only exception is the DC Mayor’s Office on Fathers, Men and Boys which grew out of a commission and serves some of the same functions. The Office describes its role as being to “address the disparities that adversely impact men and boys of color in the District of Columbia”. The Office is a successor to the 21-member Commission on Fathers, Men and Boys, created in 2014 “to advise the Mayor, the Council, and the public on issues and needs of fathers, men, and boys in the District”.
Any new Commissions working for boys and men will likely work closely with the existing ones for women and girls on a number of fronts, not least family policy. The two commissions should be seen as complementary counterparts, not competitors. As I write in Of Boys and Men:
“We can hold two thoughts in our head at once. We can be passionate about women’s rights and compassionate toward vulnerable boys and men…It is not a zero-sum game.”
Or as Jason Furman puts it (in a review of the book):
“To say there are a set of problems faced by boys and men that need a policy solution, does not mean that you don’t think there are a set of problems facing girls and women that need a policy solution.”
In many cases, these policy solutions will be arrived at when they are productively examined through a gender lens. This includes boys and men. Time to institutionalize that insight.
Click here to download the appendix.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Chris Miller
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) declined 0.1% in December on a seasonally adjusted basis according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics with year-over-year inflation falling to 6.5%. On the morning of the release, Brookings once again convened experts David Wessel (The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy), Wendy Edelberg (The Hamilton Project), and Justin Wolfers (The University of Michigan) to discuss the latest release.
Read key takeaways from their discussion below and listen to the full discussion on Twitter here.
GOOD NEWS BECOMING A TREND
In a report with lots of good news—including an outright decline in overall inflation—Edelberg focused on core inflation, the prices of everything except volatile food and energy and a closely watched indicator of the inflation trend. Core inflation rose 0.3% in December and 5.7% over the past 12 months. “For the last three months [core inflation] has risen at a rate of 3.1% at an annualized rate, and that is not all that far from what the Fed would target for that rate,” said Edelberg, noting that the Fed’s target for core CPI is around 2.5%, slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2% on an alternative inflation measure (the price of personal consumption expenditures). “Keep in mind, core inflation, according to the CPI, peaked at above 10%. So 3.1% is awfully good news.” “We’re never allowed to say we’ve won the war on inflation,” added Wolfers, “But what we do get to say is we feel enormously more relieved today, and that’s been true for each of the last three inflation prints.”
GOODS PRICES CONTINUE COMING DOWN…
The latest CPI report showed that, for the third month in a row, the prices of goods fell. “I think three months of declines officially makes a trend,” said Edelberg. “That is excellent news because to my mind, this is the category where if we didn’t see outright price declines we had no hope, or little hope, of getting inflation under control without some really painful economic developments.” Goods prices should continue to be encouraging news for inflation due to moderating (but still high) consumer demand, supply chain improvements, and the Fed’s interest-rate increases, which have eased both goods demand and shelter inflation, she continued.
“Even the services side of the economy, while it’s got high rates of inflation, those rates of inflation are falling.”
AND SERVICES, TOO.
With goods prices moderating, the “inflation grumps,” as Wolfers called them, have turned their attention to services inflation, which remains more elevated—over the past three months, core services inflation has run at a 6.1% annual rate. “That’s relatively high,” said Wolfers, “but that’s down from 7.1% over the previous three months and 8.5% before that. So the point is that even the services side of the economy, while it’s got high rates of inflation, those rates of inflation are falling.” This is especially important given that the primary cost in providing services is wages, continued Wolfers. “It’s quite extraordinary that at a point in time when unemployment is at a 50-year low, that services inflation is declining and moving back towards more reasonable rates,” he said.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT?
“Workers have lost ground.”
Wessel noted that Fed Chair Jerome Powell has expressed concern about the unemployment rate—that low unemployment would contribute to fast wage increases, making it difficult for the Fed to achieve its 2% inflation target without a rise in unemployment. But as Wolfers noted, wages have not risen as fast as prices throughout this entire inflation period. “Workers have lost ground,” he said. “It’s quite possible for workers to catch up that ground without it feeding through to prices.” Rather than just looking at unemployment, Edelberg emphasized a different labor market indicator to watch for: overall employment gains: “What I’m very confident is that we can’t continue to see employment gains of more than 200,000 every month. Given our population, given how many people want to work, that’s just not where we’re going to settle down.”
WHY IS FOOD STILL SO EXPENSIVE?
Food prices are up 10% over the last year, far more than other prices. Wessel noted that many of the explanations given—high costs of raw goods and energy due to the war in Ukraine, for example—don’t offer a satisfactory explanation of why food prices are still so high. Edelberg agreed, explaining that while commodity and energy prices have risen in the past, those factors haven’t created persistent food inflation like we’ve seen in the last year. She cited two other factors that haven’t received as much attention: Demand for food (people buying more, higher quality food) and food prices competing with other goods for which demand has also been high.
LINGERING QUESTIONS ON PRODUCTIVITY, CAPITAL, AND THE NEW NORMAL
Recent reports have shown rapid growth in employment and weak output growth, suggesting that productivity growth has been very low or even negative. Wolfers said that while productivity may well have been low during the height of the pandemic, the idea that it has remained low or negative during the recovery is “absurd.” Whether productivity is actually doing something unusual, or this is a measurement issue will have significant consequences for the labor market and wages going forward, Wolfers explained. Edelberg noted that part of this confusion may be due to the composition of the labor market: Employment gains in the last year may have just come from sectors where productivity is not as easily measured (leisure and hospitality, for example). A further concern for productivity, she added, is about the future of our capital stock – buildings, machinery, etc. The commercial business vacancy rate remains high, and businesses across the country will have to “figure out what stuff we went into the pandemic with that we no longer need,” like equipment and infrastructure that doesn’t fit with post-pandemic work model. “And that’s going to be hard for our economy to contend with,” she said.
Wolfers noted that with core inflation around 3%, many Americans will feel that the crisis has abated in the coming months. This will put added pressure on Fed policymakers as they continue to address what they see as still-elevated inflation. “I think the whole discussion is going to shift, the politics are going to shift, and the Fed is going to find itself in a very uncomfortable situation,” he said. The widespread support of Fed actions to get inflation under control, even potentially causing a minor recession, will wane as slightly-elevated inflation becomes the norm. “The broader conversation is really going to change its shape and nature as we move from the crisis period of inflation to the ‘Oh, so what,’ and even the ‘This is pretty normal,’ part of the cycle.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Molly E Reynolds
Important parts of Kevin McCarthy’s deal-making last week involved government funding and the debt limit, suggesting that we are in for yet another round of high stakes fiscal brinkmanship, with the health of the economy at stake.
In both the formal rules adopted for the session and the additional commitments made by McCarthy to building a winning coalition are provisions that bear on fiscal politics. Some of these changes are the result of negotiations with holdouts in the Republican conference who initially opposed McCarthy while others reflect longer-held GOP positions.
Several provisions related to fiscal policy are better understood as expressions of Republicans’ core positions rather than binding constraints, especially in a period of divided government. Consider, for example, the restoration of the Cut-As-You-Go (CUTGO) rule. Last used by the Republican majority between 2011 and 2019, CUTGO prohibits the consideration of measures that would increase, on net, mandatory spending such as Medicare and Medicaid; it permits, however, the House to bring up bills that reduce revenue.
Under divided government, the chances of major new entitlement spending or major new tax cuts are low, and CUTGO, like other House rules, can be waived by a simple majority of the chamber. Often, a majority that has come to agreement on a measure is also willing to set aside any rules that stand as obstacles to passage. But codifying in the House rules a budget enforcement tool that, at least on paper, treats spending increases one way and tax cuts another reflects the GOP’s core position on the question.
In many ways, the agreements between McCarthy and the holdouts aren’t surprising. House Republicans have been telegraphing for some time that they would be willing to take the debt limit hostage as leverage for enacting large spending cuts, and if past is prologue, we need only to look to 2011, the last analogous arrangement of divided government (GOP House, Democratic majority in the Senate, and a Democratic president in the White House) to find the country’s last major debt limit crisis.
What the agreements do provide, however, is some additional detail around what House Republicans’ negotiating position might be. There is no publicly available, detailed document outlining the agreement, but a summary made available at a GOP conference meeting includes a commitment that the GOP “will not agree to Debt Limit increase without budget agreement or commensurate fiscal reforms.” The same summary calls for Republicans to “Adopt an FY24 Budget Resolution balancing within 10 years” and “Caps FY24 Discretionary Spending at Enacted FY22 levels or lower.”
To be clear, there’s a fair amount of uncertainty about how these positions relate to each other and how they’ll be operationalized; does the “budget agreement” necessary for agreeing to increase the debt limit have to be one that reverts to fiscal year 2022 spending levels? And while the fact that the Senate and White House are both controlled by Democrats who are very unlikely to agree to spending cuts of that size, knowing the details of the hostage House Republicans may try to take is illustrative. Reducing discretionary spending all the way to fiscal year 2022 levels would require major cuts—as large as 25% in real dollars for non-defense programs if defense spending is exempt.
What’s more, staking out a position that would roll back the increases passed in December’s omnibus bill—9.7% for defense spending and 5.5% for non-defense, non-veterans spending—means that Republicans’ opening ask is not merely continuing the status quo in the form of a continuing resolution that freezes spending at current levels. Suggesting that only a large reduction would be a “win” alters the negotiating terrain when it comes to avoiding a government shutdown.
Finally, other commitments—like the separate consideration of the 12 individual appropriations bills—should be thought of as rank-and-file members trying to assert their individual power in the legislative process. The use of omnibus spending bills has been driven, in part, by dynamics in the Senate; narrow majorities and the routine threats to filibuster individual appropriations bills mean that Senate leaders have resorted to combining all the measures into a single must-pass package. But the majority of the work on those individual bills is still done by the subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees in the two chambers, exercising power that some of their rank-and-file colleagues would like to wrest away.
How exactly the dynamics created by these rules changes and commitments from McCarthy play out remains to be seen. As Sarah Binder wrote on FixGov, we have previous examples of party leaders promising a more open process, only to crack down when the politics get tough. But so far it looks as if McCarthy has opened the door to some very tough economic choices.
By Hayin Kimner
For generations, public schools have struggled to equitably prepare all students—particularly those furthest from economic and social opportunity—to learn and thrive.
This is not because they don’t know how. The science of learning and development shows that all children—regardless of their race, ethnicity, zip code, or circumstance—thrive in “whole child” environments where their physical, cognitive, academic, socioemotional, and developmental needs are met. Furthermore, decades of school reform research point to the importance of trust, and relationship-centered, collaborative environments where families, educators, and communities work together to improve student outcomes. Yet even though the research provides compelling evidence of what is needed, the magnitude and scale of required change (e.g., systems, processes, and practices) is daunting.
Given this persistent challenge, there is increasing recognition of how a community school strategy might provide a blueprint for how schools and communities create learning environments in which children thrive. Research has found that well-implemented community schools “lead to improvement in student and school outcomes and contribute to meeting the educational needs of low-achieving students in high-poverty schools.” Several studies also find that community schools are a cost-effective strategy, yielding positive social and economic returns.
community schools forwardCommunity school practitioners and advocates have long struggled to consistently describe and advance this comprehensive approach to broadscale systemic reform and the expected outcomes. In 2022, the Community Schools Forward task force—convened by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings Institution, the Children’s Aid National Center for Community Schools, the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leadership, and the Learning Policy Institute—worked to identify and create field-informed resources to align, build, and scale effective and sustainable community schools.
The consensus work of the task force is a major milestone and serves to leverage and amplify significant momentum across diverse federal, state, and local contexts. The resulting set of foundational resources below offers: a definition of community schools; an assessment of capacity-building resources needed to strengthen community schools; and preliminary implementation tools and resources needed to scale the community school strategy.
Align: Facilitate alignment and consensus building We start by offering a definition that reflects the consensus expertise of community school leaders and practitioners who have engaged in this work for many years:
A community school strategy transforms a school into a place where educators, local community members, families, and students work together to strengthen conditions for student learning and healthy development. As partners, they organize in-and-out of school resources, supports, and opportunities so that young people thrive.
Community schools recognize that for students to thrive, schools must cultivate “whole child” environments that address physical, cognitive, academic, and social/emotional development.
We further elaborated on this definition in our newly created Essentials for Community School Transformation and Theory of Action for Community School Transformation, and articulation of Outcomes and Indicators for Community Schools: A Guide for Implementers and Evaluators. Taken together, this body of work reflects an aligned, research and practice-based approach to community schools design and implementation.
Build: Clarify and strengthen resources Another integral part of the project was to clarify and strengthen resources to promote high-quality implementation and improvement of a community school strategy. The Stages of Development Tool provides an articulation of nuanced stages of development of community school initiatives and how they evolve over time from emerging to maturing to transforming. Strengthening community schools also requires experienced and field-informed technical support. The task force took stock of practitioners’ needs for support in the Community Schools Forward: Technical assistance needs assessment to better understand current community school capacity-building resources, and to provide forthcoming guidance to initiatives in how to choose high-quality technical assistance.
Scale: Guide and inform investment strategies In order to inform investment strategies and supportive policies to expand and sustain community schools at scale, we have developed tools to guide leaders on understanding, budgeting, and financing community schools that can be adapted to reflect diverse fiscal contexts. For example, the Community Schools Costing Tool and User Guide helps education decisionmakers understand various programmatic and infrastructure costs, and examples of how they might combine existing funding streams as part of a collaborative approach to financial sustainability.
Building on essential resourcesIn the months and years ahead, it will be necessary to encourage field leaders to actively adopt the consensus framework and related tools; maintain implementation fidelity and rigor; and invest in scaling across organizational and policy contexts to ensure institutionalization of these essential resources.
The Community School Forward task force comprises of: Robert Balfanz, Jennifer Blatz, Cory Bowman, Jitu Brown, Dia Bryant, Pamela Cantor, Chris Caruso, Hedy Chang, Leslie Cornfeld, Linda Darling-Hammond, Dena Donaldson, Cyrus Driver, Debra Duardo, Amy Ellis, Abe Fernández, Denise Forte, Dreama Gentry, Jodi Grant, Jim Grim, Donnie Hale, Zaretta Hammond, Kristen Harper, Ashley Harris, Michael Hester, Tracy Hill, Reuben Jacobson, Sarah Jonas, Taylor Kahn-Perry, Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Greg Landsman, Carissa Moffat Miller, Jose Muñoz, Jeannie Oakes, Andre Perry, Sarah Peterson, Gema Quetzal, Jane Quinn, Todd Rogers, Rey Saldaña, Karen Sanchez-Griego, Katarina Sandoval, Kyle Serrette, Jim Shelton, Tony Smith, Tony Thurmond, Nathalie Umana, Helen Westmoreland, Rebecca Winthrop, and Brian Woods.
By Stacey Campo, Hayin Kimner, Lorenna Maysonet
Community schools—an education reform strategy—have been described as another way of thinking and acting and a new way of “doing” school. This type of school transformation is complex, involves change that can be uncomfortable, and doesn’t happen overnight.
Starting in the 1990s, the Children’s Aid National Center for Community Schools reflected on the development of their own community schools and, in working with other efforts nationally, observed that community school systems and processes become more refined and stronger over time. As community schools across the country accumulate their own experiences, lessons learned, and wise practices, the National Center continues to think about how community school strategies evolve and mature through “stages of development.”
Community Schools Forward’s Stages of Development ToolA working group of the Community Schools Forward task force—a project led by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings Institution, the Children’s Aid National Center for Community Schools, the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leaderships, and the Learning Policy Institute—revisited the National Center’s 2017 stages of community schools’ development tool to reflect on the realities across implementation periods. The result is an updated tool that is aligned with the task force’s Essentials for Community School Transformation. In this framework, key community school practice areas include; family and youth engagement, expanded, enriched learning opportunities, cultivating a culture of belonging, collaborative leadership, shared power and voice, integrated systems of support, and rigorous, community-connected classroom instruction.
With the support of technical assistance, local community school expertise, and capacity development, the Stages of Development Tool is designed to guide and transform a local school and its surrounding into a community school
The tool helps practitioners to determine and plan concrete steps toward this transformation. Prior to using this tool, we recommend schools and their partners meet conditions of readiness. These are optimal foundational conditions for implementation, such as promoting an asset-based mindset, a willingness to learn, and a general understanding of the strategy and how roles in the school may shift.
Once a school begins this process, we generally observe three stages of development: emerging, maturing, and transforming. In the emerging stage, community school advocates, school leaders, and partners begin to organize people, data, and community resources, and identify needs and community assets, including local leaders and partners. In the maturing stage, families, youth, leaders, and partners co-construct and align initiatives with vision and goals, assess impact, and formalize structures for continuous improvement. In transforming, the community school creates sustainable practices, relationships, and policies with the entire school community, and braiding and blending funds supports growth and long-term planning for collective impact. Community schools are a long-term strategy, thus, schools should not expect to move through the stages each year or even in a predictable or scheduled way. A school may be “transforming” in some areas and “emerging” in others. Likewise, contextual realities, such as leadership changes or funding shifts, may disrupt a developmental process.
Purpose of the Stages of Development ToolA detailed overview of the Stages of Development Tool can be found on the National Center’s website. This resource includes information about each stage, key characteristics, processes, and task, as well as some of the benchmarks that practitioners might look to as part of regular self-assessment. Such descriptions can help policymakers, funders, and practitioners understand the longer-term trajectory of implementation, key drivers, and activities, and solidify their commitment toward progress and impact.
Alignment with implementation research In addition to reflecting decades of practitioner experience, the Stages of Development Tool also draws upon the work of the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN). Similar to the community school practice of bringing together key stakeholders, NIRN recommends an inclusive implementation team with internal and external partners representing key constituents who are both part of—and impacted by—a school or common issue. NIRN urges teams to constantly re-evaluate who is involved in decision making and who else should be engaged, while driving change. Community school teams also continuously revisit and refine their work–examining the “who, what, how, when.” For example, an assets and needs assessment process is often led by an ad hoc group of key stakeholders that develops into a more permanent structure—often called an advisory council, community school team, or CS committee. Key practices of implementation science are also reflected in community school development. Specifically, plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles of inquiry or results-oriented cycles of inquiry (ROCI) can be used to guide the identification of community school priorities and how programs and strategies are assessed and refined.
Next steps The Community Schools Forward task force has helped develop the Essentials for Community School Transformation, the Stages of Development Tool, and additional resources to support and align the growing national movement for community schools, marked by increased national and state-based interest and investment in the strategy. However, in the same way co-creation of a community school leads to new opportunities, ideas and partnerships, the task force and other leaders in the national community school movement identified the need for and interest in additional resources.
Sustained and effective community schools must be supported by broader district buy-in, cross-sector systems that promote and strengthen collaboration, and policies that support the whole-child. To that end, a forthcoming stages of system-level development tool will guide district and community leaders as they design and promote sustainable funding, capacity development, data systems, and strategic partnerships. These district infrastructures and relationships are crucial to addressing common implementation challenges and supporting community schools as they move toward transformation.
By Elijah Asdourian, Alexander Conner, Louise Sheiner, Lorae Stojanovic
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Post-pandemic, workers reduce hours without leaving labor forceA decline in aggregate hours worked can reflect fewer people working or individuals working fewer hours a week. Dain Lee, Jinhyeok Park, and Yongseok Shin of Washington University in St. Louis find that the decrease in the aggregate number of hours worked in 2022 largely reflects a decline in the number of hours worked by individual workers, not exits from the labor market. This pattern differs from the Great Recession and its aftermath, during which hours were mostly determined by the number of people employed. The available evidence indicates that the recent reductions are mostly voluntary and were largest among prime-age men with bachelor’s degrees, who had been working the most hours of any demographic prior to the pandemic. The authors also point to survey data indicating that the hours reductions “will likely stay with us,” thus suggesting that the unemployment rate and labor force participation rate, which don’t account for changes in hours worked, will remain imperfect measures of labor market tightness.
Recent home price growth is likely driven by shifting preferences, not market exuberancePrice-rent ratios are frequently used to understand the forces driving home price movements. But rental units and owner-occupied housing often differ in fundamental ways, making it difficult to construct an accurate price-rent index using owner-occupied home prices. Lara P. Loewenstein of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Paul S. Willen of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston address this issue using data that match rents with rental property prices. The authors find that high price-rent ratios that characterized the early 2000s home price boom were consistent with exuberant market expectations of rising property values. Recent home price growth, however, has been driven primarily by increases in real rents and reflects only small gains in price-rent ratios. A change in consumer preferences due to greater work-from-home options is a “logical and plausible explanation for the 2020s housing boom,” the authors conclude.
Relief narrowed inequality over the pandemicUsing a large random sample of tax data, Jeff Larrimore of the Federal Reserve Board and Jacob Mortenson and David Splinter of the Joint Committee on Taxation measure the effects of the COVID recession and policy response on the income distribution in the U.S. They find that the COVID recession was more regressive than the Great Recession, but the policy response was much more progressive; on net, income inequality declined about 10% between 2019 and 2021 as measured by a Gini coefficient. Real median wages for the bottom income quintile fell 26% from 2019 to 2021, but overall income rose 62% because of strong COVID relief. Over the same period, middle and high-quintile median real income rose 8% and 1%, respectively. In contrast, the Great Recession and policy response led to real losses across the entire income distribution. Pandemic unemployment insurance explains about two-thirds of the income stabilization and much of the drop in inequality because the insurance was more progressive than other relief.
Chart of the week: US natural gas exports are boomingChart courtesy of the Wall Street Journal
Quote of the week:“Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through elections. At the same time, in my view, the Fed does have narrow, but important, responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks. These responsibilities are tightly linked to our responsibilities for bank supervision. The public reasonably expects supervisors to require that banks understand, and appropriately manage, their material risks, including the financial risks of climate change,” says Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve.
“But without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals. We are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policymaker.’”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Chris Cassella, E.J. Fagan, Sean Theriault
In 2021, Democrats ended the 10-year earmark moratorium. Earmarks, occasionally referred to as “pork,” are small grants to programs and projects in congressional districts. House Republicans were skeptical of bringing back earmarks, though they recently voted to keep earmarks for the 118th Congress. We do not yet know if Republicans will change the earmarking process. However, we find that the parties have a fundamentally different approach to representation when it comes to their earmark requests. By analyzing data in 2021, we do know that House Democrats and Republicans used earmarks to accomplish very different goals and framed the projects funded by them in different ways. Democrats adopt a transactional or distributional approach to representation and promote policies that appeal to their big-tent constituency. Republicans adopt a more symbolic approach, emphasizing American imagery and values.
In our new paper “Partisan Asymmetries in Earmark Representation,” we analyze written justifications to measure how members approach representing their constituents. Under rules first introduced in 2021, members of Congress can request up to ten earmarks in each appropriations cycle. With each of these requests, the members must submit a written justification for why their project is a good use of taxpayer dollars. These written justifications give us an opportunity to see what policy topics are in each earmark, who the earmark is for, and how the funds will have a demonstrable impact on their constituents. We performed a content analysis of all 3,007 of these justifications and found clear partisan differences in the earmarking process.
Because earmarks by their very nature spend government money, we might expect Democrats to use the earmarking process more. But that supposition is just partially correct. On average, in the 117th Congress Democratic representatives requested two more earmarks than their Republican colleagues at a ratio of about ten-to-eight. But looking at just the number of earmarks requested undersells the partisan differences in earmarking behavior. When we change our unit of analysis to the earmark amount, we see that Republicans asked for $3 million more per earmark than Democrats ($4.7 million for Republicans; $1.7 million for Democrats). At the individual member level, Republicans requested more than $20 million more than Democrats.
At first glance these numbers are jarring, especially given the previous Republican commitments to cutting budgets and eliminating wasteful spending. But looking at the policy content of the earmark requests explains Republicans’ large-dollar requests. The “local infrastructure” projects requested by Republicans are equal parts a need-based entity in their districts (everyone needs a good road and bridge) and expensive. The content in Democratic earmarks, however, are more want-based entities and less expensive than physical infrastructure projects.
Now that earmarks are staying around for the 118th Congress, we can speculate on two possible outcomes for the future of earmarks. One possibility is that earmarking behavior in the 118th Congress is the same as it was in the 117th. We’ve already addressed a few dimensions of the earmark process. But in our paper, we also test whether earmark representation is shaped by conventional understandings of partisan issue ownership (see Table 1). Issues “owned” by Republicans are high-level: defense, the economy, and immigration. Earmarks are not well-equipped to deal with these issues, as they operate on a district level. Democratic owned issues, on the other hand, are very well suited for earmarks: social welfare, education, and community development. We find that Democrats requested significantly more earmarks with policy topics they owned compared to Republicans. Republicans used earmarks for the large infrastructure projects for which they could claim credit.
If in the 118th Congress the behavior stays the same, we would expect Republicans to request much more money from each earmark for their infrastructure projects than their Democratic colleagues, even if they continue to request fewer earmarks in the aggregate. The trend seen throughout this process continues; what Republicans request in an earmark is fundamentally different from what Democrats request.
But a second, and more likely, possibility, is that earmarking behavior shifts in response to Republicans controlling the appropriations process. This means that Republicans will start to request more earmarks than they did in the 117th Congress, and Democrats will request fewer. It also means that Republicans will begin to utilize earmarks as a tool for representation and start to request earmarks that target their core voting blocs.
In our research, we show how Democrats used earmarks as a tool for representation in this way. We group the target populations referenced in the justification letters required to accompany requests by the House Appropriations Committee into core Democratic and core Republican voting blocs (see Table 2). We define a core Democratic target as any reference in an earmark justification to class, race, women, ethnic group, LGBTQ persons or youth. A core Republican target is defined as a reference to religious groups, rural communities, military personnel, farmers, or the elderly. Democrats referenced a core target group in 22% of their earmarks in the 117th Congress. Republicans referenced a core target group in only 4% of their earmarks. These percentages align with the policy topics contained in an earmark justification as well, as the large infrastructure projects requested by Republicans are less likely to be targeted towards a key constituent group. So as Republicans alter their earmarking behavior in response to their new control of the House Appropriations Committee, expect to see more earmarks for fewer dollars, with an increased focus on projects that benefit their core target group.
The ten-year gap between earmarking cycles means scholars can approach studying these appropriation tools with fresh eyes in a contemporary context. Earmarks offer a new opportunity to see tangible evidence of the federal government “working” at the local level. If they continue to be allowed in the next congress, more earmark justifications will roll in during the next appropriations cycle. It will be interesting to see how a Republican-controlled House of Representatives will use this tool to benefit their constituents; and how Democrats, now serving in the minority, will adjust their behavior.
By Valerie Wirtschafter, Ted Piccone
As thousands of protesters descended on the three main houses of political power in Brasília on Sunday afternoon, the parallels between the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the events unfolding in Brazil’s capital were undeniable and widely discussed in the media. In many ways these comparisons were also entirely predictable: Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had followed former U.S. President Donald Trump’s playbook throughout much of his tenure in office. He rose to prominence as a pugnacious right-wing populist, did not shy away from embracing authoritarianism, spent his presidency lamenting “fake news,” and made repeated and baseless claims of fraud designed to undermine the integrity of Brazil’s elections. Both countries also experienced steady declines in rule of law performance during their respective tenures.
Despite what now seems like an inevitable finale, in the months after Bolsonaro’s defeat, Brazil watchers remained cautiously hopeful that a peaceful transition of power might be possible without major incident — and, for the most part, it was. In the aftermath of the election, Bolsonaro did not directly concede, but did authorize a presidential transition. Many Bolsonaro allies in elected office signaled their commitment to serving in “the opposition.” And although pro-Bolsonaro protests throughout the country remained a constant feature, political demonstrations in Brazil are fairly common and the security sector had successfully thwarted at least one particularly troubling incident.
Importantly, these demonstrations did not seem to feature the top-down mobilization that characterized the aftermath of the 2020 elections in the United States. In his final presidential statement, Bolsonaro urged supporters to accept their current reality. He had tried to find a way forward within the bounds of the Constitution, he told them, but ultimately, “[w]e live in a democracy or we don’t…No one wants an adventure.”
Amid heightened security and flanked by citizens representing the diversity of the Brazilian population, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was inaugurated earlier this month as the 39th president of Brazil. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro had been captured on camera in Florida, dining at Kentucky Fried Chicken and shopping at the Southern grocery store chain Publix (whose heiress had been willing to contribute up to $3 million to January 6 protests). These viral images sparked jokes about the former president’s status as a “temporary Florida man” and raised questions about his decision to flee Brazil before losing prosecutorial immunity for several legal investigations.
That a violent uprising by Bolsonaro supporters would ultimately descend upon Brasília is unsurprising, given two years of warning. But that it came when it did — after President Lula’s peaceful inauguration and Bolsonaro’s departure from Brazil — makes it both more puzzling and distinct from the January 6 attack on the Capitol. While Brazil’s federal institutions have admirably held the line against anti-democratic forces, what is now abundantly clear is that the embrace of authoritarianism has found a foothold in a country that 38 years ago emerged from repressive military rule. Although Bolsonaro’s direct role — if any — in Sunday’s attack remains unclear, the authoritarian norms that precipitated it have seemingly become entrenched amongst a subset of the population, perhaps even without the overt backing of the former president.
A different kind of insurrectionAs the attack unfolded in Brasília, Congress was not in session, and federal buildings were largely vacant. With the transfer of power complete, the assault on the Superior Federal Court, National Congress, and the presidential palace seemed without clear purpose or organization. While rioters offered vague justification about occupying the building until the military intervened to overturn the election, they seemed to primarily focus on ransacking the place. Videos and images of Bolsonaro supporters bashing windows, destroying works of art, looting government documents, lighting fire to carpets, and even defecating on desks circulated widely online, often shared by those defacing federal property. There were even concerns that Bolsonaro supporters had made off with the original copy of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, which later proved to only be a replica.
Unlike in the United States, the actions of these bolsonaristas did not directly threaten the lives of elected officials or seek to stop a constitutional process. But they did represent a clear demonstration of their disdain for democracy, laying bare the underlying authoritarian impulses motivating at least some of the former president’s supporters. They also highlighted the clear power of disinformation to mobilize even just a small fraction of partisans, who with thousands of rabid supporters committed destabilizing and destructive acts of violence.
What is more alarming about the events in Brasília is the total complacency of local government and public security officials from the Federal District (DF). Unlike Washington, D.C., the Federal District — home to Brasília — has the governing capabilities of both a state and municipality, and security forces within the DF are responsible for protecting federal buildings. Yet while the attack unfolded, Bolsonaro supporters met surprisingly limited resistance. Police officers — who are among the best paid in Brazil — were caught on camera chatting with protesters and buying coconut water.
Before the invasion, Brazil’s intelligence agency (which has reportedly become highly politicized) had warned the DF government of potential “violent acts” due to an unusual number of chartered buses headed for the capital, and messages on Telegram, WhatsApp, and other online networks calling for smaller protests around the country to descend on Brasília. Although a plan was in place to contain protesters, District-level officials purportedly relaxed their response strategy last minute, despite prevailing intelligence threats. While the role of the DF’s elected officials in these attacks is currently an open question, the now dismissed secretary of public security and the governor of the Federal District, both aligned with former President Bolsonaro, seem to have ignored these warnings.
Although the District-level government failed to meet the challenge, Brazil’s federal institutions once again showed their resilience to anti-democratic attacks, despite their relative youth. After news of the invasion broke, Lula declared a federal intervention of the District’s public security. With congressional approval, this allows the federal government to control public security until the end of the month. Alongside other federal forces, the military eventually intervened, drawing cheers from Bolsonaro supporters, but did so only to clear protesters from federal buildings (importantly, several military officials reportedly participated in the vandalism, highlighting clear internal divisions amongst Brazil’s armed forces). The Supreme Federal Tribunal Court also swiftly suspended the governor of the DF for 90 days, pending an investigation into his “painful absence” during the attack. Somewhere between 200 and 400 people were arrested immediately, and less than 24 hours later, the federal government had detained more than 1,500 people for questioning about their involvement in the attempted coup, with more arrests underway.
Investigations have already begun to identify individuals who breached federal property and uncover financial networks that helped charter buses from around Brazil. Eventually, investigators will turn to probing the culpability of elected officials. Precedent makes the prosecution of politicians a viable path, as Lula himself experienced after he left the presidency in 2011. A day after the assault, the heads of the three branches of the federal government released a joint statement of solidarity and “in repudiation of yesterday’s coup acts.” This quick action is due in part to the fact that Bolsonaro is no longer in power and, as a result, does not control the levers of the federal government. It may also be due to the fact that threats of a potential January 6-style event had been long anticipated, particularly given Bolsonaro’s warning that his future held one of three options: “being arrested, killed, or victory.”
The road to recoveryDespite widespread public disapproval of the attack earlier this week, and an outpouring of pro-democracy demonstrations following the riot, it would be unwise to celebrate the failed coup attempt as a death knell for bolsonarismo or anti-democratic forces in Brazil. After all, both found strong footing even without the overt backing of the former president. Although the recent presidential elections may have revitalized Brazil’s hobbled democracy, Bolsonaro’s presidency did serious damage to undermine the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions and electoral processes.
As the Brazilian people move forward in the aftermath of the unprecedented attack, the U.S. experience offers a flawed blueprint to follow, or an opportunity to chart a different course. While the U.S. Department of Justice has continued to successfully prosecute January 6 insurrectionists, thus far higher-ups in Trump’s circle have mostly evaded accountability, and they remain a powerful force in the new U.S. Congress. The distinct elements of January 8, 2023 have in some ways already set Brazil on its own trajectory. Yet some clear similarities remain. Hyperpartisanship, the erosion of trust in legacy media, distrust of elections, and the narrow victories of Biden and Lula represent clear challenges for both presidents. With Lula now scheduled to visit Washington in early February and the two leaders reaffirming their commitment to a “permanent dialogue…to strengthen democracy,” Brazil and the United States have an important — and perhaps existential — opportunity for collaboration.
By Richard V. Reeves, Simran Kalkat
This week in Class Notes:* “Green Book” study shows that laws reduce race discrimination faster than demographic change. * Family structure has not changed because men have become less marriageable. * Black Americans are now more likely to die in car crashes than white Americans. * Teens’ experience with cyberbullying varies by age, race, and gender, as this week’s top chart shows. * Parents agree that teaching history accurately is important, so let’s listen to them, argues Sherri Jones in this month’s choice op-ed. * In a new Big Think video, learn about the challenges faced by boys and men. * For your calendar: resources for community schools, child care partnerships, and disparities in college enrollment.
‘Green Book’ study shows that laws reduce race discrimination faster than demographic change Anti-Black discrimination spaces were a dominant feature of public spaces in America through the 20th century. How far do shifts in racial diversity impact this discrimination? Lisa D. Cook and co-authors address this question using a digitized national dataset of “Negro Motorist Green Books” published between 1933 to 1966. Recently examined in the 2018 movie, “Green Book,” this was a travel guide which helped Black Americans look for nondiscriminatory businesses to frequent. Using changes in local population resulting from World War II casualties, they find that a 10% drop in a county’s white population resulted in a 0.65% increase in the number of non-discriminatory businesses. Conversely, using changes in the white population (again from World War II casualties) as an instrument for changes in the Black population, Cook et al. find that an increase in the Black population share meant an increase in the hotels, restaurants, and gas stations open to Black Americans. These small effects underline the importance, they conclude, of civil rights legislation to hasten the opening up of these businesses to Black customers.
Family structure has not changed because men have become less marriageable American families look very different today than half a century ago, not least in terms of the role of men. In 1963, 62% of young men between 25-29 were married and living with children: by 2021, that figure was 12%. In a new report from the American Enterprise Institute, Scott Winship examines the causes of changes in family structure. In particular he takes on the claim that men have become less “marriageable” as a result of declining economic prospects. He sets a main marriageability threshold of the 25th percentile of pretax earnings among married fathers aged 25-29 in 1979, a business cycle peak. (He also uses the median and the 25th percentile for 1962, 1969, and 1979 and finds very similar trends with all six methods). Winship finds that on this basis, young men are at least as “marriageable” today as they were in 1960s, when male-breadwinner families were the norm. The main results hold even when accounting for regional differences in cost of living and geographic variation in inflation. The implication is that changes in family composition over the past few decades are not, by and large, the result of changes in the absolute economic position of men.
Black Americans are now more likely to die in car crashes than white Americans Why are traffic mortality rates now higher for Black than white Americans – by 34% in 2020 – when for many decades they were lower? Drawing largely on descriptive analysis, Aaron Chalfin and Maxim N. Massenkoff show that the Black-white gap shows up not just in national data, but when looking at regional differences between urban and rural areas, and accounting for demographic differences in age and gender. The authors examine various explanations that could shed light on this emerging trend. They largely rule out differences in medical care following a crash, or differences in riskier driving, not wearing a seatbelt, or alcohol use among drivers. But they find evidence for two factors. First, a difference in time spent driving – Black Americans are driving more, while white Americans are driving slightly less. This explains about 24% to 87% of the racial gap in traffic mortality. Second, there is some evidence for a gap in the dramatic increases in drug use, with the Black rate nearly tripling from 2014 to 2019, whereas the white rate doubled.
Top chart: Teens’ experience with cyberbullying varies by age, race and gender Close to half of U.S. teens, 46%, report experiencing some form of cyberbullying according to a Pew Research Center survey from spring 2022. About 28% of teens have experienced multiple types of cyberbullying, especially older teen girls. Older teens are more likely to report being sent explicit images without consent, or someone sending their explicit images without consent. They are also more likely to be the target of false rumors and constant monitoring by someone other than a parent.
Chart Source: Pew Research Center
Choice opinion: Let’s listen to what parents, not politicians, really want from their public schools “This exposure to diversity of all kinds is important; similarly, students must learn to think critically about our nation’s complicated past and discuss it with educators and their peers so they can learn important lessons for the future. Discussing controversial issues in the classroom is how students learn how to handle conflict and work together peacefully and respectfully. Research over several decades has shown clear benefits from such discussions for the development of critical thinking and decisionmaking abilities, and parents across the political spectrum clearly agree,” writes Sherri Jones in The Hechinger Report
Self promotion: Why boys and men falling behind, and what can be done about it Boys in the U.S. are falling behind girls in nearly every measure of educational success. Girls are about a grade level ahead of boys in the average school district, make up two-thirds of the top 10% of GPAs, and are much more likely to go to college. To help boys, we need to redshirt them, bring in more male teachers to the K-12 education system, and invest in vocational training. Learn more in this Big Think video.
For your calendar: resources for community schools, child care partnerships, and an upcoming forum on children and families Essential resources for driving community schools forward
The Brookings Institution
Thursday, January 12, 2023
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST
Building supply, quality and equity: Early head start-child care partnerships
Bipartisan Policy Center
Monday, January 23, 2023
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST
Understanding and addressing gender, class, and racial disparities in college enrollment
The Brookings Institution
Monday, January 23, 2023
1:30 PM EST – 3:00 PM EST
By Homi Kharas, Charlotte Rivard
Strong headwinds suggest that 2023 will be a difficult year for global economic development. Avoiding setbacks will be at least as important as making renewed progress. Developing countries will continue to face overlapping crises with little to no fiscal space for addressing them. In the short term, debt and humanitarian distress are pressing threats, while in the longer term, climate action and spending on sustainable development goals (SDGs) remain priorities. If ignored, any one of these areas could have serious consequences for millions of people. If a critical mass of countries were to be adversely affected, it could create systemic failure in the global capacity to provide safety nets for people and resilience for economies.
Plans to avoid the worst outcomes will require some common features. At the country level, there need to be better policies, stronger institutions, and sound economic governance. At the international level, there need to be larger flows of official finance.
It will not be feasible to protect all countries from all types of risk. The human and financial resources to respond to crises are limited. The global community—major international organizations and large donors—needs a plan to avoid systemic risk and a watchlist of systemically important countries. Such a plan must triage and focus on those countries where the number of affected people is the largest. This does not imply that small countries should be ignored, simply that they have smaller spillover consequences for the rest of the world, and from a financial viewpoint, their issues are more manageable, so they can be dealt with as and when the need arises.
Which countries should be on a watchlist of those who could trigger a systemic failure, and what are the resource gaps involved? We consider below four priority areas in economic development where there are major gaps: (1) SDGs, (2) climate, (3) debt vulnerability, and (4) fragility, conflict, and violence.
- SDGs
This year marks the mid-point of the SDG time horizon (2015-2030). Heads of state will gather in September at the United Nations to take stock of progress. They will find that all the SDG targets for 2030 are off track and some indicators are even going backward. Early findings from forthcoming work (see sources under Figure 1) suggest that 10 countries account for roughly half the number of people left behind on a cross-section of key SDG targets. For example, there are about 600 million people still living in extreme poverty and millions more without adequate food, education, healthcare, or access to modern energy. Previous work on “building the SDG economy” estimated that roughly $1 trillion in additional spending is needed for developing countries to achieve the sustainable development goals. The 10 countries with the most “people being left behind” account for about half the financial gap. Without tangible progress on SDG financing this year, or at least a plan for an acceleration, there is a risk of a “lost generation.” Confidence in global programs and solutions will also inevitably fall further.
- Climate
Developing countries (excluding China) comprise 38 percent of current global greenhouse gas emissions and are expected to emit about half of annual emissions by 2030. While a “green transition” is underway in many developing countries, it is limited by inadequate financing. Less than 20 percent of installed global solar capacity is in developing countries (excluding China), even though these countries have some of the most favorable climatic conditions in the world. The reason is simple: the higher cost of financing in developing countries. An estimated $500 billion is needed this year, in addition to current funds, to finance climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries—sustainable infrastructure projects and natural climate solutions in agriculture, forestry, and land use. (Note this is far more than the oft-referenced $100 billion of climate finance promised by developed countries, a pledge that has still not been met.) Further, with the collapse of private financing in 2022, many sustainable infrastructure projects have been put on the back burner. The 10 countries with the largest climate financing gaps need around two-thirds of the total climate financing gap, or $350 billion. These 10 countries emit roughly half of developing country emissions (excluding China). If they do not act more aggressively on climate, prospects for keeping temperature increases below 1.5 degrees, or even 2 degrees, will dim.
- Debt
In 2023, developing countries owe an estimated $381 billion in debt service on medium- and long-term external debt according to the World Bank International Debt Statistics. 53 countries have credit rating classifications estimated to be “highly speculative” or worse. This subset of developing countries owes $166 billion in debt service in 2023. The top 10 debtors alone owe almost 60 percent of this debt service, or a quarter of total debt service due by developing countries. The current debt resolution system would struggle to handle more countries. Only three countries are currently renegotiating their debt under the G-20-led Common Framework, and most large debtors are ineligible to participate. The inefficiency of approaching the issue on a case-by-case basis raises the likelihood that more developing countries will lose their hard-earned access to private capital markets and that 2023 will see a return to systemic debt crises.
- Fragility, conflict, and violence
While the war in Ukraine consistently occupied the headlines in 2022, many other countries faced urgent humanitarian concerns—from natural disasters, to armed conflict, food crises, and political instability. The IRC publishes an Emergency Watchlist of 10 countries most at risk of a humanitarian crisis. The latest watchlist countries accounted for nearly 60 percent of people displaced due to conflict, violence, or disaster across all countries in 2021. In the most recent past, only about 50 percent of the humanitarian appeals for these countries (excluding Ukraine) was met according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). They only received $17 billion in 2021 according to OECD statistics but had costs and losses estimated at $32 billion. In addition, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that Ukraine received $17.8 billion in humanitarian aid between January 24 to November 20, 2022. If these 10 countries have the same order of magnitude of losses in 2023 as they did in 2021, costs and losses will amount to $50 billion.
Key TakeawaysFigure 1 below provides an overview of the top 10 countries in each risk category. In all, there are 30 different countries that need to be watched (ten countries are on two lists). The aggregate resource gap in those countries amounts to $903 billion in 2023. Most of this will need to come from domestic sources, but a substantial amount will surely be needed in external assistance. Donors and official financing agencies should make contingency plans. (The World Bank already announced a “surge” financing program that will last through June.)
The financing needs are not simply concentrated in a handful of countries that have multiple overlapping crises. Rather, quite different sets of countries are affected by each vulnerability, resulting in many different countries requiring funds. The current system is not fit for this scale of financing needs or concurrent crises.
There are early-stage discussions on what to do next. Discussions at the G-20 and other forums on expanding the multilateral development banks are ongoing. Some funds, notably the Green Climate Fund is up for replenishment this year. But there is little indication that rich country governments are willing to support a huge step-up in official finance. There need to be new and innovative mechanisms for channeling resources to developing countries. Ideas abound: new issuance of special drawing rights (SDRs), credits for carbon offset sales in voluntary carbon markets, ecoservice payments, taxes on fossil fuels, state-contingent clauses in financial instruments. These ideas are still at a formative stage. It is time for more brainstorming in 2023 to see where the possibilities lie, else global development will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis.
Figure 1: Estimated developing country vulnerabilities and financing needs for 2023Note: Excludes Russia and China from analysis. The ordering of countries is by SDG performance, climate financing gaps, debt service payments, and emergency watch list countries according to the order by IRC (with the exception of countries in the overlaps).
Sources: International Rescue Committee; OECD Statistics; and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre for fragility, violence, and conflict; EDGAR; World Emissions Clock; and Bhattacharya et al (2021) for climate; International Debt Statistics for debt; and preliminary results from Kharas, McArthur, and Onyechi (forthcoming) for SDGs.
By Sarah A. Binder
Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)’s rocky road to the House Speakership came at a steep price. After 15 ballots, the most since the Civil War, McCarthy narrowly sewed up support only after agreeing to most of the procedural and policy demands of 20-some-odd members of the far-right bloc of House Republicans, the Freedom Caucus.
Disputes over the rules often reflect a party’s ideological rifts. But intense fighting over the rules this time was actually a fight over the House Republicans’ agenda and who will control it in the new Congress. On that score, members of the far-right, anti-establishment Freedom Caucus won big.
Here’s what you need to know about the road ahead.
Brawls over House rules are old hat Unlike the Senate, whose rules carry over one Congress to the next, each House adopts its rules anew at the start of each two-year Congress on the heels of electing its Speaker. When the chamber adopts its new rules, members of the majority party are often on the same page and just tinker with the previous session’s rules. But not always.
Previous contested speakership elections often hinged on fights over the rules. A century ago, the last time it took more than a single ballot to choose the speaker, Progressive Republicans broke from the party’s conservative wing to block election of the party nominee. They wanted to adopt new rules that strengthen the procedural rights of rank-and-file lawmakers and weaken leaders’ control. They won some concessions, but to Progressives’ dismay, Republicans expanded their ranks after the next election and clawed back those rules.
Since then, procedural battles when electing a Speaker have taken place off the House floor. When a faction of swing district Democrats opposed returning Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to the Speakership in 2019, she bought off dissenters with minor procedural concessions before balloting began.
Demands from a far-right faction Unlike past factions that often occupied the political center, making common cause with minority party lawmakers, far-right Freedom Caucus members generally hail from safe red seats and often vote against large bipartisan deals. Some of them spearheaded efforts to keep former President Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election, and almost all of the returning members voted in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol to overturn the results of the presidential election.
Many Freedom Caucus members demanded that Republican leaders loosen the procedural reins. That’s because in recent decades, House majorities have centralized authority over the agenda in leaders’ hands. So long as majority party leaders maintain the support of their rank and file, leaders call the shots on which bills advance to the floor and block votes on politically charged amendments.
Some say McCarthy’s opponents wanted to “democratize” the rules, for example demanding that GOP leaders restore amendment free-for-alls on the House floor. Both parties’ leaders have steered clear of so-called “open rules” in recent years to avoid controversial votes. (In fact, Republicans’ last dust up over amendments occurred in 2015 when conservatives wanted to allow the Confederate flag to fly over federal cemeteries.) More likely, Freedom Caucus members want open rules to advance their own policy and political agendas and force lawmakers to take votes on Caucus priorities.
Costly rules changes McCarthy’s opponents secured numerous procedural concessions that could advance their agenda of significantly paring back federal spending, especially on the social safety net. The new rules require a two-thirds majority to raise taxes, mandate new spending (but not tax cuts) to be paid for, and permits amendments to fire or reduce the pay of federal officials.
The House also created an investigatory panel to probe what Republicans term the Biden administration’s “weaponization of government.” A late concession to the holdouts explicitly empowers the committee to review “ongoing criminal investigations.” Those would presumably include the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into 2020 election interference and likely even the involvement of some Freedom Caucus members.
Sharing reins of powerBeyond rules changes, McCarthy promised to put Freedom Caucus members in coveted seats on the party panel that doles out committee assignments and gavels. Caucus members also nabbed three seats on the House Rules Committee, the arm of the leadership that sets the floor agenda. Leaders typically stack the committee with nine of their most loyal members, leaving the minority party four seats. Freedom Caucus reps can now threaten to join forces with Democrats if Republicans won’t accommodate their demands.
McCarthy also apparently promised a vote on a ten-year balanced budget plan that would reduce federal spending and would require trillions in cuts to achieve. Defense hawks are unlikely to support cuts in military spending, and swing district GOP members could join Democrats to oppose excessive cuts to domestic programs. McCarthy also committed to pair a vote to increase the government debt limit with steep spending cuts. President Biden and the Senate are unlikely to accept that deal, raising the chances of an unthinkable government default later this year.
If McCarthy reneges, any of his opponents could exploit a newly restored “motion to vacate” that allows a single member to call a snap vote to remove him as Speaker.
Rocky road aheadAny Republican speaker would face the daunting task of building winning coalitions when the margin for error is so small and the conference divided. McCarthy’s challenge is steeper.
Concessions to the GOP’s extreme tail weaken McCarthy as Speaker. Needing their votes to become Speaker, McCarthy does not appear to have demanded anything from the Freedom Caucus in return for sharing the procedural reins. Freedom Caucus members have typically lobbed bombs from the sidelines and voted against Republicans when their amendments failed. Will they stick with the party this time when they don’t get their way? That’s a core expectation for lawmakers who benefit from leaders’ largesse. Emerging fractures within the Freedom Caucus won’t make things any easier.
By Daphna Bassok, Michael Hansen, Douglas N. Harris, Katharine Meyer, Rachel M. Perera, Jon Valant, Kenneth K. Wong
From the continued response to pandemic disruptions to culture war issues that have surfaced in schools, 2022 was an eventful year for U.S. schools and education policy. That looks to be true for 2023 as well.
Below, experts from the Brown Center on Education Policy identify the education stories that they’ll be following in 2023, providing analysis on how these issues could shape the learning landscape for the next 12 months—and possibly well into the future.
DAPHNA BASSOK (@DaphnaBassok)
Nonresident Senior Fellow:
In 2023, I’ll be watching innovative state and local efforts to better fund childcare and better support early educators. The pandemic highlighted the essential role childcare plays in the lives of children, families, and the U.S. economy. It also made clear that without greater public support, childcare providers cannot pay teachers adequately and cannot offer families essential supports. The high teacher turnover rates common in early childhood settings compromise quality, and during the pandemic, they also compromised access to care. In Virginia, two thirds of publicly funded childcare centers shut down classrooms or turned families away because they could not recruit and retain teachers.
Pandemic relief dollars provided an essential lifeline to childcare. However, as these funds run out, states are now facing a stark funding cliff which will exacerbate staffing challenges considerably. New Mexico recently passed a ballot measure to establish a permanent funding source in the state constitution, making it the first state in the country to do so. Washington, D.C. approved funding to work towards childcare compensation that approaches the pay of other D.C. teachers. Virginia recently changed their approach to funding subsidized childcare to better account for the true cost of childcare, including better compensation. I’m hopeful other states will follow with big investments and that as the federal funding cliff approaches, we’ll finally see large federal investments in childcare.
MICHAEL HANSEN (@DrMikeHansen) Senior Fellow:
Heading into 2023, I am monitoring the status of the K-12 teacher workforce and reports of teacher shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched many schools’ human resources in recent years, with teachers reporting heightened burnout and intentions to leave. Combined with preexisting trends of a weakening teacher pipeline and anemic application pools for certain positions and settings, many worried that we may tip into a full-scale crisis.
I am pleased to report that recent evidence increasingly points in the direction of the teacher workforce weathering the storm, even if the rains haven’t yet fully subsided. For example, district surveys from the spring of 2022 pointed to expected turnover in the current school year (2022-2023) likely being slightly less taxing than last year (2021-2022). New evidence from Washington State shows even the elevated turnover experienced in 2021-2022 was within the range of historical teacher turnover spanning nearly four decades. Finally, another new study from Illinois points to increased staffing levels, particularly among non-teacher staff, as the primary driver of elevated vacancies in schools, even as student enrollments are falling. These reports and other data points give me confidence that we’ll make it through.
Don’t celebrate just yet, though. We still have work to do shoring up localized shortages in spots that have persistent hiring problems and doing what we can to make the teaching profession more attractive, especially among people of color.
DOUGLAS N. HARRIS (@DouglasHarris99)
Nonresident Senior Fellow:
The first thing I’m looking for in 2023 is a sign that educators, families, and students have responded to COVID-19 by making permanent and systemic improvements in schooling. As I’ve written before, COVID-19 forced everyone into novel practices. Did they develop new habits that are having lasting positive influence, such as using new kinds of devices and software? Or did remote learning create bad habits (e.g., distraction from smart phones) that are making it even more difficult for students to rebound? Anecdotally, I think the answer is “both,” but I hope some enterprising researchers and journalists are looking into this.
There’s also something I’m not looking for: I don’t expect a noticeable student rebound from COVID-19 learning loss anytime soon. The early evidence doesn’t provide much reason for hope. I think this is because: (a) if educators knew how to get students to catch up from a massive upheaval like this, they would have already been doing this for struggling students before COVID-19; (b) hiring more educators or bringing in new programs with the ESSER funds has proven difficult because of the tight labor market and temporary nature of the funds; and (c) the take-up rate on voluntary, after-school learning activities has been low.
I’m not exactly optimistic that we’ll “solve” this quickly, but hopefully there’s at least a silver lining in the form of better teaching that will help address the problem gradually, over the long run.
KATHARINE MEYER (@KatharineMeyer)
Fellow:
In 2023, my eyes are on the Supreme Court for two consequential higher education decisions. First will be an expedited hearing on the Biden administration’s proposed student loan forgiveness program. The administration accepted 26 million applications for debt relief this fall; however, forgiveness is on hold until the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in February about the legality of the program. For now, the administration has extended the pause on loan repayment. But regardless of the Court’s ruling, restarting payments on remaining balances after a three-year pause will be a significant shift in individuals’ budgets. It is incumbent on the Department of Education to provide borrowers with clear, advance communication about repayment options and resources to avoid default.
Second, the Court heard arguments in October 2022 about the consideration of race in college admissions in two separate cases. I anticipate the Court will rule in favor of the plaintiff in both cases, effectively ending the use of affirmative action. This raises the question of how colleges will shift their recruitment and admissions processes to advance their goals of a diverse community of scholars. Colleges will need to examine what other admissions practices, such as legacy admissions or the review of test scores, they may need to adjust to achieve their mission.
RACHEL PERERA (@RachelMarisa)
Fellow:
In 2023, I will be following two issues in K-12 education policy that have important implications for equity.
First, the Biden administration has signaled that new guidance on how public schools can avoid racial discrimination in school discipline may be forthcoming. Any new guidance is expected to mirror guidelines published in 2014 by the Obama administration (and rescinded by the Trump administration in 2018). The Obama-era guidelines relied on a broader definition of racial discrimination (“disparate impact”) than had been used by prior Republican administrations (“disparate treatment”). This is notable because a “disparate impact” theory of discrimination is better aligned with contemporary understandings of how racial discrimination shapes school outcomes.
I will also be following how school districts spend their remaining COVID-19 relief aid and the implementation of COVID-19 recovery interventions in schools. Emerging research and journalistic reports indicate that school districts are facing significant challenges implementing evidence-based interventions to support students recovering from the varied harms of the pandemic. Other work suggests that the scale of COVID-19 recovery funding provided to schools may be insufficient to meet the current needs of U.S. schools and students. To ensure that students, families, and educators get the support they need, it is critical that we continue to track how COVID-19 recovery in schools is faring.
JON VALANT (@JonValant)
Senior Fellow and Director:
In 2023, I’ll be watching what happens with Republicans’ push for “parents’ rights” in schools. Several states have enacted so-called parents’ rights legislation already, with several others—including Texas, Missouri, and Kansas—poised to consider bills (or constitutional amendments) as the new legislative sessions begin. Even the new GOP House majority might pursue a Parents’ Bill of Rights despite decades-long skepticism from Republicans about federal action in K-12 education. With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, that federal effort won’t go anywhere legislatively, but it could become a model for Republican-led state governments.
That’s important because the details of these bills matter and have varied quite a bit. (FutureEd has a helpful policy tracker.) Some bills explicitly target teaching about race, gender, and/or sexuality—despite the potential harms to vulnerable students—while others read more like bureaucratic sets of reporting requirements. Some call for major reforms to school choice policies while others sidestep those issues entirely.
Democrats may have something to say about parent supports, too, with continued interest in cutting childcare costs and reinstating an expanded child tax credit that slashed the child poverty rate. But even if it’s possible, with enough squinting, to see hope for bipartisan legislation, it certainly doesn’t feel like 2023 will be a year for bipartisanship in education.
KENNETH K. WONG
Nonresident Senior Fellow:
Results of the local, state, and national elections in 2022 have shifted the landscape of education governance in 2023. Institutional tension is likely to intensify requiring extra efforts by elected officials and stakeholders to resolve their policy differences. At the national level, Republican control in the House will likely slow down, and in some cases, reverse President Biden’s education equity agenda. Congressional oversight will intensify over functions of the U.S. Department of Education and in civil rights enforcement conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. Challenges against the Biden administration’s policies will also come from states where Republican governors and state attorneys have received strong electoral support. These state leaders will launch legal challenges and legislative actions to resist Biden’s executive initiatives. Finally, at the local level, school board elections have become a contested terrain. While Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group, reported victory for about half of their endorsed board candidates, the National Education Association claimed electoral success for about 70% of their endorsed candidates. A critical issue is whether and how divided governance at all levels will affect schooling opportunity, accountability, and quality for all students in 2023.
By Colby Galliher, Edison Forman
In contemporary American politics, talk of secession is rarely more than theater. Political leaders tease—sometimes bellow—the idea as a reaction to unfavorable election results, the prospect of big-ticket legislation with which they disagree, meat for their base, or to attract media attention. In reality, the barriers to secession by any state or region within the United States are exceptionally high.
There are, however, quasi-secessionist political movements that do not threaten the United States’ territorial or political integrity but nonetheless express a growing, elemental discomfort with one of the fundamental principles of a healthy democracy. Though these efforts, like their flashier secession relatives, carry little likelihood of success, the grassroots sentiments underpinning them—in particular, the decay of Americans’ willingness to be governed by their political rivals—render them worthy of analysis for what they communicate about polarization, hyper-partisanship, and political intolerance.
Secession from one state to anotherFrom the Mid-Atlantic to the Pacific Northwest, rural counties in blue states have taken steps to redraw state lines to subsume themselves under neighboring red states or to form new states of their own. In some cases, such exercises have drawn sizeable community support, leading to the placement of the secession question on local ballots and subsequent approval by voters.
The Pacific Northwest is home to a long-running movement to reorganize state lines along political rifts. In Oregon, Washington, and northern California, as in much of the United States, rural counties are much redder than their densely populated, coastal counterparts. Citing dissatisfaction with the liberal policies of the state government, citizens in some rural Oregon counties have organized to place on the ballot the question of whether to break from their home state to join neighboring Idaho—a reliably red state for the past fourteen presidential elections, where Republicans helm every statewide and federal office. In 2021, five of those counties in Oregon forged ahead and voted to join Idaho. Similar votes are likely to be held in the future in rural counties in Washington and northern California.
In the Mid-Atlantic, Republican state lawmakers in heavily Democratic Maryland made overtures in 2021 to the state legislature in West Virginia expressing their desire to secede from their home state. The lawmakers—all representing portions of three counties in Maryland’s rural western panhandle—claimed in their letters that West Virginia, in both its professed values and the heavily Republican lean of its government, would be a better home for their constituents than Maryland, where Democrats enjoy supermajorities in the State House and reclaimed the Governor’s Mansion in November. Residents of the three counties have not yet been asked to weigh in on the switch via a ballot question, though the lawmakers have indicated that such a step could be taken in the future.
This phenomenon is not exclusive to the coasts. Over two dozen counties in Illinois, including four in the southern portion of the state that border ruby-red Kentucky, have taken steps to leave Illinois for redder pastures, including by passing non-binding resolutions that encourage local officials to explore the possibility of leaving the state. Meanwhile, residents of a county in northern Colorado have explored the idea of joining heavily Republican Wyoming. And in 2021, a New Mexico state senator proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would allow counties to pursue secession, either by joining neighboring states or by creating a new one.
Even if voters do approve a state switch via referendum, actually merging with a neighboring state and shifting state borders is an exceedingly arduous procedure. The process, which is similar to that by which new states are admitted to the nation via Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, requires approval by both the legislatures of the affected states and by Congress.
Along with those high technical hurdles, states would be hard-pressed to find economic or political incentives to surrender counties to a neighbor or to allow them to form their own states. State legislatures are unlikely to pass off portions of their tax base to other jurisdictions. Ceding population, which helps determine, among other things, a state’s Electoral College votes and its number of congressional districts, is also a political non-starter. Some legal analysts have further argued that Supreme Court precedent renders county-level secession impossible.
What is notable about these movements, then, is not their potential to radically restructure political jurisdictions, but what they telegraph about the deterioration of Americans’ willingness to tolerate life under the rule of the opposing party.
Analyzing county-level secessionResidents who vote for their counties to switch states for political reasons send two messages with their ballots. First, that they are displeased with rule by their political rivals. The second message is less direct but no less consequential for the nation at large: Those voters signal an unwillingness to live in a state where their party does not control the levers of power and therefore does not dictate their state’s policy agenda. Once a cornerstone of democratic life, that toleration’s decay and a drift toward zero-sum thinking about power-sharing in governance bode poorly for the nation’s sociopolitical cohesion.
A sharpening rural-urban divide is a persuasive, though incomplete, explanation for the growth of these movements. The gulf between the two groups in key measures—socioeconomic status, education level, age, and others—has been widening for decades. Values shape what citizens expect of their elected officials and the bodies they comprise, meaning that as rural and urban Americans diverge further in their worldviews, their expectations of their representatives diverge concomitantly. Analysts have also argued that both parties have historically neglected rural populations, exacerbating their dissatisfaction.
What rural voters choose to do in the face of that disconnect (or neglect) is where polarization’s toxic effect becomes clear. For differences in policy priorities across demographics are not new. Americans, as participants in a democracy, have always had to stomach rule by the opposition, whether at the local, state, or federal level. Indeed, the persistence of democracy rests on individuals and parties maintaining a willingness to participate in the democratic system even when their party, their team, loses. Elections have consequences, meaning that when one’s political rivals win an election, conferring on them the prerogative to steer government, they reserve the right to legislate the priorities on which they campaigned.
But as American politics have radicalized, willingness to be in the minority has waned. Americans have become more restive under the rule of the opposition, be it at the state or federal level, increasingly viewing it as insufferable tutelage. In many ways, the impulse to call lost elections “stolen” or “rigged” is an outgrowth of that lack of toleration. The use of increasingly apocalyptic language to describe the election victory of the opposing side epitomizes the dire terms in which Americans have come to view living under the control of their political rivals. The spirit of competition that typifies democracy, specifically the effort to change strategies to attract new voters, to get behind leaders who offer real solutions and express a readiness to work across the aisle to devise solutions to problems afflicting both rural and urban Americans, and to expand one’s representation in government, has been supplanted by a readiness to blow up the system.
Even if that destructive impulse is not new, the impassioned drive toward life in uniformly like-minded political environments is. Indeed, in many ways, those counties seeking to join politically similar states are merely taking the next step toward the ideological homogeneity that has been congealing in the United States for the past several decades, with each party’s vote share growing in counties and states where it already does well. Americans increasingly choose where they live based on the political lean of the area. Polarization can now be tracked in geographical terms.
But there is a strong case to be made that the cross-aisle conversations which arose from that comingling of political ideologies was what once made American democracy so robust, and what now has rendered it so frail. County-level efforts to address political dissatisfaction by simply becoming part of neighboring states with more kindred political leadership only accelerate that self-sorting, further isolating Americans in their increasingly unbreachable ideological silos.
Rather than the louder, more theatrical shouts of secession from political leaders seeking points with the base, grassroots, county-level maneuvers to switch states should disquiet those attempting to peer into the nation’s future. Both exercises—the grand and the humble—bear little chance of success. But the latter figures as a better barometer of local dissatisfaction, a sign that the sociopolitical fabric anchoring American democracy is fraying. Certainly, that fabric has been stressed, stretched, and ripped; but never so irrevocably that it could not be stitched back together. Aside from offering valuable data to campaigns and leaders who seek to mend, not widen, the country’s political divides, these movements offer a window into local thinking about governance and toleration in today’s strained America.
By Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Elias Blinkoff
The invention of the telephone in 1876 was met with simultaneous amazement and trepidation. Critics wondered if phones would disrupt face-to-face communication in ways that made us either too active or lazy. When television entered our homes, we fretted about the potential harms of the box and screen time in every living room. Surely, this would create a society of couch potatoes who do not even notice the people sitting by their side and fail to engage in more important activities. The definition of “screen time” was later broadened to include the impacts of digital content and “social media” on children. Indeed, a recent article in The Atlantic by Professor John Haidt warns that the generation raised on social media could even imperil American capitalism and culture.
The latest challenge to the creative human intellect was introduced on November 30th, 2022 by OpenAI. ChatGPT is a conversational bot responsive to users’ questions in ways that allows it to search large databases and to create well-formed essays, legal briefs, poetry in the form of Shakespeare, computer code, or lyrics in the form of Rogers and Hammerstein, to name a few. As New York Times writer Kevin Roose commented, “ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public.”
Used in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool for our students, not something to be feared.
As with the telephone, however, ChatGPT is primarily being met with amazement and trepidation. Some in education fear that students will never need to learn to write, as they can merely lean on ChatGPT. Writing for The Atlantic, English teacher Daniel Herman worried that ChatGPT spelled “The End of High School English.” In the same publication, Stephen Marche declared the college essay “dead.” Fortune Magazine quipped, “Is Chat GPT the end of trust? Will the college essay survive?” On January 3, 2023, the New York City Department of Education took the dramatic step of responding to these fears by blocking access to ChatGPT on all department devices and networks. A department spokesperson justified the decision due to “…concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.” She further questioned the educational value of the technology, stating: “While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success.”
Educators, opinion writers, and researchers are engaged in a vibrant discussion about the implications of ChatGPT right now. The emerging consensus is that teachers and professors might be tricked. That is—ChatGPT would surely pass the Turing test. For example, Daniel Herman describes how the program drafted a reasonable college essay, a cover letter to serve as a manager at Starbucks, and even an academic paper comparing two texts. Microbiologist Alex Berezow further discovered that ChatGPT excelled at answering short-response questions from a college-level microbiology quiz. However, the essays produced by ChatGPT are still identifiable as bot-produced, rather than human-produced, due to a few fundamental flaws. The high school English paper that the program composed for Daniel Herman was superficial and lacked references. Other reports indicate that the program includes inaccurate information and fails to provide a compelling perspective, linking the writer and reader.
In our own test, the first author (Kathy) gave the bot a complicated essay question that she asks her Honors psychology students to answer. It did a respectable job. Yet—the bot produced no more than a B- or C+ essay. Why? To date, the bot cannot distinguish the “classic” article in a field that must be cited from any other article that reviews the same content. The bot also tends to keep referencing the same sources over and over again. These are issues that can be easily resolved in the next iteration.
More centrally, however, is that the bot is more of a synthesizer than a critical thinker. It would do well on a compare-and-contrast essay, but is less able to create a unique thesis and to defend that thesis.
As educators, we strive to make our students what John Bruer, former president of the McDonnell Foundation, dubbed knowledge transformers, rather than knowledge digesters. That means that memorization is less valued than critical thinking. In fact, one of the general problems with many educational systems today is that they value learning the facts more than being able to remember information over time, to generalize the learning to new situations and to creatively develop a new way of thinking about an issue. In a world in which all of the information since the beginning of time is said to double every 12 hours, memorization of facts quickly loses its currency.
How can ChatGPT create knowledge transformers?The question before us is how we can productively use ChatGPT to help our students become knowledge transformers? A writer, a teacher, and an education professor all suggest an analogy from the calculator and math to ChatGPT and writing. In the same way that calculators became an important tool for students in math classes, ChatGPT has potential to become an important tool for writers who want to hone their critical thinking skills along with their communication skills. How might this happen? Educators are responding with valuable approaches. Adam Stevens, a high school history teacher in New York City who opposes his district’s decision to block ChatGPT, sees it as a valuable tool to promote—not limit—critical thinking. Students can evaluate the program’s initial response to a prompt, then consider how to improve it through revision. Other teachers quoted in a recent report on ChatGPT for Ed Week advocate for a similar approach and using the program to focus on the writing process. In higher education, we can openly let our students use ChatGPT for their class assignments, as well, and even use the bot in class to generate a first draft. Students can then learn how to move beyond the first draft to make their essays better. This is precisely the method that the first author will adopt at the start of her class after winter break.
Deeper, more engaged learning Our students already know how to use this new tool. They are likely more sophisticated than their teachers at framing the questions and getting solid answers from the bot, even though it was just released. What they need to learn is why—at least for the moment—ChatGPT would get a lower grade than they could get. It is exciting to see how quickly educators are responding to this new reality in the classroom and recognizing the instructional value of ChatGPT for deeper, more engaged learning.
As Adam Stevens remarks, ChatGPT is only a threat if our education system continues to “pursue rubric points and not knowledge.” It is critical for all educators to follow their colleague’s example. As we note in our recent book, “Making Schools Work,” the old education model in which teachers deliver information to later be condensed and repeated will not prepare our students for success in the classroom—or the jobs of tomorrow. We should allow that model to die a peaceful death. Used in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool for our students, not something to be feared.
By George Ingram, Susan Reichle
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched a package of internal reforms to modernize its engagement with the private sector. The Agency has a long history of working with the private sector—on both sides of the development continuum, from partnering with American businesses in delivering development solutions to building up the local private sector. An example is USAID’s work with an Egyptian exporter association that strengthened agricultural exports and increased revenue by including smallholder farmers and exporters in the high-value horticultural value chains. Seeing the benefits of a more inclusive export sector, major Egyptian exporter associations began to increasingly seek smallholder farmer contracts.
The most concerted effort, the Global Development Alliance (GDA), was launched more than 20 years ago as a means to advance USAID’s engagement with the private sector and has resulted in more than 1,900 public-private partnerships over the past two decades. Despite, or maybe because of, being the bilateral donor that has gone the furthest in partnering with the private sector, USAID recognizes that new tools are needed to meet today’s unprecedented development challenges that require a more forward-leaning approach to scaling up public-private partnerships.
The timing is propitious. The G-7, major reports by independent experts, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen have publicly prioritized the mobilization of private finance. Billions and trillions will be needed to address climate change, the loss of progress in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), COVID and conflict-induced poverty, and the astronomical cost of rebuilding Ukraine when Putin’s war is over. It is therefore essential that USAID have the tools to enlist the resources and capabilities of the private sector to meet these monumental demands.
With many corporations aligning their business strategies with the SDGs, the time is ripe for partnership with USAID. In 2021 USAID articulated how the private sector is integral to its work in a “Private Sector Engagement Policy” and highlighted the importance of public-private partnerships to achieve the global goals by 2030.
PSE ModernizeOn November 17, 2022, USAID Administrator announced Private Sector Engagement (PSE) Modernize containing the following nine changes to its business model:
| Mission Capacity Index | Relationship Management | Data & Reporting | | Community of Practice | Future Workforce | Consultation Desk | | Innovation Incubator | Learning Lab | Flexible Fund |
Although each component is an important step, several are especially critical to USAID’s engagement with the private sector and require further strengthening to ensure the announcement of this initiative endures and leads to greater development impact.
Staffing and ResourcesOne of the greatest challenges USAID faces is the lack of staff and resources to deliver on the promise of engaging the private sector. The Mission Capacity Index is a new data system that will provide USAID country missions and Washington bureaus with information on their staffing capability to scale PSE programming. Rather than long technical documents, engaging the private sector requires unique communication skills based on slide decks and a deep understanding of the drivers for corporate partners, as well as the agility to respond quickly. While some USAID officers have these skills or could rapidly adopt them, the agency must invest and reward its staff to ensure these skills endure beyond this administration. Creating agency awards around PSE and incorporating objectives and targets into employee performance plans are just a few ways to incentivize staff.
The PSE Future Workforce Program will provide a needed focus on attracting and retaining private-sector talents in the agency. A step further would be to make PSE expertise a separate cone within the USAID personnel system to ensure those employees that their expertise is valued, and that they have a path for career advancement.
USAID has had staff members assigned to maintain the relationship with certain private sector partners. But this has been on top of other responsibilities and seldom rewarded. Under “Relationship Management” those positions will be prioritized and become more structured and formalized in the workforce plan.
The Consultation Desk, Innovation Incubator, and Learning Lab can be seen as a trio of knowledge units to provide missions and Washington bureaus access to PSE expertise, PSE innovative tools and authorities, and a repository of PSE resources. Due to a lack of resources, these endeavors are slated to be placed on the back burner. But they are critical tools for staff to perform their responsibilities in a smart and coherent manner, so priority should be placed on finding the modest resources needed to launch them.
A community of practice is a proven instrument for sharing experiences and learning. The PSE Community of Practice is designed to be internal to USAID. To be truly impactful, it should also encompass private-sector participation.
Flexible FundThe Flexible Fund takes further an underused authority in the FY 2022 foreign operations appropriations act that allows $50 million in development assistance and economic support funds used for private-sector partnerships to be available for use for three years (rather than the usual two years). If approved by Congress, the Flexible Fund, at a suggested $80 million for fiscal year 2023, would be the first time USAID had a discrete pot of money just for partnering with the private sector.
A model for this fund could be the Complex Crisis Fund (CCF) which enables USAID missions to access resources quickly per a short application to USAID/Washington. Like the CCF’s ability to act rapidly to prevent or respond to a crisis, the PSE Flexible Fund would enable missions to quickly respond to an opportunity with the private sector. Often, USAID staff and partners in-country are unable to capitalize on unique opportunities to create private-sector partnerships because USAID’s current procurement options, including the Global Development Alliance, just do not move fast enough, often requiring many months of endless meetings to reach closure. An agile fund enabling missions to rapidly draft a concept note to USAID’s PSE hub would not only provide funding but also technical assistance to missions that could significantly leverage USAID’s partnerships with the private sector.
Additional RecommendationsBeyond these practical initiatives, several additional steps the authors have proposed in earlier writings (here, here, and here) would further advance “PSE Modernize.”
A particularly important element in upping USAID’s game with the private sector is enhanced collaboration with the Development Finance Corporation (DFC). USAID has a deep understanding of development, experience providing technical assistance, and a wide array of activities that can benefit from private-sector partnerships. The DFC has the tools of finance (debt, equity, and guarantees) and insurance. Joining their respective capabilities, the two agencies can enhance their engagement with the private sector through deploying blended finance and technical assistance that will derisk private investment to build more sustainable activities.
A second area for action is the need to revise USAID procurement rules and processes to make them timelier and more amenable to how the private sector functions. A constant mantra from the private sector is the need to quickly get to “yes” or “no”. We hear of too many instances in which corporations have just walked away because trying to work with USAID was too complex and time-consuming. The agency should join together to mandate the exigencies of three initiatives that require the simplification of agency procedures. On November 28 Administrator Power announced the Burden Reduction Program to “reduce bureaucratic burdens and so-called time taxes imposed and/or experienced by the Agency.” Similarly, a critical part of the heightened agenda on locally-led development is to make USAID rules and regulations simpler in order to be more accessible to local organizations in partner countries. Incorporating PSE Modernize into these efforts to simplify USAID requirements and procedures would make it easier for the private sector, both local and international, to comply with the agency’s procedures for procurement, reporting, and accountability.
Thirdly, just as it is recognized that USAID lacks sufficient numbers of contracting officers to handle current procurement actions, much less the greater number that will result from partnering with local organizations, the agency also lacks sufficient contracting officers experienced in dealing with private companies. One example of where this will be absolutely critical is the rebuilding of Ukraine. The private sector will play a pivotal role in Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts. USAID would be wise to staff up now with needed contract and PSE experts, as well as bolster its Europe and Eurasia bureau which is chronically understaffed to manage billions of dollars in assistance.
Today’s development challenges require new and enhanced tools to engage the private sector. Administrator Power’s announcement in November is a good start. The proof will be in whether USAID can move more quickly to form meaningful private-sector partnerships that will endure beyond the headline.
By Carola Binder
On April 28, 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reported that “inflation has risen, largely reflecting transitory factors.” The June, July, and September FOMC statements repeated this statement, even as inflation continued to rise. By late November, however, Chairman Jerome Powell suggested it was time to retire the “transitory” descriptor.
The description of inflation as “transitory” became highly politicized, especially as the term was adopted by members of the Biden administration. In May 2021, for example, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “I expect all of this to be transitory, and I think the economy’s going to get back on track. I don’t anticipate inflation is going to be a problem.” On Twitter, economists and commentators began using the hashtag #TeamTransitory to represent this administration-endorsed view of inflation. The opposing view, sometimes called #TeamPermanent or #TeamPersistent, was more often (though not exclusively) propounded by right-leaning economists and media.
To what extent did the #TeamTransitory versus #TeamPermanent debates shape and polarize the inflation expectations of the general public in 2021 and 2022? Consumer survey data show that Democrats’ inflation expectations remained virtually flat throughout 2021 and 2022, while Republicans’ expectations rose sharply. In other words, Democrats and Republicans sorted extensively into #TeamTransitory and #TeamPermanent.
As inflation began to rise in 2021, Fed officials monitored survey measures of consumer inflation expectations to gauge the extent to which inflation expectations were anchored and to calibrate their policy response. But there is no consensus about the usefulness of these survey measures—the extent to which they represent consumers’ “true” inflation expectations, and help predict future inflation. The growing partisan gap in survey-reported inflation expectations is reason to use caution when interpreting the survey data.
DataThe University of Michigan Survey of Consumers asks about inflation expectations over the next twelve months (short-run expectations) and over the next five to ten years (long-run expectations).
The Michigan Survey asked respondents about their political party affiliation sporadically in 2006 through 2016. Beginning in February 2017, partisan affiliation has been solicited every month. Respondents can report that they are a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent/no preference. Only about 3% of respondents say that they don’t know or provide no response. Respondents who report an affiliation with the Republican or Democratic party are also asked if they are a “strong” or “not-so-strong” Republican or Democrat.
Partisan ExpectationsFigure 1 plots the mean short-run and long-run inflation expectations of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from 2016 through 2022. As previous studies have found, consumers typically have lower inflation expectations when their preferred party is in control of the White House. This likely reflects many consumers’ tendency to associate “good times” in general with low inflation. During the Barack Obama presidency, Republicans had higher inflation expectations than Democrats. This partisan gap reversed when Donald Trump was elected. Democrats’ short-run inflation expectations were about 1.3 percentage points higher than Republicans’ throughout the Trump presidency. Their long-run expectations were about 0.5 percentage points higher.
When Joe Biden was elected, the partisan gap reversed again. And as inflation rose, the gap began to widen. By the end of 2021, the short-run inflation expectations of Republicans were 5.5 percentage points higher than those of Democrats. Long-run inflation expectations of Republicans were 2.1 percentage points higher than those of Democrats. Expectations of Independents remained in between those of Democrats and Republicans, but closer to those of Republicans, especially for the longer horizon.
Figure 2 shows the magnitude of the partisan gap in short-run inflation expectations over time. The gap was less than two percentage points for most of the Obama and Trump eras, and for the start of the Biden era. But it has more than doubled in the last two years.
These growing partisan gaps are not driven by outliers. Rather, the entire distribution of Democrats’ inflation expectations remained virtually unchanged in 2021 and 2022, while the distribution of Republicans’ expectations shifted upward. Figure 3 plots the median and interquartile range of expectations (the middle two quartiles) by political party over time. For Democrats, no part of the distribution of expectations shifted upwards in 2021 or 2022, for either the short or long horizon. In other words, Democrats were nearly universally on #TeamTransitory.
Figure 4 shows median one-year inflation expectations since 2019 by party affiliation and intensity. Before the Biden election, strong and weak Democrats had similar inflation expectations. The expectations of Independents and weak Republicans were also similar, and strong Republicans had slightly lower expectations. As the partisan gap widened during the Biden administration, gaps by intensity of party affiliation also widened. The expectations of Independents and weak Republicans remained similar, but strong Democrats’ expectations were more than a percentage point lower than weak Democrats’ expectations in 2022, and the gap between weak and strong Republicans’ expectations likewise expanded.
A Policy ChallengeIf Democrats and Republicans really had such drastically different inflation expectations throughout 2021 and 2022, they should have made very different investment and consumption decisions. Future research could test whether this was the case. Alternatively, partisan survey respondents may be signaling their politics, rather than their true expectations, when reporting their inflation expectations. In this case, overreliance on survey measures of expectations could add noise to the policymaking process.
By Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Elyse Painter
While 2022 saw a return to pre-pandemic normalcy in many regards, the economic and social upheavals around the world due to the pandemic continue to reverberate. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well other political crises and environmental shocks, have only exacerbated these effects. The IMF estimates that global growth will be just 3.2 percent in 2022, down from 6 percent in 2021. Over the past year at Brookings, we have continued to track innovative funding mechanisms–global impact bonds–and have published research and participated in events on the topic around the globe. Additionally, our research this past year has continued to focus on data for achieving outcomes in education and early childhood development. Below, we summarize the highlights from the impact bonds market and our work this past year and take a look forward to 2023.
The impact bonds marketAs of January 1, 2023, our Brookings database shows there are 239 social and development income bonds in 39 countries around the world that meet our definition of an impact bond. This includes 27 in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Overall, we continue to see that impact bonds in social welfare (76) and employment (69) lead the field, while the majority of impact bonds in LMICs are in the employment (8), education (7), and health (8) sectors (Figure 1).
Figure 1.We have also found that the average number of beneficiaries served by impact bonds has increased significantly over the past year. At the start of 2022, the average was 11,893. Our January 1, 2023 snapshot shows that the average increased by nearly 7,000 people to 18,642 (Figure 2). As successful initiatives scale up and new projects expand beyond limited pilot formats, we expect this number to continue to rise.
Figure 2.Source: Brookings Global Impact Bonds Database, January 2023
There were significant developments within the education sector in impact bonds. Indeed, we found that education was the fastest growing impact bond sector, with 12 new impact bonds implemented in 2022 alone. In September, the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) launched the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge, an $18 million program supporting 325 public primary schools over three years to improve literacy and numeracy for approximately 130,000 children. The five projects within this outcomes fund are partnerships between impact investor Bridges Outcomes Partnership, and providers EducAid, Save the Children, Rising Academy Network, National Youth Awareness Forum, and Street Child. The outcome payers include the government of Sierra Leone; the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the United Kingdom; Korea International Cooperation Agency; Bank of America; and Hempel Foundation.
On the margins of the U.N. General Assembly, we hosted a discussion on the future of outcomes-based financing (OBF). This event, focusing on how OBF can improve children’s lives, also featured the international launch of the EOF Sierra Leone program and results from two of the largest impact bonds in the world that completed in 2022 The first impact bond, the Quality Education India Development Impact Bond (QEI DIB), focused on improving the core competencies of literacy and numeracy for 200,000 Indian students, while the Utkrisht Development Impact Bond aimed to improve maternal and newborn health in Rajasthan, India. As the knowledge partner for the QEI DIB, we interviewed stakeholders from the project to determine key takeaways and lessons learned over the course of the project, culminating in the “From evidence to scale: Lessons learned from the Quality Education India Development Impact Bond” report. This report highlighted how a focus on outcomes impacted every stakeholder in the project, from the top down to individual service providers.
This was one of several in-person events that we engaged in this year as the world began to open up. Notably, OBF was prominent in many of the global conversations addressing the multiple crises reverberating across the globe. In April, we held our first hybrid event at Brookings, featuring the results from the recently concluded Village Enterprise Development Impact Bond, which targeted first-time entrepreneurs living in extreme poverty in Kenya and Uganda aiming to increase consumption levels and assets. The speakers shared that partnership strengthening and the centering of the end-user experience were some of the key benefits of the impact bond financing structure, which were similar points to those highlighted by the stakeholders of the QEI and Utkrisht DIBs.
With the pandemic’s exacerbation of the global learning crisis, some of the most important organizations in education and early childhood development sectors emphasized the need for innovative solutions to increase both the volume and effectiveness of funding. In fact, major education sector fora have dedicated full days to exploring a variety of innovative financing mechanisms focused on expanding and enhancing domestic and donor spending on education, including outcomes-based contracts. Financing was also featured at the Annual Meeting of the Global Schools Forum, a member organization bringing together non-state providers from around the globe. We had the pleasure of engaging in a fascinating debate on financing and service delivery partnerships with Pankaj Jain who shared the experience of Gyan Shala, the service provider in the QEI DIB, and Harry Patrinos of the World Bank who spoke on his seminal research on public-private partnerships. Additionally, at the UNESCO World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education in Tashkent in November, we co-hosted a session on financing and partnerships with EOF, UNICEF, and the Global Partnership for Education in which impact bonds and outcomes funds were an important part of the conversation. In summary, spanning all these events, as well as the numerous online events in which we participated, there is more momentum than ever to identify creative solutions such as OBF to outcome achievement for children and vulnerable populations around the world.
Work on data for outcomesIn addition to our research and convening around the broader OBF market, we dedicated time this past year to digging into some deeper sub-branches on the topic. One in particular encompasses the data needed to understand if outcomes are being achieved before it is too late to achieve the goals of the program or project. In November, we launched our “Digital tools for real-time data collection in education” report highlighting the importance of real-time data to track progress and inform course adjustments in education. In the report, we provide a framework to analyze these tools, looking at specific factors like tool usability, functions, and context to help education decisionmakers select or create fit-for-purpose tools. In conjunction with the report, we launched an interactive database of existing digital tools for real-time education data being used in low- and middle-income countries which, through crowdsourcing, we will continue to populate on a quarterly basis (so let us know if you have a tool that we should include).
Additionally, over the past year, we have continued our work on cost data for education and early childhood development, another critical piece of OBF. Our Childhood Cost Calculator (C3) was piloted in three countries, with the aim to provide a user-friendly, online tool that can help answer a host of questions related to costing. Through exercises in Cambodia, Ghana, and Honduras, we saw how C3 can provide useful cost data and analysis across multiple education sectors. This includes, but is not limited to, cost feasibility analysis, cost comparisons of different interventions, cost distributions across categories or resource types, and scale-up costs. As more programs complete costing with the C3, a database of education and early childhood development costs will be created, informing future developments in the field. In September, we co-hosted a webinar with the World Bank, International Labor Organization, UNICEF, and ECDAN on costing for early learning and ECD programs. The webinar introduced three resources for costing and explored how each tool can be used effectively.
What’s next?We are looking forward to 2023, which is shaping up to be a promising year. The pipeline of projects, while having slowed during the pandemic, has grown rapidly in the past year and we are likely to see the launch of a number of impact bond projects before the end of 2023. Among LMIC countries, based on our Brookings database and the Outcome Accelerator’s Pipeline Database, the dominant sectors of projects in the pipeline are education and employment initiatives, and we are observing the growth of less common intervention areas such as energy and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and anticipating projects in new countries such as Vietnam, Namibia, and Lebanon. A notable rising trend is the use of outcomes funds bringing together a multitude of projects as stakeholders seek to achieve greater scale. For example, EOF, following their recent launch in Sierra Leone, will launch in Ghana this month. The $30 million program, supported by the government of Ghana and the World Bank, will aim to reach approximately 175,000 children by helping to assimilate out-of-school children back into the classroom and improve learning outcomes through assistance to teachers in 600 primary schools around the nation. Furthermore, with the development of several local and global initiatives aimed at expanding OBF this past year, we expect to see the fruits of these efforts in 2023. For example, globally, we hope to see growth of projects and research with the launch of the Outcomes Accelerator, which brings together disparate stakeholders with a goal of realizing the Sustainable Development Goals through increased and effective use of OBF.
As for us, over the next year, in addition to following the global market and diving deeper into particular projects, we will continue exploring what is needed to engage in OBF effectively and efficiently. Keep an eye out for further research on data for outcomes including real-time and cost data and the launch of the C3.
As always, please stay in touch. We’d love to hear about your work as well as share the insights from our research. Wishing you all a fruitful and joyful 2023!
By Markita Morris-Louis
It’s been well documented that assets such as cash savings or real estate are essential to economic mobility. They provide a cushion in emergencies and allow people to become homeowners, start businesses, and pursue advanced education. Yet one in four families with low-incomes do not have the assets needed to cover even three months of basic living expenses without income.
For these families, the opportunity to build assets is out of reach, as anti-poverty programs often discourage or penalize savings—a symptom of the systemic and historic barriers that have long prevented Black, Latino or Hispanic, and multi-racial families from building wealth.
However, there’s an underutilized federal program with tremendous potential to change this for millions of families: the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program. FSS is a savings incentive program for families living in HUD-assisted housing that enables participants to save a portion of their rent payment when they earn more money at work.
How affordable housing can prevent families from building savings In some types of HUD-assisted housing, a household’s rent is based on income. Therefore, if a household earns more money, their rent increases proportionately. Although designed to keep housing affordable, this structure can discourage families from increasing their income, since they would pay more in rent and potentially lose other benefits with income limits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
This rent calculation effectively functions as a marginal tax on increased earnings, which also makes it difficult to build savings. But when households enroll in FSS, if their rent increases because they earn more money at work, the non-utilized portion of their previous housing subsidy goes into a savings account. These savings build over time, and once participants “graduate” from the program, they can put the money to use for financial goals such as buying a home, going to college, or improving their credit. To graduate from FSS, participants must demonstrate progress toward those goals, participants must be working, and no adults in the household can be receiving cash welfare assistance at the time of graduation.
Although FSS was established in 1990, only 3% of the estimated 2.2 million eligible households currently participate. In other words, there is a large, untapped pool of federal funds that could help close the asset gap for lower-income Americans. Barriers to enrollment include limited resources for marketing and program administration as well as residents’ concern that the program seems “too good to be true.”
An asset-building model proven to help families save thousands of dollars But it’s not too good to be true. My organization, Compass Working Capital, has spent over a decade proving just that. Since 2010, our financial services nonprofit has partnered with housing providers to run the FSS program for residents.
To date, Compass has helped nearly 4,500 families build over $12.5 million in savings through FSS. These are families that have gone on to start businesses, buy homes, and save for their children’s future. A 2021 study of our FSS programs by Abt Associates found that participants earned more and received less public assistance than comparable households not enrolled in FSS. On average, participants graduate with over $8,000 in savings—proving that well-run FSS programs can set families on the pathway to financial stability.
Expanding access to FSS through an opt-out model HUD has recently implemented new rules for FSS to improve families’ abilities to build savings by easing some graduation requirements and increasing the length of the program. But we need more creative policy measures to make meaningful strides toward closing the participation gap.
Compass advocates for an opt-out model for FSS, which would enable households to automatically build rent-based savings without navigating time-intensive and potentially discouraging upfront enrollment requirements. An opt-out model could also decrease administrative costs related to marketing, enrollment, program management, and service provision. Compass partnered with the Cambridge, Mass. Housing Authority to pilot an opt-out model called Rent-to-Save in two public housing properties. Both properties saw significantly higher FSS participation rates (51.4% and 82.3%), indicating that opt-out models are successful in expanding program access.
An opt-out model holds promise for scaling the FSS program to reach the more than 2 million households nationally that could participate. And, because about half of all HUD-assisted households are headed by Black, Latino or Hispanic, and multi-racial women, FSS is a tool could help narrow racial and gender wealth divides.
The next step: securing permission from HUD to build more expansive opt-out pilots that demonstrate the model’s potential at a greater scale. This would be a step toward a broader vision—when the opportunity to build assets is the norm, and not the exception, in our nation’s anti-poverty work.
By William A. Galston
Today marks two years since Americans turned on their televisions to watch something that many thought was impossible—a violent mob attacking the Capitol of the United States with the intention of disrupting the Electoral College vote count. Those days were followed by the creation of a House Select Committee and ten drama filled hearings that began on June 9, 2022 and ended December 19, 2022.
Many expected that the hearings would change public opinion, but on the second anniversary of the January 6 violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol, sentiment remains mostly divided along party lines and has barely budged since the first anniversary of this event. Americans remain split on the issue of whether former president Donald Trump committed crimes related to this event and whether he should be charged, and the dramatic testimony delivered at the public hearings of the Select Committee changed few minds.
During the past year, Quinnipiac University conducted a series of polls probing sentiment about January 6. Concerning the former president’s responsibility for events at the Capitol, here are the results from the beginning, middle, and end of 2022.
TABLE 1: HOW MUCH RESPONSIBILITY DOES DONALD TRUMP BEAR FOR JANUARY 6?
| A lot | Some | Not much | None | | January 2022 | 43 | 18 | 16 | 20 | | June 2022 | 41 | 18 | 14 | 25 | | December 2022 | 45 | 19 | 13 | 21 |
[Source: Quinnipiac University polls]
Opinion about the seriousness of the January 6 events was also stable. In January 2022, 50% of Americans thought that these events represented an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten, compared to 44% who believed that the country was making too much of these events and that it was time to move on. In December, Americans remained divided on this issue, 54% to 41%.
In July, the NPR/PBS/Marist survey posed the question differently but got similar results. Presented with three different assessments of January 6, 50% of respondents said that it was an insurrection that threatened democracy, 19% regarded it as constitutionally protected political protest, and 25% deemed it unfortunate but believed that it was time to move on.
Public opinion about the seriousness of Donald Trump’s actions related to January 6 showed a similar pattern of division and stability. In June 2022, according to Quinnipiac, 46% of Americans believed that Trump had committed a crime, but 47% disagreed. In July, after several more explosive public hearings, 48% thought that he had committed a crime, compared to 44% who didn’t. By December, sentiment remained unchanged, 47% to 43%.
In late August, a Monmouth University survey found that 41% wanted Trump to be charged with January 6 crimes, 34% did not, and 25% were unsure. There is no evidence that this balance shifted in the final months of 2022. If the Justice Department follows up on the January 6 committee’s criminal referral by charging the former president, the public response is likely to mirror this division.
Beyond the up-or-down legal issues, broader assessments of the former president’s actions on January 6 revealed some cracks in the wall of partisanship that surrounds these events. For example, a CNN survey in July found that 20% of Republicans believed that Trump’s statements had encouraged political violence and that 55% of Republicans did not think that Trump had done everything in his power to stop the violence once it erupted. Fifty-two percent of Republicans felt that Mike Pence had done more than Donald Trump on this fateful day to serve the national interest.
Some days of violence, such as the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, become symbols of national unity and resolve. The evidence so far suggests that January 6 will not join their ranks. It is more likely that to future generations, the day the U.S. Capitol was stormed will serve as a reminder of the deep political divisions that characterized the current era of American politics.
By Ryan Hass
China’s leaders confront mounting domestic social, economic, and public health-related stresses in 2023. If past is prologue, it is reasonable to expect China’s leaders will respond by seeking to calm their external environment to concentrate on challenges at home. To help counter scrutiny of their domestic governance record, they will want to present an image to their people of being afforded dignity and respect abroad. Nowhere will such symbolism matter more than in the U.S.-China context. How China’s leaders are seen to be managing relations with the United States often is a factor in how their performance is perceived at home. Even as the broadly competitive framework of the U.S.-China relationship is unlikely to change, opportunities may emerge for the United States to advance discrete affirmative priorities with China in the year ahead.
To be clear, there are no credible indicators of any softening in China’s foreign policy toward the United States, nor any accommodation of American concerns about Chinese behavior. In his 20th Party Congress work report, President Xi Jinping emphasized repeatedly that China will need to “struggle” in the face of Western opposition to China’s rise. Other Chinese officials similarly echoed at the Party Congress that the spirit of “struggle” will define the country’s foreign policy.
Don’t bet on lessening of tensionsIf anything, China in the coming year likely will double-down on its pressure on Taiwan and its efforts to impose its will on Hong Kong. Beijing will continue to exert an iron fist against any hints of domestic dissent. It will maintain a tight grip over regions with large minority ethnic populations, including Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. Beijing will continue to favor state intervention in its economy and likely will intensify efforts to acquire intellectual property from abroad by hook or crook. China’s diplomatic activism is unlikely to abate. The People’s Liberation Army will expand its range and frequency of operations as its capabilities grow. China will not do the United States any favors on North Korea. Xi also will continue to invest in his — and China’s — relationship with Putin and Russia.
Washington also will take actions that Beijing will view as heightening competitive dynamics in the relationship. There will be further high-level Congressional visits to Taiwan. A Republican-controlled House will dial up public criticism of Chinese activities, including by probing the origins of COVID-19. Republican presidential candidates will compete to outdo each other in their hawkishness on China. The Biden administration will invest in coalitional efforts to strengthen deterrence in the Asia-Pacific and in limiting China’s technological advances in national security-sensitive areas.
Even so, Beijing may still see virtue in calming tensions with the United States. In the 1950s, Mao used a strategy of “fight, fight, talk, talk” to buy time to regroup, study the opponent, and collect strength to reenter prolonged struggle. A similar effort may be unfolding in Beijing now.
Such an approach would allow Beijing to concentrate on restoring the veneer of governance competence. It also would lessen America’s capacity to form issue-based coalitions that challenge China’s interests. And with Xi traveling to the United States in November for the APEC leader’s meeting, a calmer environment would support his interest in being accorded preferential treatment by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Beijing will want to give as little as possible to get the benefit of stabilized relations and preferential public treatment for its leaders. From China’s perspective, a natural next step for advancing these objectives will be to negotiate with American counterparts on principles to steer the U.S.-China relationship. Xi previously has articulated that the relationship should be guided by mutual respect, mutual benefit, and shared commitment to peaceful coexistence. There is negligible benefit for American diplomats to get pulled into negotiations over such principles. Even if mutually adopted, they would not constrain Chinese behavior or solve any of the underlying stresses in the relationship.
How the United States should respond to ChinaRather than reacting to Chinese efforts to negotiate principles for guiding the relationship, the Biden administration would be wise to present its concrete objectives for the year ahead. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China in the first quarter of 2023 provides an opportunity for the United States to set the agenda. By laying out concrete goals and signposts for advancing them, Blinken could orient the relationship toward America’s top priorities and concerns. China’s focus on positive optics for Xi’s visit to the United States in November will offer an opportunity to leverage form for substance.
On the security front, both sides could take practical steps to lower risk. These include reaching agreement on limits around uses of new and emerging technologies in areas where both sides are vulnerable and no rules presently exist. For example, both sides would benefit by establishing limits on uses of artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous weapons systems. As a first step, both sides could agree that humans must be responsible for all nuclear launch decisions and that such decisions must never be delegated to artificial intelligence-enabled systems. Similarly, both sides have demonstrated destructive anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons systems. They could agree to limit future testing of ASAT weapons to prevent the creation of orbital debris.
Both countries also are vulnerable to future pandemics. They have mutual self-interest in the creation of a global disease surveillance network to detect future virus outbreaks before they spread. A similar logic applies to climate change. Methane plays a major role in rising temperatures. Both sides would benefit from pooling capabilities to advance research into methane emission reduction challenges and solutions.
The opioid epidemic in America also demands attention. Chinese officials argue that the problem is one of demand, not supply. Nevertheless, U.S. and Chinese officials must think more creatively about practical steps to reduce the flow of fentanyl with Chinese-origin precursor chemicals into the United States.
This list of priority issues is intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive. There are other critical areas where mutual self-interest should compel common purposes, such as limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities, ensuring unimpeded energy flows and greater food security, combating ocean pollution, and coordinating on debt distress in the developing world. The point is that there is a robust menu of issues where both sides could take parallel or coordinated actions that would serve mutual self-interest.
Is the risk worth the benefit? Skeptics will argue that there is little point in pursuing a positive agenda with China, given the inherent competitiveness of the relationship and the unlikelihood that China will respond favorably to American proposals. Such skepticism may be proven true, but it should first be tested. In 2022, such pessimism would have precluded America from successfully lobbying China to withhold materiel support to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. It would have prevented Biden from drawing Xi out on China’s opposition to Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. It also would have impeded America’s Public Company Auditing Oversight Board from successfully securing full transparency from Chinese regulators on the books of Chinese companies listing on America’s stock exchanges.
Others will warn that China will insist on issue linkage, i.e., demand that the United States reduce its pressure on China in other sensitive areas, as a precondition for coordination on common challenges. The implication of such warnings is that Washington should not get suckered into softening its stance on Taiwan or Xinjiang in pursuit of cooperation. In fact, this is not new. The way to get past Chinese requests that the United States “create favorable conditions for cooperation” is to make clear first that Washington is prepared for the relationship to improve or worsen depending upon China’s choices, and second that Washington would recognize Chinese contributions and welcome its leadership in addressing challenges. This allows China to enjoy international recognition in return for the United States securing concrete Chinese contributions on U.S. priorities.
At a strategic level, America’s leaders are receiving a strong demand signal from their international partners to manage competition with China responsibly. Thus, even if Beijing refuses to abide by America’s efforts to advance a positive agenda, the world will be put on notice as to where the obstacle lies. This, in turn, will open political space for America to enlist partners on common projects in Asia.
Situating China among global challengesFinally, China will be one of many pressing challenges confronting the Biden administration in the new year. The White House would be in a stronger position to manage its myriad challenges — e.g., the pandemic, mass migration, global recession, global warming, Ukraine, food and energy shortages, and North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear aspirations — if it is able to situate China within a set of global challenges it must address. This does not mean giving China a pass or yielding ground on sensitive issues such as Taiwan, technology, or human rights. America must remain steadfast in defending U.S. interests and the values it shares with its closest partners. Rather, it means recognizing that there are few major challenges in the world where China does not factor in as a partner or a problem.
Ultimately, the United States and China are locked into a long-term competition to determine which governance model can best solve global problems and improve the lives of its citizens. Performance will drive perceptions of power. America is strongest when it is improving its condition at home and galvanizing global efforts to tackle common challenges, not when it is consumed by competition with an ambitious but constrained power.
By Darrell M. West, John Villasenor, Mark MacCarthy
Social media platforms and search engines have increasingly become a major information hub. These platforms allow users to receive information while also sharing materials with a wide range of individuals. Yet, it is not clear how much responsibility these sites bear for the material published or the search recommendations made by their algorithms. In 1996, Congress enacted legislation that shields internet providers from legal liability for information published on their sites. For the past two decades, most judges have taken a broad view of that legal liability shield and have made rulings that exempt platforms from legal responsibility.
Now, there is a case coming before the Supreme Court that will test the scope of existing laws. The case, Gonzalez v. Google, could have profound consequences for social media sites and content moderation policies. However, the possibility exists that the Supreme Court could weigh in on challenges to state laws in Florida and Texas aiming to impose certain obligations on social media companies.
To discuss these important questions, vice president of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, Darrell West, is joined by two distinguished experts. John Villasenor is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of Engineering, Law, and Public Policy at UCLA. Mark MacCarthy is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and a senior fellow at the Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy at Georgetown University. Listen to their discussion of the legal issues facing the court and possible ramifications for users and businesses.
You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the TechTank podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.
By Dana R. Fisher
As the 118th Congress is sworn in today, one of the many big issues before them will be climate change. The first two years of the Biden Administration ushered in historic national climate action in America, including the largest investment ever to encourage a clean energy transition with billions of dollars being spent to support clean energy, climate resilience, and equity-centered environmental investments. All of this was accomplished with a Democratic majority in the Congress. So what happens now that the Republicans control the House? My research suggests clear areas of disagreement but also opportunities for collaboration.
Since 2010, I have been studying the top political elites’ positions on the most prominent climate policy options in the US through my Climate Constituencies Project. In spring 2022, I conducted a new wave of data collection to understand how perspectives on climate policy options changed after the 2020 election. In total, 70 policy actors were surveyed and 68 participated in interviews—including politicians, federal agency offices, business leaders and associations, environmental groups, prominent scientists, and other political organizations. Participants in the study represent the full range of actors that work to influence climate policy at the federal level (including the offices of 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats in the Congress).
Here, I present findings from the 2022 research plotting responses to questions regarding support for climate-related debates, proposals, and decisions in the United States. Respondents were asked to indicate their organization and/or office’s level of support from Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (5) to each item. In this figure, responses to these questions are plotted by policy actor (the black diamonds represent the overall mean for each response).[1] Policy mechanisms circled in red are those where there is greatest disagreement; mechanisms circled in green show potential opportunities for bipartisan collaboration.
When we map political elites’ perspectives regarding a transition away from fossil fuels by the various policy actor types, the full spectrum of disagreement around this topic reveals itself (this statement is circled in red). Not only do the Republicans in the Congress (the red dots) oppose a transition away from fossil fuels, Democrats in the Congress and the Biden Administration (the blue dots) are on the opposite end of the distribution. In fact, the responses to “US energy policy should replace fossil fuels with clean energy” had the largest standard deviation of all of the policy questions.
This difference in perspective was corroborated during my interviews. While Democrats and members of the Biden Administration discussed how best to transition the US away from fossil fuels towards more renewable energy sources, Republicans focused much of our conversation on their perspective that expanding American natural gas extraction and exporting it abroad is the best way to address climate change globally. Perhaps this staff member for the Republicans on one of the House committees directly working on the issue best summarizes this perspective: “The single biggest thing that we can do in the near-term from a climate standpoint is to replace our cleaner, natural gas…and supplant much dirtier Russian natural gas” (interview with author, 3/18/2022).
Now that the Republicans have taken the majority in the House of Representatives, we should expect the new leadership to focus their climate efforts unambiguously on fossil fuel expansion to support increased natural gas extraction in the US.
However, while there is clear disagreement regarding a transition away from fossil fuels, data from the 2022 survey also identify opportunities for collaboration (the statements circled in green).[2] In particular, two of the statements yielded responses where Republicans and Democrats were much closer together in their perspectives. Policy actors on average supported federal funding to study “technological responses to climate change.” In addition, nearly all actors supported the idea that “the US should provide subsidies for nuclear power as a form of greenhouse gas emissions reductions.” Policy actors were also in relative agreement about a cap-and-trade policy. In this case, however, nearly all the policy actors opposed establishing a federal market for emissions trading.
There’s no question that the policy instruments with the highest level of agreement are less risky, as well as less likely to motivate the “rapid transformation of societies” that the 2022 UN Emissions Gap Report says is necessary “to avoid climate disaster.” Nevertheless, any additional opportunities for collaboration (and perhaps even bipartisanship) on climate in the new Congress will help maintain the momentum started in 117th Congress and keep the US on a much stronger path moving forward.
[1] Since the sample had only 2 scientists, they were dropped from the figures.
[2] As measured by the smallest standard deviations.
By Gracelin Baskaran
Rare earth elements—a group of 17 metals—are critical for both human and national security. They are used in electronics (computers, televisions and smart phones), in renewable energy technology (wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicle batteries), and in national defense (jet engines, missile guidance and defense systems, satellites, GPS equipment, and more). In 2021, global demand for rare earths reached 125,000 metric tons. By 2030, it is forecast to reach 315,000 tons.
Concerningly, production of these rare earth minerals has remained concentrated. China has a dominant hold on the market—with 60% of global production and 85% of processing capacity. In light of growing geopolitical tensions around China and Taiwan, the U.S, Australia, Canada, and other countries are seeking to reduce their reliance on China as a source of rare earths production and processing.
This opens up a window of opportunity for African countries. With their rich endowment of key commodities, African countries can leverage this search for new sources of rare earth elements to bring in much-needed revenue to finance core socioeconomic objectives and reduce poverty, utilize the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to improve value addition, and strengthen global trade partnerships.
The tip of the iceberg of African rare earth commoditiesAfrica’s full potential in rare earths is largely untapped given low levels of exploration. As Figure 1 shows, in 2021, the mining exploration budget in sub-Saharan Africa was the second lowest in the world—roughly half that of Latin America, Australia, and Canada—despite having triple the surface area of Canada and Australia. In 2021, on a yearly basis, Canada’s exploration budget rose by 62%, followed by 39% in Australia, 37% in the U.S., and 29% in Latin America. The budget for Africa grew only 12%, and the vast majority of exploration continues to be concentrated in gold, rather than rare earths or green metals critical to the clean energy transition (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Mining exploration budgets by region, 1997-2021 (Millions USD)Source: “World Exploration Trends 2022,” S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Figure 2. Distribution of exploration budgets by commodities, 2012-2022Source: “Africa – mining by the numbers, 2022,” S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Scaling up exploration is critical for enabling Africa to identify and extract rare earth elements. Already, several rich deposits have been found. In 2022, Mkango Resources, a Canadian explorations firm, announced that its Songwe Hill rare earths mine in Malawi is expected to commence production in 2025. Bannerman Energy, an Australian firm, announced that it has acquired a 41.8% stake in Namibia Critical Metals, which owns 95% of the Lofdal heavy rare earths operation. The mine produces 2,000 tons per year of rare earth oxides and has rich deposits of two of the most valuable heavy rare earth metals—dysprosium and terbium. South Africa’s Steenkampskraal Mine has one of the highest grades of rare earth elements in the world. It contains 15 elements and 86,900 tons of total rare earth oxides, with large deposits of neodymium and praseodymium. In 2020, the Angolan subsidiary of Pensana Rare Earths, a British firm, received exclusive mining rights for the Longonjo Mine, a rare earths operation, for a 35-year-time period. These deposits are not insignificant considering Africa’s small share of global exploration.
How to maximize Africa’s benefits from rare earth mineralsBeyond increasing exploration, there are three ways African countries can maximize the benefits of rare earths for their economies:
- Because there has been a shift from labor-intensive to capital-intensive mining, the primary benefit of these resources is the revenue they bring in rather than job creation. Governments need to strengthen tax policy to maximize revenue collection, while keeping stable fiscal policy to prevent volatilities that can deter investments. For example in 2017, South Africa’s mining and quarrying sector accounted for just 1.3% of total revenue collected, compared to its 7.3% of GDP, partially owing to tax incentives and provision payments. Good governance is required to ensure that these revenues—in the form of production taxes, regulatory taxes, and royalties—are used to reduce reliance on external debt and to finance core socioeconomic objectives. This is particularly important given that Africa may be home to 90% of the world’s poor by 2030, as countries have less fiscal space to spend on pro-poor policies.
- African countries should leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area to maximize value addition. The process of extraction and value addition is difficult to do within a single country due to the high cost of rare earths separation facilities. The U.S. set aside $156 million for a single facility to extract and separate rare earths—a sum out of reach for most African countries. Yet without continental separation facilities, African countries will export ores and miss out on the benefits of local processing and manufacturing. If implemented effectively, the AfCFTA would enable countries to enhance value addition within the bloc before exporting. We have already seen the power of cooperation—Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed an agreement to build a regional value chain by manufacturing electric batteries using the minerals found in both countries. It’s time for more such efforts.
- Africa should use resources strategically to build strong trade partnerships and strengthen its presence in global value chains, particularly with the U.S., EU, and Australia. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called for “friend-shoring,” or building supply chain networks with allies and friendly countries, to reduce exposure to political disruptions. Canada recently invested $162 million to help position Quebec as a center of excellence for critical minerals processing, with the specific intent of building strong global supply chains and strengthening trade relationships with allies. African countries can, as a bloc, forge long-term trade partnerships with these countries who are seeking to build more resilient rare earths value chains.
Still, countries need to manage the challenges associated with mining by developing and enforcing policies that ensure firms cover all of their social and environmental costs, from mine exploration through to mine closure. Mining can generate significant negative externalities, including pollution, health consequences, and damage to land and infrastructure. Covering these costs should be built into the agreements between firms and governments.
If African countries heed these recommendations, they will be well-positioned to leverage their rich endowments of resources to join strategic global value chains and utilize revenue inflows to support equitable economic growth.
By Shibley Telhami, Stella M. Rouse
Just before Thanksgiving, the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, had dinner at his home with the self-avowed white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, who had declared, among other outrageous utterances, that the U.S. should “be run by Catholics, not Jews”. The lack of remorse from Mr. Trump for giving an audience to such an individual and his refusal to condemn Fuentes’ views have increased legitimate fears that such views may be widespread and spreading further, at least among a large segment of Trump’s base. Why would Donald Trump choose not to criticize Fuentes and his views? Unless he thought he might be alienating his core supporters.
As abhorrent and dangerous as such views are, there is reason to believe that they are not spreading, even as their holders have grown louder, undeterred, and more dangerous. This expectation is backed by survey data that we have tracked over several years. Trump may have elevated the voice of a white supremacist and antisemite, as he has done in the past, but there is little evidence that people with antisemitic—and Islamophobic—views have grown in number, and we have some evidence the number is actually shrinking. Our University of Maryland Critical Issues poll provides some striking findings.
No one person “runs” America, of course, but the president of the United State is perhaps the most powerful and visible actor in American democracy. For several years, we have thus fielded a question about the percent of the public who would oppose voting for presidential candidates of different religious identities, assuming one agrees with their positions on issues. In the latest 2022 iteration of this poll, we found that Jewish presidential candidates were the least opposed of all candidates, followed closely by Catholic and Mainline Protestant Christians:
At 7%, opposition to a Jewish presidential candidate is the lowest; it compares to 9% for a Catholic candidate, 10% for a mainline Protestant, 26% for a Muslim, and 34% for an atheist. It is also notable that low opposition to a Jewish presidential candidate transcends partisan lines with the smallest gap in opposition among Republicans and Democrats (difference of 2%), compared to other candidates. This low opposition to a Jewish candidate holds among Catholics, 7%, Mainline Protestants, 6%, and Evangelical Christians, 6%; and holds equally for Whites and non-Whites, at 7% each.
Intensity of attitudes matters of course, even if the number of violent antisemitic racists may be small. For example, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has documented an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S., rising 34% from 2020 to 2021, including a 43% increase in harassment and a 167% increase in antisemitic assaults, reaching the highest recorded number of antisemitic incidents since ADL first began tracking incidents in 1979. In parallel, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has also documented a rise of incidents against another group which had been targeted in recent years: Muslim-Americans. There has been a 9% increase from 2020 and the highest number of civil rights complaints in 27 years, including a 28% increase in hate and bias incidents. These increases must be confronted forcefully regardless of the number of perpetrators.
It may be easy to conclude that there has been an increase in the number of people who express these beliefs, but the intensity of hate, what we call a vertical expansion, has not led to an increase in the number of people who express such views—what we would call a horizontal expansion. Even as a marked increase in reported antisemitic incidents has been documented, ADL polling data shows declining numbers of Americans expressing antisemitic views. Since 2007, the number of Americans agreeing with two or more antisemitic statements has decreased. In 2007, 48% of Americans agreed with at least two of the 11 antisemitic statements presented, but in 2019 that number was 40%, with most Americans saying they agreed with only one or no antisemitic statements. In addition, the number of people who agreed with six or more statements has consistently decreased over time, from 29% in 1964 to 11% in 2019.
The Trump Backlash Effect: Limiting and Shrinking Horizontal Hate SpreadTellingly, the low opposition to a Jewish presidential candidate appears to have withstood the Trump years. We began asking Americans whether they would support a presidential candidate based on their religious identity in 2016. We initially focused principally on attitudes toward Muslim and Jewish candidates, as the Trump presidential campaign rhetoric had raised fears about rising Islamophobia and antisemitism. We repeated the questions in 2020 and 2022, expanding the poll to include other groups. In fact, from 2016 to 2022, attitudes toward Jewish candidates have remained roughly the same, with low opposition to Jewish candidates, and with a major decline in the difference between Democrats and Republicans starting in 2016.
As promising as the picture may look for Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant candidates, the opposition to a Muslim or atheist presidential candidate is discouragingly high. But as high as this opposition is in 2022, there has actually been a decline in public opposition: 26% in 2022 compared to 31% in 2016, and 34% in 2020 (including a significant drop in Republican opposition).
These trends in attitudes toward Muslims confirm extensive polls we have conducted since the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in 2015, and we first noted the trend in a 2016 article. In “Measuring the Backlash against the Muslim Backlash,” we showed that, as Trump targeted Muslims in his campaign, more Americans, especially Democrats and Independents, seemed to rally behind Muslims, even as anti-Muslim discourse expanded. Since then, we have conducted multiple polls tracking attitudes toward Muslims that showed the same trend: favorable views of Muslims continued to rise, going from a low of 53% in 2015 to a high of 78% right after Trump left the White House.
We do not have pre-Trump and post-Trump data on other groups, such as Buddhists, Hindus, and others who still face strong opposition if they choose to run for president, so we cannot document the trends. The only other group that we studied, beginning in 2016, was Evangelical Christians. Here, the story is a little different from that of Muslims and Jews. Opposition to an Evangelical candidate for president has slightly increased since Trump began his campaign from 17% in 2016 to 20% in 2022. In the same way that many Americans have rallied behind those Trump opposes, Americans seem to have penalized those he embraced and who embraced him back. Notably, most of the opposition has come from Democrats (34%), with only 5% of Republicans opposing an Evangelical candidate in our 2022 poll, providing the largest partisan gap in presidential candidate opposition among all other religious identity groups, except atheists. The biggest change from 2016 to 2022 has been the expansion of the partisan divide from 12% to 29%, respectively. This issue will require further study, but attitudes among Democrats are likely a reflection of a backlash against perceived Evangelical influence during the Trump administration, coupled with fears deriving from the consequences of such power. As we noted in another recent article, 76% of Evangelical Republicans said they supported declaring the U.S. a ‘Christian Nation’ even as most also said such a move would be unconstitutional.
ConclusionThe political rise of Donald Trump since the 2016 presidential election campaign has been accompanied by an emboldened extremist fringe targeting Jewish and Muslim Americans, among others, which must be confronted. Fortunately, this has been more of a vertical effect (the intensity of a few voices), though dangerous nonetheless, rather than a horizontal effect (the expansion in the number of voices).
By Tom Wheeler
“Tech companies have built a perfect record so far in blocking major legislation in Congress,” The Wall Street Journal observed as the final effort to pass tech-related regulation failed in the closing days of the 117th Congress. However, the same companies that spend lavishly to oppose American consumer protection efforts are buckling under as European Union (EU) rules prepare to be phased in between now and 2024.
What $100 Million BuysA key to Big Tech’s unblemished record, The Wall Street Journal reported, was “prodigious spending on Beltway lobbying and grassroots politicking.” Advertising to influence Congress not to pass tech-related legislation exceeded $100 million, the story continued.
Much of this advertising was alarmist as opposed to factual. One television commercial by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) warned that Congress wants to “dismantle technologies we depend on.” The ad closed with the alarmist line, “Don’t take away our tech.”
Far from taking anything away, Congress was proposing protecting children from harmful content (the Kids Online Safety Act), giving app developers and consumers more rights in app stores (the Open App Markets Act), and expanding consumer choice by prohibiting e-commerce platforms from giving preference to their own products (the American Innovation and Choice Act). That these limited actions were the best Congress could try to accomplish was, itself, the result of the ongoing advertising and lobbying blitzkrieg of tech companies.
What had appeared to be progress on legislation protecting the privacy rights of Americans was stopped by industry lobbying. After being reported out of the House Commerce Committee with a bipartisan 53-2 vote, The American Data Protection and Privacy Act never made it to the House floor.
A similar situation occurred regarding antitrust legislation. After an exhaustive House Judiciary Committee report, the opportunity for broad antitrust legislation looked hopeful when a series of bills were sent to the House floor with bipartisan support. Again, the bills never received a House vote.
In the Senate, both the Open App Markets and the American Innovation and Choice bills were reported by the Judiciary Committee, both with bipartisan support but died from inaction on the floor.
To achieve these results, Big Tech and its trade associations have peddled a never-ending series of incendiary messages such as:
- “Why is Congress considering legislation that makes us less safe?” another one of the CTA’s commercials This one alleged that legislation would allow “cyber warfare against the U.S.”
- “Don’t break what works” warned the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) commercial. “Congress has plans that could stop progress in its tracks, breaking the products and services you love,” the ad warned.
- In another commercial, CCIA warned the inability to preference Amazon products over competitors would destroy Amazon’s famous delivery service. “Don’t break our Prime,” the ad warns.
The Scares Didn’t Sell in EuropeWhile the companies were spending $100 million to block the U.S. Congress from acting, the EU has moved forward on some of the very same issues. In particular, the messaging that seemed so frightening here failed to impress the European Parliament. As a result, the EU’s recently passed Digital Markets Act (DMA) and other activities are already accomplishing for European consumers what Congress has failed to accomplish.
For example, a target of the CTA “Don’t take away our tech” commercial was the Open App Market Act, which would give app developers more rights in the Google and Apple app stores. Confronted by the EU’s DMA, however, Apple is preparing to give European iPhone and iPad consumers the ability to download third party software without using the Apple App Store (so-called “sideloading”). The company is even discussing allowing alternative app stores with alternative payment systems on its platform. Already, Apple has been forced to allow such outside services for dating apps in the Netherlands.
The CCIA “Don’t break our Prime” commercials were targeted at legislation to end Amazon’s practice of giving preference to its own products. Amazon, however, has just agreed to a settlement with EU regulators that will prohibit it from engaging in such practices. Henceforth, in the EU, Amazon will give rival products access to valuable “Buy Box” real estate on the website. In addition, Amazon agreed to not use the non-public data the platform sees when independent sellers use Amazon to compete against those sellers.
An EU regulator just issued a preliminary ruling that Meta platforms cannot tie use of its Facebook platform to its Marketplace advertising in order to disadvantage competitive ad services. Nor can the company use its terms of service to coerce users into allowing the use of third-party advertising data to target Facebook or Instagram advertising. Meta will have an opportunity to challenge the ruling.
The EU has also just adopted a “Common Charger Directive” that requires small electronic devices to be compatible with the USB-C charging plug used by most device manufacturers. This means that Apple will no longer be able to insist consumers buy its proprietary Lightning cable. “Buyers will also be able to choose whether they want to purchase new electronic equipment with or without a charging device,” the EU explained. Apple is reportedly preparing to implement the directive.
So Far Europeans OnlyThus far, the actions of American companies appear to only benefit European consumers. It will be interesting to see what Big Tech and their industry association do in the next Congress when confronted with, “You can do this to help Europeans, why not help Americans?” Scare tactic advertising won’t answer that question.
Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon are unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and are not influenced by any donation.
By Aloysius Uche Ordu, Danielle Resnick
Last week’s US-Africa Leaders Summit brought more than 40 African presidents to Washington, DC for three days of engagement with President Biden, congressional leaders, U.S. diplomats, business leaders, and the African diaspora on an impressive array of issues. The Summit implicitly intended to reset relationships with the continent after the previous administration’s antipathy and the growing presence of other geopolitical players, such as China and Russia, in the region. Explicitly, the White House emphasized the need to see African countries as equal partners and recognize the continent’s tremendous potential. Yet, now that the Summit has ended, what was promised and how can those promises be upheld?
A dizzying sum of financial commitments were made, many of which require congressional approval. Importantly, these commitments are all in priority areas that could be potential game-changers. For instance, the Biden administration announced $55 billion over the next three years to support the numerous objectives outlined in the African Union’s “Agenda 2063”. Infrastructure is among the top targets for this support, and a major priority of African leaders.
The administration also promised to invest over $350 million in the Digital Transformation with Africa (DTA) initiative to spur digital infrastructure and a digital enabling environment and $10 million in direct funding for the Health Electrification and Telecommunication Alliance (HETA)—an initiative to improve access to electricity and internet to public health facilities across sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Beyond infrastructure, the US government announced $2.5 billion in additional humanitarian assistance to address food insecurity in Africa.
Other commitments were more rhetorical, such as championing implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA), reaffirming the U.S.-Africa Food Security Framework, and support for the AU to become a permanent member of the Group of Twenty (G20). The latter pronouncement has been a longstanding demand of the AU, but what it substantively entails, and how it will affect the already fraught consensus-based mechanisms of the G20, remains to be seen. Furthermore, various U.S. government officials conveyed their support for renewing and expanding the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which offers eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to U.S. markets. Yet, AGOA’s expiration in 2025—outside the tenure of the current administration—makes substantive commitments to renewal implausible right now.
Still other areas were more muted. Despite the Summit coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Biden’s Summit for Democracy, good governance received comparatively less attention. This likely reflected the range of leaders invited to the Summit, which included all countries in good standing with the AU and with which the US maintains diplomatic relations. Following a meeting with presidents of six countries with elections in 2023, President Biden promised $165 million to support elections and good governance in Africa in the coming year. This is nonetheless smaller than the $258.8 million for democracy, human rights, and governance that was disbursed by the U.S. to sub-Saharan Africa in 2022.
Ensuring accountability of U.S. leaders to uphold these disparate commitments—and African leaders to deliver for their citizens—will be the critical test of the Summit’s lasting success. Encouragingly, the Summit ended with the appointment of Ambassador Johnnie Carson to ensure that the dialogues result in concrete action and to differentiate “new money” from reallocations from existing commitments. Ambassador Carson’s efforts should be complemented by a platform similar to the foreign assistance tracking system that could be leveraged to incorporate details on financial disbursements made by the U.S. government during the Summit to particular countries and sectors. U.S. businesses that made pledges during the Summit should equally be encouraged to participate in such a platform.
In addition, an “Africa coordinating office” could avoid duplication or contradictory policy efforts across the U.S. government while simultaneously reducing the transaction costs for African leaders to engage with the more than dozen U.S. government agencies and departments that work in the continent. A scaling up of the Prosper Africa Secretariat in the White House, which coordinates U.S. government intra-agency initiatives related to trade and investment in the region, is another option. Relatedly, it is critical to ensure policy coherence with similar initiatives offered by the U.S. government’s other partners in Africa. For instance, the EU-Africa Summit in February 2022 ended with the announcement of a 150 billion euro Global Gateway infrastructure plan, which also aims to support Africa’s digital transition and health systems. Similarly, the AU’s and African Development Bank’s Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) could be bolstered through $5 billion in U.S. government grant funding to “de-risk” priority projects.
Finally, more frequent U.S.-Africa summits could maintain momentum over time. Yet, they need to involve a broader range of African leaders beyond national executives, including parliamentarians, mayors, and community leaders. This would help increase local ownership and awareness of high-level financial and policy commitments, thereby improving the likelihood of their ultimate implementation on the ground.
By Nicol Turner Lee, Brady Tavernier
An estimated 90,000 people have been laid off from some of the largest tech companies, including Meta, Twitter, Amazon, and potentially Google, as seen in recent press reports. The jobs that have been mostly impacted are white collar, primarily in sales and human resources, with new hires most affected in these industry-wide, cost-cutting measures. While some researchers have argued that big tech companies are simply responding to the winding down of COVID-19’s stay-at-home mandates or addressing the company bloat of redundancies in jobs, very little attention has been paid to the growth opportunities in another segment of the digital economy—broadband industries.
Employment opportunities to install, maintain, and troubleshoot high-speed broadband systems have gotten a boost from the federal government under the Biden administration, presenting new opportunities for workers outside of service sector industries, like retail store sales associates, product delivery drivers, and other occupations. Passed in 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is expected to create up to 200,000 jobs for broadband deployment, which will need a ready and able workforce. Among big tech workers, there likely will be a soft landing for new employment opportunities due to an existing shortage in highly technical workers, including computer scientists and engineers. While some worker shortages will be expected for the new jobs created by the IIJA, our argument is that the workforce may be more plentiful in the broadband sectors, especially since many of the occupations do not require college or advanced degrees. Broadband jobs also have the potential to be more inclusive and representative of diverse talent, including workers who have been historically marginalized, low paid, and dislocated in the labor force.
What the Biden administration has promised to doIn November 2022, the White House and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) hosted their own job fair to publicize the jobs emanating from the government’s trillion-dollar investment in the nation’s infrastructure. The primary goal of these and other efforts was to reverse the narrative that IIJA-related jobs primarily require college or other formal education. Instead, the immediate needs of these opportunities, particularly within the broadband sectors, involve the installation, maintenance, and repair of high-speed networks—not at all demanding a minimum four-year degree. In fact, the Biden administration has been clear about its intention to leverage the IIJA in the creation of high-wage, blue-collar jobs by building the economy from the bottom up and middle out. However, what is not quite clear is where the specific opportunities are in the broadband sector, thus calling for a broader taxonomy of direct and indirect jobs, along with a structured pathway for professional career development for workers without college or advanced degrees and specific technical skills proficiencies.
In this blog, the authors rely upon feedback from a September 2022 focus group of academics, policymakers, and workforce development experts, as well as extensive research of available labor datasets to offer some perspective on how to effectively engage diverse and under-represented talent in the emerging broadband economy. This blog is the first of two and primarily touches on the types of jobs and skills needed to fill out the vast opportunities fueled by recent government investments, particularly if the aim is to engage even the lowest-skilled worker in the new digital economy.
What are the broadband jobs?Broadband allows users to access information via the internet using one of several high-speed transmission technologies, which is particularly significant today, as getting online has become more of a necessity instead of a luxury. To date, insufficient and underwhelming data exists on the workforce opportunities within the broadband industry, including in areas like wireline, wireless, fiber, satellite, and other telecommunications services. To recruit and retain high-quality and skilled employees, workers need to know what and where the opportunities are. Currently, the DOL does not recognize any specific broadband “job codes.” State and regional workforce development organizations also have not classified broadband industry jobs as high skill or high wage, even though such jobs can significantly increase earning potential through certification and training programs.
Without the appropriate occupational classification of such industries in an expanding broadband labor market, it is nearly impossible to measure worker value, earnings potential, and skills acquisition in these occupations, and it is challenging to develop career pathways and related learning curricula to ease transitions into these roles. Further, despite the shortage of highly skilled, technical workers in areas that include cybersecurity, data science, and other computing-heavy jobs, the jobs created by the IIJA are not reliant on strict technical and educational credentialling. Instead, these jobs tend to be more task oriented, requiring more experiential and “on the job” immersion for workers, which can increase the engagement and improve the quality of employment for diverse and under-represented talent, especially workers who have been historically marginalized in the labor force.
Disadvantaged by the lack of available data to accurately project the range and scope of broadband jobs, the authors attempted to create a broad taxonomy of similarly aligned occupations that were mentioned during the September 2022 focus group, particularly construction, installation, machinery, customer service, and cloud support. Table 1 provides some of the preliminary functional descriptions from each of these areas, relying largely on data collected from O*Net, which is hosted by DOL’s Employment and Training Administration. It also adds in what the additive value of tech experience would be for the aligned occupations.
Table 1. Aligned Occupations, Functions, and Critical Technology Skills
| Occupation | General Functions | Critical Technology Skills | | Construction | Perform tasks involving physical labor at construction sites. May operate hand and power tools of all types: air hammers, earth tampers, cement mixers, small mechanical hoists, surveying and measuring equipment, and a variety of other equipment and instruments. May clean and prepare sites, dig trenches, set braces to support the sides of excavations, erect scaffolding, and clean up rubble, debris, and other waste materials. May assist other craft workers. | Computer aided design (CAD) software; project management software; etc. | | Installation / Maintenance | Service or repair internet equipment on customer’s property. Repair, install, or maintain broadband cable, including fiber optics, as well as equipment used in mobile broadband. May test and analyze network coverage. | Facilities management software; geographic information system; map creation software; project management software; etc. | | Machinery | Repair, install, adjust, or maintain industrial production and processing machinery or refinery and pipeline distribution systems. May also install, dismantle, or move machinery and heavy equipment according to plans. | Computer aided manufacturing (CAM) software; facilities management software; industrial control software; etc. | | Customer Service | Interact with customers to provide basic or scripted information in response to routine inquiries about products and services. May handle and resolve general complaints. Excludes individuals whose duties are primarily installation, sales, repair, and technical support. | Accounting software; cloud-based data access and sharing software; customer relations management (CRM) software; data base user interface and query software; financial analysis software; helpdesk or call center software; etc. | | Cloud Support | Analyze, test, troubleshoot, and evaluate existing network systems, such as local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN), cloud networks, servers, and other data communications networks. Perform network maintenance to ensure networks operate correctly with minimal interruption. | Cloud-based data access and sharing software; cloud-based management software; cloud-based protection or security software; communications server software; development environment software; network monitoring software; network operating system enhancement software; etc. |
Realistically, the existing and emerging opportunities within broadband industries will require some competency in any one or combination of the above-mentioned areas. Tasks that include the construction and maintenance of high-speed broadband networks to customer support, and on- and off-site troubleshooting will be needed as the U.S. expands its critical online infrastructure. However, these areas are not intensely focused on higher education credentials and will lean more towards skills-based proficiencies that are discussed in the next section.
More skills than degrees will be requiredAs shown in Table 1, occupations that include construction, installation, maintenance, customer service, and cloud support combine physical, technical, and cognitive skills, alongside problem solving, interpersonal strengths, specialized technical competencies, and project management. Further, these occupational functions can also add or reflect the desired technology skills that may not be gained from more traditional higher education.
At face value, the focus on skills-based hiring can not only widen the talent pool for the broadband workforce, but also bring in more diverse and under-represented talent who have not benefitted from these occupational spheres and have traditionally been left behind by educational institutions. In maintenance, construction, production, and transportation industries, there are already disproportionate shares of workers who already get paid high wages and do not have college degrees, especially in the more physical industries. Having a clear taxonomy of broadband occupations will widen the pool of high-wage work and expand the benefits of durable jobs to others. While some software requirements will be essential to many broadband jobs, in most instances, they still will not need highly specialized degrees. Instead, companies can develop their own training around their proprietary systems to lower the barriers to entry for lower-skilled workers.
Table 1 also should implore workforce development agencies and community-led organizations to ready diverse and under-represented talent pools around the descriptions of tasks assigned to occupational aligned professions in the absence of more robust job descriptions.
The role of the private sector and unionsSome activities are already in motion to jumpstart employment in this sector. The Biden administration, in coordination with various private and civic sector employers, recently committed to expanding pre-apprenticeships and high-quality training programs for broadband workforce development. The White House is committed to expanding equitable pathways into good-paying jobs through collective bargaining positions. Lumen Technologies, for example, plans to invest more than $80 million annually to hire 1,000 new employees, many of them in union jobs, to support its fiber broadband expansion program and provide technical training sessions. AT&T and the Communications Workers for America (CWA) are creating a task force to design broadband apprentice programs, work with community colleges to expand career options for current employees and streamline tuition reimbursement for AT&T’s union employees. These and other examples demonstrate a good faith effort toward equitable broadband workforce development by the private sector, with some job protection for these opportunities.
Yet, the authors lend caution if the transformative broadband economy begins to resemble traditional construction, manufacturing, and other trades, which have historically carved out racial minorities and women. Given that these industries have historically provided a structured path to the middle class for many Americans, most low-wage workers struggle to move up in a labor market and are declined membership in union jobs. Women and people of color have been disproportionately affected by these trends in the trades, impacting their ability to find unionized jobs and develop within internal ranks. As President Biden has suggested that IIJA jobs be proportioned to those with limited pathways to job mobility, more discussion needs to be had on how to incentivize more openness among unions of historically marginalized groups, including women.
That is why broadband job creation, training, and placement needs to be differentDespite our attempt to create a more fluid taxonomy, the skills demanded by broadband occupations will slightly differ from typical construction and manufacturing occupations, especially for cognitive-physical jobs, such as customer service and cloud support. Job seekers will need to be able to acquire and demonstrate competency in soft skills to be competitive for advancement within the broadband industry and adjacent industries made possible by the expansion of broadband, especially those that tend to be more customer facing. Likewise, employers need to ensure that applicants are evaluated on both their current and future value to the job, ensuring that the ability to learn or transfer their existing skill sets—both technical and interpersonal—are part of the framing of the ideal candidate.
In reality, most of these infrastructure jobs are going to be long-term careers in a broad variety of roles, most of which are positions where “you don’t need to wear a hard hat” to carry out employment functions. Further, the technical and social skills needed for these broadband opportunities are not necessarily taught in college. For example, general maintenance and repair workers often start out by performing applied tasks while learning from more skilled colleagues. Even the “soft skills” needed for customer service and cloud support occupations, such as communication and problem solving, can be developed outside of the classroom.
Recommendations for next stepsThat is why a starting point to engage more diverse and under-represented talent in existing and emerging broadband jobs should center on accurate data collection and dissemination to workforce development agencies, training organizations, and employers. Without clear guidance on what to train employees for within broadband sectors, the U.S. will not meet projected goals to maximize labor opportunities here. We recommend that the White House and DOL, along with other affected state and local agencies, take these next steps to better prepare themselves for a longer debate on a more inclusive workforce and potentially gather more granular information on regional differences in employment opportunities, as well as hiring.
- Federal agencies and workforce practitioners, including O*Net, NIST, and other employee-serving organizations, must develop better taxonomies of broadband occupations and competency-based learning progressions to better measure, train, and narrow the scope of these occupations.
- People without college or advanced degrees should be the intended targets of IIJA-related job opportunities, which requires a more inclusive workforce development strategy that includes partnerships with community-based organizations for recruitment and supportive services, skills-based hiring practices on behalf of employers, ensuring job placement in occupational pathways that lead to a family-sustaining wage, benefits such as paid sick leave or health insurance, and ongoing career advancement opportunities.
- Standardized high-quality credentialing and “soft skills” training programs, like those adopted by some private and civic sector employers, should be readily available and serve as models for providing a structured pathway for marginalized workers without college or advanced degrees to acquire valuable and transferable skills in the broadband industry. Employer incentives should also be in place to recruit, train, and hire diverse and under-represented workers in fields that do not require higher education.
- Union jobs remain an important determinant of relatively high-wage jobs and high-quality working conditions, but many labor unions struggle to achieve equity in their membership and break the historical exclusion by race and gender. There must be intentional efforts to diversify unionized roles within broadband, such as hiring diverse leadership, providing retention support such as childcare, and addressing scheduling barriers for workers who are juggling family and work obligations.
ConclusionWith the recent appropriation of landmark funding for broadband deployment, the DOL and industry partners in the broadband sector should consider working together to clarify the existing and emerging employment opportunities in broadband industries, particularly for diverse and under-represented talent without college or advanced degrees who desire to move up in the labor market. Starting with more accurate data around what these jobs do is a first step, followed by more discussion on how to create traditional and alternative paths to technical and soft skills proficiencies. At this opportune time when job creation is in full swing, the creation of a more inclusive workforce must be prioritized in current and future broadband infrastructure spending.
AT&T, Meta, Google, and Amazon are general, unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations and conclusions in this piece are solely those of the authors and not influenced by any donation. The authors also acknowledge the research support of Jack Malamud and the constructive comments of Annelies Goger from the Brookings Metro program.
By Minha Khan, Ajay Pinjani, Hina Saleem
Ayla recalls her early days in Sindh, Pakistan at school, when it was nothing but a strange building. Her home was so different and so was her neighborhood.
I remember my teacher, Ms. Sindhu, who lived three houses away from mine, once asked me to narrate a story about a camel ride. We have many camels around us, so I became excited and wanted to share, but I just couldn’t. I just struggled to say what I knew, what I have enjoyed and wanted to say. It felt like my tongue froze.
Ms. Sindhu asked Ayla to narrate this story in English, a language that was unfamiliar to her at the time. If asked in Sindhi, Ayla would not only have communicated her experience but also received her teacher’s energy of affirmation in return. Language is an invisible source of familiarity in school that children hold on to—it is through language that they have experienced the world so far. In this way, language becomes a bridge between school and home, allowing children to safely cross between the two worlds.
Despite the abundance of literature and experience supporting the benefits of teaching in a familiar language, an estimated half of all children in low- and middle-income countries are not taught in a language they understand. The case of Pakistan is no different. After 200 years of colonial rule under British India, Pakistan was born in 1947. Today, the country is home to over 70 languages, including the official languages of Urdu and English (a language that stayed, even after the British left). Urdu and English are utilized by the government, corporate sector, media, and—most relevantly—educational institutions.
As is the case with many other post-colonial nations, Pakistan is afflicted with “English-medium fever,” a desire to keep English as the medium of instruction in schools due to its perceived superiority and association with wealth, status, and power. This fever has led to a deep disconnect between the languages of the home and the school. Only 2 out of over 70 indigenous languages are formally recognized in schools in Pakistan. Most of the other languages remain “informal” in their usage, given little to no recognition outside of everyday use.
It is crucial to continue to longitudinally study the effects of such solutions, to identify what’s working and what can be potentially scaled up, and ultimately, to create a world where Ayla and the millions of children like her can learn and share their experiences with confidence, ease, and excitement.
Despite the desire for English-medium instruction, for most students “English-medium” schooling only means that the textbooks and exams are in English. Research has demonstrated that a large portion of teachers in Pakistan do not understand English. Instead, teachers rely on local languages to teach and communicate with students, and students memorize and replicate text without comprehension. Students are subjected to learning unfamiliar content in a foreign language by a teacher who has not mastered the language. This places a burden on students, thereby furthering the inequality between themselves and more privileged students.
The gap between policy and practice in the language of instructionPakistan’s national education policies provide provinces with the option to use native languages in the early years of schooling and encourage the inclusion of mother tongues.
This leads us to ask why Pakistan’s national policies are not inspiring practice within provincial and private school systems. If the intention to teach children in languages they understand is there, why are a significant numbers of schools continuing to teach children using textbooks in Urdu or English, despite those languages collectively only being the native tongue of 8 percent of the population?
One crucial gap is that while policy details the importance of learning in one’s own language, there is no guidance on how this policy should be implemented. School systems are left on their own to design curriculum and develop the necessary material to implement this policy. Moreover, the examination boards for Matric and Intermediate students are still held predominantly in Urdu and English, thereby discouraging schools from investing in teaching children in familiar languages and instead facilitating the rote memorization of unfamiliar language textbooks that students will later replicate on exams. Parents also fear that their children will do poorly on these exams, lose opportunities if they study in their own language, and forgo learning in the English language.
This is contributing to a growing crisis where children are attending school but struggling to comprehend. When these children decide to no longer pursue an education, we say they “dropped out.” But the truth of the matter is that these children are pushed out due to a systemic failure.
A language ladder can help bridge multilingual instruction Languages can provide access to opportunities and serve as a bridge between a child and the outside world. However, to ensure academic success, cognitive development, and positive identity formation, children must be taught in languages familiar to them. Research finds that after children have developed proficiency in their familiar language(s), it is easier for them to learn foreign languages like English. Conversely, learning in an unfamiliar language is too demanding for a young child. This disadvantage disproportionately impacts children facing other educational barriers, such as poverty, hunger, and poor learning conditions.
So, how can a mother tongue-based multilingual education policy be translated into the classroom? To answer this, The Citizens Foundation, which operates one of the largest networks of independently run, nonprofit schools in the world, began a research study in 2018 that includes a socio-linguistic survey, interviews and focus groups with stakeholders and experts, and literature reviews. We combined more than five years of research findings to develop a “language ladder” (or language progression plan) that outlines how children can be taught in their native language in the early years and then transition to learning multilingually to optimize learning and future opportunities (see image below).
The language ladder can be adapted to any context; all it requires is that a thorough socio-linguistic survey be conducted in the community to ensure that the aspirations and needs of the community are understood and are reflected in the language progression plan. The development of a language ladder is a first step toward teaching children in languages they understand.
TCF is currently piloting this language ladder across 19 schools and 84 classrooms—from pre-KG to grade 2—in Tharparkar, Pakistan. It will be scaled to close to 100 schools in the upcoming school year. The model adopts the most familiar language as the medium of instruction in the early years (until grade 3), undergoes a gradual transition from familiar to unfamiliar language in the late primary and early secondary years (grades 3 to 7), and finally completely transitions to the language most demanded beyond schooling in the late secondary years (grade 8 onward).
Source: The Citizens Foundation.
The multilingual language ladder puts comprehension at the center. It insists on the use of a familiar language to teach unfamiliar content so that there is a higher likelihood that the student will thrive in their environment. To ensure this goal is achieved, it is not enough to develop a policy that simply endorses mother-tongue instruction. There is also a need for technical guidance as to how multilingual schools can implement such policy on a classroom level.
Designing and introducing a language ladder can support policymakers and practitioners in addressing multilingual teaching within their individual contexts. It is crucial to continue to longitudinally study the effects of such solutions, to identify what’s working and what can be potentially scaled up, and ultimately, to create a world where Ayla and the millions of children like her can learn and share their experiences with confidence, ease, and excitement.
You can learn more about the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Program at The Citizens Foundation here and a recent policy brief related to school language policy here.
Photo credit: Albertina d’Urso.
By Elijah Asdourian, Alexander Conner, Louise Sheiner, Lorae Stojanovic
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Access to Black physicians yields better outcomes for Black patientsBlack patients with certain chronic diseases have better outcomes if they receive medical care at facilities with a high number of Black physicians, show Michael D. Frakes of Duke University and Jonathan Gruber of MIT. The authors use a decade of medical records from the U.S. Military Health System, which provide information on the race of both patients and providers. Military-affiliated patients frequently move for reasons unrelated to their health or race, providing an ideal natural experiment for studying how Black patients’ outcomes are affected by the racial composition of a facility’s physicians. The authors studied patients with four “chronic, deadly, but ultimately manageable diseases”—diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and clogged arteries—where the quality of patient-provider relationships is a key part of disease management. Black patients who moved to a medical facility with a one standard deviation increase in the share of Black providers had a 15% relative decline in mortality compared to non-Black patients. Increased preventive medication use accounts for between 55% and 69% of the mortality reduction; a sign, the authors say, of greater trust in provider-patient relationships.
Criminal charges permanently change earnings and tax filing behaviorAmanda Agan of Rutgers and co-authors find that being charged with a crime permanently changes workers’ earnings and tax filing behavior. Using IRS tax return data and court records from three states and two large counties between 2000 and 2019, the authors document that individuals who have interactions with the criminal justice system have low tax filing rates and earnings even before their first criminal charge. But individuals’ earnings and rates of tax filing fall persistently after charges are filed, even if they are charged with misdemeanors or are not convicted of any crime. Further, they find that removing non-convictions from criminal records increases earnings only for gig work—that is, it has no positive effect on employer-reported earnings or 1040 tax filing rates. The authors hypothesize that the initial effects of a criminal charge, such as loss of work experience, “lead to longer term labor-market scarring that can be difficult to undo,” thus making “clean slate” laws that hide criminal history less effective than expected.
Conflicts of interest help drive municipal bond complexityThe $4-trillion municipal bond market is marked by complex bonds that offer issuers flexibility but lower market liquidity, often increasing the borrowing costs of issuing governments. With data from 2010 to 2013 on municipal securities, economic conditions, and state-level lobbying laws, Giulia Brancaccio of New York University and Karam Kang of Carnegie Mellon University examine the trade-off between liquidity and complexity. They find that underwriters benefit from issuing more complex bonds: Moving from the average to the 75th percentile in bond complexity increases the intermediation spread—the difference between what underwriters pay an issuer and what they get for selling a bond—by 14% (17 basis points) and the underwriter’s market share by 11%. Anti-revolving-door laws reduce bond complexity by 6%, they find, suggesting that underwriters use implicit or explicit promises of employment to encourage government officials to favor these complex instruments. Although the increased underwriter rents from more complex bonds raise borrowing costs, some degree of non-standard bond provisions is nonetheless beneficial because they allow issuers more flexibility to deal with contingencies and reduce default risk.
Chart of the week: US building permits have recently plummetedData from the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development via FRED
Quote of the week:“We must vigorously protect global economic integration. As we do so, we need secure trade that reaps the benefits of economic integration while providing greater reliability of supply for the goods we depend on. Three key risks are of particular concern,” writes Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury.
“The first risk is over-concentration…We must avoid over-concentration of the production of critical goods in any particular market…Take the example of semiconductors. Microchips are essential building blocks of the modern economy. Yet virtually all manufacturing of the most advanced chips is located in East Asia…Second, we must protect against geopolitical and security risks. Not only is Russia waging a brutal war against the Ukrainian people; it has also weaponized commodity exports against the world. … Third, we must shift away from supply chains that violate core human rights. For decades, the U.S. has prohibited the import of goods made with forced labor. One area of particular concern are imports from the Xinjiang region in China, where the Chinese government has perpetrated [human rights] abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Jennifer Kotting
Rosenwald Schools: A blueprint for community schools in the Deep South Community school strategies are starting to flourish in the Deep South, jumpstarting a powerful, equitable, and community-informed educational approach that lays the foundation for teaching and learning. The basis for community schools in the South has historic roots that offer ways to practice democracy and build a shared future in the present day.
Sara Sneed, president and CEO of the NEA Foundation, says that some of the first community schools in the U.S. came in the form of Rosenwald Schools of the South. These were community-driven, high-quality schools that served more than one-third of African-American children across the South by 1928—initiated by Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute and Julius Rosenwald, philanthropist and president of Sears Roebuck. The legacy of these schools influences how education leaders like Sneed are bringing communities together for educational opportunities for residents of the Deep South, and particularly to improve access and education justice for Black children.
Community schools in the Deep South are making space for people to co-create that future by building relationships, trust, and authentic communication.
Today, over one-third of all K-12 students and 56 percent of Black children reside in the South. Meanwhile, education spending per pupil, teacher salaries, college matriculation and completion rates, and math and reading scores are typically below national averages in most southern states. Despite all this being true, only 3 percent of philanthropic investment nation-wide is directed towards the South.
A Southern Regional Alliance for Community Schools emerges through quarterly conveningsToday, education leaders are working to address these educational conditions that persist throughout the Deep South through community school strategies. The NEA Foundation has made preliminary investments in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi community schools with quarterly convenings for grantees, who have named themselves the “Southern Regional Alliance for Community Schools.” Sneed sees this investment as a way for philanthropies to demonstrate what is truly valued and supported when it comes to equity in education.
The NEA Foundation has a four-pronged approach to supporting community schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi: grants, technical assistance, convenings, and policy change. They make grants that begin with year-long planning—focusing on building relationships that go deep rather than wide—which is why they have grantees in three target states.
When the NEA Foundation launched their Community Schools Initiative (CSI) in 2020, following more than a year of preplanning with people and organizations throughout the region and nationally, to the best of their knowledge there were no community schools in Arkansas or Mississippi, and only one in Louisiana. There are now 16 established and formally named community schools; 13 schools that are under development or slated for transformation into community schools; and seven school districts at a visioning stage that have expressed interest or are developing the community schools strategy. According to Sneed, “Ample research points to up to $15 in social value and economic benefit for every dollar spent in developing a community school.”
The Foundation sets up grantees with technical assistance and coaching that is not prescriptive, so each site can pursue its self-determined priorities and preferred courses of action. The set goals for grantees are to establish or expand a team or coalition to develop strategy and deepen that team’s understanding of community schools strategies; conduct local needs and interests assessments and an environmental scan to assess capacity; and create a work plan for implementation of the community school(s). Hands-on support comes from the Institute for Educational Leadership Coalition for Community Schools, Harvard Graduate School of Education’s EdRedesign Lab, FourPoint Education Partners, and others.
State and local policies can also create the conditions that enable partners or services, such as school-based health centers, to operate in schools. Consequently, the NEA Foundation partners with local, state, and federal actors to create policies related to financing, implementing, and/or securing technical support for community schools.
Career pathways are made real through community school partnerships in Arkansas.Far from community school strategies focusing purely on resource provision, or “wraparound services,” Sneed prioritizes instruction: “Community schools are first and foremost schools, so focusing on the instructional core is key. Services can’t compensate for that core, they can only enhance that. We know that co-location of resources in schools can have benefits, but it’s only when they are aligned into a comprehensive and synergistic whole towards clearly defined goals that you begin to see impact and advancement.”
For example, the Batesville School District in Arkansas is collaborating with a local manufacturing business to create an engineering pathway for high school students. Laura Howard, the district’s lead and coordinator for community school strategies and an educator of 32 years, says, “Community schools strategies offer innovative ways of connecting with local businesses to create immersive experiences so students can take what they have learned in their class and apply it to real world situations with actual engineers.”
When Howard does professional development training for districts that are considering community schools strategies, she often tells them that they may be implementing some aspects of the strategy already, but the framework is helpful for understanding best practices and creating ways to innovate that put students first. She says, “Community schools strategies put students first.” But that doesn’t mean that the strategy is the same from district to district. Howard also says, “If you’ve seen one community school, you’ve seen one community school. Each one is different.”
Community schools in the South offer a way to practice democracy and build a shared futureThe practice of building trust and partnership takes a lot of time and patience in the process of growing community school strategies. In the Deep South, complex power dynamics exist between institutions like education and community-based organizations. But community school leaders have seen the benefits outweigh the obstacles time and time again, not just for individual students, but for their future contributions to the well-being of their communities and society as a whole.
Senator Robert L Jackson, CEO of Quitman County Development Organization, Inc. has described how Quitman County’s residents, school leaders, nonprofit and faith-based organizations, and others readily came to the table to explore and implement the community school strategy together under the leadership of its superintendent, Dr. Fredrick Robinson. They were able to do this through what he describes as a “democratic process” in which all voices are genuinely honored and respected.
Jackson says, “Cultivating community schools creates new opportunities, not only for communities to determine what each wants for itself, for its children, and others, it relies on those essential commitments that advance democracy – everyone contributing their best critical thinking, sense of self-efficacy, and the desire to participate in decisionmaking processes that directly and indirectly affect everyone.”
Sneed says, “The community school strategy offers so many benefits, from academic to social and emotional well-being, but also allows us a way to practice the idea of democracy because they offer a pragmatic, focused way for people in communities to come together and imagine a future together.” Community schools in the Deep South are making space for people to co-create that future by building relationships, trust, and authentic communication.
By Sharan Grewal
The first round of Tunisia’s parliamentary elections generated an astonishingly low turnout. According to the official figures, just 11.22% of Tunisians turned out to the polls. Such a low figure represents the second-lowest voter turnout ever recorded worldwide in an election since 1945. (The lowest was Jamaica in 1983 at just 2.73%, followed by Haiti in 2015 at 17.82%, and the Gambia in 2012 at 19.44%. See turnout data at International IDEA.)
The meager turnout reflects an embarrassing misstep for President Kais Saied, who is attempting to secure public buy-in for a new political system after his self-coup upended Tunisian democracy in July 2021. While Saied hopes for a higher turnout in the run-off elections, the lack of interest in the first round underscores that Saied’s vision for “politics without parties” may also become politics without participation.
Why the low turnout?The “collective shrug” by which Tunisians approached these elections can be attributed to several factors. First, about half of Tunisians never vote, even during the previous democratic era. In Tunisia’s last free and fair election — the 2019 presidential run-offs — turnout reached just 55%.
Among those who do vote, about half oppose Saied’s rule, and have followed the opposition parties in boycotting his post-takeover elections. In the July 2022 referendum on Saied’s new constitution, this boycott brought the voter turnout down to 30.5%.
Yet, turnout dropped considerably further, to 11%, in these December 2022 elections. Of the 2.6 million Tunisians who voted yes on the new constitution, only 1 million turned out in these parliamentary elections. Why?
First and foremost, Kais Saied was not on the ballot. Unlike the referendum, these parliamentary elections were not viewed by Saied’s supporters as a referendum on his rule. Saied has no party and endorsed no candidates in these elections. Moreover, Saied did little to encourage turnout, instead spending the last week in Riyadh for the China-Arab States summit and then in Washington for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
Moreover, many of Saied’s supporters want a strong presidency and see little need for a parliament. After all, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of a constitution that enshrines a hyper-presidential system where the parliament plays little role and exerts no checks on the president. It is understandable there would be little interest in voting for a powerless parliament, particularly among voters who do not care for a parliament or even checks and balances. In the Fall 2021 Arab Barometer survey, 85% of Saied supporters agreed that, “This country needs a leader who can bend the rules if necessary to get things done.”
Third, the low interest in the elections reflects Saied’s attempts to marginalize political parties and campaign finance. Parties were not permitted to field or fund candidates for these elections, and there was no public funding for candidates either. This election accordingly struggled to find candidates at all: Ten of the 161 constituencies had only one candidate, and another seven had none at all. With little funding, these candidates did little actual campaigning, save for a handful of fliers and posters in the major cities. The paltry turnout thus underscores how political parties and financing are critical to ensuring sustained political participation.
Finally, the slate of candidates presented were not representative or inclusive of society. In his push to mark a contrast with the past, Saied abandoned Tunisia’s candidate quotas that had previously mandated women be 50% and youth 25% of party lists. Instead, only 4% of candidates were youth (under 35 years old) and only 11% were women. While we do not yet have data on who turned out to vote, it is possible that women and youth may have felt less excited than usual, not seeing faces that represented them on the ballot.
Why it mattersThe election results suggest that even if Kais Saied remains popular, the system he is trying to create is not — even among his base. When the new parliament eventually takes office, it will suffer from historically low trust and legitimacy. From Saied’s point of view, this may be advantageous, all but ensuring that the new parliament will serve only as his rubber-stamp, having neither the power nor popularity to challenge his rule.
On the other hand, a system that suffers from such low trust will struggle to govern. Effective governance requires institutions, and public trust in those institutions. Without support from the opposition nor apparently Saied’s supporters, his system will struggle to implement his policies and address the major socioeconomic challenges Tunisians face.
The view from abroadThe elections have also revealed shifting international positions vis-à-vis Saied’s rule. France’s Emmanuel Macron had been an early supporter of Saied’s takeover but has seemingly grown more critical. The French ministry of foreign affairs statement simply took note of the election, highlighting instead the low turnout. Algeria and Egypt, two of Saied’s strongest supporters who both praised the July referendum, have thus far been silent this time around.
Meanwhile, the United States appears to have shifted in the opposite direction. Although the Biden administration had been fairly critical of Saied since his coup, it inexplicably labelled these election results as an “essential initial step toward restoring the country’s democratic trajectory.” With this statement coming just days after a friendly embrace between Saied and Biden at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, democracy supporters in Tunisia can’t help but wonder where the U.S. stands. With just 11% turnout, the U.S. would be wise not to view these elections as creating a stable or sustainable system. As domestic calls for Saied’s resignation heat up, the U.S. should instead continue its pressure on Saied to restore democracy by conditioning foreign assistance and leveraging the IMF loan.
By Mark MacCarthy
On November 28, the U.K. government announced major changes to its Online Safety Bill. The legislation has languished in Parliament since June, and the changes are intended to smooth its forward passage. The proposed draft amendments, released two days later, demonstrate just how difficult it is for governments to regulate harmful online content, even in a nation where free speech protections are more limited than the First Amendment. The proposed revisions would:
- Strip the provisions related to material that is legal but harmful for adults.
- Provide mechanisms for users to avoid exposure to certain material defined in the bill, such as hate speech or encouragement of self-harm.
- Criminalize encouragement to commit self-harm, nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography and “downblousing.”
- Require social media companies to remove content only if it is illegal or violates their publicly announced standards, to have in place systems to enforce their publicly announced standards, and to provide an appeals process for users whose content has been removed.
These draft changes are a mixed bag. The due process and transparency measures are all to the good. The requirement for companies to take steps against content they say they will constrain is also a valuable consumer protection measure. On the other hand, the changes weaken the bill’s tough stand against harmful online material while maintaining a problematic requirement for social media companies to take certain steps in connection with material the government itself has identified. Just keeping harmful material out of the feeds of people who do not want to see it is obviously an ineffective way of protecting the public from the effects of information disorder. Moreover, by imposing a new duty not to act against online material unless it violates a company’s published standards, the bill might make it more difficult for companies to respond to new online speech challenges until after the damage has been done.
The U.K. government has forwarded its package of amendments to the relevant committee of the House of Commons, which is considering them in a process that started on December 5. Further amendments are possible during this legislative process, which should take a couple of months. The U.K. government expects the bill to be passed out of the House of Commons in January.
The BackgroundSome press reports suggested that the references to “legal but harmful material” were targeted for removal because the bill required social media companies to “stamp out” this material even though it remained perfectly legal under U.K. law. But this interpretation is a misreading of the earlier version of the bill.
The earlier bill did require the Secretary of State to designate categories of content that would be considered harmful to adults. The fact sheet accompanying the bill noted that these categories might include abuse, harassment, and exposure to content encouraging self-harm or eating disorders as well as misogynistic abuse and disinformation. Parliament would have had to approve the designations by the Secretary of State.
The earlier bill would have also required companies to conduct risk assessments in connection to such material, take one of four steps in dealing with it, including the possibility of leaving it on their systems, and describe in their transparency reports how they treated this material.
Under the earlier bill, platforms that choose to carry legal but harmful material would be required to develop “systems or processes” available to users that are designed to “reduce the likelihood” that the user will encounter harmful content or “alert the user” to the harmful nature of the material.
The RevisionsVarious groups, including some senior conservative officials and some free speech groups, objected to the very existence of a government-defined category of “legal but harmful speech,” even if the platforms were not explicitly required to remove this material. The message, they felt, was clear enough: The government wanted this material limited or removed from social media, even though it was material that could legally be carried in other media such as books, newspapers, or magazines. Apparently, this concern was enough to hold up the bill.
As a result, the U.K. government’s just-proposed amendments would deprive the Secretary of State of the power to define legal but harmful material and would remove all duties related to that content, including risk assessments, coverage in transparency reports, and the requirement to take one of four specified measures in connection with the material.
But the proposed amendments retain the duty of user empowerment, requiring companies to adopt and maintain measures that would allow users to control their exposure to certain categories of information. The bill explicitly defines these categories, including material relating to suicide, deliberate self-injury, eating disorders, or abuse or incitement of hatred toward people because of their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. Moreover, the enforcing regulatory agency Ofcom, the traditional media regulator, must produce guidance which contains examples of the content that the agency thinks is included (or not included) in each of these categories and is thus subject to the requirement for user empowerment.
The U.K. government’s announcement about the new amendments is misleading in its sweeping statement that “the Bill will no longer define specific types of legal content that companies must address.” The new amendments explicitly mention certain types of legal content that social media companies must address under the duty to provide user empowerment. Under these proposed amendments, social media companies have no duty to provide users with tools to shield themselves from controversial political speech, for instance, but they do have such a duty with respect to hate speech. This suggests that some legal speech is more worthy than others in the eyes of the U.K. government. The free speech advocates who objected to the role of the Secretary of State in defining “legal but harmful material” in the older version of the bill will not be happy with this new statutory designation of certain legal speech as requiring special user-empowerment measures.
The government also intends to add measures to the bill that would criminalize material that encourages users to commit self-harm. This change was introduced in reaction to the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who died in 2017 after viewing certain harmful online material. Despite this criminalization measure, Molly’s father, Ian, objected to the amendment removing measures related to legal but harmful content as did the opposition Labour Party. Lucy Powell, Labour’s culture spokesperson, said this would give “a free pass to abusers.”
The U.K. government also announced its intention to criminalize nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography and “downblousing.” This criminalization measure would include explicit images taken without someone’s consent through hidden cameras or surreptitious photography, as well as explicit images or videos that have been manipulated to look like someone without their consent. These changes should make law professor Danielle Citron happy. Her latest book calls for exemptions from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for revenge porn.
The new amendments include measures designed to promote speech, including a duty “not to act against users except in accordance with terms of service.” Under this new provision, companies “will not be able to remove or restrict legal content, or suspend or ban a user, unless the circumstances for doing so are clearly set out in their terms of service.” They will also be allowed to remove content that is against the law. The new amendments also contain a requirement for an “effective right of appeal” when a user’s post has been removed or limited.
In addition, as described in the government’s announcement, the new amendments have a further consumer protection measure. When social media companies set out their content rules, they must “keep their promises to users and consistently enforce their user safety policies.” If a company outlaws “racist and homophobic abuse or harmful health disinformation,” for instance, then it must have in place systems and processes to “tackle” this banned content. The new bill retains its enforcement mechanism, allowing Ofcom to fine companies up to 10% of their annual turnover.
A Mixed BagThe prospects for the bill at this point are not clear. Despite opposition from the Labour Party, its chances of moving forward have improved. But the changes have disappointed many who hoped for a more coherent and forceful approach. U.K. journalist Chris Stokel-Walker speaks for many when he calls the revised bill “a beacon of mediocrity.”
I think that’s an overly harsh judgment, but there is something feckless about the bill’s fundamental approach of allowing disinformation, hate speech, and racism to flourish online provided only that social media companies find a way to keep this material out of the feeds of people who don’t want to see it. It is not as though we’ll be able to protect ourselves from the harmful effects of the online information disorder by cultivating willful ignorance of its existence.
In addition, the U.K.’s new direction does not include two important measures I recommended in an earlier TechTank commentary. The first, which is a provision for researcher access to social media company data, is vital to verify whether any of the other measures are doing any good and to discover other ways to address harmful content online. The second, a provision for greater involvement of civil liberties groups, would go a long way toward ensuring that government overreach or collusion with the regulated industry is kept in check.
Parliament still must approve these new measures and will be able to add provisions of its own during its consideration over the next several months. There is adequate time to reconsider some of the problematic measures still in the Online Safety Bill as proposed by the U.K. government and to add some vitally needed provisions for researcher access and civil society involvement.
By Kemal Kirişci
Last week a court sentenced Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoğlu, to almost three years in prison and barred him from politics for allegedly insulting the judges in the Supreme Election Council (YSK) for their decision of canceling the mayoral election results in 2019. The decision comes six months ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey, and is widely regarded as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s move to block Imamoğlu from running against him as the rival candidate.
It comes at a time when the opposition — composed of six political parties, referred to as the “Nation’s Alliance” or “Table of Six” — has been unable to agree on a joint candidate. The ruling galvanized the opposition into an exceptional show of unity, expressing support for Imamoğlu. It also led many to frame the decision as politicizing the judiciary and usurping the electorate’s will.
The ruling resembles Erdoğan’s “faux pas” from 2019, when the YSK canceled the initial local election and then Imamoğlu won the repeat election with an even larger margin. However, whether this recent court ruling will backfire on Erdoğan’s prospects of winning the upcoming presidential election will depend on the opposition reaching the necessary compromises and urgently finalizing the nitty-gritty details of preparing for a tough election, including announcing a joint candidate.
What happened?At the March 2019 mayoral election in Istanbul, Imamoğlu, then a little-known local politician from the main opposition Republican’s People Party (CHP) defeated his rival, the candidate of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Binali Yıldırım, by a small margin. Istanbul is where Erdoğan started his political career as mayor after he unexpectedly won the 1994 local elections. His mayorship was interrupted by a court conviction in 1998 for inciting religious hatred after reciting a poem. The conviction triggered popular support for him. His career then took off in earnest once his AKP won the national elections in 2002.
As the demographic and economic hub of Turkey, Istanbul came, personally and politically, to hold a special place for Erdoğan and was captured by his favorite line “whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.” Hence, he simply could not accept losing Istanbul to Imamoğlu and instead got the YSK to rule for a repeat of the election on the basis of unproven AKP complaints of irregularities. The current court ruling resulted from a lawsuit against Imamoğlu for, allegedly, calling those who took the decision to re-run that election “stupid.” Imamoğlu has consistently claimed that the call was made during a heated exchange with the Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and did not target the YSK judges. For the ruling to come into effect it still needs to be endorsed by a higher appeals court, which normally can take more than a year.
Another “faux pas” from Erdoğan?Turkey and Erdoğan have a long record of using the judiciary to settle scores with political rivals. Selahattin Demirtaş, former co-leader of the Kurdish dominated People’s Democracy Party (HDP), has been in prison since November 2016 on rolling lawsuits, despite rulings from the European Court of Human Rights and Turkey’s own supreme court for his release. All because in June 2015 election his party won 13% of the national votes and caused the AKP to lose its majority in the parliament, drawing Erdoğan’s anger. Demirtaş continues to enjoy influence over the Kurdish electorate at a time when HDP votes are generally recognized as likely to be the tiebreaker in the upcoming presidential election.
Similarly, Canan Kaftancıoğlu, as the out-spoken critic of Erdoğan and former head of CHP’s Istanbul branch, as well as the co-architect of Imamoğlu’s victory in Istanbul, was given a suspended five-year prison sentence on charges of insulting Erdoğan and barred from competing in the upcoming parliamentary elections. As noted by a journalist and a commentator on Twitter, it would not be surprising if the appeal of Imamoğlu’s sentence is brought to a speedy conclusion to block his chances of running in the upcoming elections.
Erdoğan and his ally Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the National Movement Party (MHP), have abundantly made it clear that they would prefer to see Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the CHP, as the joint candidate of the “Table of Six.” They see Kılıçdaroğlu as easier to defeat for numerous reasons. He belongs to the Alevi minority religious group in Turkey. Despite Erdoğan’s declarations that all Turkish citizens are equal, Alevis have long faced discrimination, and Erdoğan has at times employed divisive language against them for political gain. It is assumed that some voters of Sunni identity would refrain from voting for him. Furthermore, unlike Imamoğlu and the CHP mayor of Ankara Mansur Yavaş, Kılıçdaroğlu has never won any elections. In polls, he rarely scores better than Erdoğan, unlike the two popular mayors. Erdoğan also likes singling out Kılıçdaroğlu’s limited experience in public office as an impediment to his ability to govern effectively.
The “Table of Six” has postponed announcing a common candidate to early 2023, as Kılıçdaroğlu’s ambition to be this candidate continues to meet resistance. There are concerns over his chances of winning a contest against Erdoğan. This concern, though not openly stated, is displayed by the leader of the IYI Party, Meral Akşener, who rushed from Ankara to Istanbul immediately after the court ruling to show her solidarity with Imamoğlu during the evening rally protesting the court ruling. The issue of electability inevitably leads to Imamoğlu’s name being brought up as the more popular and more likely candidate to win against Erdoğan. His ability to relate to a wider spectrum of ordinary people, including conservatives, together with his strong will and political ambitions are considered more of a match to a “political fox” like Erdoğan.
Not so easyHowever, it is not evident that Kılıçdaroğlu is willing to leave the stage to Imamoğlu. He pushed aside the criticism that it was a major mistake for him to travel to Berlin on the day of Imamoğlu’s court case and miss the initial rally called for by Imamoğlu. Kılıçdaroğlu did not admit to such a mistake, but did interrupt his trip and returned to Istanbul in time for a follow-up rally attended by the “Table of Six” partners, in a rare show of unity before a crowd of 200,000 people, according to one estimate. In his rally address, Kılıçdaroğlu made it clear that he preferred to see Imamoğlu continue to serve as mayor. Subsequently, Imamoğlu in an interview supported the candidacy of his party boss Kılıçdaroğlu. However, he seemed to leave the door somewhat open when he added, “But the decision lies with the Table of Six.”
Yet, if Imamoğlu were to be chosen as the common candidate of the opposition there would always be the danger of a hurried appeal process that would bar Imamoğlu from running in the presidential election with weeks, if not days to go, and prevent him from taking up his post. Erdoğan’s assurances that the Turkish judiciary is independent, and the appeal process would be decided on the merit of the case, is hard to believe. It would not be surprising if the final judicial ruling served Erdoğan’s political priorities. It is true that Erdoğan’s experience of interfering with local elections in Istanbul in 2019 cost him dearly, and that there is a likelihood that the current situation could trigger a similar reaction from the electorate. Such a possibility has been flagged by numerous AKP personalities. In a recent poll close to 29% of AKP voters and almost 40% of MHP voters thought that the case against Imamoğlu was political.
However, for such interference to damage Erdoğan, the “Table of Six” would need to move into high gear. The joint candidate issue would need to be resolved speedily to prevent it from sapping energy away from winning the electorate’s hearts and minds. The failure to resolve the candidate issue is partly why the opposition in recent months has steadily lost ground in polls to Erdoğan’s AKP and governing coalition. It projects an image of disunity and incompetence.
Early commitment from the “Table of Six” to end Erdoğan’s one-man rule with a “strengthened parliamentary system” appears abstract and distant, especially in a country where the media is heavily controlled by the government and does not permit open debate. The opposition must weave their common vision into a narrative that offers solutions to Turkey’s serious economic problems, and helps the electorate imagine a promising future. Furthermore, the “Table of Six” still has not announced a plan to ensure the security of the ballot boxes and the ballot counting process, or explained how they intend to share power if they win.
ConclusionErdoğan’s latest blunder is likely to swing public opinion toward the opposition. Yet, it is too early to claim that it signals the collapse of Erdoğan’s 20-year reign, as claimed by a prominent and seasoned Turkish commentator. Ultimately, the outcome of Turkey’s June 2023 elections will depend on the opposition’s ability to make the most of Erdoğan’s most recent “faux pas.”
By Wendy Edelberg, Richard G. Frank, Aaron Klein, Sanjay Patnaik, David Wessel
Economic policy leaders and researchers were kept busy in 2022 by high inflation, a volatile labor market, crypto crashes, and major legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act. We asked five Economic Studies scholars about important developments this year in their fields of study and developments that they expect in 2023.
Use the links below to explore their perspectives.
- Health care >>
- Monetary policy >>
- The labor market >>
- Finance >>
- Climate policy >>
Health careRichard Frank
What were the most important developments in health care from the last year?The past year has seen dramatic developments in both mental health care and drug pricing. Concerns over mental health in the United States has- taken center stage. For example, the prevalence of mental illnesses increased over the last decade for the first time since the 1950s. That was largely driven by illness in children that more than doubled from 2010 to 2019. President Biden drew attention to the problem and sketched a vision of how to address it.
The U.S. Congress enacted the Inflation Reduction Act that established the ability of the federal government to negotiate prices for prescription drugs and established catastrophic protection against the costs of prescription drugs. These are historic changes in U.S. policy that will save American consumers and taxpayers tens of billion dollars.
What Brookings work have you done on these issues?Our work on mental health policy during 2022 has focused on three specific issues: the mental health of children, the system for dealing with mental health crises, and the challenges of integrating behavioral health into general medical care. Some key points made in that work are as follows.
- The growth in mental illnesses in children pre-dates the pandemic and the factors driving that change are not well understood. Nevertheless, there are numerous evidence-based interventions that can prevent and treat mental illnesses in children and adolescents.
- We propose that schools can play a greater role in identifying need and engaging children in treatment. Treatment services can be delivered by a range of providers by integrating behavioral health services into a variety of settings facilitated by improved support from the Medicaid program.
Our work on prescription drugs has focused on two key issues. The first is on claims made regarding the impact of policies that negotiate drug prices on innovation and the supply of “new cures.” Our analyses highlighted several points. We showed that concerns over the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act’s impact on new cures was exaggerated and that the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of a very modest impact was consistent with existing evidence. In addition, we examined various complementary policy measures that could be taken to promote innovations that would boost the health of Americans including greater investments in the NIH and other science agencies and government seeding of venture investments. The second area focused on regulatory impediments to competition. We offered a series of possible modifications to FDA regulations that would promote greater price competition in prescription drug markets that would generate savings to consumers and taxpayers and invigorate the emerging market for biosimilar products.
How do you see these issues evolving in 2023?The attention and initial steps towards addressing the complex array of issues related to the American struggle with mental illnesses have provided a general direction for policy. In the coming year the details of the strategies for implementing policies at all levels of government and civil society will need to take shape. Our work will focus on both the development of federal policy and addressing barriers at the state and local levels that will be necessary to realize the vision that developed over the past several years.
There are a variety of critical implementation issues related to the prescription drug provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that must be developed in 2023. Several of those will turn on the answers to analytical questions regarding how markets will respond to policy guidance that will guide the development of a price negotiation process. We intend to focus on some of those analytical issues. In addition, the President has called for ideas for addressing drug prices and competition beyond the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. We will be conducting several research projected specifically on those issues.
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Monetary policyDavid Wessel
What was the most important development in monetary policy from the last year?This past year was one of the most unusual in recent Federal Reserve history. As inflation proved unexpectedly virulent, the Fed took interest rates from zero to over 4%, a faster pace of rate increases than any time since Paul Volcker. This triggered a sharp decline in both stock and bond prices that eroded the value of Americans’ retirement accounts, a spike in mortgage rates that hit new-home buyers hard, and brought long-sought relief for those with savings in the bank or in market funds.
What Brookings work have you done on these issues?For the Fed to make policy that will bring inflation under control, they first have to know how high it is, and measuring inflation is no easy task. We’ve published several explainers to help reporters, average Americans, and even policymakers understand how the federal government—primarily the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – does it. Measuring the price of housing—both rental and owner-occupied – turns out to be particularly messy, and housing plays a big role in the official inflation measures, as we explain here.
In the second half of 2022, we hosted an illuminating series of discussions alongside the monthly releases of the BLS Consumer Price Index report. Guests including Wendy Edelberg (The Hamilton Project), Justin Wolfers (Brookings nonresident fellow), Jason Furman (Harvard), Neil Irwin (Axios), and Betsey Stevenson (University of Michigan) joined me to share their perspectives on the drivers of inflation, the Fed’s response, and the road ahead. You can read takeaways from the latest discussion here.
How do you see these issues evolving in 2023?We hosted Fed Chair Jerome Powell in December, and he made it as clear as anyone has that we will continue to face challenges from inflation well into the future. We will be watching closely to see how quickly inflation comes down and how far the Fed raises rates in 2023 – and whether, as I expect, the U.S. economy will slide into recession during 2023. We’ll also be thinking about the questions the Fed needs to address when it reviews the monetary policy framework it adopted in August 2020 in light of the recent bout of inflation.
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The Labor MarketWendy Edelberg
What was the most important development in labor market policy from the last year?A combination of factors—long-COVID, excess retirements, high demand for labor, among others—has contributed to a volatile labor market in 2022. Some observers have focused on the low unemployment rate compared to the job opening rate and concluded that the unemployment rate will likely have to rise to startling high levels just to stabilize the labor market and get rid of the upward pressure on inflation. Instead, the fill rate (the ratio of job openings to hires) shows that firms looking to hire large numbers of workers are indeed expanding employment at a rapid pace. It’s a complex and unique situation.
What Brookings work have you done on these issues?In this piece, I argued with some of my colleagues at The Hamilton Project that in order for the economy to return to more stable footing, the labor market needs to soften, but not at much as some think. What squares the circle between the unemployment rate and the fill rate is that right now, the unemployment rate is doing a relatively poor job of capturing the pool of potential workers—many are coming straight into jobs from outside the labor force.
How do you see these issues evolving in 2023?We show that the labor market dynamics since 2021 suggest that getting the job openings rate back to a more sustainable pace means we need the pace of hiring to return to roughly 2015 levels. Such a labor market in the year or so ahead would be softer than today’s, but not startling so.
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FinanceAaron Klein
What were the most important development in finance from the last year?Bank overdraft fees exploded over the last twenty plus years, growing by some estimates to over $30 billion a year. Overdraft penalizes people who run out of money with fees (typically $35 each time) that directly flow into bank profit. This year, most of America’s largest banks and many smaller ones announced major changes to their overdraft programs that will reduce the high cost to be poor. By my estimate, changes from the largest banks alone will result in $5 billion a year back in the accounts of those living paycheck to paycheck.
Digital assets and crypto currency exploded and imploded with a series of high-profile losses and bankruptcies. Regulating crypto will likely be front and center before Congress and financial regulators who spent last year writing reports requested by President Biden’s executive orders earlier this year.
What Brookings work have you done on these issues?In 2022, many banks changed their overdraft policies absent any new regulation or legislation, as highlighted at this Brookings event focused on early adopters. New research, public name and shame, and potential competition from financial technology (FinTech) firms finally forced major changes across the industry. President Biden claimed some credit for this as part of his crack down on “junk fees” but regardless of why banks changed their way, the reality is a major win for working families who run out of money, which sadly is by some estimates half of all Americans.
On the crypto side, Brookings was glad to host, among others, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman, Acting Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman, and the New York State Banking Superintendent in a series of events discussing how they are regulating crypto. We recently created a resource for people interested in digital asset markets with key takeaways from a number of these events, along with summaries of recent research on crypto regulation.
How do you see these issues evolving in 2023?While the voluntary progress on overdraft fee policies was welcome, can and must take action. There are still banks (and likely some credit unions) operating on unsafe and unsound business models reliant exclusively on overdraft. I outlined a series of steps regulators should take: stopping any bank from relying on overdraft fees for a majority of their profit in consecutive years, fixing America’s real-time payments system, and a requirement for all financial institutions to offer a no-overdraft, low-cost, basic bank account. I hope Congress will consider these important measures in 2023.
One key question likely to be discussed in 2023 on crypto will be whether the Federal Reserve can or should issue its own central bank digital currency (CBDC). America already runs on commercial bank digital currency (credit/debit cards, digital banking, etc.) so it remains to be seen whether swapping the first C in CBDC from Commercial to Central will unlock benefits for the American economy or whether it is more in reaction with countries like China which are rolling out CBDC’s for their own reasons which are often very different than ours.
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Climate policySanjay Patnaik
What was the most important development in climate policy in the last year?The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law in August of this year, is the most significant piece of climate legislation passed in this country’s history. The law provides a total of $386 billion for climate and energy issues, including $271 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives, $40 billion to reduce air pollution and fund clean energy and infrastructure projects, $35 billion in conservation and rural development, and $27 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund that will award grants to national and local green energy and electrification projects.
This law provides significant incentives for large and small businesses as well as for consumers to adopt more low-carbon energy initiatives. It also specifically provides funding for disadvantaged communities to help grant them access to clean technologies and fight against the effects of climate change. Current modeling predicts that instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 27% from 2005 levels by 2030, the US could potentially be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 42% from 2005 levels by 2030 because of the climate provisions in the IRA.
What Brookings work have you done on these issues?One example is our recent article on permitting reform, which discusses that the U.S. needs to clear major regulatory delays and enable an unprecedentedly rapid build-out of solar, wind, and electric transmission infrastructure to fully realize the benefits of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and meet the Biden administration’s climate goals. Permitting obstacles include local and state government delays, as well as a long list of federal permits and reviews that can take many years to complete.
Another example is our explainer video on climate risk. From homeowners in flood-prone areas facing rising home insurance rates to corporations facing pressure to disclose climate risks, nearly everyone is exposed to climate risks. Understanding and proactively mitigating these risks is critical to protecting people and places from climate change.
How do you see these issues evolving in 2023?With a divided incoming Congress, I do not see much room for additional climate legislation to pass. A bipartisan compromise on permitting reform, with concessions to the left on environmental protection and to the right on fossil fuel infrastructure, seems unlikely but remains possible.
This will essentially mean that with much of the grant money set aside in the Inflation Reduction Act still to be allocated, regulatory agencies such as the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency will play an even more significant role in implementing climate regulation in 2023. This is why, in addition to continuing to perform research on permitting reform as well as tracking climate regulation implemented by agencies, looking at how IRA money is allocated will be key in the next year.
Other significant climate developments I anticipate in the near future include a final Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring climate risk disclosures by public companies and additional details from the EPA on their cap-and-trade program for hydrofluorocarbons.
On the international front, the recently-announced provisional agreement on the European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is a major development. It will target imports of carbon-intensive products, functionally applying a carbon tax to imports to bring them into compliance with the EU’s climate ambitions. The CBAM will begin phase-in in October 2023, and is likely to have significant impact globally.
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The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Jenny Schuetz
Policymakers and advocates working to reduce the impacts of climate change have a difficult tightrope to walk: trying to raise public awareness about the scale and urgency of the problem without terrifying people into paralysis. One way to encourage productive conversations is to balance explanations of risks with concrete, feasible solutions. A new book from Carolyn Kousky, “Understanding Disaster Insurance: New Tools for a More Resilient Future,” provides an excellent example of how to do this.
The book explains how well-designed insurance products can provide financial support to households and businesses that are impacted by climate-related events such as intense storms, wildfires, and earthquakes, and highlights the limitations to our current insurance markets and programs. Some of the material is fairly technical and gets into the weeds of complex financial instruments (who hasn’t heard of parametric microinsurance?). But three big-picture takeaways are quite straightforward—and deserve greater attention from policymakers and voters.
Most American homes and families are underinsured against climate-related stresses Readers may wonder: Why is it necessary to have special insurance for disasters? Two-thirds of Americans own their homes, and mortgage lenders require borrowers to buy property insurance at the time of purchase to protect the lender’s investment. While typical homeowners’ insurance covers some physical damages from weather (like a tree falling onto the roof), policies expressly do not cover disasters such as floods (often the most expensive damage from hurricanes) or earthquakes. Chapter 2 of “Understanding Disaster Insurance” contains some eye-opening statistics on insurance gaps:
- Across North America, only 40% of economic losses from disasters are insured.
- Among households who live in the 100-year flood plain designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, only about 30% have flood insurance.
- Slightly more than 10% of California homeowners have earthquake insurance.
- Only 40% of renters have renters’ insurance.
Even for households that have disaster insurance, their policies often do not cover the full cost of damages. Policies may have high deductibles that homeowners must pay out of pocket before insurance kicks in. Caps on the total reimbursement amount may be lower than the costs of repairs needed. A common problem is that consumers insure their home for the market value at the time of purchase, and do not update the value of the property or their belongings over time. Public insurance programs such as the federal National Flood Insurance Program and Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program fill some of the gaps, but also typically fall well short of the total cost of damages.
The fragmented system of disaster insurance and recovery means that the financial costs are distributed across many people, private companies, public agencies, and taxpayers. Climate disasters also have economic repercussions for surrounding communities and the broader financial system. And families affected by natural disasters face long-term financial risks, including mortgage default and declining credit scores.
The complexity of buying disaster insurance deters consumers A core tenet of well-functioning markets is that consumers are able to make well-informed, rational decisions about their purchases based on how much they value a good or service. But disaster insurance is a clear example of a service where consumers lack key pieces of information that allow them to determine whether they should purchase insurance against a particular climate event and at what price. Specifically, what is the likelihood that the climate event will occur, and how much damage will it cause? Insurance companies develop estimates based on historical events and statistical modeling, but this information is rarely shared with consumers. Even small differences in assumptions can make insurance a “good” or “bad” purchase, as shown in the hypothetical examples below.
Let’s say that the annual premium for flood insurance is $150. Scenario 1 estimates that the probability of a flood occurring is 1%, and the flood would cause $10,000 worth of damage to a home. That means that the expected value of damage is 1% x $10,000, or $100. A risk-neutral customer would not choose to pay $150 for flood insurance, because the annual premium exceeds the expected value of damages. (A risk-averse customer would be willing to pay more than $100 for flood insurance, but probably still less than $150.)
But what if the estimate of the flood damage is too low? Scenario 2 estimates that the flood causes $20,000 worth of damage. Now the expected value of damage is $200, so a risk-neutral customer would be willing to pay $150 in annual premiums. And Scenario 3 shows that increasing the probability of flooding to 5% while keeping damage costs at $10,000 also makes the $150 flood insurance premium a good purchase.
Even with the best climate data and analytics available today, there is considerable uncertainty about when and where disasters will occur and how severe they will be, especially as the climate changes over time. Many consumers find the pricing of insurance opaque and do not understand the underlying math. And most people prefer not to think about unpleasant events, let alone spend money in expectation of them.
In short, if policymakers want more households to be covered by disaster insurance, relying on voluntary purchases won’t get the job done. The book points out that in other countries, disaster insurance is included in standard homeowners’ policies, which gets around the need for households to make separate purchase decisions. Lessons can also be drawn from mortgage markets: As a result of the 2007-2009 foreclosure crisis, federal regulators now require mortgage lenders to provide a standardized one-page disclosure form summarizing key loan features to help borrowers understand their purchase. However, unlike mortgages, insurance is regulated by state governments rather than federal agencies, so such policies would likely require state-by-state action.
Disaster insurance complements—but does not replace—efforts to reduce risk Although the primary focus of “Understanding Disaster Insurance” is the mechanics of how to create better insurance products, the author underscores that insurance is only part of the broader approach to climate change. As one of the most memorable lines in the book puts it: “We want to prevent dead cows, not pay for them once they are gone.” This means we should undertake investments that reduce the probability of disasters, and limit the extent of damage when they occur.
A variety of strategies could reduce the climate risks homes and neighborhoods face. Some strategies are expensive, such as elevating homes in high-flood-risk areas, but others have modest upfront costs. Insurance policies can be designed to incentivize property owners to undertake some of these investments. For instance, some policies offer reduced annual premiums to homeowners who fortify their roofs against hurricane winds or prune trees near homes in wildfire zones (both relatively inexpensive tasks). But low-income households with limited access to credit will have difficulty paying for even small investments, so may require direct grants from public agencies to cover the costs. And some risk reduction efforts will be expensive and politically unpopular, like relocating entire communities or designating no-build areas in places at highest risk.
Increasing the physical and financial climate resilience of U.S. homes and neighborhoods is an urgent task that will require concerted efforts by policymakers at all levels of government as well as private companies in insurance, housing, and financial services. An important first step is increasing awareness among voters and policymakers; books like “Understanding Disaster Insurance” that make these issues tangible and accessible are part of that process.
Full disclosure: Carolyn Kousky is a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings Metro and was a classmate of Jenny Schuetz in graduate school. She was not involved in the writing of this piece.
By Jennifer Kotting
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are home to more than 322,000 students who attend 635 schools. In its nearly 200-year-long history, Chicago’s schools have faced segregation, fiscal crises, and calls for “real equity.” In order to make strides in supporting student success, CPS has invested in the community schools strategy to connect the dots among community partnerships, strong school leadership, and academic achievement. Community schools aim to transform schools and accelerate student success based on the unique priorities and strengths of local communities. As community school strategies have grown in Chicago, independent evaluations have shown improvements in school-day attendance, academic achievement outcomes such as GPA and NWEA scores, school-related behaviors, and outcomes related to school climate.
Chicago’s community schools have evolved over the past two decades, with both successes and lessons learned.Chicago’s landscape of community schools has evolved multiple times since 1998, when 50 schools adopted the strategy through a braiding of resources, investment in relationships, and shared visions. Insights from leaders reveal how these community schools evolve, survive, and thrive as implementation unfolds and as funding shifts.
By 2001, CPS deepened their commitment to the strategy by increasing the number of community schools to 150 within three years. In the subsequent decade, Chicago had expanded to 205 community schools before school closings and funding shifts resulted in a decrease to 117 schools.
Due to a variety of increases in funding streams ranging from the local Sustainable Community Schools (SCS) Initiative, federal Full-Service Community Schools grant program (FSCS), and yearly federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers Grants, the total number of community schools are increasing again. This major increase in federal funding for community schools has led to a resurgence occurring not just in Chicago, but nationally.
Community partners are key to continuity through school closings and funding shifts.Community schools in Chicago have been bolstered through a number of processes and inputs, including partnerships with institutions of higher education, such as the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Reform and its School of Social Work, which no longer exists, but developed an explicit certification and learning process for community school coordinator and resource manager positions. Community-based organizations in Chicago, in partnership with the Coalition for Community Schools and the now defunct Public Education Fund, also co-developed a foundational set of pillars that contributed to national strategy.
Additionally, the SCS Initiative, included in the Chicago Teachers Union contract of 2016, was a critical input that emerged from the hunger strike to reopen Walter H. Dyett High School, the last open-enrollment high school in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Some of the original local community-based organizations who were involved are still working with community schools in the city today, such as Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Enlace, Youth Guidance, and Blocks Together.
Strong school leadership leads to a shared vision that drives strategy-based implementation and academic outcomes forward.One of the most important ways a school leader can move toward implementation is by establishing a shared vision for school success. Autumn Berg, manager for the Community Schools Initiative in CPS, emphasized the importance of a comprehensive community school strategy that makes shared leadership, whole-child teaching, and learning central, reimagines how school buildings are being used, and includes communities to inform student learning and connectedness. For Berg, strong school leadership means engaging with parents and students, community members and organizations, local businesses, and educators when making decisions and creating strategies.
“When a principal really foundationally understands a community school strategy and trusts partners, students, and families in supporting that overall strategy, that’s how a community school works,” said Berg. This approach smooths the way for integrating services from community partners into the school, sets a tone for interaction with families, and creates trust in the school community, as described in a 2022 report.
The range of strategies in Chicago most often includes a warm and welcoming environment, increasing student connection to school, improving academic or socio-emotional learning, increasing family engagement, and developing connection to the community. The more time spent in implementation, the greater the focus on whole-child supports on top of a foundation of skill building and a welcoming environment for students.
One school leader was quoted as saying, “We talk about [our shared vision] on a regular basis. It’s posted around the school. It is a living, breathing document. We revamped our vision this year as a school. We got all stakeholders involved in that process.”
Neil Naftzger is a principal researcher working on community school, afterschool, and youth development initiatives at American Institutes for Research (AIR). Naftzger has been tracking the progress of Chicago’s community schools with AIR for more than a decade. He’s found that while seeing results of a shared vision can take time, the youth development and school-related outcomes are well worth investing in the visioning and implementation processes.
Evaluations of Community Schools Initiative programming in Chicago over 11 years have consistently shown positive effects on attendance and disciplinary incidents, as well as increases in annual GPA (0.12 to 0.26 grade points higher), MAP Reading (0.11 standard deviations), and MAP Mathematics (0.20 standard deviations) among some cohorts of schools. Note that these analyses were completed using one of two quasi-experimental designs: (1) a comparative interrupted time series with matched comparison schools in the district or (2) a comparison of students attending CSI-funded programming relative to students from the same schools or other district schools not attending programming. While these designs help control for some sources of selection bias that could impact results, all important sources of selection bias cannot be controlled through these methods. Significant effects associated with CSI implementation were generally positive, although some infrequent, significant negative effects were also found.
Out-of-school learning time and school climate are important for academic success.Out-of-school learning time with extended day programming focused on academics has also been core to Chicago’s community schools strategy. A study by AIR found that participation in Community Schools Initiative programming for 120 hours or more across the two school years “was found to have a positive impact on both annual GPA and NWEA scores in reading and mathematics.” Positive effects associated with enrollment in SCS school were related to school-day attendance-related outcomes, including high school students who were chronically absent 14 to 15 percent less often and had fewer numbers of suspension days.
There is also a relationship between improvement in school climate and culture measured by Chicago’s 5Essentials survey and the quality of experiences youth were having in afterschool programming. Schools where youth reported more positive experiences related to interest and engagement in afterschool programs demonstrated more improvement on school-related climate and culture. These include scores in peer support for academic work, student-teacher trust, academic engagement, emotional health, knowledge of human and social resources in the community, rigorous study habits, and psychological sense of school membership.
Naftzger has noticed that when students gain familiarity with new topics in out-of-school programs, they can develop new interests and passions in areas like STEM. He said, “High-quality afterschool programs create opportunities for youth to stretch, try something new, and work hard to get better at something that matters to them. These opportunities also lead to students gaining a sense of accomplishment and agency, which are critical factors in their academic success.”
Measuring success starts with agency, belonging, and well-being of students.As schools move toward more consistent impact on academic outcomes, early indicators of the success of a community school may be present in school climate, culture, attendance, and relationships. Given that community schools are grounded in relationship-driven strategy, Naftzger recommends looking at interactions and relationships first: “Implementation takes time. It’s important not to instantaneously believe you will shift test scores in one to two year’s time in a way that will be detectable. It’s important to invest in the early processes that are part of community schools strategies.”
Chicago community school leaders practice this approach grounded in relationships and support for youth in developing a greater psychological sense of connection to school, a sense of place, belonging, and emotional health—toward long-term academic and school success.
By Brianne Dornbush
Like many cities, Washington, D.C. often takes a siloed approach to community development. While there are countless community-based organizations, place governance entities, and city agencies doing tremendous work in fields such as economic development, social services, housing, and education, these actors rarely work together to assess where community strengths lie, where stakeholder connections may be missing, or where service gaps exist. This fractured approach can hamper neighborhood progress and result in cascading consequences for residents and small businesses.
Using the case study of a declining public space in the heart of one of the District’s most vibrant neighborhoods, this piece examines the far-reaching consequences that community development siloes have on neighborhoods and introduces an actionable model for strengthening hyperlocal governance ecosystems through a more integrated approach. It shows how cities—by investing in hyperlocal governance—can tackle some of their most pressing challenges.
What happens when city agencies and organizations don’t talk to one another In an environmental ecosystem, the absence or introduction of a single organism or element can devastate the entire system. This reality also holds true in neighborhood development, but may be less apparent. By applying an ecosystem approach to community development, we can start to understand how to solve many systemic challenges facing neighborhoods.
Take the case of Washington, D.C.’s Columbia Heights Civic Plaza: a public space in the heart of Columbia Heights, one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods by race, age, socioeconomic status, and cultural identification. Civic Plaza was built in 2008 during a major redevelopment of Columbia Heights’ commercial district, with the vision of it being an activated, vibrant space for residents to socialize, play, and build community.
That vision soon fell apart due to ownership and responsibility issues. While the plaza itself is a fairly small public space, there are many different stakeholders and agencies with responsibility or ownership for parts of the space. For instance, the District’s Department of Transportation controls the sidewalks, but because the public realm design utilizes a special paver stone that only the Department of General Services (DGS) has access to, neither agency appeared to have clear responsibility for making repairs when needed. The plaza’s splash pad was meant to be physically maintained by DGS, but it was also part of the Department of Parks and Recreation’s (DPR) portfolio—meaning that if the fountain was turned on or off at the wrong time, DPR was supposed to address the issue, but if it was malfunctioning, it was DGS’ responsibility.
Because there was no clear citywide plan for how stakeholders would resolve such issues, the plaza fell into a significant state of disrepair, with challenges ranging from dangerous sidewalks to malfunctioning fountain sprockets shooting water onto the surrounding area. This lack of care for the space had ramifications for the community. The plaza where kids and families used to play became underutilized and occupied by individuals struggling with substance use disorders. The state of the plaza contributed to a decrease in revenue for nearby small businesses and subsequent business turnover, resulting in several long-term storefront vacancies. These issues further diminished the public’s perception of the space, turning this once idealized plaza into a neighborhood “problem”—and a clear example of an ecosystem out of balance.
Working toward a balanced ecosystem By 2021, Civic Plaza reached a point of disrepair that became intolerable for many in the community. Residents and business owners approached my organization, District Bridges, to see if there was anything we could do. We applied for a grant with the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to pilot a “Community Development Ecosystem” approach to repairing Civic Plaza. We define this approach as a comprehensive method for understanding and organizing the people, systems, and spaces—both good and bad—that impact the success of a neighborhood.
From the lessons learned during the six-month pilot, we codified three key steps in a Community Development Ecosystem approach that can be adapted to any neighborhood or city context:
- Develop a shared vision across agencies and actors. Many neighborhoods already have active citizens associations, business associations, arts and humanities organizations, and residents committed to supporting their communities. The first step in building a stronger ecosystem is engaging these community stakeholders to co-create a shared vision for neighborhood development. In Columbia Heights, this shared vision was to create a safe and welcoming environment at Civic Plaza. To align trust and values among the stakeholders, we convened monthly and eventually agreed to prioritize the plaza’s maintenance and repair first before moving on to more holistic interventions.
- Create a community ecosystem map. After establishing a shared vision, the next step is to assess the state of a neighborhood’s development ecosystem and pathways to improving it. In the case of Columbia Heights, we used a seven-element community assessment that relied on surveys, interviews, focus groups, and visioning sessions to map the ecosystem of people, spaces, and systems influencing the neighborhood and determine which interventions could improve the ecosystem’s function. While we had agreed to prioritize management of the space first, our community ecosystem map made it clear that we had to simultaneously direct outreach to the vulnerable individuals who frequented the plaza. Unlike the challenge of maintenance, this task was more complex and required acknowledging the layers of trauma and systemic hardship these individuals faced. But by mapping their barriers and pathways to care, we were able to outline key interventions to address gaps in social service provision, from assisting individuals in accessing documents (like driver’s licenses and Taxpayer Identification Numbers) to employing them through a new Plaza Stewardship Program.
- Ensure sustainability. Collaborative partnerships and coalitions often break down because they lack a strategy for long-term sustainability. To ensure this doesn’t happen, a Community Development Ecosystem approach must craft a plan from the outset to determine how existing funding will be managed, how new funding will be pursued through a coalition model, how funding gaps will be addressed, how credit and acknowledgement will be shared, how disputes will be resolved, and how the work will be collectively communicated. Initiating collaborative governance requires a lot of time and conversation upfront, but as organizational roles are solidified, sustainability eventually requires less time and attention because the partners understand their responsibilities. The key to sustainability for collaborative governance is continuous commitment, assessment, and adaptation to the environment. In Columbia Heights, this is still an emerging practice that we are actively working through with city government partners.
Of course, Columbia Heights is a large neighborhood with many complex challenges that extend far beyond Civic Plaza. But by limiting the scope of this pilot to focus on Civic Plaza—a public space emblematic of many broader system breakdowns—we were able to establish a culture of collaboration across siloes to address a range of issues impacting the community.
Strengthening hyperlocal governance across Washington, D.C. In fiscal year 2022, District Bridges received additional funding from the city’s Department of Small and Local Business Development to continue the community development ecosystem approach in Civic Plaza. In this first full year since receiving this funding, we have been able to achieve multiple successes, including: developing a service provider working group for those experiencing homelessness and/or substance abuse concerns, employing unsheltered people as stewards of the space, developing a community-based safety plan through a partnership with the DC Peace Team, and hosting hundreds of community events.
We are now looking to expand these successes to a broader approach that can eventually be replicated in all eight wards of the District. As we look to scale and replicate, it’s important to remember what made this program successful to begin with: remaining focused on nurturing relationships between agencies, systems, and siloes through the lens of place.
By Jonathan Stromseth
U.S. engagement with Southeast Asia received a significant boost last month when U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended a cascade of summits in the region and elevated U.S. relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Biden and Harris also held individual meetings with several ASEAN country leaders, highlighting Washington’s attention to bilateral relations amid escalating U.S.-China rivalry in the region.
The Biden administration has been particularly focused on expanding relations with Vietnam, with its booming economy and strategic location on the South China Sea. During high-level visits to Hanoi over the past 18 months, administration officials have stated very publicly that bilateral relations should be upgraded to a “strategic partnership.” The possibility of such an upgrade has been discussed for years in quiet diplomacy, but the idea has never been realized — partly due to Vietnamese concerns that it could be construed in Beijing as hostile to China. A strategic partnership is achievable, however, if both sides address the issue more systematically over a reasonable timeframe.
The Trajectory of Bilateral RelationsU.S.-Vietnam relations have already expanded dramatically since diplomatic normalization was achieved in 1995 — an expansion seen in the establishment of a “comprehensive partnership” in 2013, the transfer of two U.S. Coast Guard cutters to Hanoi since 2017, and port visits by U.S. aircraft carriers in 2018 and 2020. In addition, bilateral trade has grown 200-fold since normalization, and annual U.S. investment in Vietnam has reached $2.8 billion. Vietnam sends roughly 30,000 students to U.S. educational institutions each year, ranking sixth among sending countries, and this year the first cohort of American Peace Corps volunteers arrived in Vietnam.
Washington and Hanoi have begun cooperating on the regional stage as well. Among ASEAN nations, Vietnam has most actively supported the Quad partnership between the United States, Australia, India, and Japan, with Vietnamese diplomats participating in pandemic-related dialogues with Quad members. Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established a regional office in Hanoi to enhance public health engagement in Southeast Asia.
This trajectory has resulted not only from shared concern over China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea, where Hanoi has longstanding territorial disputes with Beijing, but also from popular attitudes in Vietnam strongly favoring the United States. Recent surveys of Southeast Asian policy experts have found that, within ASEAN, Vietnamese experts are especially wary of China’s growing strategic clout and are among the most supportive of U.S. influence in the region.
Hanoi Keeps an Eye on BeijingPopular sentiment in Vietnam may favor expanded ties with the United States, but party leaders in Hanoi, all too aware of their country’s economic dependence on, and geographic proximity to, China, worry about blowback from Beijing if they get too close to Washington. They also have doubts about Washington’s long-term commitment to allies and partners in the region. And so Hanoi, seeking to balance China without provoking it, pursues a “multidirectional” foreign policy rooted in “three no’s”: no foreign troops on Vietnamese soil, no allying with one country to counter another, and no military alliances with foreign powers.
In recent months, rising U.S.-China tensions over Taiwan have only intensified Vietnam’s efforts to triangulate between Washington and Beijing. This hedging behavior was on display in late October when Vietnamese Communist Party Chief Nguyen Phu Trong paid an official visit to Beijing. Trong was the first foreign leader to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping after China’s 20th Party Congress, telling him that Vietnam gives “top priority” to “developing its comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China.” This party-to-party visit was not, in fact, unusual from a historical perspective, and it probably says more about China’s calculations than Vietnam’s, with Xi pointedly reminding Trong that both countries should “never let anyone interfere” with their progress.
Hanoi’s caution is understandable from an economic perspective. Although Vietnam has emerged as Asia’s growth leader, with annual growth expected to reach 7.2% in 2022, its economy has become increasingly dependent on China since 2012, when Xi became China’s paramount leader. Vietnam is by far China’s largest trading partner in ASEAN. Trade between the two countries surpassed $165 billion in 2021, more than quadruple the figure from 2012. Last year, nearly a fifth of Vietnam’s exports went to China, which, in turn, contributed a third of Vietnam’s imports. These imports are indispensable to Vietnam’s manufacturing supply chain.
Bridging DifferencesMeanwhile, serious issues continue to hamper Vietnam’s bilateral relationship with the United States, including Hanoi’s longstanding procurement of Russian defense systems as well as profound differences over human rights and core political philosophies. Yet, at least some of these differences may not be as insurmountable as they appear.
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute indicate that the five-year moving average of Vietnam’s arms dependency ratio on Russia has declined from approximately 94% in 2013 to below 60% in 2021. Last week, Vietnam organized its first-ever international defense expo with the goal of diversifying the country’s defense procurement channels. The U.S.-ASEAN Business Council led a U.S. defense industry delegation to Hanoi to market their wares at the expo, and America’s ambassador to Vietnam, Marc Knapper, told the local news media that the event “represents a new stage in Vietnam’s efforts to globalize, diversify, and modernize, and the United States wants to be part of it.”
Moreover, although Vietnam is a one-party state led by a communist party, and the Biden administration has formulated a foreign policy that envisions a global struggle between democracies and autocracies, the administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) makes an important distinction between different types of autocracies. The principal strategic challenge, the document says, comes from “powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy,” resulting in behavior that threatens international peace and stability and undermines democracy in other countries. China and Russia clearly fit into this category, according to the NSS, but “many non-democracies join the world’s democracies in forswearing these behaviors.”
Vietnam, it seems, falls squarely into the latter category, exemplified in its strong support for freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, and for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea more broadly.
The Road AheadIf the United States wishes to establish a strategic partnership with Vietnam, it should return to quiet — but persistent — diplomacy with the goal of realizing the partnership by the end of the current presidential term. Toward this end, it should seek to integrate related issues into ongoing bilateral dialogues with Hanoi (e.g., the U.S.-Vietnam Asia-Pacific Dialogue and the U.S.-Vietnam Defense Policy Dialogue) to flesh out the main focus areas of an elevated relationship. In addition to maritime security, the dialogues could explore areas of shared concern that will resonate with Vietnamese leaders and the public at large — especially pandemic prevention, climate change, and sustainable infrastructure development in Vietnam and the Lower Mekong subregion.
The administration should also scope out the possibilities of an official visit by Biden to Hanoi, or of a Vietnamese leader to Washington, just as then U.S. President Barack Obama hosted General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in the Oval Office in July 2015 and, a year later, visited Vietnam. Precedent suggests that the Vietnamese would expect a strategic partnership to be formalized in the context of a state visit.
The Vietnamese leadership has decisions to make as well. Given the precariousness of Vietnam’s geopolitical position and economic interdependence with China, it is understandable why the leadership prefers to deepen strategic ties with Washington quietly while keeping the diplomatic nomenclature as ambiguous as possible. But the recently concluded Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the United States and ASEAN appears to offer a platform — and the political cover — for individual ASEAN states to conclude strategic partnerships with Washington on a bilateral level, no matter what China thinks.
Nearly 10 years ago, then Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said it was Vietnam’s “desire to establish strategic partnerships with all the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.” Today, Hanoi has concluded strategic partnerships with all of the Permanent 5 save one: the United States. In some ways, it would be more consistent with the basic tenants of its “multidirectional” foreign policy for Hanoi to agree to the Biden administration’s proposal to elevate relations. It might also be prudent to lock in the current gains. Given the vagaries of American politics, this could be a time-limited opportunity.
Ultimately, a strategic partnership would signal that the bilateral relationship is not just comprehensive, or the sum of its parts, but is also moving in a more ambitious direction based on shared long-term objectives — such as promoting a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, encouraging transparent economic governance in the Mekong, and addressing public health challenges and climate change in Southeast Asia and beyond. It would also be a natural evolution of gains already won.
By David Wessel, Elijah Asdourian
Going back to the Marshall Plan after World War II, the U.S. has spent substantial sums and energy to rebuild war-torn countries. The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy and the Center on the U.S. and Europe asked four experts to identify lessons relevant to Ukraine, particularly for donor countries, from the Marshall Plan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Here’s a summary of their answers and videos of their full remarks at the December 15, 2022 event, which also included a report on Ukraine’s economy and the way to finance, govern, and organize reconstruction.
The Marshall Plan: ‘The key is to identify the bottlenecks’Harold James, Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies at Princeton University, discussed the connections between the crisis Western Europe faced after World War II and the crisis Ukraine faces now. He emphasized that while the U.S. provided necessary funding to Western Europe through the Marshall Plan, the American government paid nowhere near the full cost of reconstruction. The U.S. never spent more than 3% of GDP on the Marshall Plan, and most Western European countries received Marshall Plan funds worth only between 3% to 10% of their GDP. Instead, the administrators of the Marshall Plan identified and covered the costs of two key resources which Western Europe needed—foodstuffs and machinery—and these resources jumpstarted reconstruction efforts. James argued the same principle should apply in Ukraine: “What [Western governments] can do,” he said, “is trigger specific bits of reconstruction, and the key to doing that is to identify the bottlenecks.” While the bottlenecks post-WWII were in agriculture and manufacturing, James pointed to the energy and technology sectors as parallel challenges for Ukraine. Investing in these crucial sectors, in combination with debt relief and further economic integration with Western Europe, would allow donor countries to contribute significantly to Ukraine without paying for the full cost of damages incurred during the war. He added that while there was a real question in the 1940s as to whether Germany could be democratic, there is no need to teach Ukrainians lessons about democracy and democratic values.
South Sudan: ‘Without political and diplomatic attention, a development partner will not have impact’Brian D’Silva, a retired consultant for the U.S. government who did extensive work in South Sudan, argued that reconstruction efforts often overlook important political factors on the ground. In the case of South Sudan, ethnic divisions, regional conflict, and corruption stymied many developmental efforts. D’Silva advocated for investments in infrastructure, agriculture, and natural resources, but cautioned against providing funding blindly. The U.S. provided over $4 billion in assistance for developmental and humanitarian assistance to South Sudan before it was independent, and several Western and Northern European nations joined. Yet South Sudan fell into a continuing civil war in 2013, only two years after gaining independence in 2011. Without transparency and monitoring, the funding got redirected away from intended uses and put into the hands of corrupt officials who enriched themselves. It also was directed to the capital, Juba, rather than distributed around the country. Existing military leaders, rather than the youth and women in the country, made away with most of the gains, as few processes existed to hold recipients accountable. “The focus has to be on institutions and on supporting a new generation of leaders who prioritize their own communities, rather than getting rich at any cost…” he noted. “We need to have both a political conflict lens and a technocratic lens,” he advised those planning efforts for Ukrainian reconstruction.
Afghanistan: ‘Promise less, deliver more’Naheed Sarabi, a visiting fellow in Brookings’s Global Economy and Development program and the former deputy minister for policy in Afghanistan’s finance ministry, warned that international development programs tend to overpromise. Even with 70 international donors on board after reconstruction began post-9/11, the reconstruction of Afghanistan missed many of its key targets, largely as a result of overly ambitious plans, Sarabi said. While some health and education indicators improved from very low starting points, crucial sectors like agriculture and infrastructure saw meager improvement, and Afghanistan remained reliant on international aid. “International assistance to Afghanistan suffered from short-termism and unpredictability,” she said. To achieve fast results, international donors relied on foreign funding and international aid groups within the country, rather than building up national institutions, and this undermined government legitimacy. The Afghan government became more accountable to international donors who had provided financing than to its own people, billions of dollars intended for development leaked out through inefficiency and corruption, and many promises were broken. Sarabi’s advice for multilateral coordination efforts: “Less ambitious plans. As our motto went in the last years of the Afghan Republic, promise less, deliver more.” Further, Sarabi emphasized the importance of donor coordination and country ownership of development efforts. As the West looks towards reconstruction financed by a large set of international donors, it is crucial that Ukraine plays a central role in its own economic development, and that the donors who make it possible are on the same page.
Iraq: ‘Private finance, as well as public finance, is essential.’Hideki Matsunaga, Director General of the Middle East and Europe Department of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and a former adviser to the World Bank on the Middle East and North Africa, argued that private sector investment is essential not just for the reconstruction of Ukraine, but for the long-term health of its economy. “In Iraq, the most critical shortcoming was that reconstruction failed to diversify the Iraqi economy away from the dominant oil sector. As a result, few economic opportunities were created in the non-oil private sector.” Matsunaga argued that private sector involvement is the safest bet for lasting gains for ordinary people within Ukraine, and for creating a large range of job opportunities. While the private sector has the capacity to invest in the Ukrainian economy, as it stands, the risks are very high. Matsunaga thus called for the international community to “de-risk private investment,” explaining, “The resources required for physical infrastructure development are so great that private, as well as public, finance is essential.” On the public finance side, he emphasized the importance of donor coordination. “In Iraq, reconstruction became a set of disparate projects rather than a national enterprise, in part because each donor oversaw projects for which it was providing funding,” he said. In Matsunaga’s view, low-risk private investment, in combination with strong donor coordination for publicly financed projects, will be necessary for Ukraine going forward.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Nicol Turner Lee, Jack Malamud
In October 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights (“Blueprint”), which shared a nonbinding roadmap for the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). The comprehensive document identified five core principles to guide and govern the effective development and implementation of AI systems with particular attention to the unintended consequences of civil and human rights abuses. While the identification and mitigation of the intended and unintended consequential risks of AI have been widely known for quite some time, how the Blueprint will facilitate the reprimand of such grievances is still undetermined. Further, questions remain on whether the nonbinding document will prompt necessary congressional action to govern this unregulated space.
The Brookings Center for Technology Innovation hosted a conversation with experts from the OSTP, think tanks, and social justice organizations on December 5, 2022, during which they unpacked key aspects of the Blueprint while debating potential limitations and, in some instances, blind spots that may not have been considered in its development. Some thought was given to whether the harms were too broadly defined and if federal agencies had the resources to adhere to the responsible practices and procedures around AI procurement, use, and consistent audits as outlined in the Blueprint.
In terms of progress before and after the Blueprint’s release, at least five federal agencies have adopted guidelines for their own responsible use of automated systems. The Department of Defense’s (DOD) Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Artificial Intelligence Action Plan have both implemented some guidance around government use of AI. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has also launched its own AI and algorithmic fairness initiative in their partnership with the Department of Labor to “reimagine hiring and recruitment practices.” Further, the EEOC is collaborating with the Department of Justice to release guidance on how the use of AI in employment decisions can discriminate against people with disabilities.
A few federal agencies, including the DOD, the Department of Energy, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Health and Human Services, have each established their own centers or offices to implement these guidelines. At least a dozen agencies have issued some sort of binding guidance for the use of automated systems in the industries under their jurisdiction, such as the Federal Trade Commission’s business guidelines on Using Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms and the Food and Drug Administration’s principles for Good Machine Learning Practice for Medical Device Development. However, the detail and scope of federal agencies’ full adherence to these activities still varies in terms of timeline and deliverables. While the mentioned entities are working toward responsible AI use, other federal agencies, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has issued a report with a proposed framework for evaluating potential AI harms.
Part of these varying degrees of progress within the federal government are due to the number of allotted staff who can effectively and expeditiously implement this new rights-based framework. Another related aspect is how far along they each were in the implementation of the previous guidance around AI from OSTP leaders in the Trump administration that encouraged similar alignments around responsible use.
The Blueprint also relies upon some consistency in the interpretability and protection of civil rights in automated decisions, particularly in the areas of lending, housing, and hiring. Yet, how widely known civil rights laws are followed within digital domains is still unknown, especially given the opacity of the internet and algorithmic applications. Because the factors affecting how algorithmic models operate are often hidden from consumers, people are normally in the dark about how they function and the potential threats. Recent studies have found that, although more algorithmic literacy is needed, particularly regarding their use on social media or new platforms, individuals often have little idea about how these algorithms work or what data they use. While the call for increased data privacy and security is also integral to the Blueprint, more work needs to be done to disentangle how to explicitly apply civil rights laws and protections when online malfeasance occurs.
Finally, the current Blueprint looks to the private sector for self-regulatory management, specifically governing and producing products and services from a consumer rights-based approach. However, this expectation may be too ambitious for companies that generally profit from AI’s opacity, including the inferential data that is collected from individual users in the absence of demographic information. Similarly, the Blueprint does not provide mandatory, enforceable guidelines, and the lack of an enforcement regime or a central governing body makes self-regulation insufficient to guard against potential harms.
Perhaps, the greatest limitation is the Blueprint’s carving out of law enforcementThe use of AI in law enforcement, especially facial recognition, has raised many legal and ethical considerations and created a great deal of risk. The use of AI in law enforcement can reinforce inequality and disproportionately impact people of color, leading to false arrests and detainment. The Blueprint’s developers missed a major opportunity to implement a rights-based framework to automated decision making and make great strides in AI and criminal justice. For now, the Blueprint avoided detailed scrutiny on these fronts by carving out law enforcement—even among federal agencies that use these technologies, including Capitol police, airport security, and customs and border protection officers. Excluding law enforcement may continue the oversurveillance of certain populations, communities, and individuals under the guise of public safety and national security and will not necessarily reduce the history and manifestation of rampant discrimination against people of color and immigrants. If law enforcement were included in the Blueprint provisions and guidance, it could have offered new guardrails and agency for individuals left with little recourse when misidentified and/or scrutinized by existing and emerging AI technologies.
How to make the national Blueprint stickSome of the panelists from the Brookings December 5 event offered several recommendations worth describing in this blog, starting with the need for a more sectoral approach to AI governance, explicit inclusion of law enforcement in the Blueprint, and the idea of revisiting the nation’s existing civil and human rights precedents to ensure their applicability to the online space.
- Sectoral approaches will be critical to advancement and enforcement. There is no silver bullet for AI governance, which is evident in the comprehensive and singular legislation introduced in the European Union (EU). The EU is currently considering a new version of the proposed Artificial Intelligence Regulation Act (AI Act) that has faced significant challenges as a single piece of legislation—challenges that a sectoral approach would largely avoid. Maintaining a more flexible approach in the application of the Blueprint’s principles would enable innovative solutions tailored toward the various sectors—such as healthcare, housing, and education—where automated systems are used.
- Law enforcement must be fully part of the national Blueprint guidance. OSTP should consider either offering an addendum to the existing Blueprint to provide guidelines for law enforcement applications or the including relevant agencies under the purview of the federal government. The practices around the use of AI on human subjects, in addition to procurement policies, should be reviewed, and systems adopted under a “monolithic technology-procurement model” should be re-evaluated, especially since they “rarely [take] constitutional liberty into account,” which illustrates the need for including law enforcement in these initial conversations in order to develop clear guidelines for their use of AI.
- Existing civil rights regimes should be revisited to ensure their applicability to new and emerging digital rules. Historic civil rights laws and statutes have their roots in resistance efforts that pre-date the digital revolution. While, implicitly, laws that govern fair housing, credit, hiring, and education should apply, they can fall under the radar of contemporary interpretation, especially among AI systems that skirt around the edges of civil rights protections. Kearns and Roth pointed to the inferential data economy in their signature book, The Ethical Algorithm (2019), and when left unchecked, demographic data that is extrapolated rather than confirmed by subjects can lead to online biases and disparate impact, completely foreclosing opportunities for historically marginalized populations. The White House should create a new commission on civil rights to evaluate the agility of existing laws to the new digital environment.
ConclusionA last alternative, but certainly not nominal consideration, is congressional action through constructive legislation that reinforces the insights gleaned from the Blueprint. The work to democratize AI in the U.S. and globally is not an easy task. Unsettled data privacy laws also complicate the presentation of a rights-based framework that potentially gives consumers agency over the data and decisions. But at this point, legislation might be the only way to make these rights stick, given the challenges in enforcing certain criteria and outcomes that may be driven by proprietary interests.
Congress must absolutely look to new data privacy rules that support the implementation of a rights-based AI governance framework, while setting clear guidance around auditing automated decisions within certain use cases—mainly credit, housing, hiring, education, and healthcare. The principles laid out in the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights are crucial—individuals must absolutely have the right to safe automated systems, protection from algorithmic discrimination, data privacy, notice of the use of AI, and meaningful human alternatives—but without congressional action, strategies to effectuate change may lack the effective, credible enforcement regime that only legislation can create. Whether Congress will act to codify these principles and expand their coverage to law enforcement and national security, where they are needed most, remains to be seen, but the influence of the White House behind this issue is an encouraging first step.
By Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
In the spring of 2022, reports showed that only 67 percent of third graders were reading at grade level in the aftermath of the pandemic. Following on the heels of the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, the U.S. now witnesses the largest decline in reading outcomes since 1980. Children from underserved communities have lost as much as half a year of traditional normal reading progress. Learning loss has become a well-worn term for an international crisis prompting governments to seek ways to accelerate learning.
This context has ignited a major reckoning with educational policy and methods. As it turns out, reading scores were not impressive even before the pandemic. According to the 2019 NAEP scores, just 34 percent of students were proficient at reading. By “proficient,” these scores suggest that students can only not just sound out a word, but also gain meaning from text. This low starting point pre-pandemic is the real problem. Someone, something, must be to blame. According to a recent New York Times article and a widely heard podcast, “Sold a Story,” Professor Lucy Calkins of Columbia University seems to be descending to that mantle.
The reading wars, it turns out, created a false dichotomy between meaning versus phonics as primary drivers of beginning—and later proficient—reading.
Professor Calkin’s balance reading curriculum was used in more than a quarter of U.S. schools. It focused on three cues that students needed to follow to become readers: semantics (is the word meaningful?), syntax (does the word fit grammatically?), and grapho-phonic (can you guess the sound from its first letter?). The bottom line is that this curriculum falls short. As “Sold a Story” reveals, balanced reading was an offspring of Marie Clay’s Reading Recovery program developed in New Zealand and used around the world. A report issued in April of 2022 noted that third and fourth graders who used reading recovery methods were behind those who did not use the program. Culprit revealed.
The science of reading has progressed a great deal in the 50 years since Reading Recovery and the balanced curriculum were introduced. Indeed, this period of scientific discovery can be seen as the end of the so-called reading wars between whole word instruction and phonics—or mastering the letter-to-sound correspondence that enables readers in an alphabetic system to translate print into language (i.e., that “b” translates into “buh”). Brain research helps to adjudicate that the winner of the reading wars was phonics. Professor Bruce McCandless of Stanford University found that children learning phonics activated the brain circuitry used in reading. Those who learned in whole-word methods did not.
Today, the brain circuitry underlying reading is well understood. Professor Stanislas DeHaene of the University of Paris is one of the leaders in this science. Reading, unlike speech, is a cultural phenomenon that must be learned. Professor Steven Pinker once said, “Children learn language in the way that spiders spin webs.” Reading does not work this way. Children need to visually recognize letters, combine the letters, and relate the sounds to the language and meaning systems in the brain. In fact, DeHaene argues that humans co-opted an area of the brain—the visual word form area—that matures as we get more experience in reading. That is, if children can sound out the words, they can tap into the vast resources of their language to glean meaning from print.
The bottom line is that children need to learn phonics and letters to sound out correspondence. Methods like Clay’s and Calkins, based on prior theories of whole-language reading, will not solve the problem. Calkin’s methods, as the podcast “Sold a Story” suggest, can generate readers who pretend to read rather than those who can actually read new words when encountered in print.
On the other hand, phonics alone, while necessary, will also not generate strong readers. A superbly written overview by Anne Castles and colleagues notes that children need to do more than translate letters into sounds: They need to make contact with a rich knowledge base and with a growing language system. In fact, educational methods that focused only on phonics had many children who sat in rows, barking out words for extended periods of time. Many of these children experienced the fourth-grade slump when their phonics knowledge did not translate into meaningful information. Jeanne Chall’s classic 2003 study suggested that the fourth grade slump results from the fact that students who have learned how to decode might not have the rich language base that they need to make meaning from the words that they sound out. Children need to learn in active and engaging ways that are meaningful and joyful.
The reading wars, it turns out, created a false dichotomy between meaning versus phonics as primary drivers of beginning—and later proficient—reading. The scientific answer is more nuanced. It takes both phonics and meaning to create strong readers. Phonics is the tool that allows children to break into the alphabetic system–to understand that the squiggles on the page relate to the words in their vocabularies. Meaning making is the key to finding richness in the narratives and the motivation for wanting to read.
U.S. student reading levels are low and have been low for decades. The pandemic exacerbated this serious educational problem. And this has prompted much reflection in education and in the public square. This is, however, an area in which the science is well developed.
We tend to oversimplify science when and if it moves from the laboratory to policy and classroom practice. Simplification comes at a cost. Even today, policymakers are pressed to understand that language and literacy are intertwined in all reading curricula moving forward. Let’s end the great disconnect between science, policy, and practice. Let’s teach reading in ways that supports a foundation in phonics while making the experience enjoyable, motivating, and meaningful by connecting to children’s lived experiences. Let’s not confuse pedagogy with content. Phonics instruction need not be drilled into children but can be learned at the same time children are learning meaning and are actively involved.
By Leora Klapper
Since the first iteration of the Global Findex survey in 2011, the share of adults in developing economies with a financial account has risen to 71%—an increase of more than 50 percentage points. While that growth is worth celebrating, the total numbers hide significant differences in how and why adults today in developing economies are accessing and using financial services.
From 2011 to 2017, financial inclusion efforts were driven by “scale,” as governments in large-population economies like India and China enacted policies specifically to increase account access. Between 2017 and 2021, however, global trends shifted toward broader “scope,” such that 34 developing economies of different sizes increased their share of adults with a financial account by more than 10 percentage points. Both scale and scope expansion of financial inclusion have been enabled by customer-facing digital technology—but the kind of technology making an impact and how it’s delivering results may not be what you think.
How does Findex assess the role of “digital technology” in financial inclusion?A great deal of focus and excitement has pointed toward the digital-only services offered by non-bank financial entities such as mobile money providers or other financial technology firms (fintechs). Mobile money is a financial service offered by a telecom or a fintech firm that partners with mobile network operators, independent of the traditional banking network (this is different from traditional banking services accessed through a mobile phone). Mobile money services are typically enhanced by local mobile agents, where customers can conveniently deposit even small amounts of cash to make payments, pay bills, send remittances, or store money outside of the home. These actors are centrally important in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in places like Bangladesh and Paraguay. Yet contrary to the amount of attention they get, they are not the only source driving growth in digital inclusion. They aren’t even the largest source.
The Global Findex captures the demand-side perspective on financial services digitalization in two ways. First, we ask adults about the accounts people have (whether they are with a traditional financial institution like a bank, or, as we’ve asked since 2014, with a mobile money provider). Then we ask about the services and transactions respondents use, distinguishing cash-based transactions from those executed through a computer, mobile device, or card-based payment network without cash changing hands. That holistic view allows us to highlight the relative impact of digital accounts as well as digital transactions, such as direct digital payments.
Mobile money accounts play a critical role in Sub-Saharan Africa and other countriesTen percent of adults worldwide had a mobile money account in 2021, up from 4% in 2017. That rises to 13% of adults when we look only at mobile money account ownership in developing economies. A minority of those mobile money account holders (about one in four) only have a mobile money account. The rest have accounts with both a mobile money provider and a bank or similar financial institution, suggesting that the marginal impact of mobile money on access to financial services—while significant in certain economies—is minimal at global scale.
Mobile money provides a critical service in some economies. Regionally, Sub-Saharan Africa is the world leader in mobile money accounts, with 33% of adults in the region having one—just six percentage points fewer than the 39% of adults in the region with an account at a bank or similar financial institution. Mobile money adoption grew by 13 percentage points since 2017, a rate that mirrors the 13 percentage points of growth in regional ownership of any kind of financial account. In certain economies, such as in Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, and Malawi, adults even appear to be replacing their financial institution accounts with mobile money accounts: the share of adults with accounts of any kind rose in these economies between 2017 and 2021 as the percentage share represented by traditional brick and mortar accounts declined.
Outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, a few developing economies also have around 30% or higher mobile money account ownership. They include Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Paraguay, the Russian Federation, Thailand, and Venezuela. But on average, less than 5% of adults in these countries have a mobile money account without also having an account at a bank or similar institution (the data does not allow us to ascertain how adults with both types of accounts differentially use them).
So, if mobile money has had a relatively small overall impact on financial access in developing economies, where is technology playing a larger role? With payments.
Globally, payments are the most-used financial serviceFigure 1: Adults using an account for financial services in developing economies (%), 2021
Thirty-nine percent of adults in developing economies opened their first financial account at a bank or similar financial institution (excluding mobile money accounts) for the express purpose of receiving a direct government payment (such as a wage, pension, or benefits payment) or a direct wage payment from a private-sector employer. In the large-population economies of China and India—the governments of which launched programs between 2014 and 2017 to drive financial inclusion—the share of first account opening to receive a direct payment is well above the average, at 49% and 54%, respectively.
Moreover, 36% of adults in developing economies received at least one payment into their account in the 12 months prior to the Global Findex 2021 survey. Among them, 54% reported receiving a wage payment directly into their account, while 36% received a government support payment. In addition, 42% received a domestic remittance payment into their account, a better option than cash and money transfer operators because recipients can leave money in the account for safe-keeping or for savings. Digital payments made directly from a mobile phone are also often a cheaper and more convenient option for the urban poor to send money home to rural areas.
Direct payments from a government or employer are the biggest documented driver of account access—and are associated with more use of digital transactionsReceiving a direct payment is only part of the story. Another key part is making digital payments directly from an account using a card or phone. While previous iterations of the Global Findex found that payment recipients tended to simply cash out when they wanted to access their money, the 2021 survey finds that 83% of account-owning payment recipients now also make payments directly as well. Many of these payment products are offered by bank-fintech partnerships.
Together, these findings point to payment digitalization in developing economies as a major technological enabler of both financial access and usage. The benefits flow both ways: recipients get a more secure and convenient way to store and save their money, reduce transaction costs, and build up a financial history, and payers benefit by having an end-to-end digital payment trail that decreases costs and leakage.
Figure 2: In developing economies, adults who receive a payment into an account are more likely than the general population to also make digital payments and to save, store, and borrow money (%), 2021
Direct digital payments—whether by a traditional bank or a fintech—require a robust payments infrastructureAn overall message from the data is that payments sent directly into accounts are a driving force for expanding financial inclusion in developing economies.
But the successful digitalization of payments requires an enabling financial infrastructure that facilitates direct deposits and digital payments by all financial providers. This infrastructure includes interoperable payment networks, telecommunications infrastructure, and network security. It also includes data privacy and consumer protection regulations. These are the key enablers on which banks and fintechs will depend to expand their reach to increase financial access and usage in developing economies.
By Jordan Muchnick, Elaine Kamarck
American politics at the end of 2022 is deeply divided, and on many issues the state of discourse can only be described as tribalized. As the 2022 midterms demonstrated, Americans are split down the middle. The ‘red wave’, which was meant to provide Republicans with a sizeable House majority and potentially Senate control did not materialize. The American people did not deliver a clear mandate for the direction this country should take, and so we can expect two more years of bitter division as both sides make their case for why their differing visions of the country should be the one to break the deadlock.
One area, however, seems to be far less contentious than the domestic strife we hear so much about, U.S foreign policy. While there are of course arguments to be had, the level of vitriol is miniscule by comparison, and polling indicates bipartisan unity on many of the foreign policy issues in the news today. Below we will look at three countries currently making headlines, and how U.S. public opinion of the events involving them appears to be shaping up.
IranOne of President Obama’s signature foreign policy initiatives was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. At the time the deal was strongly opposed by many Republicans. Not surprisingly, President Trump withdrew from the deal in mid-2018. When President Biden was elected two years later, there was some optimism among the deal’s supporters that it may be revitalized. However, two major events have changed the prospects for a new deal; the war in Ukraine (specifically due to Iran providing drones to Russia), and the widely covered protests following the death of Mahsa Amini which have rocked Iran’s urban centers since October. These two events make the revitalization of a deal in the foreseeable future highly unlikely.
Over the summer, a bipartisan group of senators voted on a non-binding Republican-led measure essentially stating any new nuclear agreement would need to be “stronger” than the old one. Sixty-two senators total, including 16 Democrats, voted to approve the motion, indicating cross-aisle skepticism of reentering the deal. A sticking point of the deal was always the lifting of economic sanctions, and according to the Chicago Council surveys from earlier this summer, a substantial number of Americans continue to favor tighter economic sanctions on Iran. Nearly 80% (87% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, and 73% of Independents) of Americans believe economic sanctions should be used against Iran if they were to restart development towards a nuclear weapon.
As for the protests, nearly three-quarters of Americans (73%) strongly or somewhat approve of the recent protests in Iran, while only seven percent disapprove. The Senate has likewise expressed their support, introducing a widely bipartisan resolution “reaffirming the United States’ support for the Iranian citizens who have taken to the streets in peaceful protest for their fundamental human rights, and condemning the Iranian security forces for their violent response.” An identical resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.). The protests in Iran have convinced many in the U.S., including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that all negotiations in the way of a new nuclear deal should be put on hold for the time being.
Right now, the U.S. is taking a clear stance on Iran; negotiations regarding the nuclear deal should be temporarily shelved and focus should shift towards supporting the protestors on the ground demonstrating against a regime they believe is guilty of committing human rights abuses.
UkraineWhile some have noted that support for U.S. aid to Ukraine has been waning, it is clear that a substantial majority of Americans from both sides of the political spectrum do and will continue to believe the U.S. has a role to play in helping Ukraine in this conflict. When asked about aid for Ukraine, Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, “This is probably one of the most bipartisan issues that I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress. We are bound to do this on a bipartisan basis. We’re arm in arm on this.”
Polling from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Data for Progress show that just 30% of those polled felt the U.S. should “stay as uninvolved as possible”. According to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 94,000 voters, about 4 in 10 voters said military and financial support to Ukraine has been about right and 3 in 10 said the U.S. should be more active. Only about 3 in 10 wanted the U.S. to provide less to Ukraine. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from October found that 73% of Americans, 81% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans, felt that the U.S should continue to support Ukraine despite threats from Russia. According to the Chicago Council of Foreign affairs, as of early December, Americans continue to support supplying Ukraine with arms (65%), sending economic aid (66%), and sanctioning Russia (75%). This included a majority (55%) of Republicans who still favor sending additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government.
In Congress, leaders from both sides of the aisle continue to voice support for Ukraine. Senator Rick Scott, in an interview with Meet the Press said, “I think we have to continue to do everything we can to support Ukraine, who wants to defend their freedom and stop Russia from continuing to expand”. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s pre-election statement of not wanting to write “blank checks” to Ukraine set off some alarm bells initially and raised the question of support for Ukraine should Republicans take the House. Though McCarthy quickly walked back the comment, the swift negative response to his statement, including from a number of notable Republicans, indicated unity on the issue. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has remained a staunch supporter of U.S. aid to Ukraine and has repeatedly gone after “isolationist” members of his party. He has remained resolute that the GOP would continue to support the “timely delivery of needed weapons” to Ukraine.
Concerns about aid to Ukraine have come largely from fears of a recession early next year and the economic threat of China, an issue many Republicans care more about than Russia. But a slim Republican majority in the House is not likely to be enough to significantly impact Ukraine’s funding. House Republicans could end up simply asking for more oversight of how U.S. funds and supplies are used, rather than cutting aid to the point that it has a battlefield impact. This could be a way of demonstrating fiscal responsibility to constituents concerned about the economy, without hurting Ukraine’s chances of regaining territory.
ChinaGallup polling indicates that as of 2022, nearly 80% of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, a drastic increase from 2018 when it was 45%. According to Pew, 83% of Republicans hold a negative view of China, as well as 68% of Democrats. Though there is a 15-point gap, both figures demonstrate meaningful majorities which will guide policy going forward. Based on the Pew findings, Republicans and Democrats are very critical of China’s handling of the coronavirus, as well as China’s human rights violations, especially against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
While the most vocal criticism of China has usually come from the right, Democrats have also become more critical, recently opting to no longer support reducing tariffs on China to combat elevated prices, a decision with brings them in line with many Republicans. American legislators have introduced more than 400 bills or resolutions related to China since early 2021, according to data from the U.S.-China Business Council. This number includes a bill introduced by Senate Democrats and eventually passed which is intended to increase chip production in the U.S. and to boost competition with China.
Americans are also increasingly aware of the growing tension between China and Taiwan. According to Pew, a large majority of Americans (78%) say tensions between China and Taiwan are at least a somewhat serious problem for the United States. A survey conducted over the summer found that in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, 76% of Americans would support imposing diplomatic and economic sanctions, 65% would be in favor of sending additional arms and military supplies to the Taiwanese government, and 62% would be in favor of using the US Navy to prevent Beijing from imposing a blockade against Taiwan.
While the rationale for condemnation might not always be in perfect lockstep, both Democrats and Republicans are clearly moving in the same direction on how to handle China.
ConclusionThus, surprising as it is in these polarized times, Americans do agree on some things. As Our Primaries Project findings demonstrated, belief in America’s active role in the world was something that members of Congress from both sides of the aisle were able to agree on. This sentiment is clear in the polling mentioned above as American’s want to continue to see support for the protests in Iran, support for Ukraine in their war against Russia, and a more hardline stance against China, due to their economic competition, human rights record, and their threat to Taiwan.
By Shivshankar Menon
India’s interest in and interactions with Taiwan have grown steadily since the end of the Cold War, as economics and politics have combined to increase Taiwan’s significance to India.
Taiwan has consistently provided a window into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for India. This dynamic builds on the legacy of India’s relationship with the Kuomintang that were forged during then President of the Republic of China Chiang Kai-shek’s 1942 visit to India, when he insisted on meeting with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, despite U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s objections. When the Kuomintang retreated from the mainland to Taiwan, these ties were subsequently carried over.
While India was one of the first non-communist states to recognize the PRC, unofficial ties with Taiwan continued through the 1950s and 1960s. India’s “Look East” policy from 1992 increased Taiwan’s salience in Indian policy, and the relationship gained substantive economic and other content. In 1993, the two sides agreed to establish representation in each other’s capitals, namely the India-Taipei Association for India in Taipei and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in New Delhi and Chennai, India.
Since then, the relationship has grown in depth and breadth, as India opened up and began to integrate its economy with the world after initiating economic liberalization in 1991. This has occurred under Indian governments of different ideological persuasions, suggesting that there is strong consensus on both sides.
While foreign direct investment from Taiwan into India grew slowly initially — $805 million cumulatively from April 2000 to 2019 — recent years have seen several major commitments, such as the Taiwanese multinational Foxconn’s planned investment in semiconductors and consumer electronics in Maharashtra, and possibly in electric vehicles. A bilateral investment promotion agreement is now in place. Trade has also grown rapidly recently. More significant for India than the quantity is the quality of the trade and economic exchanges in terms of semiconductors and high technology. Arrangements are now in place for the avoidance of double taxation, and shipping and airline and other connectivity is steadily improving.
Cooperation in science and technology has grown with over 80 joint projects carried out before the pandemic, and almost 3,000 Indians now study in Taiwan. Economic and other relations are covered by bilateral investment, avoidance of double taxation, and customs cooperation agreements and arrangements.
There is a broader Indian interest in peace and security throughout the Indo-Pacific and in maritime Asia, of which Taiwan is a significant part. As early as the Formosa crisis of 1958, where India acted as an intermediary between the PRC and the United States while the PRC shelled islands in the Taiwan Strait, India has made it clear that it hopes and works for a peaceful resolution of the issues between the PRC and Taiwan. More recently, as India-China relations have deteriorated, and the situation in China’s near seas and around Taiwan has become more strained, officials in India have spoken out. Responding to rising tensions in the wake of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson expressed concern on August 12, 2022 at these developments and urged restraint and the avoidance of unilateral actions which might alter the status quo. Instead, he urged a de-escalation of tensions and efforts to maintain peace and stability.
Today, nearly 55% of India’s trade with the Indo-Pacific region passes through the South China Sea, and a large portion of that goes through the Taiwan Strait. With rising stakes in the relationship with Taiwan and in regional peace, it is only natural that India should be increasingly concerned about the rising tensions in this extended maritime space and across the Taiwan Strait. India has therefore sought to work with partners who share its concerns and approach, such as the Quad (a grouping comprised of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) to make the Indo-Pacific free, open, and secure. What form that will actually take in practice will depend on how the situation and Indian capabilities develop in the near term.
For the future, it seems safe to say that India’s interest in peace and the status quo being maintained across the Taiwan Strait will likely grow. India’s “Act East” policy (the present incarnation of “Look East”) and Taiwan’s “New Southbound Policy” are aligned in expressing official determination to carry present processes of diplomacy, trade, economic, academic, and other forms of contact forward, despite the fraught subregional context within which the India-Taiwan relationship operates.
With the worsening of India-China relations in the last decade, there are influential voices in the Indian strategic community calling for a more active Indian political engagement with Taiwan. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs spoke in 2018 of the need to review “India’s deferential foreign policy towards China,” and of India “using all options including its relations with Taiwan” in the event of China being unwilling to reconsider its stance on the border and sovereignty. Since then, the situation on the border has worsened considerably. But the Indian government has been careful to avoid taking steps related to Taiwan which might worsen already difficult ties with a China. This restraint is unlikely to be reciprocated by China on territories that India considers its own, such as Kashmir. It has been several years since the Indian government reiterated its commitment to a “One China” policy, a phrase that seems to mean different things to different people. It might therefore bear watching how Indian thinking on Taiwan evolves in the future.
By Joseph Parilla, Glencora Haskins, Julia Bauer, Sarah Edwards
Last month, the Treasury Department released the most up-to-date snapshot of how $350 billion of the American Rescue Plan Act’s (ARPA) State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) are being spent. The new data provides a fresh look at how large cities and counties—which received $65 billion in total—are budgeting the second half of their SLFRF dollars, which Treasury distributed in May.
Over the past six months, our Local Government ARPA Investment Tracker has been monitoring how 330 large cities and counties are using these resources to stabilize government operations and address the COVID-19 pandemic’s health and economic effects. This piece provides updates on ARPA commitments and expenditures through June 30, 2022.
Large cities and counties have committed 61% of their allocations Local governments have until the end of 2024 to budget and obligate their SLFRF allocations, which means they were about one-third through that timeline as of June 30. By then, large cities and counties (91 cities/consolidated counties and 239 counties with populations over 250,000) had committed SLFRF dollars to roughly 7,500 projects—a 21% increase since the end of March 2022.
Funding commitments grew as well. The total share of committed SLFRF dollars increased from 51% at the end of March to 61% at the end of June. This means that, as a group, large cities and counties have budgeted the entirety of their first tranche of funding and are beginning to allocate the second tranche they received in May.
Cities were a bit further ahead in budgeting than counties in our analysis. Large cities/consolidated counties have budgeted 71% of their SLFRF allocations—nearly 20 percentage points higher than counties, which have budgeted 52%.
Overall, by June, $39 billion in SLFRF dollars allocated to these local governments have been budgeted or spent, with $26 billion remaining to be obligated by December 2024 and spent by 2026.
Over 43% of committed funds are going to government operations In our previous analysis of ARPA data from March, the largest share of cities and counties’ SLFRF allocation went to stabilizing government operations, which includes fiscal health recovery, employee wages, and investment in facilities and equipment. The latest data suggests this pattern is relatively unchanged; government operations accounted for 43% of city and county commitments as of June 2022, down marginally from 44% in March.
However, there were some shifts in budgeting priorities between March and June. For counties, the share of funds committed to public health decreased from 17% to 15%, perhaps due to COVID-19’s waning impact on public health services. Meanwhile, the share of funding to community aid projects increased from 9% to 14%.
For cities/consolidated counties, priorities remained remarkably similar across our major categories. About half of budgeted funds are still going to government operations, with the remainder evenly split across the six remaining categories.
Large cities and counties have spent 23% of their SLFRF dollars As of June 30, large cities and counties have spent $15 billion in SLFRF dollars—nearly one-quarter of their $65 billion allocation. Expenditures increased by 36% between March 2022 and June 2022. Notably, large cities/consolidated counties have spent a higher share of their funds than large counties (30% versus 18%), which is consistent with the faster rate at which those governments have budgeted the dollars.
SLFRF commitments indicate what areas local governments are prioritizing, but expenditure data provides a sense of where those funds are displaying an initial impact. For cities/consolidated counties, government operations accounts for 48% of commitments but 60% of expenditures thus far. This trend also holds for large counties (38% committed but 48% expended). Indeed, local governments are likely finding it easier to move resources quickly through existing operations rather than standing up new programmatic investments. And because cities/consolidated counties have higher shares of their overall commitments and expenditures in government operations, that may account for their faster expenditure rate.
Beyond government operations, however, large cities and counties are also expending large investments to build livable communities and vibrant local economies though economic and workforce development ($1.1 billion); community aid ($1.1 billion); infrastructure ($792 million); and housing ($725 million).
Large cities and counties continue to budget about 30% of funds toward addressing social and economic disadvantage This March, about 29% of SLFRF commitments were concentrated in 19 project groups aimed at addressing social and economic disadvantage. By June 30, that share increased to 30%, representing a $12 billion infusion of resources for equitable recovery. This portfolio includes $3.6 billion for affordable housing, rental assistance, anti-homelessness, eviction prevention, and other housing programs; $1.3 billion for stabilizing and strengthening small businesses; and $1 billion for workforce development and youth and family supports.
About 15% of local governments (47) in our analysis budgeted more than 50% of their SLFRF resources for projects addressing social and economic disadvantage. Fifteen local governments are committing more than 75% of their resources to these projects. Importantly, equitable ARPA spending approaches cut across every part of the country, including communities such as Madison, Wis. (98%); Lee County, Fla. (90%); and North Las Vegas, Nev. (89%).
With the new Treasury Department data, we now have a much fuller picture of how ARPA resources are being utilized. Yet past may not be prologue, and spending priorities for the second tranche of funds will likely look different than the first. With government operations stabilizing in the second half of 2022, the next round of reporting data will reveal the full extent of how governments are addressing the long-standing economic and social challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
Note: The total number of local governments studied in this analysis has changed from 326 (90 cities/consolidated counties and 236 counties with populations over 250,000) in the March 2022 data to 330 (91 cities/consolidated counties and 239 counties with populations over 250,000) in the June 2022 data.
The authors thank Ricardo Aguilar, Christine Baker-Smith, Alan Berube, and Teryn Zmuda for research advice and support.
By Glenn D. Rudebusch, David Wessel
The extent of future climate change largely depends on policy choices that the world makes today. Quantifying the link between policy actions and subsequent climate outcomes is crucial, but hard to do. Climate policy curves are a way to measure that link and enable comparison of alternative climate policies. This explainer draws from a Hutchins Center working paper, “Climate policy curves: Linking policy choices to climate outcomes.”
What exactly does a climate policy curve show?Climate policy curves quantify the relationship between a carbon price and future increases in global temperatures. They incorporate two important relationships: the economic link from carbon prices to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and the physical link from emissions to climate outcomes. A higher carbon price tends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and eventually curb the increase in global temperatures.
To restrain global warming, policymakers need to choose a combination of an initial carbon price and the pace at which it will rise over time. For instance, the analysis shows that an initial carbon price of $50 a ton that increases 6% a year limits the global temperature increase by 2100 to below 2% Celsius. An initial carbon price of $160 a ton that increases by 2% a year will achieve the same result. The first option pushes much of the burden of limiting climate change to future generations while the second puts more of the burden on today’s generation.
How would putting a price on carbon work?Putting a price on CO2 emissions creates an incentive for producers and consumers to buy products and employ methods that emit less carbon. This price can be explicit, like a direct tax on the greenhouse gasses emitted when producing goods and services. But other climate policies can be viewed as placing an implicit price on carbon emissions, including a cap-and-trade system where the government sets a cap on emissions and creates a market for trading allowances to emit a certain amount. Producers that can most easily reduce emissions would tend to sell allowances to those for whom emission reduction would be more costly—an efficient outcome. A range of other policies, such as green subsidies, energy-efficiency regulations, and renewable-energy mandates, can also be broadly summarized in terms of an implicit price on each ton of CO2 emitted.
Where do the estimates in climate policy curves come from?The authors of the paper calculate climate policy curves using an updated version of the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) that was developed by Nobel laureate William Nordhaus. The DICE model combines economic and climate science relationships to represent the trade-off between economic growth and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is widely used by policymakers and researchers to evaluate the potential economic impacts of different climate policies. By repeatedly simulating this model for different carbon price paths and observing the associated global warming, the authors trace out several climate policy curves.
Is there a lot of uncertainty about projections that run to the end of the century?Yes. Uncertainty is a central issue for the design, implementation, and assessment of climate policy. Despite much climate science and climate economics research, substantial uncertainty remains about the key climate-economy interactions. In particular, a climate policy curve is subject to uncertainties about the effect carbon prices have on emissions and on the effect emissions have on rising global temperatures. The creators of climate policy curves show how varying the DICE model parameters creates a wide swath of possible curves. Thus, for example, limiting peak global warming to 2°C likely requires a carbon price of between $50 and $150 a ton coupled with a 4% subsequent annual price growth rate. However, this entire price range far exceeds the current global effective carbon price, which is less than $10.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Chris Miller
The Consumer Price Index report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on December 13 indicated that prices rose 0.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis in November, slower growth than the 0.4% of October. On the morning of the release, just days before the Federal Open Markets Committee would announce the latest round of interest rate hikes to continue battling inflation, David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, and Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, discussed the latest figures.
SOME VERY GOOD NEWS FOR THE FEDThe November CPI report was the second in a row to suggest that inflation was slowing. “This is the kind of report that the Federal Reserve has been looking for,” said Wessel. Inflation is still high at 7.1% over last year but, as Wessel said, “It doesn’t mean the inflation war is over, but today’s battle is a win for the forces against inflation.” Edelberg honed in on core CPI, which omits volatile food and energy prices and is a key indicator for Fed policymakers. Over the last three months, at an annualized rate, core CPI inflation has been just above 4%, she said, which sounds high compared to pre-pandemic levels, but is significantly lower than it was in recent months when it hovered around 6-7%. Four percent is only 1.5 percentage points above the Fed’s target for core CPI, she said. “That’s what I would call within spitting distance – you’d have to be a pretty good spitter, but within spitting distance … Having core CPI inflation a little above 4% suggests that we are close to the end of this tightening cycle that the Fed is going through.”
GOODS PRICE FINALLY FALLING, SERVICES LIKELY TO FOLLOW
“This is the kind of report that the Federal Reserve has been looking for.”
Edelberg cited two reasons why goods prices have come down. The first is that supply chain issues over the last few years have eased. The second is that household spending on goods was far above trend during the height of the pandemic. “If you look at spending on goods relative to trend, it’s been 10% higher than trend, 15% higher than trends – these are just nutty numbers,” she said, but those numbers are now moderating. Even as goods prices have started to come down, service price inflation remained high, but Edelberg expects those prices to start falling more as well because of shelter costs: “Because of what we know is happening with rents, it looks like on the horizon lower services inflation is in store.”
FED WILL STAY THE COURSEWhile the markets were exuberant about the latest report, Wessel said that it wouldn’t change much for the Fed’s immediate plans. “I think there’s a sense that the Fed may not be going to relax now, but they may be preparing to relax next year, and they won’t have to force the economy into a recession in order to break the back of inflation. I personally think that’s a little overoptimistic, but this is definitely a bit of data that comes down on that side of the case,” he said. Edelberg agreed that the report wouldn’t lead to the Fed changing its plan to raise interest rates by 50 basis points at the December meeting (the Fed did raise rates the day after this conversation, as expected), but it will be a contributing data point to future decisions: “I think what this does is it puts a huge amount of pressure on CPI releases in that come out in the next two months, because the real question will be, do they continue to see moderating inflation without another rate hike after tomorrow?”
“We are spending money like there wasn’t a pandemic overall, but we have millions fewer people showing up wanting jobs. That’s just not sustainable.”
FED WANTS TO SLOW NOMINAL WAGE GROWTHAs far as impact on the labor market and the overall economy, Wessel and Edelberg agreed that the Fed would continue to try and cool the economy, even at the expense of wage growth. Wessel noted that at a recent Brookings event Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell specifically said that he thought wage growth was too high to meet the Fed’s inflation target and that he would continue to argue for tightening until the pace of wage growth has slowed. Edelberg noted that the very tight labor market is contributing to that wage growth, and that tight labor market is in part due to the still-strong spending: “We are spending money like there wasn’t a pandemic overall, but we have millions fewer people showing up wanting jobs,” she said. “That’s just not sustainable.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti
The first year of recovery—2021—from the COVID recession was characterized by increasing financial market optimism and strong global capital flows. This post focuses on the size of cross-border claims and liabilities, an important measure of international financial integration. External assets and liabilities can increase because of new international borrowing and lending, captured by cross-border financial flows, or because the value of such claims increases as a result of asset price or exchange rate changes. In 2021, global financial flows were strong and asset prices rose, increasing the value of external assets and liabilities. However, as a ratio to global GDP they declined, because of the sharp increase in nominal GDP, with high real growth and high inflation.
The chart also highlights the size of the external balance sheet of financial centers, a category which includes countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, as well as smaller offshore centers such as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands. In recent years, however, the size of external liabilities booked in financial centers appear to have stabilized in relation to world GDP (the picture for assets is analogous). To put the size of these holdings in context, financial centers in 2021 accounted for only 7.5% of world GDP, against 42% for emerging and developing economies and just over 50% for other advanced economies.
The following chart shows the evolution of portfolio equity liabilities, a category which includes both common stock (shares, mostly listed on stock exchanges) as well as investment fund shares. This category has grown sharply since the global financial crisis, reflecting the large increase in global equity prices as well as the growth in investment in fund shares issued by financial centers (in particular, Ireland and Luxembourg for investment funds in Europe, and the Cayman Islands for hedge fund shares).
The pattern for foreign direct investment (FDI) follows a broadly similar pattern—indeed, some countries estimate FDI at market value, and hence adjust estimates for rising stock prices. But there is a difference in the pattern for financial centers: specifically, FDI liabilities peaked in 2017 and have declined since (the 2020 observation is less meaningful because the higher ratio is driven by the COVID-induced decline in world GDP). This reflects mainly the unwinding of some special purpose entities in financial centers such as Luxembourg and the Netherlands following the U.S. corporate tax reform of 2017, which typically reduce assets and liabilities by similar amounts as these are pure “pass-through” entities. These same entities had accounted for an important component of the growth in FDI in financial centers during the previous 15 years.
Turning to the categories capturing the behavior of debt instruments, the ratio of portfolio debt instruments (which includes short- and long-term bonds) to world GDP has broadly stabilized after the global financial crisis. Large purchases of government bonds by central banks, the partial fragmentation in euro area bond markets following the 2011-12 crisis, and a slowdown in the accumulation of foreign reserves, which are held mostly in these instruments, were all contributing factors. The size of portfolio debt liabilities in emerging and developing economies has increased in the past decade, as more countries have issued international bonds and as foreign investors have increased participation in local bond markets. It remains relatively modest compared to the overall size of the international bond market. Note, however, that the blue bars understate the size of emerging market bonds outstanding on international markets, because bonds issued offshore by emerging market corporate entities (for instance, by Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, and Russian firms) are classified as liabilities of the offshore center where the issuing entity (an affiliate of the EM parent) resides.
The last liability category we consider, “other investment,” comprises primarily international bank activity in the form of loans, deposits, and trade credits, but also includes activity in these categories by governments and nonbank corporate entities. Here we see the most dramatic shift since the global financial crisis, with a sharp decline in cross-border activity after 2007. This decline reflects the shrinking balance sheets of many large international banks—primarily those from European advanced economies such as France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Overall, these data provide a useful characterization of the size and type of financial integration of individual economies with the rest of the world, as well as information on external imbalances and their composition. Their global coverage also allows the analysis of world and regional trends, such as the ones described in this blog. They can usefully be integrated with databases which provide bilateral positions across countries, such as the International Monetary Fund’s Coordinated Portfolio Investment and Coordinated Direct Investment Surveys (CPIS and CDIS, respectively) and the Bank of International Settlements’ statistics on global banking. However, care must be exercised in interpreting the data. This is particularly the case for the past 20 years, where trade in financial assets through financial centers has grown exponentially, as illustrated by the charts in this blog. The routing of financial operations through these centers can obscure the underlying economic linkages across countries (think of a German investor holding a share in Luxembourg of a fund investing in the United States) and the nature of financial instruments (think of the large share of FDI which represents purely financial operations by multinational corporations for regulatory or tax reasons).
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Elijah Asdourian, James Lee, Lorae Stojanovic, David Wessel
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Pandemic quantitative easing was counterproductiveQuantitative easing (QE) that the Federal Reserve conducted between March 2020 and March 2022—initially to mitigate strains in the bond market at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic but later to shore up the economy—did not significantly reduce term premiums (the compensation that investors require for bearing the risk of holding a long-term as opposed to a short-term bond). This implies that QE did not contribute to the subsequent economic recovery, according to Andrew Levin and Brian Lu of Dartmouth and William Nelson of the Bank Policy Institute. Since the bond buying was financing the Fed’s short-term liabilities, this round of QE may have been counterproductive by increasing the federal government’s interest rate risk and reducing the Fed’s Treasury remittances by about $760 billion over the next 10 years, the authors say.
Differential productivity drives wage inequality between high-skilled and low-skilled workersWhy are wages growing faster at the top than at the median? Using data on 40 U.S. industries and 34 OECD countries, the late Edward Lazear of Stanford and co-authors found that this growing inequality reflects faster productivity at the top of the wage distribution than at the middle or the bottom. U.S. industries that mainly employ college-educated workers had the highest productivity growth over the last 30 years, and hence had higher wage growth. Countries with high productivity growth also attained higher wage growth than countries with low productivity growth. The authors argued that technological advancement may be driving the change, as high-skilled workers make use of new technologies and become more productive, while low-skilled workers are often replaced by new technologies. They also suggested that future improvements to artificial intelligence could affect high-skilled workers, which could change the distributional impact of technological change.
Absence of low-skilled labor leads firms to automateFrom 1995 to 2019, low-skilled, non-Western immigrants were drawn to Denmark due to the collapse of Yugoslavia, political unrest in some African countries, and the expansion of the E.U. These immigrants tended to relocate to municipalities with large existing communities from their home countries. To study the effects of an increased supply of low-skilled workers on adoption of robots by firms, Katja Mann and Dario Pozzoli of Copenhagen Business School match firm-level data on robot imports to municipal-level data on the share of the working population comprised of non-Western immigrants. Firms located in municipalities with large non-Western immigrant populations were less likely to automate, the authors found. A one percentage point increase in the worker share of non-Western immigrants triggered a 7% decline in robot adoption by firms.
Chart of the week: The Federal Reserve’s portfolio begins to shrinkData courtesy of the Federal Reserve Board via FRED
Quote of the week:“A perennial question is whether economics is really a science. It is true, for example, that we economists can’t do large-scale experiments—although neither can evolutionary biologists or seismologists,” says Ben Bernanke, Distinguished Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, at the 2022 Nobel banquet.
“However, one thing we surely have in common with physics, chemistry, and the rest is that ignorance or misapplication of basic principles can result in enormous damage. In economics, that damage takes the form of financial crises and economic depressions. While financial and economic crises can have terrible human costs, at least they can give us insight into how economic and financial systems work, why they break down, and how we might avoid such outcomes in the future… We [this year’s economic laureates] agree that financial systems are prone to instability which can be very costly for an economy and a society as a whole. There is consequently a strong case for government oversight of the financial system as well as for safeguards like sufficiently high bank capital that reduce the risk of crises.”
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Reem Alsukait, Christopher H. Herbst, Volkan Cetinkaya, Severin Rakic, Zara Shubber, Mariam Hamza
Overweight and obesity—A growing challenge in Saudi Arabia Overweight and obesity, referring to body mass index (BMI) over 25 and 30, respectively, are a growing global epidemic and one of the key public health challenges today. Most of the world’s population lives in countries where overweight and obesity have a bigger impact on mortality and disability than underweight. The Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) proposes the elimination of all forms of malnutrition in children under five, including wasting and overweight. The share of children who are overweight is one of the few SDG indicators that has become worse since 2015, especially in countries such as Saudi Arabia.
The rise of overweight and obesity has been particularly alarming in Saudi Arabia—The rate has nearly doubled over the past 50 years. Like in many other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, rapid economic development and urbanization have brought lifestyle changes including decreased physical activity and increased consumption of highly processed foods and beverages. As a result, more than 50 percent of the population in Saudi Arabia today is overweight (Figure 1), and more than 20 percent have obesity.
Children and adolescents are hit particularly hard While overweight and obesity rates in Saudi Arabia are high across all age groups, they are increasing rapidly among children and adolescents. The crude prevalence of overweight/obesity among those 5 to 19 years of age is one of the highest in the world at 36 percent, twice the global average in 2016. While overweight and obesity are historically higher among adult women than men in Saudi Arabia, there is a reversal in trend among children and adolescents, with boys now having higher overweight and obesity rates than girls (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Proportion of the population who is overweight in the Gulf Region countries Source: WHO, 2019
Figure 2. Crude prevalence of overweight and obesity among Saudi Arabian children and adolescents, ages 10 to 19 years, by sexSource: WHO, 2020
The high rate of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents is especially concerning given that a third of Saudi Arabia’s population is under the age of 15, two-thirds are under 35, and the prevalence of overweight and obesity and the resulting complications will likely increase further as the population ages, if no action is taken. Affected children and adolescents often carry the extra weight into adulthood, leading to lifelong health problems. They are at higher risk of early onset health problems, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and sleep disorders. It might also impact their psychological well-being by generating low self-esteem, depression, and social isolation.
The heavy burden of overweight and obesity—an unaffordable costOverweight and obesity are among the most significant determinants for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer and have recently been associated with worse outcomes in COVID-19. In Saudi Arabia, overweight and obesity account for 27 percent of all NCD mortality and 15 percent of NCD-related disability in the kingdom.
Overweight and obesity are costing the government around $3.8 billion in direct costs, equal to 4.3 percent of health expenses in the kingdom in 2019. The treatment of type 2 diabetes is a big driver of direct overweight/obesity-attributable costs. Around 7 million Saudis (24 percent) are diabetic, while almost 3 million have prediabetes. This is high compared to a global diabetes prevalence estimated to be around 9 percent in 2019.
Overweight and obesity also have substantial indirect economic implications and costs. They negatively impact human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate to realize their full potential as productive members of society and contribute toward economic growth. A recent study estimated overweight and obesity-attributable absenteeism (absent from work) and presenteeism (working while sick) to cost Saudi Arabia a total of $15.5 billion, equal to 0.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019.
How Saudi Arabia is fighting backUnder its “Vision 2030,” Saudi Arabia is aiming for a 3 percent reduction in obesity and a 10 percent decrease in diabetes prevalence by 2030. Accordingly, Saudi Arabia aims to be at the forefront of implementing interventions to address the main behavioral risk factors of obesity, such as unhealthy diets and inadequate physical activity. It has already commenced by being one of the few countries that mandated menu calorie labeling in all food service establishments, in an effort to help consumers make healthier choices. It also implemented a 50 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and a 100 percent tax on energy drinks in 2017 which already led to a 35 percent decline in carbonated drinks sales. Additionally, it introduced several voluntary and mandatory measures to encourage companies to reformulate their food and beverage products to have less salt, fat, and sugar.
Interventions to target children are now also being prioritized. Saudi Arabia allowed physical education in schools for girls for the first time in 2018 and introduced a promising obesity prevention program for school children called “Rashaqa” which aims to improve nutritional behavior, increase physical activity, and provide preventive and therapeutic services to overweight and obese students or select primary and secondary schools across Saudi Arabia.
Planning for more is in the works. Additional measures currently under consideration include adopting a nutrient profiling model as a general guideline for nutrition-related policies including front-of-package labeling such as nutrition warnings or traffic light labels. The aim is to be at the forefront globally of tackling obesity by 2030 and mitigate the high health and economic burden before it gets worse.
ConclusionAddressing the overweight and obesity epidemic is critical to achieving the health and economic goals outlined in Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030”. It is also critical to achieving several of the SGDs targets, especially targets 2.2 on reducing the prevalence of malnutrition among children under five years of age and 3.4 on reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases. Effectiveness and success will require continued targeting of interventions across the life course of the population continued prioritization of prevention over treatment; a commitment and mechanism to work across sectors, and a particular emphasis on implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. If successful, Saudi Arabia has the potential to substantially improve overall health, reduce the NCD burden and preserve Saudi Arabia’s next generation’s human capital.
By Elaine Kamarck
As others in this series and elsewhere have noted, former President Donald Trump is in trouble. He is probably weaker politically than he has been at any time since he won the 2016 Republican nomination. This might be good news for the country but is it good news for Democrats? I don’t think so.
Donald Trump is like a 10-car pileup on the side of the highway. We can’t stop looking at him. He has dominated news coverage since he came down that golden escalator in Trump Tower. The veteran journalist Marvin Kalb writes of his coverage: “Trump is known to raise TV ratings and increase newspaper subscriptions. Editors like that. Climate change stories tend to depress ratings and subscriptions. Editors don’t like that.”
For more than seven years, Trump has sucked all the air out of the media space, and climate change isn’t the only story that has gotten lost in the shuffle. Another one that received insufficient coverage is that there is still a “normal” Republican Party in waiting, and Democrats, who have had three substantial wins in recent years, (the 2018 midterms, the 2020 presidential and the 2022 Senate) may not do as well against a “Trumpless” party.
During the primaries, my team at Brookings conducted a review of every single Republican and Democratic candidate for Congress.[1] During the primaries a lot of attention was paid to candidates at all levels who were hungry for Trump’s endorsement. Even among those who failed to get his endorsement, a large number did their best to turn themselves into “mini-Trumps” mimicking his style, his positions on issues and declaring themselves MAGA and America First. And the fact that Trump-endorsed candidates did well in the primaries added to the mantra that the Republican Party was now “Trump’s Party.” However, it turns out that a “normal” Republican Party was lurking in the wings. Of the 1,397 GOP candidates in congressional primaries in 2022, 59% were not endorsed by Trump, made no mention of Trump on their websites or social media, and made no mention of MAGA or America First.
In the general election, non-Trump Republicans did very well. In fact, some Republican operatives have taken to calling them “normal” Republicans—the first time in many years studying politics that I’ve ever heard people refer to some of their candidates as “normal.” In Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State who refused Trump’s request to find him the 11,780 votes that would allow him to win Georgia, sailed to a 10-point victory over his Democratic opponent, surviving the wrath of Trump. Raffensperger was backed up by Gov. Brian Kemp who certified Biden’s win in the state. As a result, Kemp became enemy number one in Trump’s post-election vendettas. Kemp beat a Trump-backed candidate in the Republican primary, and in the general election, he won a 7.5% victory over the powerful Stacey Abrams whose campaign to end voter suppression made her a national celebrity.
In Nevada, the Republican candidate, Joe Lombardo, beat the incumbent Democratic Governor by 1.4%. Although Lombardo had Trump’s endorsement, he pushed away from him in the one gubernatorial debate saying, “he was bothered by Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, [and] he was “not shying away from that” and agreeing that Trump lying about election fraud undermined the confidence of the voters.”
Not surprisingly, Trump threatened to withdraw his support, but Lombardo won anyways. By contrast, the Trump-embracing Senate candidate in Nevada, Adam Laxalt, lost to incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto by 1.9%.
One of the most “normal” Republicans around is New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu who is extremely popular in the state. Gov. Sununu called Trump’s claims that the election was rigged “misinformed” and said that some people convicted of participating in the January 6 riots should not be pardoned. Corey Lewandowski, a Trump operative who lives in New Hampshire boasted of trying to primary him, which didn’t work. In the end and in spite of having called Trump “f—— crazy,” (or perhaps because of it) Sununu won his re-election with 57% of the vote while, at the same time, the Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan won reelection against a Trump-backed candidate with 53% of the vote.
In increasingly Republican Ohio, Republican Governor Mike DeWine had moved away from Trump during the pandemic, setting his own path for the state when it came to shutdowns and other pandemic-related issues. In November, he sailed to re-election with 63% of the vote in spite of the fact that he had dismissed Trump’s stolen election lie and had criticized him for having “poured gas on the fire” before the January 6 riot at the Capitol. The Trump-backed Senate candidate in Ohio also won but with ten percent less of the vote than DeWine got.
Had Trump not intervened in Republican primaries there would have been more “normal” Republicans on the ballot and the predictions of a red wave may have been more accurate. But the fascination (or obsession) with Trump has caused many to overlook the fact that there is a non-Trump Republican Party out there and it does pretty well. A return to a more normal Republican Party may be good for America but could pose a problem for some Democrats who need to build a stronger rationale for their party than “we’re not Trump.”
[1] See Brookings, The Primaries Project 2022 at https://www.brookings.edu/series/the-primaries-project-2022/
By E.J. Dionne
Since I never expected Donald Trump to be president, I shuddered at the prospect of participating in a symposium on the theme, “Is this the end of Trump?” How often does anyone want to risk being wrong?
But as the investment funds always warn, past performance is no guarantee of future results. After years of confounding his detractors by surviving, he has now reached the end of the line. It may take a while. His poll ratings among Republicans will not come down all of a sudden. Nonetheless, the man who labeled Jeb Bush the “low energy” candidate is perilously close to deserving the “low energy” moniker himself.
Yes, the worlds of politics and punditry have become so accustomed to Trump’s ability to come back from scandals that would destroy the careers of everyone else that they now see Trump as endowed with miraculous superpowers. His greatest superpower has been the reluctance of most Republicans to move against him no matter what he did or said. To a large degree, that still holds. The GOP’s politicians remain deeply afraid of Trump’s loyalists and, as I wrote recently in the Washington Post, Trump’s weakness is his strength: The more he drives non-extremists out of the Republican Party, the more his supporters will dominate Republican primaries.
So far there have been far fewer protests among Republicans against Trump’s dinner party with Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and white nationalist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes than there should have been. There was a bit more pushback against Trump’s statement that the Constitution should be set aside so he can become president, but—Good Lord!—that should have been the end of the line right there. It wasn’t. Yet.
It would be lovely to think that decent, reasonable Republicans would finally turn on Trump for principled reasons, especially after his comments on upending the Constitution. This was the path already taken by Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger especially, and by the other eight House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment the second time in 2021. It was also the choice of the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict him.
But notice how small those numbers are. And only two of the 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach him will be members of the 118th Congress. Four, including Cheney, lost primaries, and four, including Kinzinger, decided to leave Congress.
No, Trump will only be pushed aside when his political cost to his party becomes intolerable. That is precisely what is in the process of happening. Nothing has harmed Trump more than the obvious damage he did to Republicans in the 2022 elections, culminating this month in the defeat of his handpicked candidate Hershel Walker by Sen. Rafael Warnock in the Georgia runoff.
Republicans might well have taken control of the Senate but for the weakness of Trumpist candidates not only in Georgia but also in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. Trumpism was shellacked at the state level. His election deniers lost all the swing state secretary of state races. The landslides of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro were a tribute not only to their political skills but also to the backlash against the extremism Trump promotes.
In the meantime, standing against Trump has proved helpful to key GOP figures. Think especially of Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. Both held on to right-wing Republicans but performed well in the Atlanta suburbs and ran far ahead of Walker. Republicans elsewhere noticed the potential advantages of life after Trump.
Trump’s political toxicity is also leading traditional centers of conservative power to move away from him. This is nowhere more obvious than in the Murdoch-owned press: the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the New York Post. Fox News is a more complicated story, but there have been moments of Trump agnosticism and even skepticism since the election that would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
The possibility of a Trump indictment, which seems to grow stronger by the day, is not helping him, either. It could prove to be the moment of truth. No doubt lots of Republicans, especially in the House, would rush to his defense. But others might view it as the occasion to say definitively that it was time to move on.
Which is the final element of the case for Trump’s fading from the scene: He clearly senses the possibility that Republicans will slowly abandon him. His frantic efforts to gain attention—his call for ignoring the Constitution is Exhibit A—reflect his fear that he might become the one thing he never wants to be: a loser. And the more panicky he looks, the more likely that outcome becomes.
Even when they winced, Republican leaders tolerated most of Trump’s sins. But there is one they will not forgive him for: booting away electoral victories.
By Richard V. Reeves, Simran Kalkat
This week in Class Notes:* High-speed internet worsens adolescent mental health, especially for girls. * Incentive pay programs help reduce substitute teacher shortages. * SNAP benefits matter for SAT performance. * There are now more than 1 million same-sex households, as this week’s top chart shows. * Ditch the cell phone bans in schools, argues Michael B. Horan in this month’s op-ed. * Check out our piece on immigrants and the elder care market. * For your calendar: events on school finance, equitable community development, and broadband access.
High-speed internet worsens adolescent mental health, especially for girlsDoes internet access impact mental health and behavior in teens and young adults? Esther Arenas-Arroyo and co-authors examine this question using the introduction of high-speed internet (HSI) in different areas of Spain between 2007 and 2019. The rollout of fiberoptic internet in the country was influenced by a range of historical and political factors more than socioeconomic ones, providing exogenous variation for the study. Using administrative data on discharge diagnoses from Spain’s public and private hospitals, the authors find that HSI increased behavioral and mental health problems among 15–19-year-olds, with girls driving much of the effect. In particular, HSI led to more anxiety, mood disorders, drug abuse, self-harm, and suicide attempts. Drawing on separate data from ESTUDES, a survey of 14–18-year-old Spanish teens, the researchers also found that access to HSI appears to “crowd out” time for sleep, homework, and socialization. This paper adds to a growing literature on the effects of internet and social media usage, examining a time period that saw the introduction of popular platforms including Instagram (2012) and TikTok (2017).
Incentive pay programs help reduce substitute teacher shortages Even before COVID-19, there was a shortage of substitute teachers for K-12 schools. This has equity implications. In Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Black students are three times more likely to experience an uncovered teacher absence than white students, and low-income students at twice the rate as more affluent students. Can financial incentives help? Matthew A. Kraft and co-authors evaluate a 2018 CPS program which offered bonuses to substitute teachers working in schools with the lowest fill rates. Using a regression discontinuity design, they find that the bonuses resulted in a 23-percentage point increase in the number of substitute requests filled in the 75 target schools. The effects were mostly concentrated among female teachers, Black and Hispanic teachers, and among substitute teachers who had previously worked at the schools. Teacher absences also increased by 3.5 days, though largely for professional development instead of sick or personal days.
SNAP benefits matter for SAT performance Can access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) improve academic performance? Timothy N. Bond and co-authors examine whether the timing of SNAP payments impacts SAT scores. Some states issue SNAP benefits to program participants on a single day, others stagger the payments across the month, for example in last name order. Bond et al. exploit the variation in timing in seven states and Washington D.C. to compare SAT outcomes for students. They find that students taking the SAT in the second half of the month after a SNAP payment scored six points lower than those during who took the test during the first two weeks. They were also less likely to attend a four-year college. Those that did attend college were less likely to attend a more selective school.
Top chart: Number of same-sex households exceeded 1 million in 2021 Using the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau released updated numbers for same-sex couple households in the U.S. There were about 1.2 million in 2021, with roughly 710,000 married and 500,000 unmarried. Larger shares of same-sex couples had both partners with at least a bachelor’s degree compared to opposite-sex households. A larger share of same-sex couples are also interracial compared to opposite-sex couples.
*Choice opinion: Ban the cellphone ban*“[C]ellphone bans are following the larger trend of banning many things in schools—from books to speakers to certain kinds of speech or topics of debate. Cellphones may make for another easy bogeyman, but blanket bans are ill-informed and regressive. Though we might not see a big reversal in phone bans anytime soon, we should. Educators on the ground should choose for themselves when and whether to allow their students to carry cellphones to class, so they can leverage learning apps to help students make progress,” writes Michael B. Horn in Education Next.
Self-promotion: Immigrants play an important role in supporting the elder-care market As the U.S. population ages, the need for better elder care provision is rising, especially since most of the elderly population prefers to age at home. In this paper, Kristin F. Butcher, Kelsey Moran, and Tara Watson look at how immigrant labor is an important part in allowing for the elderly to age at home. They find that a larger less-educated immigrant labor force is associated with a 1.5 percentage point lower probability in institutionalization for those aged 65 or older and a 3.8 percentage point lower probability for those 80 and older.
For your calendar: events on broadband access, school finance, and equitable community developmentThe state of broadband at IIJA’s one-year anniversary
The Brookings Institution
Thursday, December 15, 2022 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
School finance and education equity
The Brookings Institution
Friday, December 16, 2022 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM EST
Advancing racial equity in our communities: Involving communities in equitable development
Urban Institute
Friday, December 16, 2022 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
By Anthony Luvanda
The digital economy opens opportunities for new and lucrative careers in Kenya and across the globe, while at the same time eliminating a sizable number of administrative, clerical, and non-skilled jobs—with women the most affected by these changes. Most young women are missing out on technology-related career opportunities, which is even more worrying when coupled with the decline in job growth in fields traditionally dominated by women.
Yet the gender gap in the information and communications technology (ICT) workforce begins much earlier in women’s lives, as very few girls enroll in digital technology-related courses at the tertiary level of education. In Kenya, the rate of women graduating university with an ICT degree is disproportionately low, comprising less than 30 percent of ICT graduates, thus resulting in the underrepresentation of women in digital technology careers. As a 2022 Echidna Global Scholar, I decided to conduct a study on how Kenya can create a holistic education policy response that would help mitigate the cumulative disadvantages that exclude girls and young women from digital technology-related courses across their educational trajectories.
WHAT ARE THE CUMULATIVE DISADVANTAGES THAT ARE LEADING TO GENDER-BASED EXCLUSION IN DIGITAL RELATED COURSES IN KENYA? My investigation sought to identify why girls and young women were not taking ICT courses from the lowest to the highest level of education. Some of my findings are highlighted below:
- Negative impact of gendered social normsIn focus groups, we examined whether girls were made to feel that certain homestead chores were meant for them, while others—especially physical chores—were meant for boys. The girls that believed that certain homestead chores were meant for girls and others for boys tended to lean toward career choices that have been traditionally associated with women, while those that did not report such biases felt that career choice should not be dictated by gender. The focus group data indicates that a relationship may exist between gendered social norms and the type of careers that girls find themselves in.
- Poor advocacy of digital technology careers
The majority of the girls in the study, at all levels of education, not only did not know about the existence of digital technology careers, but they also could not name a single woman in the ICT industry. This could be attributed to several factors: chief among them, a lack of exposure to women role models who work in ICT, unavailability of literature and media exposure promoting women working in ICT, and poor advocacy of digital technology careers during their education. - Inadequate vocational counseling
Most of the young women who were pursuing ICT-related courses at the tertiary level had a reasonable amount of digital technology career knowledge, but most revealed that the ICT course that they were taking was an alternative option after they were unable to gain admission to their first-choice course. This indicates a lack of effective vocational counseling offered to the girls before they chose examinable courses in secondary school courses.
POLICY INTERVENTIONS TO HELP BRIDGE THE GENDER GAP IN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY * Build girls’ interest in ICT-related courses from the earliest yearsThe Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development needs to ensure textbooks and study materials—at all levels of primary and secondary school education—contain literature and images of women in ICT careers. There is also a need for the ministry of education, with the ICT ministry, to partner with big tech companies operating in East Africa. Most of these companies are already pushing for more women in digital careers to assist with putting in place at both primary and secondary schools a girls’ coding program as well as ICT related extravaganzas, events, and hackathons for girls that are more effective. Such initiatives will not only create ICT awareness in the young girls’ minds but also build confidence in their abilities to use digital technology for various tasks and real-life problems.
* Increase advocacy and awareness
Big tech companies can help introduce girls at the earliest levels of education to locally- and internationally-based role models. It is equally important for more women who are successfully plying their trade in the ICT industry to be identified and invited to play an advocacy and mentorship role.
* Enhance vocational counseling for digital technology careers
Given that entry to university is based on individual subject performance coupled with overall performance on the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination and that secondary school students choose their examinable subject in the second year of education, it is important that vocational counseling sessions are held with students, especially girls, to help them choose a subject that will be admissible for ICT-related courses at the tertiary level of education.
I recently shared more on my research at the “Bridging the gender divide in digital technology careers in Kenya” workshop, held on December 6 as part of the research and policy symposium on gender equality in and through education on “De/reconstructing education as a space for transformative belonging and agency.”
By William A. Galston
Donald Trump has had a bad month, probably the worst of his political career. His hand-picked Senate candidates lost winnable races in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, torpedoing Republicans’ chances of retaking the Senate. The same thing happened to the gubernatorial candidates he endorsed in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Meanwhile, Republican governors who kept their distance from him or criticized him publicly won landslide reelection victories in New Hampshire, Ohio, and Georgia.
Mr. Trump’s legal difficulties are compounding as well. On November 6, a New York court convicted the Trump Organization on 17 criminal charges of tax fraud and related offenses. Mr. Trump is facing numerous other state and federal investigations, and the January 6 committee may well include him in the criminal referrals it will send to the Justice Department before the end of December.
Mr. Trump’s conduct since announcing his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination has weakened his credibility within his party. His decision to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago with a notorious Holocaust denier along with the anti-Semitic artist and Hitler admirer formerly known as Kanye West, led to a chorus of criticism from Republican elected officials and even his closest Jewish friends and supporters. His tweet calling for the suspension of the U.S. Constitution to reverse or redo the 2020 presidential election sent many of his long-time boosters running for the tall grass.
Against this backdrop, signs are multiplying that Mr. Trump’s party no longer sees him as the path to victory in 2024. A Marist poll conducted in mid-November found that only 35% of Republicans think he would be their strongest candidate, while 54% said “someone else.” A recently released Marquette University survey showed Joe Biden tied with Ron DeSantis in a potential matchup but leading Donald Trump by 10 points, 44% to 34%. Among the Republicans in this poll, Trump’s negatives were three times as high as DeSantis’s. Just 32% of the electorate has a favorable opinion of Trump; among Independents, just 22%.
Most Republican analysts believe that anti-Trump sentiment within their party has expanded significantly, in part because the former president’s recent conduct has been outrageous by even his standards, but largely because Trump is increasingly seen as a loser—and rightly so. In 2018, he led his party to a 42-seat loss in the House of Representatives. Two years later, he lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden by more than 7 million popular votes and by 74 votes in the Electoral College as five states he won in 2016 shifted into the Democratic column. Two months later, his ham-handed intervention in two Georgia senatorial runoffs gave Democrats control of the Senate. Against this backdrop, Republicans are increasingly viewing this year’s midterm election results as the continuation of a long trend that they need to disrupt.
Does all this mean that Trump is finished? Not quite, because he still has a narrow path to victory in 2024. He would probably lose a head-to-head contest with Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination, but many other ambitious Republicans are lining up to join the race. Unless the contest narrows quickly, we could see a repetition of 2016, when the division of the anti-Trump vote among multiple candidates allowed Trump to rack up an insurmountable string of victories with only a plurality of the vote.
If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, it is not hard to imagine circumstances in which he could defeat Joe Biden. For example, assume that inflation proves even more stubborn than the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell now believes and that the Fed is forced to keep raising interest rates well into 2023, triggering a recession that continues into 2024.
Granted, voters do not live by bread alone, as the recent midterm elections prove. But it would be dubious to assume that a recession following hard on the heels of the highest inflation in four decades would not have a significant impact on voter sentiment. Mr. Trump’s path back to the Oval Office has gotten narrower and steeper in recent months, but it is not yet completely blocked.
By Emily Carlton, David G. Victor
Another United Nations climate conference (COP) has come and gone, leaving the world to scratch its head over what was accomplished. The annual conference has ballooned over the years into a massive climate festival: nearly 50,000 people — an all-time record — taking part in the rituals of formal diplomacy and, in parallel, a flashy climate change expo. So what came of it?
If you ask people who paid attention only to the formal negotiations, the answer is not much. Meetings were frustrating and adversarial, focused on broken promises and eking out small, hard-fought victories. When they finally ended — two days after the formal deadline had expired — there was a sense of relief that consensus had been reached, but bewilderment about its content. Most visibly, parties agreed to set up a new funding mechanism to compensate developing countries for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change. But the fund was empty of money. What the celebrated agreement really does is lay out a process for future negotiations on a slew of issues where governments don’t much agree — including who will pay into the fund and how the money, if it ever appears, will get spent.
Those who focused more on the other things happening around COP27 have a different and more encouraging story to tell. That story is full of examples of implementation — small groups of governments and firms working together to transform key industrial sectors. Too often, these examples of productive cooperation and practical action get overlooked because they happen largely outside the negotiating room.
As the climate effort shifts from forging consensus around the need to do something, to actually doing things, implementation is what really matters. The character of the COP event is evolving accordingly — every year, firms, governments, researchers, and civil society show up in greater numbers to showcase and build on their activities in what is now a full-blown climate expo. But even as focus on the ground shifts away from formal diplomacy and toward action, media coverage keeps the spotlight on the formal process.
The message coming out of COP matters. The Paris Agreement was built on the logic that action by some will beget more action by others — building trust and collaboration, ratcheting ambition and generating momentum. The COP is the most important climate conference in the world. Many look to it to gauge the temperature of progress on global climate action. For the event to continue inspiring collective action, the world needs a more holistic message about its outcomes — not just the division and chaos coming from the negotiating room, but also the real efforts and purposeful learning emerging outside it.
Competing stories from COP27The big diplomatic win dominating COP27 news was the creation of the loss and damage fund to compensate vulnerable countries for climate impacts. Certainly this was important, both morally and to maintain the legitimacy of the Paris Agreement, which is partly rooted in meaningful global consensus. But the victory was largely symbolic, punting on all the hardest questions about how the fund will work (stay tuned for a big fight in 2023 over whether high-emitting developing countries like China should be required to contribute). Still, it was unexpected and an uphill battle. Going in to COP27, loss and damage funding was widely seen as a non-starter (developed countries balked at the cost and precedent), but Europe, with the most at stake in maintaining global climate solidarity, blinked at the last moment and agreed, leaving other rich countries little choice but to follow. Ultimately, the celebration following the loss and damage agreement seems to stem less from achieving meaningful progress and more from well-managed expectations.
On other issues seen as key going into COP27, the negotiations ended with even less forward movement. On mitigation, only 30 countries heeded last year’s call for all countries to update their pledges to cut emissions. The final COP27 decision included no decision to phase out coal or fossil fuels and only a weak reference to the target of stopping warming at 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels, to the bitter disappointment of the EU and other developed countries. (Never mind that actually stopping warming at 1oC is essentially impossible and has been for a long time.) On adaptation, the final decision was procedural, setting out a plan to negotiate rules and metrics that might eventually lead to a global goal. And on climate finance, negotiators began a multi-year process to set a new annual goal for how much money rich countries should provide to the developing world; meanwhile, the existing $100 billion promise remains unmet.
But the disappointing and slow results in the formal negotiating rooms obscure important gains outside it. On climate finance, for example, a partnership announced last year between South Africa and several G-7 countries, who will invest $8.5 billion to facilitate a fair transition away from coal, made an important advancement with the publication of an investment plan. A second such partnership for $20 billion was announced with Indonesia, and similar agreements are being negotiated with Vietnam, India, and other big coal consuming nations.
Other examples of government actions — along with private sector initiatives — abound. The financial sector rolled up its sleeves and got to work transforming their high-profile promises into concrete and credible moves to direct capital away from high emissions industries. Meanwhile, a new door opened for cooperation between the United States and China — cooperation that will be vital for any future agreement to have real impact, given China’s large and growing emissions profile. Unlike diplomatic outcomes, which are centrally reported on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) website, these kinds of examples emerge piecemeal, across the media, sometimes during COP but often after the fact.
Fixing the COPThe effort to stop global warming is advancing, and COP must advance with it. For a long time, what was needed was global consensus on the need to do something and a framework for driving collective action — the stuff of formal diplomacy and universal participation. Now, with the Paris Agreement adopted and its rules mostly worked out, those diplomatic needs are waning. Much more important, as COP27’s Egyptian hosts rightly identified, is implementation. Implementation doesn’t happen by global consensus; instead, it happens in small groups of motivated governments and firms learning how to cut emissions — groups who are arriving at COP in bigger numbers and with better intentions each year.
Can COP become tethered more tightly to what matters?In principle, the formal COP process could pivot to focus more on facilitating implementation — for example, by doing what has long been done in the Montreal Protocol and helping governments and firms learn which new technologies and shifts in business practice actually help fix the environmental problem at hand. Doing that, however, will be hard because conflicts are rife. Even getting an agreement on the need for review will inevitably end in gridlock. For example, the Paris Agreement’s formal “enhanced transparency framework,” — the process for reporting and reviewing countries’ climate activities — instead of being a vehicle for sharing progress, critically evaluating efforts, or learning, is much more focused on country-level reporting and self-declared compliance. The resulting biennial reports, often hundreds of pages long, are posted on the UNFCCC website and largely ignored by people working to cut emissions in key sectors.
Meanwhile, the reality at COP meetings is, on its own, already evolving in the right direction. As one veteran attendee put it, “COPs used to be 80% negotiations, 20% trade show, now it is the reverse.” Increasingly, folks who are changing facts on the ground — creating new industries, shifting capital, testing new technologies, experimenting with new local and regional policies — are showing up. That’s a good start. The trade show has already become a premier place to showcase how the world is grappling with the transformations needed to manage climate change.
The trade show could become more purposeful if some of COP’s leaders would lead. Unlike the negotiations, which are centrally organized by the UNFCCC, there is little rhyme or reason to what happens around the edges. Organizations spend many thousands of dollars on pavilions, side events, and exhibits, and feel pressured to fill them with content — or at least words and flash. That content is difficult to follow, either virtually or in person, because it is decentralized, disorganized, and lower in coverage-priority than the negotiations. Being there feels like thrift store shopping — digging through a huge bin of miscellaneous events happening at once to find a few gems.
A motivated COP presidency could help create more order in the side activities of COP so they are less of a bazaar and more of an actual conference. (The U.K. did that in Glasgow, and the next hosts — the United Arab Emirates — are well positioned to do something similar.) A laser focus on productive problem-solving would require organizing these activities in a way that fits the problem — by sector — and making sure that alongside the inevitable bazaar there are some more highly organized elements.
Industrial leaders should also be invited to play a bigger role, by showing what implementation means in practice. Many important initiatives are taking shape, such as in steel, shipping, aviation, finance, and many other sectors. But the leaders should do more to show how the varied experiments they are running are panning out in practice. In effect, the world is running a series of experiments, sector by sector, without yet a reliable mechanism to learn from all that investment.
Making COP positive and productive won’t be easy, but it is important. The current system is highlighting global cooperation at its very worst, spotlighting disagreements that are unavoidable and unsolvable while burying in chaos the good news of the trade show. Real progress is unfolding, in pockets of first movers who are changing facts on the ground. These first movers inevitably won’t march to the drummer of diplomatic consensus.
By Shamika Ravi, Mudit Kapoor
In September 2022, India became the fifth largest economy in the world by overtaking the United Kingdom, according to a recent report from the International Monetary Fund. India’s economic and political rise has both domestic and global implications and might alter the nature of the country’s foreign relations with powerful countries like the United States, China, and Russia, and vice versa. Furthermore, global events, such as the protectionist tech policies imposed by former President Trump on Chinese trade policies, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the deepening of authoritarianism in China, are forcing global realignment. Consequently, countries like India are reassessing their foreign relations with existing major powers and signaling interests and preferences vis-à-vis new emerging powers.
In this essay, we quantify India’s foreign relations based on news that involves the country and the top economies in the world: Australia, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, the United States, and Russia. We exploit the Global Database of Society, which is a part of the Global Data on Events, Location, and Tone (GDELT) Project that monitors news (broadcast, print, and digital) across the globe in more than 65 languages. Within 15 minutes of a news event breaking worldwide, the GDELT Project translates the event if it is in a language other than English and processes the news to identify the event, location, people, and organizations involved and the nature and theme of the event based on more than 24 emotional measurement packages (the largest deployment of sentiment analysis) to assess more than 2,300 emotions and themes to “contextualize, interpret, respond to, and understand global events” in near real-time.
The GDELT database lends itself to fascinating quantitative analysis of the changing nature of international relations as reflected in the news and media coverage. In our analysis, we find significant changes in India’s bilateral relations with major economies like France, China, Russia, and the United States in recent years. We also find structural breaks and major realignment in the relations of global powers vis-à-vis China since 2018.
Research methodsWe limit our analysis to the GDELT event database that records events (such as appeals for rights, ease of restrictions on political freedoms, protest, etc.), the date of the event, and the actors involved (which could be geographic, ethnic, religious, etc.), the country of the actors, the number of mentions of the event (the higher the mentions, the more important the event), and the average media tone associated with the event, which is a numeric value that can range from -100 (extremely negative tone) to +100 (extremely positive tone), with typical values between -10 and +10 and with zero indicating a neutral event. Our analyses focus on events from June 15, 2015, to September 24, 2022. Overall, we analyze more than 99 million events, where the major actors were from three large countries: India, China, and the United States. We also estimate an average daily tone for each of the three countries by constructing a weighted mean of the average tone of all the events recorded on that date, with the number of mentions as a weight for each event. Our primary objective is to identify the pattern of the daily weighted average tone of the events related to India, China, and the United States from 2015 to 2022. To achieve this, we fit a Bayesian regression with a cubic spline and seven knots and plot the posterior mean with 95% intervals of the weighted average daily tone.
Media Tone: China vs. USA vs. IndiaOverall, we find that events related to China, an authoritarian country with severe restrictions on free media, have a relatively more positive tone than the tone of events in democracies such as India and the United States. However, since 2018, the tone of events related to China has begun a sharp downward trend. This change toward China was also observed in a 2021 Pew survey on Americans’ views toward China. It is also interesting to note a more positive trend in tone for India-related events since 2020, which remains steady and does not exhibit any sharp pattern.
(i) India’s relations with the United States, China, and RussiaIn our analysis of events related to India, China, the United States, and Russia, we focus on events where the prominent actor is India. Until late 2021, events related to India and Russia had a relatively more positive tone than those associated with India and the United States. and India and China. However, since late 2021, there has been a sharp reversal in the tone of events related to India and Russia. This is most likely a direct outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
We also find that the tone of events related to India and China had a sharp reversal during the Doklam crisis in 2017 when there was a military border standoff between the Indian Armed Forces and the People’s Liberation Army of China. This was in response to the Chinese constructing a road at the trijunction area of India-Bhutan-China. The border standoff lasted more than two months and ended only when the Chinese halted the road construction and troops from both sides withdrew from Doklam. There was a short recovery in late 2018, however, from early 2019 onwards, there has been a sharp reversal in tone which worsened at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Thereafter, India-China relations have continued to remain steady but at a historic low.
Concerning events related to India and the United States, we observe that their tone was steady and continuous until the middle of 2018, after which it started to fall. This downward trend continued until 2020 (the year of U.S. elections and the start of the pandemic), after which we observe a steady rise in the tone of events related to India and the United States.
(ii) Global realignment: China v. IndiaIn our analysis, we also reviewed events that relate India and China to the world’s top economies: Australia, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, the United States, and Russia. We include Pakistan (PAK) and Israel (ISR) for this analysis, as both countries are important actors in India’s foreign policy.
Over the entire period, the average tone of events that relate India to the major economies has remained somewhat similar, except for France and Israel, where there is a significant upward swing in the average tone after 2021. Not surprisingly, this reflects the dramatic improvements in India’s ties with Israel and France in recent years.
In contrast, since 2018, the average tone of events that relate China to the major economies has experienced a downward trend. In particular, the India-China gap in the average tone with Australia, Germany (DEU), France, and the United States widened after 2018. However, since 2020, the downward trend in the average tone of events has either reversed or remained constant. The most striking result of this analysis concerns Russia’s relations with India and China. We observe a sharp downward trend in the tone of events concerning Russia’s relations with both China and India between 2021 and 2022, which is most likely the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Broadly, the average tone of events that relate India to the major economies is higher compared to events that relate China to the major economies (in particular, Australia, Germany, France, and the United States); this gap has widened since 2018-2019. Results for Pakistan are along expected lines, as the tone of events covering its relations with China and India remain steady and unaffected by global events over time. Pakistan’s relations with China are significantly better than its relations with India, which have a systematic and significant negative tone.
ConclusionThe findings of our research suggest that events related to China (which has heavy-handed, authoritarian restrictions on all forms of media) have a relatively more positive tone than large federal democracies when it comes to media, such as India and the United States, which have a relatively free press. However, since 2018-2019, there has been a sharp downward trend in tone of events related to China, perhaps reflecting the changing view of China in the western world, particularly within the United States, and the former president’s political attack on China concerning its trade policy. However, in the last two years, we have observed a reversal in this trend, which could reflect an easing of the tension post-pandemic and change in the U.S. government.
When analyzing events that relate India and China to the top economies and Russia, we find a widening gap in the average tone of events. However, when it comes to Russia post-2021, there has been a sharp decline in the average tone of events for both China and India, perhaps an outcome of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Based on the average tone of events, the findings suggest a consistent realignment of the world’s top economies in their foreign relations concerning India and China, especially after 2018.
By Lucas Fox, Este Griffith, Tara Petronio
In 2022, The Hamilton Project continued its mission of advancing inclusive economic growth by conducting original research on policy-relevant issues, commissioning policy proposals from leading economic experts, and hosting events that brought together policymakers, academics, and businesspeople. This year, Hamilton Project research evaluated the economic policy response to the pandemic and its effects on inflation, labor market conditions in both the goods and service sectors, social insurance programs including the Child Tax Credit, and more. This review highlights 12 key data visualizations produced by The Hamilton Project that capture the spirit of its work in 2022.
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By Colby Galliher, Norman Eisen
It appears that the grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia may be about to recommend charges for election-denial attacks on the 2020 presidential contest in that state. But in addition to Georgia, Republican electors in multiple other states also allegedly issued false electoral slates similar to the one scrutinized by Fulton County prosecutors, reportedly at times at the direction of and in coordination with the Trump campaign.[1]
A survey of the seven states where Republican electors are reported to have met on December 14, 2020—the day the Electoral College convened to cast its votes for president—reveals a factual and legal basis for other state investigations of those officials who took the origins of the election denial movement to an extreme: potential criminal wrongdoing. The false electors signed their names to documents that claimed they were “duly elected and qualified” electors from their state (implying President Trump won the popular vote in their states, when he did not). Then those documents were submitted to Congress and the National Archives, raising the question of whether the false electors may have violated state laws in jurisdictions other than Georgia.
This essay summarizes the known facts surrounding the false electors’ activities in each of the seven states where false slates were created, as well as a sampling of potentially applicable state laws that may be implicated by the electors’ conduct.
We begin with Georgia, which offers the most advanced example of a state investigation. We then turn to four other states that may offer comparable circumstances for state investigations to be developed: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Those are the strongest cases.
We next turn to New Mexico and Pennsylvania. In those two states, the false electors added qualifiers to their certificates that attempt to condition the certificates’ legitimacy on favorable decisions in concurrent court challenges to the election results. In other words, the certificates purported only to take effect if Trump won his post-election litigation challenges. Those cases are not as strong. Finally, we conclude with a note about the federal criminal investigation and its relevance to parallel state review.
Georgia
Sixteen Republican electors allegedly met on December 14, 2020, at the Georgia state capitol and signed a certificate purporting to show President Trump’s electoral college victory in the state. Communications between the false electors and members of the Trump campaign, including Robert Sinners, the campaign’s election operations director for Georgia, indicate that campaign officials played a direct role in coordinating the false electors’ meeting and encouraged them to sign and submit their certificate with “complete secrecy.” The false electors’ conduct may implicate several Georgia laws that criminalize false statements and writings, false swearing, and forgery, among others.
The Georgia false electors and the Trump campaign officials who purportedly assisted them are currently under investigation by the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for their activities pertaining to the false electoral certificate in that state. The electors receiving target letters from Willis’s office suggests they face legal peril for their 2020 election conduct.
Arizona
Eleven Republican electors from the state of Arizona reportedly met on December 14, 2020, at the state party headquarters and attested in writing that they were “duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Arizona.” This false attestation may implicate Arizona’s laws on counterfeiting election results and forgery more broadly. Additionally, Arizona has also criminalized “knowingly caus[ing] or procur[ing]” someone, including oneself, to be registered as an elector when they are “not entitled to such registration.”
Two of the 11 Arizona electors, Chairwoman Nancy Cottle and Secretary Loraine B. Pellegrino, were subsequently subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee. The subpoenas sought “information about [their] role and participation in the purported slate of electors casting votes for Donald Trump and, to the extent relevant, [their] role in the events of January 6, 2021.”
Michigan
According to former Michigan Republican Party chair Laura Cox, the Trump campaign informed her that sixteen Republican electors allegedly sought to hide overnight in the state capitol to fulfill requirements under state law that electoral votes be cast in official chambers. The electors then apparently met on December 14, 2020 and signed a document claiming that they were “duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Michigan.”
In doing so, the false electors may have violated Michigan state laws barring the forgery of public records as well as more generally the creation, filing, or publication of false documents “with the intent to defraud.” Michigan’s attorney general referred the matter for federal investigation, and at least some of the false electors have received subpoenas.
Nevada
In Nevada, six Republican electors, including state party Chairman Michael McDonald, purportedly gathered at the state capitol at noon on December 14, 2020. They subsequently cast votes for Trump and asserted in writing that they were “duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Nevada.” This attestation may expose them to liability because Nevada state law makes it illegal to falsify “any record.” Nevada laws also prohibit individuals from performing the duties of public officials without authorization and legitimate public officials from “mak[ing]…a false certificate.”
All six false electors have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department for records relating to their plot. McDonald and a fellow false elector were previously subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee, and McDonald had his phone seized by the FBI under a search warrant.
Wisconsin
While Biden electors met in the state capitol on December 14, 2020, to cast their legitimate Electoral College votes, false electors for Trump convened in the same building and signed a certificate claiming a Trump victory just hours after the state Supreme Court verified Biden’s win. Similar to the certificates in the above-noted states, the Wisconsin false electors’ language claimed they were “the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Wisconsin.” Their signing of the false electoral slate may have exposed the false electors to liability under Wisconsin’s impersonation of a public officer statute, as well as running afoul of the state’s law governing presidential electors. Two of the 10 Wisconsin false electors were subpoenaed in early 2022 by the January 6 Committee.
We turn next to New Mexico and Pennsylvania, which appear to offer special features that may make state level investigation less compelling.
New Mexico
Allegedly meeting in the state capitol on December 14, 2020, former state party Chairwoman Deborah Maestas joined four other Republican electors in certifying New Mexico’s electoral results for Donald Trump, despite Biden’s decisive win in the state, “on the understanding that it might later be determined that [they] are the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of New Mexico.” In other words, the certificates purported only to take effect if Trump won his post-election litigation challenges that were ongoing at or after December 14.
Depending on the legal weight given to that caveat, the electors may have criminal exposure under state laws prohibiting perjury, falsification of election documents, falsely signing a certificate of registration, or even “offering to sign a certificate of registration when not a qualified elector.” Even if their exposure is found to be mitigated by the caveat, they may still be exposed under provisions criminalizing presidential electors’ failure to comply with statutory procedures set out in state law. Among these statutory procedures is “meet[ing] . . . in the office of the secretary of state . . . to vote by ballot for president and vice president of the United States and to certify the results of such election” (emphasis added)—a requirement that the false electors likely did not fulfill given the New Mexico secretary of state’s rejection of election denialism in 2020.
A state investigation is underway, and the state attorney general has made a referral to federal law enforcement. Maestas and another false elector received subpoenas for testimony from the January 6 Committee.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s 20 false electors—many of whom were Trump campaign and Republican state party officials—reportedly met in Harrisburg on December 14, 2020, signing a false certificate with the caveat: “on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania.” As noted above, this appears intended to allow the certificates to take effect if and only if Trump succeeded with litigation challenging the election after the signing of the certificates. That disclaimer may bear upon investigation to determine the application of state laws prohibiting perjury or barring interference with elections, including “conspir[ing] with others . . . in any manner to prevent a free and fair primary or election.” Two of the state’s false electors were subpoenaed in 2022 by the January 6 Committee.
Federal
The false electors’ scheme has reportedly become a central focus of the federal criminal investigation of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. And that facet of the Justice Department’s investigation is gaining steam, with news last week that Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the Justice Department’s investigations related to former President Trump, sent subpoenas to local officials in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona for their communications with the former president and his campaign during the 2020 election cycle and leading up to Trump’s departure from office.
Conclusion
The fact that the federal government is investigating the false electors’ scheme is no reason for local and state prosecutors not to. Parallel state and federal investigations are common, as seen in the ongoing investigation in Georgia. If 2023 brings a series of investigations in these states it will deal one more blow to the election denier movement, especially as it impacts presidential elections.
[1] The authors have written extensively about the former president’s and the false electors’ legal exposure in Georgia. See: https://www.brookings.edu/research/second-edition-fulton-county-georgias-trump-investigation/
By Christopher Miller
Ben S. Bernanke, distinguished senior fellow in Economic Studies, shared the 2022 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. “Through statistical analysis and historical source research,” the Nobel committee said, “Bernanke demonstrated how failing banks played a decisive role in the global depression of the 1930s. Bernanke’s research shows that bank crises can potentially have catastrophic consequences. This insight illustrates the importance of well-functioning bank regulation.”
In his Nobel lecture delivered in Stockholm on December 8, 2022, Bernanke summarized his work on how stress in credit markets leads to increases in the cost of borrowing and reduces availability of credit with consequential effects on the macro economy. He offered two case studies: the Depression—the subject of the work that the Nobel committee cited—and the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis, which hit while he was Federal Reserve chair. His analysis, Bernanke said, implies a need for effective regulation to make the financial system more resistant to shocks, a macroprudential perspective by policymakers, and adequate tools to fight crises when they happen.
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By Shibley Telhami, Stella M. Rouse
President Joe Biden has every reason to celebrate the midterm election results, especially now that Democrats have added a 51st member of the Senate with the reelection of Senator Rafael Warnock. As Michael Beschloss notes, Biden has enjoyed the strongest first-term midterm Congressional showing of any President in eighty-eight years. In that time, he is only the third president in his first midterm to gain or not lose Senate seats while losing fewer than 10 House seats (along with JFK after the Cuban Missile Crisis and George W. Bush after 9/11). But as our research shows, this election was as much about Trump as about Biden.
In many previous midterms, the results followed the president’s approval rating. So why didn’t Biden’s unpopularity hurt the Democratic congressional ticket as much as predicted? Our recent University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll post-election iteration offers some insight: nearly as many voters, 14%, said the midterm election was a referendum on Donald Trump as those who said it was a referendum on Joe Biden, 17%, with the difference falling within the 3.7% margin of error; and those who said it was the former tended to vote for Democratic candidates, while those who said the latter tended to vote for Republican candidates. To be sure, there was partisan variation, with more Republicans, 25%, saying it was a referendum on Biden than Democrats, 18%, saying it was a referendum on Trump. But importantly, Independents were nearly equally divided, with 15% saying the election was a referendum on Trump and 17% saying it a referendum on Biden.
In other words, Trump may have neutralized the impact of Biden’s low approval ratings. Indeed, it is unprecedented that a defeated former president remains such a central part of American politics—even seen by many of his supporters as the elected president. It is hard for many to evaluate Biden and his presidency without referencing Trump.
The following bar graphs illustrate the importance of the current and the former president in these elections:
It is also notable that nearly half of voters in the midterm election, 47%, said that Donald Trump hurt the Republican congressional candidates in the midterms, including one third of Republicans:
This perception is bolstered by other analyses that showed that Trump-backed candidates tended to be demonstrably less successful than other Republican candidates. Two critical Senate races—Pennsylvania and Georgia—where the outcome would have changed control of the chamber involved particularly weak, Trump-selected candidates. In contrast, these weak candidates faced strong Democratic candidates, Rafael Warnock in Georgia, and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, even as the latter’s candidacy was somewhat weakened by the stroke that he suffered months before the election. There is plenty of evidence showing that many Pennsylvania voters saw Republican candidate, Mehmet Oz, as a carpet bagger, and Herschel Walker as unfit to be a US Senator. Both candidates were endorsed by Trump. It is also clear that Walker received far less support than the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, who had rejected Trump’s urging to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. It’s worth noting that this gap could have been a function of Warnock’s popularity, compared to Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor.
Still, most voters didn’t see the election as a referendum on Trump or Biden, as most said they voted on issues; and as we noted prior to the election, abortion and democracy were high on the voters’ agenda even as inflation topped that agenda. Those pre-election findings were reinforced by our post-election findings: voters’ pre-election assessment of top issues closely matched their post-election ranking, affirming the relative electoral resonance of these issues, even as their importance varied somewhat across the partisan divide:
Both President Biden and the Democratic party have much to celebrate given the historic outcome of the midterm election—particularly in an election cycle where the expected outcome for the president’s party was predicted to be bleak. Without taking away from the accomplishments of the Biden administration, the outcome was likely more a result of the rejection of Donald Trump and many of his selected candidates than Biden’s achievements, which, in any case, failed to help the President’s approval ratings before and after the election. Certainly, polls, including ours, have also shown the centrality of the abortion issue, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the unprecedented high visibility and constant presence of a defeated former president, claiming to have won an election he lost, reduced the impact of Biden’s low approval ratings, as those who saw the election as a referendum on Biden were almost equaled by those who saw it as a referendum on Trump.
By Marta E. Wosińska, Richard G. Frank
Generic drugs are essential for bringing price competition to prescription drug markets and providing a moderating force on drug spending. They make up 92% of prescriptions, but only 16% of invoice-level spending in the US.
This price competition relies on a determination by FDA that generic products are therapeutically equivalent to a brand name drug. That determination enables the generic drug to be automatically substituted at the pharmacy counter for the brand-name product. This in turn allows lower priced generics to quickly take market share from the more expensive brand. Therapeutic equivalence rating also unlocks competition for physician-administered drugs: drugs rated as such are combined into a single Medicare reimbursement code with the branded version, which drives down reimbursement of the brand and, with it, shifts utilization to the less expensive generics.
Despite the competitive importance of therapeutic equivalence, FDA does not assign therapeutic equivalence (TE) codes at approval to all eligible drugs, thereby leaving “money on the table” and disadvantaging American consumers.
In this blog, we explain FDA regulations and practices for assigning TE codes, describe how the current FDA process to assigning TE codes fails for many sterile injectable drugs, and propose ways in which either FDA or Congress could address the existing delays in TE assessments. In our view, current legislative proposals that would set a 180-day deadline for FDA review of Citizen Petitions requesting TE codes represent an important improvement in promoting competition in the prescription drug market. However, FDA should go further by incorporating TE determinations at approval.
FDA regulations and practices governing therapeutic equivalence determinationTherapeutically equivalent generic products have the same active drug ingredient as the reference brand name drug, in the same amount, dosage form and route of administration. They are also bioequivalent to the branded product, meaning there is no significant difference in rate and extent of the active ingredient in the body after administration. But therapeutic equivalence allows for differences in characteristics such as inactive ingredients, shape, packaging, and expiration date.
If FDA determines a drug product to be therapeutically equivalent to other pharmaceutically equivalent products, the Agency will assign the drug a so-called A rating. Generally, solid oral dosage forms (e.g., tablets and capsules) will receive an AB rating. Drug formulations with no known or suspected bioequivalence problems are designated as AA, AM, AO, AP, or AT, depending on the dosage form. For example, AP is reserved for parenteral (injectable) drugs and AO for injectable oil solutions. The TE code is almost always assigned at approval if the drug is approved under the Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) pathway, which is the standard approval pathway for generics.
While therapeutic equivalence allows for differences in inactive ingredients, FDA requires injectable drugs to contain, with some exceptions, the same inactive ingredients (Q1) in the same concentration (Q2) as the reference listed drug (branded product) if they want to obtain market authorization using the ANDA pathway. This is known as the ANDA Q1/Q2 sameness requirement.
The Q1/Q2 sameness requirement can create barriers to entry if inactive ingredients are part of the branded product’s patenting strategy. If a generic manufacturer wants to get around patents involving product formulation listing inactive ingredients, they must sidestep the ANDA pathway. In those situations, the FDA directs them to what is called the 505(b)(2) pathway to approval, with review done by the Office of New Drugs, rather than Office of Generic Drugs. This move will put the applicant in the domain of the Prescription Drug User Fee Agreement (PDUFA), which comes with higher user fees but better turnaround times than the Generic Drug User Fee Agreement (GDUFA). Obtaining a TE rating will remove the drug from the obligation to pay ongoing PDUFA product user fees.
But unlike with ANDAs, FDA does not automatically assign TE codes to eligible applicants who use the 505(b)(2) pathway. Instead, the FDA asks generic companies to file Citizen Petitions post approval.
FDA performance with reviewing 505(b)(2) therapeutic equivalence determination requestsTo assess how the 505(b)(2) pathway is currently functioning for these drugs, we undertook a review of Citizen Petitions seeking an A-rating. We identified 22 such Citizen Petitions. As can be seen here, these petitions represent 28 drugs, all of them injectables. Of those, 25 are seeking an AP rating, two an AB rating and one an AO rating. Of the 28, 20 are only approved for intravenous route of administration, which should automatically qualify them for a biowaiver and for what should be an automatic AP rating if otherwise the drug is pharmaceutically equivalent. The remaining eight drugs have either a different or an additional parenteral route of administration: subcutaneous or intramuscular injection. These routes may require additional data to substantiate they are eligible for an A rating.
FDA has been very slow to take action on these 505(b)(2) Citizen Petitions, as illustrated in the figure below. Of the A-rating requests 22 petitioners submitted, the only petition granted by FDA was for Xellia’s voriconazole for injection. That petition took 654 days to resolve. FDA denied one petition because the reference brand drug was discontinued. Four were withdrawn by petitioners, including one where the petitioner discontinued marketing the drug. The others are still in queue, with most having already waited two or three years.
FDA’s long delays in handling Citizen Petitions have failed to promote competition, keeping costs higher for consumers and purchasers. The cost of these delays is underscored by a recently announced change to the way Medicare pays for these products. In November 2022, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced in guidance its intention to issue separate reimbursement codes for the kinds of unrated generic 505(b)(2)s drugs that we describe in this blog. CMS had been including those drugs in the same reimbursement (HCPCS) code as the branded product, which meant lower reimbursement for the brand and therefore an incentive to providers to switch to higher provider margin 505(b)(2) alternatives.
The CMS guidance—which now legally aligns the multisource drug determination with FDA’s TE determination—means that the benefits of competition are lost unless these companies obtain A-ratings, thus increasing the importance of FDA process to assign TE ratings to these products.
Policy solutions to expediting review of 505(b)(2) therapeutic equivalence determination requestsIn responding to petitioners, FDA has indicated that addressing these 505(b)(2) TE petitions falls behind other Agency priorities. One follow-up letter from September 2020 stated that “FDA has been unable to reach a decision on your petition due to the need to address other Agency priorities. (…) We will respond to your petition as soon as possible given the numerous demands on the Agency’s resources.” The petition is still pending.
In this section, we discuss three ways to accelerate consideration of these TE petitions: user fee process improvements, a Congressional mandate, and greater executive branch engagement.
User fee process improvementTypically, review process inefficiencies and resource constraints are resolved through user fees. FDA and industry identify inefficient processes and then agree on proposed process changes, funding, and performance commitments.
Generic drug applicants are not at the negotiating table for the branded drug program that funds their 505(b)(2) review. Additionally, industry participants in the negotiations lack incentives to support quick TE ratings for competitor products that will erode their sales.
Unfortunately, TE rating requests by 505(b)(2) applicants sit in a gray area that falls in between the two main user fee domains. Section 505(b)(2) TE applicants are really generic companies, which typically use processes that fall in the GDUFA domain. However, the 505(b)(2) pathway is funded by PDUFA for which TE petitioners are typically not at the negotiating table. Any additional TE review work in the 505(b)(2) process, however minimal, could jeopardize FDA’s performance on PDUFA timelines, compromising commitments that FDA has made to the stakeholders that are at the table in that process. For these reasons, we do not see changes to PDUFA as a likely remedy for this problem.
Although implementing a by-request TE rating review into PDUFA may be unrealistic, creating a new user fee under GDUFA may be an option. Such fees would provide funding and performance goals for FDA. However, it would be challenging, but not impossible, to align a GDUFA TE review with the PDUFA 505(b)(2) review. Additionally, this policy direction would necessarily be a long-term solution because the next iteration of user fees will not be in place until 2027.
Congressional mandateAs we indicated above, the problem at hand is a resource and priority issue, not a lack-of-mandate issue. In the current user fee climate, the Citizen Petition process is FDA’s preferred pathway, but Congress can mandate FDA to expedite processing these reviews. A bill establishing 180-day review timelines for Citizen Petitions is currently included in the riders that Congress may pass in with the year-end package.
Giving FDA a timeline would be a step in the right direction. We would also recommend additional appropriations to address resource constraints. Those appropriations would likely be modest given the relatively low volume and simplicity of these TE requests—recall that the overwhelming share of these drugs are intravenous only and therefore should qualify for so-called biowaivers, which make the bioequivalence aspect of the TE code determination automatic. However, even with funding and a Congressional mandate, we worry priorities may still remain elsewhere.
Executive branch engagementEven if a 180-day Citizen Petition review timeline is enacted into law, post-approval TE code determinations via Citizen Petitions represent an unnecessary delay for the small number of 505(b)(2)s that might request it upon approval. Such delays are inconsistent with the spirit of President Biden’s July 2021 Executive Order on Competition, which encouraged policy measures to address drug pricing.
The White House can encourage FDA to improve its approach to TE ratings by integrating the assignment of TE ratings into approval process of future 505(b)(2)s instead of requiring post-approval Citizen Petitions. For dealing with the backlog of Citizen Petitions and for incorporating by-request determinations into the approval process, FDA could seek additional funds through the President’s Budget—a move that should be embraced by the Administration given the budget request’s alignment with President Biden’s executive order.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.
By Nicol Turner Lee, Yolanda Jinxin Ma, Addisu Lashitew, Jane Munga
Conversations around the tech industry typically focus on the United States, largely ignoring Africa despite its status as the world’s second largest continent. Over decades, Africa has increased the number of residents that are connected to the internet. Researchers have estimated that at least a quarter of the population of Africa has internet access, with some perspective that three quarters of residents will be connected by 2030. While the improvement in these numbers are good, they still rank far behind other continents when it comes to technological advancements.
Access to mobile devices is a large contributor to internet access and has also generated a significant portion of jobs (about 1.7 million) and roughly contributing 8.5% to the economy of Africa. Additionally, mobile health applications have become critical in raising the quality of life in many African countries as they supported many medically vulnerable individuals and families during and before the pandemic.
Despite the progression of online access, the digital divide in Africa stifles the universal adoption and use of existing and emerging technologies. In this episode of the TechTank Podcast, co-host Dr. Nicol Turner Lee speaks with guests Yolanda Jinxin Ma, Addisu Shaw, and Jane Munga to understand the digital transformation in Africa and the future challenges with universal adoption and use.
You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the TechTank podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Acast.
By Brad McNally
Coinciding closely with the release of the National Security Strategy (NSS) was the release of the United States Coast Guard Strategy (CGS). This was the first high-level service strategy document released by the Coast Guard under new Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan. It built upon the themes of “tomorrow looks different, so will we” and “readiness, resilience, and capability” that she laid out when she took over as the Coast Guard’s senior officer this summer. The CGS lays out a robust strategic framework based on three cornerstones: transforming the Coast Guard’s workforce, sharpening its competitive edge, and advancing its mission excellence.
The NSS and CGS depict no shortage of global challenges, including climate change, energy security, transnational criminal organizations, challenges to the rules-based order, natural disasters, and geopolitical changes. While many of these challenges are not new, they are dynamic and evolving. The Coast Guard has long been operating in the high latitudes — the Arctic and Antarctic — and is one of the few government entities which does so consistently. As the climate changes and the Arctic becomes more accessible, there will be new challenges related to tourism, natural resource extraction, new shipping lanes, and an increased military presence from other nations looking for influence in the region. Recent incidents show that the maritime commons are becoming more contested: efforts by transnational criminal organizations such as drug cartels to exploit the vastness of the oceans for illicit means, and actions taken by foreign-flagged vessels fishing far from where they launched, that were dangerous and not in compliance with international norms. The Coast Guard must remain committed to providing the exceptional service the nation expects in legacy missions such as search and rescue, law enforcement, disaster response, waterways management, and industry engagement. Yet, it is also adapting to meet new and in some cases yet unknown challenges in non-escalatory ways.
The NSS dedicates an entire section to “investing in our strength.” Due to its multi-mission nature conducting humanitarian response, environmental stewardship, law enforcement, and regulatory work, its membership in the intelligence community, and its status as a branch of the armed forces, the CGS lays out a strong case for the Coast Guard’s unique capability to build and sustain partnerships at multiple levels internationally and domestically. With the NSS’s heavy focus on partnerships and cooperation and the Indo-Pacific Strategy specifically mentioning the Coast Guard by name, there is no doubt the Coast Guard will be expected to do more in this arena. This will be especially true in Oceania where the Coast Guard’s unique capabilities in search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, and small vessel operations make it a natural partner for many small island nations in the region. The Coast Guard has capitalized on the recent arrival of new fast response cutters by deploying the boats throughout the region to bolster foreign partner relations and combat illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing. Funding from Congress for additional cutters, training teams, local liaisons, and mission support needs is required to create a sustained presence in the region and realize the outsized impact the Coast Guard can have on the NSS’s stated goal of “promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Mirroring the NSS’s focus on “investing in our people” and “modernizing and strengthening our military,” Fagan states early in the CGS, “Delivering improvements for our Coast Guard workforce is my top priority.” Revolutionizing talent management and recruiting, modernizing learning, and improving healthcare and family services are the CGS’s focus for transforming its workforce. The Coast Guard must seize the opportunity to revamp its training systems with a move toward more virtual in-person and virtual self-paced training. Doing so will both help deal with austere budget realities and deliver the training necessary to operate and maintain increasingly complex systems.
While training system improvements will pay long-term dividends, this is only true if there is a full workforce to train. Recruiting is an especially urgent issue as the Coast Guard is suffering from some of the same challenges as the Department of Defense (DOD) in fielding the all-volunteer force. Targeted bonuses and likely increases in 2023 to basic pay and housing allowances will help with recruiting and retention, however these are unlikely to solve the Coast Guard’s already existing personnel shortages. With an estimated 75% of the target population not eligible for military service, the Coast Guard is increasingly competing with the DOD and the civilian sector for the same personnel. The Coast Guard must act aggressively to ensure recruiting efforts can meet mission requirements. While the service has already more closely aligned its medical criteria for accession with the DOD, it should look for innovative ways to help more people who want to serve in the Coast Guard able to realize the opportunity. One area that should be explored immediately is something akin to the Army’s Future Soldier Prep Course, designed to help potential recruits with obesity or trouble on the Armed Forces Qualification Test meet the requirements to attend boot camp.
Harnessing technology to “increase security, prosperity, and values of the American people” comes up several times in the NSS. On this front, the Coast Guard has significant work to do but also tremendous opportunities. The CGS emphasizes investing in critical technology and critical infrastructure, a future-focused integrated approach, expanding a culture of innovation, and leveraging data to sharpen the service’s competitive edge. Although partnering with the DOD to operationalize new technology can be advantageous, the Coast Guard must find its own innovative ways to employ autonomy in the air, on the surface, and below the surface. The service can’t be paralyzed by the rapid increase in autonomous capabilities. It should move quickly to finalize policy and begin fielding more autonomous capabilities, even if only in small field trials. The longer it delays, the further behind it will fall, and the less it will be able to realize technological advantages when faced with challenges.
On the cyber front, it is now clear there is a real and persistent threat in the cyber domain that is here to stay. As the NSS highlights, even in future conflicts not contested in the maritime domain or even near American shores, there is an avenue by which our adversaries can strike deep within our borders. The waterways, ports, navigation aids, vessels, vehicles, and users collectively known as the Maritime Transportation System, account for 90% of global trade travel, $5.4 trillion of annual commerce in the United States, and 31 million American jobs, per the American Association of Port Authorities. It is vulnerable to cyberattacks in ways not previously seen, and must be defended.
Dealing with this threat is one of the greatest challenges to the Coast Guard’s “Always Ready” posture. Previously this meant being ready and responding in the air, on shore, and at sea. It now must include virtually, which is a big leap for the Coast Guard and industry. Given current cyber threats from Russia and China, the Coast Guard should continue investing in cyber security for its own internal networks and accelerate working with industry to strengthen cyber resilience in the larger Maritime Transportation System.
The Coast Guard must maintain its existing strong network of domestic relationships at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels, which are paramount to national security. It must maintain legacy capabilities while developing new ways of operating and uses of technology that meet emerging challenges. And it must safely coexist with adversarial entities who may not share the same level of adherence to international norms. Underpinning all of this are multiple long-term acquisition programs to replace its aging surface fleet, sustain aviation capabilities, improve C5I systems (command, control, communications, cyber, and intelligence), and replace or repair shore infrastructure, including aging buildings, hangars, and piers. To successfully execute all of this, the Coast Guard will need continued support from Congress in an austere budget environment, and it will need to manage these acquisitions — which are some of the largest in the service’s history — effectively.
The CGS lays out an aggressive path to ensure the service can meet the challenges associated with rapid technology, workforce, and geopolitical change. However, it will also be necessary to keep the Coast Guard postured to support the NSS and at the forefront of saving lives, protecting the waterways, defending the country, and remaining “Always Ready.”
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government or the Brookings Institution.
By Jacob Taylor, Daniel Bicknell, Anthony F. Pipa
Communities around the world are increasingly recognizing that breaking down silos and leveraging shared resources and interdependencies across economic, social, and environmental issues can help accelerate progress on multiple issues simultaneously. As a framework for organizing local development priorities, the world’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) uniquely combine a need for broad technical expertise with an opportunity to synergize across domains—all while adhering to the principle of leaving no one behind. For local leaders attempting to tackle intersecting issues using the SDGs, one underpinning question is how to support new forms of collaboration to maximize impact and progress?
In early May, over 100 people across the East Central Florida (ECF) region in the U.S. participated in “Partnership for the Goals: Creating a Resilient and Thriving Community,” a two-day multi-stakeholder convening spearheaded by a team of local leaders from the East Central Florida Regional Resilience Collaborative (ECFR2C), the Central Florida Foundation, the City of Orlando, Florida for Good, Orange County, and the University of Central Florida. The convening grew out of a multi-year resilience planning process that leveraged the SDGs as a framework for tackling local economic, social, and environmental priorities all at once.
To move from community-wide planning to community-wide action, the organizers experimented with a 17 Rooms process—a new approach to accelerating collaborative action for the SDGs pioneered by the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings and The Rockefeller Foundation. We collaborated with the ECF local organizing team and, in the process, spotted a range of more broadly relevant insights that we describe here.
The SDGs as a helpful framework for action In 2019, recognizing the potential of the SDGs for defining local priorities and spurring local action, the ECF leadership team decided to put the goals at the center of a multi-year effort to foster regional resilience. In collaboration with 41 partners, ECFR2C launched a “Strategic Resilience Action Plan“ in early 2022. The action plan outlined the drivers of community resilience across the SDGs, including safe and affordable housing; safe open spaces; health care access; food access and security; access to energy and clean water; economic mobility; and safe, clean, reliable, and affordable transportation. The action plan designated practical objectives to strengthen these drivers (e.g., through a regional greenhouse gas emissions inventory) and techniques (e.g., dashboards) to track progress. In parallel, the Central Florida Foundation developed a framework of five priority areas for targeted impact fund investment and action.
Using 17 Rooms to enable multi-disciplinary and community-wide collaborationAfter engaging with a full range of community stakeholders and issues to develop the comprehensive action plan, the ECF leadership team was looking for a cross-cutting, community-wide process to spur collaboration, akin to the collective impact model. The ECF organizing team wanted a straightforward way to convene around the SDGs, to bring natural—and sometimes unconventional—allies together with enough diversity to generate new ideas and pathways for local cooperation, collaboration, and innovation for advancing shared priorities.
17 Rooms has proven useful at multiple scales of collaborative action, from a global flagship process that promotes targeted collaborations among global leaders under each SDG to “17-X” experiments by universities, regions, and nations that unlock collaborative action within their institutions or among partners. At the heart of the model, participants assemble into 17 curated working groups (or “Rooms,” one per SDG) to brainstorm practical next steps that they could take in the next 12 to 18 months to advance priorities within each SDG. Action proposals are then shared across Rooms to surface opportunities for practical collaboration across goals.
Taking the next step, not the perfect stepThe ECF 17 Rooms process was held on day two of the two-day “Partnership for the Goals” convening, following a series of informational seminars on the state of local efforts to address SDG issues on day one. After an introductory plenary session, participants gathered in their assigned SDG Rooms for an in-depth two-hour discussion to identify practical priorities and actions that could be taken to move things forward in their goal.
The focus on taking practical next steps urged participants to avoid overly abstract or theoretical conversations about what perfect looks like or what others should be doing to advance an issue. The 12 to 18-month time horizon for action provided enough scope to encourage next steps that were “big enough to make a difference, but sized right to get done” within the next calendar year or budget cycle.
“big enough to make a difference, but sized right to get done”
The composition of each Room was curated to blend participants with similar interests but varied professional expertise and resources, with the aim of sparking actions that spanned beyond the scope of just one organization or one type of organization. Room participants were challenged to find where their comparative advantage could contribute to their Room’s action agenda, whether they were a businessperson in Orlando or a government employee from the Space Coast. Shared responsibility, “leaving your institutional agendas at the door,” and “breaking from business as usual” emerged as recurring themes as Rooms hashed out proposals for action.
After their within-Room Meetings, participants visited one other Room, drawing on their own professional expertise to help test, validate, and strengthen that Room’s actions. Finally, the closing plenary followed a fun and energetic “rapid report-out” session, in which each Room had 90 seconds to share emerging ideas with other Rooms to identify opportunities for collaboration. ECF organizers compiled these ideas and are working across all Rooms to support achieving these actions.
Action, insight, and communityHow did the local 17 Rooms process help ECF leaders advance their work? Three forms of outputs seemed to stand out, and were similar to some of the experiences from other 17 Rooms processes:
- Concrete actions beyond the scope of one organization. Action proposals ranged from multistakeholder efforts to establish baseline equity data for the region to expanding broadband access as a way to help alleviate extreme poverty. The process surfaced exciting cross-Room collaborations, too. For example, Room 1 (SDG1: No Poverty) and Room 8 (SDG8: Decent Work and Economic Growth) coordinated a seminar series explaining the implications of the scheduled minimum wage increase on reduction of public benefits (dubbed the “Fiscal Cliff”) for businesses and employees.
- Novel insights through a common language. The SDGs provided a common language and framework to help each participant understand that what they work on has a place in a larger context of community-wide action. For example, participants’ diverse perspectives on the reasons for the shifting nature of work helped Room 8 co-leads consider new ways to support more meaningful work, such as directing public resources toward job-seeking services or promoting employee ownership initiatives. Several Room co-leads even committed to identifying and branding the SDGs associated with their organization and rewriting their own organization’s strategic plan using the SDGs.
- Cross-disciplinary communities. The 17 Rooms process provided a neutral space for participants to build new relationships across professional and geographical silos. In the days and weeks following the main event, the local leadership group fielded numerous requests from participants to connect with other participants from different Rooms. For instance, a coalition of members from Rooms 2, 11, 13, 14 and 15 has connected and aligned on actions to create land trusts in ECF that will consider climate impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and sustainable agriculture. One participant in Room 3 commented that 17 Rooms provided “knowledge … of additional resources available and … a sense of shared responsibility … that we are not alone.”
Above all, ECF’s 17 Rooms exercise fostered a sense of excitement among participants. This appeared to be driven by a feeling that ownership and representation within the global framework of the SDGs. 17 Rooms worked as a catalyst for a holistic, community-wide network of SDG-committed local actors across multiple organizations throughout the region. A focus on practical next steps helped translate the region’s medium- to long-term strategic priorities for sustainable development into practical projects, learnings, and partnerships.
In his remarks to conclude the two-day convening, James Bacchus, a distinguished university professor at UCF and former member of Congress, argued that the outcomes of the day’s 17 Rooms exercise demonstrated grassroots democracy in action. At its core, grassroots democracy is about agency—about each citizen having a part to play in shaping their own society. Professor Bacchus described the 17 Rooms exercise as a valuable platform for enabling local collaboration and innovative action toward this vision for the people of East Central Florida.
By Elijah Asdourian, Alexander Conner, Louise Sheiner, Lorae Stojanovic
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
Growing supply of government debt modestly increased neutral ratesLong-run neutral interest rates rose after the global financial crisis and during the pandemic, find Thiago Ferreira and Carolyn Davin of the Federal Reserve Board. Using a structural model of advanced economies, they estimate that from 2008 to 2019, neutral rates rose between 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points in the U.S., U.K., Euro area, and Canada. Neutral rates rose faster over the pandemic, with the U.S. and U.K. seeing roughly half-point increases from 2020 to 2022. The growing supply of government debt during the pandemic has exerted the most upward pressure on neutral rates, accounting for almost all the increase. Global financial spillovers and demographics were the most significant drags, although components such as productivity had a larger effect during the pandemic. Overall, these neutral rate estimates fall in the middle of the ranges communicated by the Fed, Bank of England, and European Central Bank, and slightly above the Bank of Canada’s range. The authors note that excluded factors, like heightened uncertainty and trade disruptions from the war in Ukraine, would likely depress neutral rates if they persist.
Estimates of ‘missing workers’ due to pandemic are overstatedSince the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the labor force participation rate has declined and payroll employment has fallen below its pre-2020 trend, leading some to argue that the American economy has 5.8 million “missing jobs.” Bart Hobijn of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Ayşegül Şahin from the University of Texas at Austin argue that most of those jobs are not actually missing, but instead the result of a counterfactual that assumes short-run upward pressure on labor force participation and payroll employment in 2019 would continue through 2022. The authors note that this would have brought the unemployment rate down to 2.3%, which they argue is “unreasonable” and contradicts professional forecasts of the unemployment rate from the months before the pandemic. After accounting for trends in the business cycle, as well as long-term downward trends in both the labor force participation rate and population growth, the authors determine that the number of “missing jobs” that can be attributed to the pandemic is about 810,000.
Pandemic caused a wave of excess retirementsAs of October 2022, labor force participation rates were nearly 1½ percentage points below pre-pandemic levels, with an increase in retirees accounting for nearly all the shortfall, according to an analysis of Current Population Survey microdata by Joshua Montes, Christopher Smith, and Juliana Dajon of the Federal Reserve Board. After controlling for pre-pandemic trends, more than half the increases in the retired share of the population are from retirements that would not have happened in absence of the pandemic. Whites, the college-educated, and individuals above age 65 were overrepresented among the excess retirees, which the authors speculate might be due to the larger financial cushion these groups possess. The authors expect that excess retirements will fade into expected retirements “as those who retired early during the pandemic reach ages when they would have normally retired” while the retired share of the population will remain persistently elevated due to demographic trends.
Chart of the week: Yield curve is invertingData courtesy of the U.S. Department of the Treasury
Quote of the week:“Typically, you could expect inflation to get closer to our target with extra time. One reason is that we have raised interest rates already by quite a bit and we’ve said we’ll raise them again. This does not have an immediate effect on inflation, but over the next one or two years those higher interest rates will dampen demand, reduce expenditure, and therefore reduce the ability of firms to charge high prices and in turn limit the scope of unsustainable wage increases. So a basic reason why inflation will be closer to our target is the actions of our monetary policy. We also do think that we will not experience the same energy inflation every year,” says Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank.
“But let me also say, we do think there will be a second round of inflation….[M]any sectors need to raise their prices because their costs have gone up. Many workers also have so far suffered a big reduction in their living standards, but we expect them to receive bigger pay increases next year and also in 2024 and 2025. These bigger pay increases will support expenditure and will also raise prices. That is why it will take some time to return to our 2% target. So the second round effects will drive inflation next year and in 2024.”
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By Daniel S. Hamilton
Russia’s relentless barrage of missile and drone attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks signals a horrific escalation of its multi-front war. Russian President Vladimir Putin first wanted to take over the country. Now he wants to shut it down.
Failing on the battlefield, Putin is stepping up his assaults on Ukrainian society. In so doing, he is changing the very nature of the war. Russian forces are committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. They have killed thousands of civilians. They are trafficking in children. They are bombing hospitals, schools, homes, and factories. They have targeted subways, railways, and highways. Their hackers sow disinformation and have infiltrated government and financial institutions. Moscow is doing what it can to destroy, degrade, or disrupt the flows of energy, food, water, medicines, goods, services, data, and information that sustain Ukrainian life. These attacks are evidence that the Kremlin is now implementing a recently developed approach known as Strategic Operation for the Destruction of Critically Important Targets, or SODCIT. This concept targets the critical societal functions of a society, rather than just its military forces.
The Ukrainian people have won global admiration by refusing to back down in the face of Russia’s onslaughts. They are determined to persevere in what their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, calls “a war of strength and resilience.” Ukrainian forces have won back over half of their territory lost to Russia since February.
Nonetheless, challenges off the battlefield threaten to erase Ukraine’s frontline gains. The World Bank projects Ukraine’s economy to shrink by 35% this year. Inflation looks to spike to 30%. Ukraine’s health system is “facing its darkest days in the war so far,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Nearly half of Ukraine’s energy grid was knocked out by Russia’s recent strikes. Practically all big thermal and hydroelectric power plants have been damaged. People across the country are suffering from serious degradation of essential services, including access to clean water, sanitation, fuel, and electricity. Regions are implementing rolling blackouts.
The dangers of a humanitarian disaster are very real. Six million Ukrainians are now displaced within their country, and an additional 7.8 million people have sought refuge elsewhere. This is already the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, and the WHO warns that three million more Ukrainians are likely to leave their homes this winter.
Don’t ask, “when will this end?” Ask “how will this continue?”As the war drags on, weary pundits and politicians are fond of asking, “When will this end?” We will do better by asking ourselves, “How will this continue?” because it is likely to get worse before it gets better. Prospects for a near-term settlement, or even a patchy cease-fire, are dim. Putin is doubling down, not giving up.
Instead of pondering abstract endgames, Kyiv and its partners must focus on what they can do specifically, now, to prevent the conflict from spreading. One important step is to prioritize the type of military assistance that will address Putin’s revised tactics. Tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, and anti-tank rocket launchers remain important to the war on the ground. They are Ukraine’s sword. Now Ukraine needs a shield: an integrated air and missile defense system that can thwart Putin’s aerial assaults.
The United States and its allies are moving in this direction. They have provided advanced surface-to-air missile systems, shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems, and self-propelled anti-aircraft gun systems. In addition to providing more of the same, they need to give the Ukrainians even more capable systems.
A second urgent need is to move from on-the-fly assistance to more structured and sustainable long-term support. Steps are being taken on the military front. The Pentagon is standing up a new joint forces command in Germany, called the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, to train and equip Ukraine’s military for what is likely to be a long haul. The European Union’s Military Assistance Mission will also train Ukrainian forces, and its European Peace Facility (EPF) continues to finance arms deliveries. However, those transfers have already exhausted nearly all of the EPF’s €5.7 billion budget, originally intended to last until 2027. Either a dedicated Ukraine support fund needs to be established, or the fund needs to be replenished. EU leaders are discussing a plan to add another €5.5 billion to the kitty.
Strengthening Ukraine’s resilienceMilitary efforts are only part of what is needed to help Ukraine win a war that is now as much about strengthening resilience as about defending territory. Non-military support has been a nine-month scramble to address urgent humanitarian needs, patch damaged infrastructure, and support ongoing Ukrainian government operations and emergency services. Yet Western officials admit that they failed to anticipate Moscow’s more expansive tactics, even though Zelensky has warned that “the financial frontline for Ukraine is now as important as the frontline on the battlefield.”
The Biden administration has pledged an additional $53 million-worth of equipment to help Ukraine repair its energy infrastructure, and is pressing others to give similar aid. But it is now clear that ad hockery will no longer do; a more sustainable effort is required. Washington and other allies are looking to set up a group to coordinate on energy infrastructure, much like the U.S.-initiated Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which coordinates arms shipments among dozens of countries. While this is an important step, consideration might be given to embedding coordination on energy within a broader resilience coordination support mechanism, since disruption is not limited to the energy sector alone.
Progress could be made at a donor conference slated to be held December 13 in Paris to bolster Ukraine’s civilian resilience. Discussions are also under way to create a financial coordination platform, perhaps under the auspices of the G-7, co-chaired by the United States, the EU, and Ukraine, and including international financial institutions, to coordinate financial assistance to Ukraine and prioritize immediate and long-term recovery needs. Robust anti-corruption efforts will be essential, given Ukraine’s dismal record on this front.
Stopping the conflict’s spread also means stemming the waves of disruption that Moscow is unleashing beyond Ukraine. NATO has so far shielded its troops from Putin’s war. The same cannot be said for NATO’s societies. Putin has been clear that he is intent on exacerbating social and economic problems that will “split” European societies, “inevitably lead to populism … and a change of the elites in the short term,” and weaken European support for Ukraine. Russian gas and oil flows have slowed to a trickle, and Moscow has possibly sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. European societies face more than price spikes, cold apartments, shuttered factories, and job losses: An analysis by The Economist concluded that the energy crunch is likely to cause over 100,000 deaths in Europe this year – more than the number of Ukrainian soldiers who have died so far.
Putin has more arrows in his quiver. Moscow is generating surges of Ukrainian refugees that threaten to swamp Ukraine and its neighbors. It is disrupting critical flows of food and other commodities to countries around the world. It uses Ukraine as a testing ground for its cyberwarfare capabilities. If something works there, Moscow takes it on the road. The precursor to the SolarWinds attack in the United States, for instance, was the NotPetya attack in Ukraine. Russian cyberattacks on Ukrainian command and control in February ended up disabling tens of thousands of communications terminals outside the country. In September, Russia’s cyber-military unit Sandworm launched disruptive malware it had used against Ukraine at Polish-based logistics hubs. What happens in Ukraine doesn’t stay in Ukraine.
Needed: A strategy of shared and forward resilienceUntil recently, NATO’s resilience efforts were limited to identifying country-by-country benchmarks for critical infrastructures. Only at the June 2022 Madrid Summit did allied leaders agree to apply shared resilience to military and non-military challenges. The test now comes with implementation. Allies must go beyond critical infrastructures to review key industries, financial flows, strategic ports and transportation nodes, supply chains, communications and information networks, and other connective tissues that bind allied societies together. For instance, Germany and Norway have urged NATO to set up a resilience hub to coordinate the police, maritime authorities, and communications of littoral countries of the Baltic and North Seas.
Allies must also be prepared to project resilience forward to non-NATO partners. Allies should complement their efforts at forward defense, which stop at NATO’s edge, with a comprehensive strategy of forward resilience, which would extend to vulnerable democratic partners beyond NATO’s borders. Together with the EU, they should make it a strategic objective to help countries like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia resist Russian destabilization and disruption.
Resilience may begin at home, but in today’s deeply interconnected world, no nation is home alone. The United States and its allies must do everything they can to help Kyiv resist Russia’s assaults, because Ukraine is emblematic of a broader ongoing struggle between forces of disruption and resilience. Ukraine must win, both off and on the battlefield. Its fight is our fight too.
By Garrett Wallace Brown, Blagovesta Tacheva, Minahil Shahid, Natalie Rhodes, Marco Schäferhoff
On November 13, 2022, the Group of 20 (G-20) hosted the official launch of the Pandemic Fund, the new World Bank Financial Intermediary Fund to promote pandemic preparedness and response (PPR). At that event Priya Basu, the executive head of the Pandemic Fund Secretariat at the World Bank, suggested that the fund had only received $400 million of the $1.4 billion pledged by donors (well short of the estimated $10.5 billon that was claimed to be required). Moreover, when questioned about whether substantial new moneys would come into the fund or be diverted from existing aid budgets, Basu stated that “this isn’t just sort of shifting money from one port to another. This is new money.”
However, analysis of new official development assistance (ODA) and national level resource management data reveal some worrying trends that could temper this optimism. These trends suggest that not only did ODA peak during COVID-19, but that resources were reallocated to COVID-19 and PPR activities at the global and national level. Furthermore, there is evidence that these shifts are exacerbating existing health vulnerabilities and weakening overall global health. If these trends continue, then there will be considerable impacts on global health as well as global PPR policies and the Pandemic Fund’s ability to finance them.
Official Development Assistance has peaked and shiftedIn May 2022, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD DAC) released its annual data on ODA for health. Data are now available for 2020, the year COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. To allow tracking ODA for COVID-19 control, the OECD DAC introduced a new code for reporting COVID-19 ODA.
The data show that in 2020, official donors disbursed $29.1 billion in health ODA, a substantial increase of 31 percent (or $6.9 billion) compared to the previous year (all data reported in constant 2020 prices). Thus in 2020, health ODA reached its highest-ever level. Private flows to health also increased by 21.6 percent, from $4.0 billion to $4.9 billion (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Trends in ODA Disbursements for Health and Private Flows for Health Source: OECD DAC CRS. Gross disbursements, constant 2020 USD prices
Donors disbursed a total of $4.4 billion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A substantial share (63.9 percent) of the increase in health ODA results from donor funding for COVID-19 control. In addition, ODA for infectious disease control grew from $2.3 billion in 2019 to $3.1 billion in 2020. Much of this increase can be attributed to aid activities for pandemic preparedness and response, including for the surveillance, research, and the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
However, the data also reveal areas of concern. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3 (“Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”) by 2030. Delivering on SDG target 3.8—achieving universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030—was always ambitious but looks weakened by post COVID-19 ODA. For example, ODA for basic health care fell from $3.4 billion in 2019 to $2.3 billion in 2020, a drop of 34.5 percent. ODA for basic nutrition declined by 10.1 percent. When paired with concerns about donor fatigue in the face of growing global problems (climate, Ukraine, food security, etc.), the outlook for reduced ODA spending and/or diversions of existing funds looks elevated.
Resource shifting and its effect on global healthBeyond the ODA data, there is further evidence that the pandemic has exacerbated UHC vulnerabilities via diversions within national health budgets of LMICs. Particularly from areas such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV to COVID-19 and other PPR related activities. Moreover, a study on Ghana found that the COVID-19 pandemic will have an adverse effect on the health financing system in Ghana, including the expected reallocation of government funding for the health sector into COVID-19 related priorities.
Further evidence shows that COVID-19 resource reallocations are reversing progress on health outcomes. For example, evidence suggests broader secondary effects on health systems and outcomes due to COVID-19 takes prioritization away from other health concerns, particularly related to malaria, tuberculosis, sexual and reproductive health and HIV, noncommunicable diseases, and neglected tropical diseases. The World Health Organization reported that 43 countries (including 13 countries with high tuberculosis burden) used GeneXpert machines for COVID-19 testing instead of diagnostic testing for tuberculosis. In addition, 85 countries reported the reassignment of staff in tuberculosis to COVID-19 related duties, while 52 countries confirmed reallocation of tuberculosis budgets to COVID-19 activities. There is also considerable evidence that medical personnel are being reassigned from other health subsystems to COVID-19 related activities. In the case of Indonesia, the diversion of human resources to pandemic response efforts disrupted polio immunization services, putting the country’s polio-free status at risk.
The prospects do not look good—for the Pandemic Fund or global healthThere is good reason to believe that a focus on COVID-19 and PPR is pulling resources from UHC with wider health outcome effects. This raises concern that diminished ODA, alongside budget reallocations for increased PPR activity, will increase burdens on already strained health systems while reducing funds available for new initiatives (opportunity costs). There are also signs that global health donors may further reduce their health aid, falling back into a common pattern in global health financing—the “cycle of panic and neglect.” This condition will exacerbate vulnerabilities and health outcomes. Moreover, this will undermine the credibility and sustainability of the Pandemic Fund as existing money is diverted while new money remains scant.
This underscores the need for sustainable long-term funding not only to be well prepared for the next outbreak, but also to support health system strengthening and population health. As the COVID-19 pandemic showed, it is much costlier to respond amid a crisis than to properly invest in global health, including in strong and resilient health systems.
By Russell Wheeler
Hallmarks of first-year Biden judicial appointees were their diversity but also their sheer number— more first year appellate and district court appointments than any president since JFK. Biden’s end-of-two-year numbers will outpace most of his recent predecessors.
To reach record confirmations for Biden’s four-years, Senate Democrats—some facing tough 2024 races—will need to maintain party unity and avoid temporary or permanent reductions in their 50 or 51 vote majority from illness or worse. And opposition senators have ways of slowing and sometimes scuttling nominations and confirmations.
However those factors play out, three additional factors will challenge Biden’s ability to top Donald Trump’s four-year record of 231 appointments—54 court of appeals (circuit) judges and 177 district judges. Those factors will also make it almost impossible for Biden to reverse the shift Trump accomplished in the courts of appeals’ party-of-appointing-president composition. The factors are the paucity of projected vacancies, who’s likely to create the vacancies, and the administration’s disinclination so far to fill district vacancies in red and purple states.
Recent Presidents’ Third- and Fourth-Year ConfirmationsTables A and B compare the six most recent presidents’ first-and-second, and third-and-fourth, year confirmations. Reagan, for example, appointed 10% fewer judges in 1983 and 1984 than he did in 1981 and 1982. The Senate confirmed 98% of his nominees in his first stint and 83% in his second. Biden’s two-year confirmations—87 as of December 5—will change through the month with lame-duck confirmations.
TABLE A—District and Circuit Judge Confirmations in First and Second Two-year Stints
| Four-year Total | Years 1-2 | Years 3-4 | % change | | Reagan | 165 | 87 | 78 | -10% | | Bush | 191 | 70 | 121 | 70% | | Clinton | 201 | 126 | 75 | -43% | | Bush | 204 | 100 | 104 | 4% | | Obama | 171 | 60 | 111 | 85% | | Trump | 231 | 83 | 148 | 78% | | Biden (12/05) | N/A | 87 | N/A | N/A |
Asterisk indicates divided government
TABLE B—Comparative Confirmation Rates
| Four Year Total | Years 1-2 | Years 3-4 | | Reagan | 165 | 87 (98%) | 78 (83%) | | Bush | 191 | 70 (93%) | 121 (69%) | | Clinton | 201 | 126 (90%) | 75 (77%) | | Bush | 204 | 100 (77%) | 104 (82%) | | Obama | 171 | 60 (58%) | 111 (73%) | | Trump | 231 | 83 (54%) | 148 (85%) | | Biden (12/05) | N/A | 87 (62%–in flux) | N/A |
Asterisk indicates divided government
Four of the six presidents had more confirmations in their second than in their first stints, and the most recent three had higher confirmation rates as well. The first Bush’s greater third-fourth year confirmations but lower confirmation rate reflect his limited success in filling an influx of vacancies that Congress created at the outset of his third year. Clinton benefitted from leftover vacancies, but his numbers and rate dropped after Democrats lost the Senate in 1995. George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump outperformed in their second stints partly because the Senate confirmed judges through December of the fourth year, rather than October.
Biden’s Four-Year ConfirmationsIn 2023-24 Biden can probably top the confirmation rates of his first two years. But the number of confirmations depends partly on available vacancies. Changing the party-of-appointing-president balance on the courts depends partly on who creates the vacancies. Party-of-appointing-president is a modest (but about the best readily available) aggregate predictor of judicial voting in ideologically charged cases.
Courts of AppealsWhile Biden’s total first- and second-year circuit appointees will top all predecessors (except perhaps Trump’s 30), Biden’s impact on the court of appeals ideological make-up has been modest and will stay modest.
Table C shows how Trump changed the composition of the 179-judgeship courts of appeals over four years, the changes Biden has effected to date, and one possible four-year outcome.
TABLE C—Courts of Appeals Changes
| As of: | Rep. Appointees | Dem. Appointees | Vacancies | | Jan. 2017 | 71 (40%) | 91 (51%) | 17 (10%) | | Jan. 2021 | 96 (54%) | 80 (45%) | 3 (2%) | | Nov. 2022 | 91 (51%) | 79 (44%) | 9 (5%) | | Dec. 2024 (projected | 91 (51%) | 88 (49%) | 0 |
Row percentages may not total 100 due to rounding
Since Biden took office, Republican-appointed judges in active status have dropped from 96 to 91 (from 54% to 51% of statutory judgeships), but the number of Democratic appointees has also dropped, and the number of vacancies has increased.
Biden has replaced only four Republican appointees (including one Democrat appointed in a deal). By contrast, in Trump’s first two years, 11 of his 30 circuit appointees replaced Democratic appointees; over four years, 19 of his 54 appointees did so. (Trump benefitted from the near-total shutdown of confirmations in Obama’s final two years in office. Nine of the 17 vacancies Trump inherited were over a year old. Had Obama been able to fill them, Trump likely would have appointed only 21 circuit judges in his first two years, replacing six rather than 11 Democratic appointees.)
Not surprisingly, other-party appointees have resisted retirement under Biden. Since his election, 25 Democratic appointees have retired or resigned, versus five Republican appointees. In the comparable period after Trump’s election, eight Democratic appointees have done so, versus 17 Republican appointees.
Table D—one simplified scenario of Biden’s full-term court of appeals appointments—shows how Biden might appoint as many circuit judges as did Trump but won’t replace as many other-party appointees.
TABLE D—One Scenario of Biden Four-Year Circuit Appointments
| Appointees | Running Total | Replaced Rep. Appointees | | Confirmations as of 12/5 | 26 | 26 | 4 | | (1) | Confirm all pending nominees (during lame duck session and upon resubmission in 2023) | 11 | 37 | 1 | | (2) | Submit nominees/get confirmations for current and announced vacancies without nominees | 4 | 41 | 2 | | (3) | Fourteen judges leave active status in time for Biden and the Senate to replace them | 14 | 55 | ? |
(1) Confirming the pending nominees would increase Biden’s total from 26 to 37 and replace a fifth Republican appointee. Of the 11, three are to states with two Republican senators and two are to split-delegation states. Home-state senators can no longer shut down the confirmation of circuit nominees to whom they object—Senate Democrats have continued Republicans’ practice of depriving home-state senators of that prerogative.
But the confirmations in 2022 to Tennessee and Pennsylvania vacancies—to which home-state senators objected (here and here)—took measurably longer than the other 24. For the 24, the median days from nomination to confirmation was 119, although often contentious. For the Tennessee and Pennsylvania confirmations, median days were 295 and 253 respectively, highest and second highest among the 26.
Home-state Republican senators apparently support at least three of the five pending red or purple state nominees. But where there is opposition, based at least on experience to date, confirmations may be drawn out and consume time that otherwise could be spent on additional confirmations.
(2) Filling the four current or future vacancies without nominees—one each in Texas and Indiana—would bring the number of Republican appointees Biden has replaced from four to seven.
(3) Additional vacancies will occur as circuit judges leave full-time service (“active status”) and thus create vacancies. Most circuit and district judges wait to leave active status at least until they satisfy “the rule of 80”, a statutory formula combining age and years of service. They keep their judicial salaries as semi-retired “senior judges” (or former judges if they leave the bench).
When the Senate convenes on January 3, 2023, 16 active-status Democratic-appointed circuit judges will meet rule-of-80 criteria, as will 24 Republican appointees. (One more Democratic appointee, and three Republican appointees become eligible by September 1, 2024.)
Table D shows that if 14 judges leave active status in time for Biden to appoint their successors, he could top Trump’s 54 confirmations. But, of the 16 Democratic appointees, three have been rule-of-80 eligible for 10 years, and seven have been eligible for five years. One can only speculate what might incentivize any 14 of the 16 (or, less likely, one or more eligible Republican appointees) to leave active status so Biden could try to appoint successors. Of course, others might leave active status—rule-of-80 eligible or not (eight rule-of-80 eligible active status judges are 80 years or over).
But, unless Biden can replace additional Republican appointees beyond the four so far and three more in process, Republican appointees would still be in the majority at the end of the 118th Congress, as shown in Table C.
District CourtsTwo factors distinguish district from circuit judge nominations under Biden. First, probably to avoid hardline bargaining with home-state Republican senators, Biden has eschewed nominations to vacancies in red and purple states. (Home-state senators still have near-veto authority over district nominations.) Of 104 district nominations, only 11 were to red and purple state vacancies—mostly Ohio and Pennsylvania—versus eight of 37 circuit nominations. The median days from district vacancy to nomination for vacancies in Republican-senator states was almost 400—as opposed to 253 for blue states and even less for courts with no senators.
Second, Democratic appointees were already a slim majority of district judges when Biden assumed office. They now constitute 53% of active-status district judges—320 of 599—and that proportion will increase. How much is hard to say, based on the contingencies in Table E.
TABLE E—One Scenario of Biden Four-Year District Court Appointments
| Appointees | Running Total | Replaced Rep. Appointees | | Confirmations as of 12/5 | 61 | 61 | 31 | | (1) | Confirm all pending nominees (during lame duck session and upon resubmission in 2023) | 42 | 103 | 22 | | (2) | Submit nominees/get confirmations for current and announced vacancies without nominees | 61 | 164 | 35 | | (3) | Fourteen judges leave active status in time for Biden and the Senate to replace them | 14 | 178 | ? |
(1) and (2) may vary slightly from other accounts because of a withdrawn home-state senator support and a withdrawn intention to leave active status
(1) Only two of the 42 pending nominations are to what will be red or purple states in 2023 and, one presumes, have been approved by home-state senators, who still have near veto power over district nominees. (Because the incoming Ohio Republican senator might impose a veto, the lame-duck Senate appears likely to confirm the nominee.) To be sure, home-state opposition is not the only source of contention; a New York and a California nominee who have stirred Republican opposition have been waiting for over 425 days since nomination. The median wait for other pending nominees is 140.
(2) Getting nominees in place for the 61 current or formally announced future vacancies may be complicated. Thirty-nine of the 61 are in states with a Republican senator—the kind of vacancies that Biden has largely avoided. But nominating mainly to blue state vacancies obviously reduces the number of appointments (and reduces the number of appointees who replace Republican appointees: of the 21 blue state (or no senator) vacancies, only eight were created by Republican appointees).
(3) By my count, 35 additional active-status Democrat-appointed district judges are or will be rule-of-80 eligible by January 3, 2023, but only 14 of the 35 have two Democratic (or no) senators, and there’s no certainty that all 14 will leave active status in time for Biden to replace them (six of the 14 have been rule-of-80 eligible for over ten years). However, 16 more Democratic appointees become rule-of-80 eligible by January 2024, and another 19 by September of that year—and the latter two tranches are more heavily dominated by Democrat-or no-senator states. But how many leave active status and how many the administration and Senate can replace are open questions.
Fifty-four active status Republican appointees also are or will be rule-of-80 eligible by January 3, 2023. Republican-appointed district judges have been more likely than their circuit counterparts to leave active status with Biden in the White House.)
In short, to top Trump’s record of 177 district appointees, the administration will need some combination of more nominees for vacancies in red and purple states, as well as more vacancies created by active status appointees in time for the administration and Senate to fill them.
To sum upThe scenarios sketched here are oversimplified. They do not account for vacancies created outside of rule-of-80 retirements, and they assume high confirmation rates and a significant uptick in circuit judge retirements. But they provide a starting look at how 2023-24 may play out.
By Steven Pifer
Writing in The Washington Post on December 2, Robert Wright called on the Biden administration to press Ukraine to negotiate a settlement to the war Russia unleashed on it. That adds to a spate of articles in recent weeks urging Washington to prod Kyiv toward the negotiating table or to set a diplomatic process for settling the conflict.
Negotiations could well become necessary at some point. However, the questions of if — and when — to engage should rest with the Ukrainian government.
In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine. It has run into difficult straits. The Russians retreated from Kyiv in March. More recently, Ukrainian counteroffensives drove the Russians out of Kharkiv oblast (region) and liberated Kherson city, pushing the Russians back to the east side of the Dnipro River.
As Kyiv’s military successes grew, commentators began calling for Washington to “bring Russia and Ukraine” to the negotiating table, to “lay the groundwork” for talks, and to “begin discussions” on eventual negotiations. The authors offer various reasons for doing so: that Russia might escalate; that the costs of supporting Kyiv are too high; that Ukrainian victories might make negotiations more difficult; that the Russian military might recover its footing and win; that the war could settle into a drawn-out stalemate; and that, absent a firm settlement, Ukraine would face the threat of reinvasion.
The West cannot casually dismiss the possibility of Putin escalating to use a nuclear weapon, but he has real reasons not to. Doing so would alienate the Global South and China as well as open a Pandora’s box with potentially nasty consequences for Russia. The Kremlin appears to understand that and has de-escalated the nuclear rhetoric.
Russian escalation at the conventional level to strike, for example, the routes in Poland that flow Western arms into Ukraine hardly seems plausible. The Russian General Staff has its hands full with the Ukrainian army; it does not want a fight now with NATO.
The United States and the West are spending significant sums to support Ukraine’s defense. But they are not too high given the size of Western economies and defense budgets and, in particular, in view of what the West has at stake. A Russia that wins in Ukraine could be emboldened to use force elsewhere.
The concern that Ukraine’s liberation of its territory could complicate negotiations is misplaced. That more likely would engender greater realism in the Kremlin and make serious talks more possible. As for the opposite concern, the Russian military has given no basis to believe it can regain the military initiative sufficiently to win the war.
True, the conflict could settle into a stalemate. However, that scenario does not by itself make a strong case for pushing Ukraine into an early negotiation, especially with an adversary who offers no hint of readiness to seek a middle ground in negotiations.
As for the threat of a Russian reinvasion, Ukraine would face that regardless of how the war ends — at least, as long as Putin remains in power. That threat is by no means theoretical. In 2014, the Russian military seized Crimea, and Russian and Russian proxy forces occupied part of Donbas, but the Kremlin was not content just with that.
None of the authors offer reasons to believe Moscow would negotiate in a serious manner. The Kremlin’s demands in February included demilitarization and neutrality for Ukraine plus Kyiv’s recognition of Crimea as Russian. At the end of September, despite a month of losing on the battlefield, Moscow claimed to annex four Ukrainian oblasts. After Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson, the capital of one of these regions, Putin’s spokesperson quixotically called the city “the territory of Russia.” How should Kyiv regard such a prospective bargaining partner?
Some authors, including Wright, urge talks without addressing what outcome they hope or expect to see. Others suggest a “territorial settlement” or Ukrainian “flexibility” and sound all too ready to concede Ukrainian land to Russia. That would entail consigning Ukrainians to Russian authority as well. The atrocities and war crimes committed by Russian forces in Bucha, Irpin, Izyum, Mariupol, and many other cities and towns have shown Ukrainians exactly what that would mean. Moreover, prodding the Ukrainians into negotiations in which they would accept either explicitly or de facto Russian seizure of their territory has implications well beyond Ukraine. That would legitimize Moscow’s tactics of using force, and one must wonder whether Putin’s ambitions end just with Ukraine.
The West thus should hope for Ukrainian victory and liberation of all occupied lands. However, that might not prove possible, and instead a prospect of a serious negotiation could at some point develop, offering a hope of a settlement to end the war. Even then, the Ukrainians would have to exercise caution. They would not want to allow the Russians the possibility of “negotiating” simply to buy time to reconstitute their military forces for a new offensive.
If a serious negotiation were to emerge, it would almost certainly require that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government compromise on some of their conditions for peace, which include the return of all occupied territories, full reparations for the immense damage, and punishment of those responsible for war crimes. Zelensky undoubtedly shares Wright’s desire to avoid further loss of Ukrainian lives, but deciding which issues on which to give in during a negotiation would raise delicate questions. Among other things, he must take account of the attitude of Ukrainians. A late October poll showed that 86% supported continuing the fight and opposed negotiations.
Washington cannot decide these kinds of issues. The Ukrainians — the victims in this war — first have to see that they have a serious Russian bargaining partner. They themselves must conclude that the time has come to make tough decisions on compromises to end the conflict. The questions of if and when to negotiate properly should remain Kyiv’s to decide.
By Lang (Kate) Yang
Public school districts in the United States spend, on average, 9.5% of their budget, or $1,440 per student, on capital projects, which includes spending on school building construction, equipment purchases, and bus acquisition. Notwithstanding the magnitude of these costs, schools should probably be spending more on capital projects, since over half of all public school districts are in need of physical improvement in their schools. Moreover, per-student capital spending has been historically higher in the highest-income districts compared to the lowest-income districts (in the average state), though the gap has narrowed since 2008.
Is there anything that can be done to reduce these historical gaps in capital spending? This is the subject of my new working paper, where I explore the role of access to credit as a leading factor in these spending patterns. In the paper, I provide the first nationwide, comprehensive evaluation of state credit enhancement of school district debt.
Access to credit and its equity implicationsThe average annual spending figures mask the fact that capital outlays are “lumpy”: districts pay a large upfront cost to acquire the infrastructure and then use it for many years to come. To pay for the upfront cost, districts often borrow money from investors by issuing bonds on the municipal bond market. The interest rate on a bond varies across districts and bonds. To help market the bond, a district may hire independent credit rating agencies to assess the creditworthiness of the bond and to assign an underlying credit rating.
Holding all else equal, a higher credit rating is associated with a lower interest rate. As I demonstrate in the paper, bond market data shows that, on average, districts serving communities with higher levels of poverty receive lower ratings and thus face higher costs to borrow. Understandably, higher borrowing costs often correspond to lower levels of capital spending.
Districts with low credit ratings can try to enhance them externally, and, historically, private bond insurance companies filled that need. By paying an insurance premium, a district would obtain a pledge from the insurer to serve as the backup payer and receive the insurer’s rating as the enhanced credit rating, and thus obtain access to lower interest rates. Municipal bond insurance previously provided the highest-possible, triple-A rating and was purchased for around three quarters of school bonds. However, following the Great Recession, the insurers have experienced significant downgrades and can no longer offer the universal appeal of a triple-A rating.
State Credit Enhancement ProgramsSchool districts with low credit ratings could pursue another method to improve their credit: credit enhancement through the state government. Currently, 24 states have credit enhancement programs for their districts. State credit enhancement is a pledge by the state to take certain actions, such as intercepting state aid or temporarily using state funds to pay the interest or principal on school bonds if a district is unable to do so.
With state credit enhancement, a district receives an enhanced credit rating carried by the state program, which is largely benchmarked to the state’s rating. The district, therefore, may benefit if the enhanced rating is higher than the district’s underlying rating. Because low-income districts are more likely to have low underlying ratings, state enhancement is most attractive to them. This is essentially a method that states can use to lower districts’ borrowing costs without directly spending money, as it is analogous to a parent co-signing on a loan for a child. A majority of the 24 states offering credit enhancement limit it to only general obligation school bonds backed by district general revenue but not revenue bonds repaid with specific revenue sources such as sales taxes or charges. Many state credit enhancement programs also require approval by the state for each bond issuance and charge a nominal fee.
Impact of State Credit EnhancementBut does state credit enhancement actually help close capital spending gaps? To identify the impact of state credit enhancement on school districts’ interest rate and capital spending, I first compare, within each state, school districts that received state enhancement on all bonds issued between 2009 and 2019 to those whose bonds were never enhanced. The latter group mostly has underlying ratings similar to or higher than the state program’s rating, and thus state enhancement likely provides little benefit. A concern, however, is that the always-enhanced districts, which have lower underlying ratings and are more likely to serve economically disadvantaged students, may have different interest rates and capital spending levels from the never-enhanced due to other, unobserved factors. Therefore, in separate analyses, I compare bonds enhanced by the state to unenhanced bonds of the same district. This enables me to observe the implication of issuing enhanced bonds while controlling for district-specific characteristics.
The two analyses generate remarkably similar results. School bonds with state enhancement enjoy an interest rate reduction at around 14 basis points (0.14 percentage points). To put it into perspective, the average interest rate paid by districts is 2.36% during the study period. Moreover, the interest rate reduction is larger for higher-poverty districts. High-poverty districts with very low credit ratings may be priced out of the private bond insurance market but can benefit tremendously from the state programs.
The lowered cost of debt may suggest an increased ability to borrow for capital investment. Indeed, I find that capital spending increases by 6% to 7% after a district issues state-enhanced bonds as compared to unenhanced bonds. The impact on capital spending is more pronounced for high-poverty districts. The increased capital spending associated with state credit enhancement, however, does not translate into improvements in student test scores, on average.
Therefore, the availability of state credit enhancement may help explain the recent convergence in capital spending between high- and low-income districts since the demise of private bond insurance companies in 2008. Figure 1 shows that in states without credit enhancement programs, the trends in capital spending are similar for districts in the highest- versus lowest-poverty quintiles: both decreased starting in 2003 and continued to drop after 2008, with low-poverty districts consistently spending more. In contrast, in states offering credit enhancement, low-poverty districts decreased capital spending after 2008, while spending by high-poverty districts remained stable, leading to a reversal in the capital spending gap.
Policy ImplicationsIn sum, the empirical evidence suggests that state credit enhancement has the potential to offer significant interest savings to school districts and spur additional education infrastructure investment. For a state to provide meaningful credit enhancement, the state government must have a sufficiently strong credit rating that is higher than the ratings of bond-issuing districts within the state. I calculate the potential savings districts in the 26 non-program states could have achieved from 2009 to 2019, had credit enhancement programs existed in these states. Up to $56 billion of school debt could have been enhanced, with a net-present-value saving of $385 million to $1 billion.
States may be concerned that providing the pledge to prevent district default may increase their own financial risk and their interest rate. My results suggest the financial risk to states is very small. A comprehensive search and interviews with state agencies show that across the 24 states with credit enhancement programs, state intervention was triggered only once for a district in Pennsylvania. Further, additional analyses fail to find a correlation between state interest rates and the amount of school debt enhanced by the state. The safeguards embedded into the design of state credit enhancement programs and the rarity of school district default may have both contributed to the lack of a “moral hazard” in pledging state support to school district debt.
If carefully designed, credit enhancement programs may be a valuable policy tool to support educational infrastructure investment, which will help improve capital spending for school communities that need it the most.
By Rachel M. Perera, Ayesha K. Hashim, Hayley R. Weddle
More than two and a half years later, the cumulative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and their caregivers are coming into clear view. Surveys of both parents and educators highlight concerning trends in children’s emotional well-being and mental health. These concerns are heightened for children of color, who were significantly more likely to lose a parent or caregiver from a COVID-19 related death. Recent research evaluating the effects of the pandemic on students’ learning trajectories reflects this reality. Learning rates slowed during the pandemic for most students, and even more so for students of color and students from low-income families.
To support students, families, and schools in recovering from the varied harms of the pandemic, Congress has provided U.S. public schools with $190 billion in federal relief aid over the last three years. Many school districts are using some of these resources to fund academic interventions like summer and after-school programs and high-dosage tutoring that families can sign their children up for.
News reports and recent research indicate that participation in these opt-in recovery programs may be low. Some researchers argue that low participation rates indicate low levels of parent interest in academic recovery efforts. However, a broader literature on family engagement in education suggests that insights gleaned from families’ participation in recovery programs may be limited.
Here, we interrogate what we do and do not know about families’ interest in and engagement with COVID-19 recovery programs based on the limited research to date. We also summarize broader literatures on family engagement that can support education leaders working to better engage families in COVID-19 relief efforts.[1]
Surveys of Families Provide Limited InsightsFirst, let’s understand what we do and do not know about parents’ interest in COVID-19 recovery programs. According to a recent nationally representative survey, low shares of parents were interested in enrolling their child in either tutoring (28%) or summer school (23%) in spring 2022. Results from the same survey reported elsewhere show significant variation by family background, with Black, Asian, Latino, and low-income families significantly more likely to express interest in academic recovery programs relative to White and more affluent families. For example, about 35% of Black parents expressed interest in summer school compared to less than 20% of White families, with similarly large differences observed for interest in tutoring.
How the authors define parent interest is an important limitation of these results (a limitation the authors acknowledge). In particular, the survey uses parents’ participation in recovery programs (conditional on being offered an available seat) as a proxy for parents’ interest. This definition likely underestimates parents’ interest in academic recovery programs. This is because families’ participation in recovery interventions is almost certainly influenced by factors unrelated to their interest—e.g., program eligibility rules, scheduling issues, and transportation access. Put another way, this definition does not account for barriers families may face in accessing COVID-19 recovery programs for their children.
More importantly, these survey results leave unanswered critical questions as to why reported participation rates may be low.
One hypothesis that some researchers have put forth is that parents are overly optimistic about their children’s academic recovery from the effects of the pandemic. For example, according to a survey released earlier this fall by Education Next, 43% of parents report that their children did not experience any learning losses during the pandemic.
These results are being framed as potentially worrisome in part because they do not comport with researchers’ understanding of the breadth and magnitude of pandemic harm on test score growth. This misalignment may be driven by differences in the types of information available to parents relative to the information used in academic research.[2]
Regardless, the research to date leaves unanswered questions that are important for ensuring the success of COVID-19 recovery efforts in schools. Questions like: How do parents understand their children’s academic and emotional well-being needs in the context of COVID-19 recovery? How are parents making decisions about whether they enroll their children in COVID-19 recovery interventions? And what potential barriers are families encountering in accessing these resources?
What can research tell us about how to effectively engage families in schools’ COVID-19 recovery programs?
Research emphasizes the important roles that parents and families play in children’s learning and development. If COVID-19 recovery efforts are going to meaningfully aid students and their families, family engagement must be a critical component of those efforts. Work in this area makes an important distinction between family involvement and family engagement.
School-Driven Family Involvement Has LimitationsFamily involvement is typically characterized by structured ways for parents to support their child’s learning as prescribed by schools. For example, family involvement includes activities like attending parent-teacher conferences, chaperoning school field trips, and engaging in other volunteer activities, but can also take the form of participation in school-based decision-making bodies like parent-teacher organizations.
While some research suggests activities like this support student learning, other scholars argue that those effects can be explained by ethno-racial and socio-economic differences in the types of parents (e.g., white, middle-class parents) most likely to engage in prescribed forms of family involvement. For example, one study found that while family involvement activities such as attending parent-teacher conferences, PTO membership, volunteering at school, and homework checking are positively associated with test scores, this relationship is notably weaker—and perhaps even negative—after accounting for students’ race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and baseline test scores.
Indeed, scholars have cautioned that families from less socio-economically advantaged backgrounds and families of color often encounter significant barriers to participating in schools in these highly prescribed ways. For example, one study found that negative interactions with teachers and other parents, as well as scheduling challenges, limited Black parents’ involvement with school-based activities.
Moreover, conceptualizing family involvement in narrow ways that are not inclusive of families who may have less time to donate or less relational trust with educators can exacerbate educational inequalities. For example, research shows that family involvement often yields additional benefits to highly involved (typically more affluent, white) families while simultaneously perpetuating negative stereotypes about less involved families (typically low-income families and families of color).
In the context of this research, recent surveys and reports showing low family uptake of academic recovery programs may be telling us more of what we already know: when schools expect families to engage in highly prescribed ways without sufficient stakeholder engagement, families may not participate. Claims that parents lack “interest” in their children’s education based on participation rates ignore existing structures and practices that limit parents’ participation in schools and incorrectly shift blame for educational inequalities onto families.
Partnership-Driven Family Engagement Shows Promise for COVID-19 RecoveryMoving beyond prescriptive roles for parents, family engagement is characterized by reciprocal relationships (grounded in relational trust) between educators and families—with the goal of working as partners to support student learning and school improvement. According to one scholar of community organizing for school reform, “parental engagement designates parents as citizens in the fullest sense—change agents who can transform urban schools and neighborhoods.” For example, family engagement practices include educators and families working in partnership to co-design engagement agendas, strategies, and initiatives, and consistently seeking out families’ expertise in the education of their children—all with the aim of sharing decision-making power with families and communities.
Research demonstrates that family engagement has many benefits, including promoting the success of school reform efforts, deepening leaders’ and educators’ understanding of stakeholder perspectives, and supporting child development outcomes. Justice-based approaches to family engagement recognize families as experts who can help build more equitable education systems. And considering the inequality-intensifying effects of the pandemic, it is critical that any engagement work is inclusive of all families, particularly communities of color, low-income families, and immigrant families.
How can schools develop stronger approaches to family-school engagement? A report recently commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York outlines a research-based framework—the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships–for developing strong family-school engagement that is grounded in anti-racist and social justice principles. This framework argues that for schools to meaningfully improve family-school engagement, schools need to build capacity for this type of partnership work among both educators and families and work to improve certain organizational conditions necessary for family-school partnerships to be successful. (For additional ideas on strategies schools can pursue to improve family-school partnerships, see work by our colleagues in Brookings’ Center for Universal Education.)
Some of our own research in Michigan suggests that strong relationships with families helped insulate schools from the worst outcomes during the pandemic. Districts that demonstrated better-than-predicted achievement growth in the 2020-2021 school year engaged in consistent and clear two-way communication with families. Further, these districts had strong existing relationships with families that provided a foundation for effectively supporting student learning during crisis.
Moving Towards a Family-Centered Approach to COVID-19 RecoveryRecent surveys of parents above all else underscore that family engagement in COVID-19 recovery efforts cannot be an afterthought. Family engagement in COVID-19 relief spending is a priority for the Biden-Harris administration. Yet, low shares of states and districts included explicit family engagement strategies in their COVID-19 spending plans.
Some education policy experts are recommending that districts consider adopting opt-out policies where opt-in participation is low. We argue that where opt-in rates are low, district and school officials should interpret that as a clear signal that parents and families have not been sufficiently engaged in decision-making. One lesson emerging from early work on implementing COVID-19 academic recovery programs is that family engagement is critical to a program’s success. Before making voluntary programs mandatory, school leaders and educators should engage with families and students to understand why participation rates were low in the first place and determine together what adjustments should be made.
COVID-19 relief funding provides a unique opportunity to rebuild public education after an exceptionally challenging two years. As Anne Ishimaru and Megan Bang have argued, we need to “recast families and communities as co-designers of education” rather than conceptualizing families as the recipients of services or even worse as barriers to implementation.
The road ahead for districts and schools will be challenging. Family engagement efforts will have to contend with the historic failures of school systems to effectively serve marginalized communities. Researchers can aid these efforts by fostering research-practice partnerships focused on developing family engagement practices grounded in educational equity. Without these efforts, school districts risk spending limited COVID-19 relief aid on programs and initiatives that don’t meet the needs of students and families and won’t remedy pandemic harms on student learning.
Footnotes:
[1] Note that we use the terms “parent” and “family” interchangeably as both are used in this literature. We use “parent” to describe any family member or other adult in a caregiving role. Although, we rely more on the term “family” to acknowledge the diverse contexts in which children are cared for. (Back to top)
[2] Several academic studies that estimate the effects of the pandemic on test score growth do so by using large administrative datasets and comparing students’ rates of learning during the pandemic to pre-pandemic trends in student learning. (Back to top)
By Cameron F. Kerry, Mishaela Robison
In the debate over federal privacy legislation, advertising and marketing loom large. Social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff coined the term “surveillance capitalism” to describe the advertising business model as built on monetizing the collection, use, and sharing of digital information and testified to a House committee that the model is “founded on the premise that privacy must fall.” Her concept has been echoed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in their privacy rulemaking notice last August, which framed its inquiry as about “commercial surveillance.”
Regardless of how it is characterized, digital advertising is a significant factor in the unbounded spread of personal information. Under the status quo, most companies can set the rules for what data they collect and what they do with it. Without boundaries around the collection, use, and sharing of personal data, the complex systems that support digital advertising have become online tornadoes, rapidly sucking up data and spreading it across the landscape. The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), a House bill reported out of committee by a 53-2 vote, goes further than any other comprehensive privacy bill proposed or enacted to put objective boundaries around the collection, use, and sharing of personal information and to change digital advertising practices.
These are needed changes. Their net effect will be to curtail opportunities to collect and monetize personal information while limiting the current spread of personal information across digital advertising networks beyond the privacy expectations of most individuals. Nevertheless, no one can predict precisely how these changes will affect a variety of interests. Apart from the privacy of individuals and the profits of the advertising industry, there may well be collateral impacts: on publishers that earn revenue from advertising, access to free services enabled by ad sales, or marketing for startups and small businesses that need to identify niche markets. In addition, the legislation may well strengthen large platforms’ hold in the advertising marketplace.
“To ensure that the ADPPA’s boundaries on advertising adequately consider the possibility of such potential effects, we recommend lawmakers incorporate a provision authorizing the FTC to finetune the bill’s limitations through rulemaking.”
To ensure that the ADPPA’s boundaries on advertising adequately consider the possibility of such potential effects, we recommend lawmakers incorporate a provision authorizing the FTC to finetune the bill’s limitations through rulemaking. Below, we explore the reasons for this recommendation: first by describing the networks that support digital advertising and how they spread personal information, then by detailing how the ADPPA addresses these and what effects it may have, and finally by describing why providing rulemaking authority to the FTC is especially appropriate.
The landscape of digital advertisingThe players: Advertisers and publishers. Digital advertising has become the dominant way of reaching consumers’ eyes and ears. Online advertising (excluding U.S. political advertising) accounted for 64.4% of all total advertising in 2021 and continues to grow each year. Digital marketing enables the agencies that place ads (“advertisers”) to reach potential customers in new ways, bolstered by digital information. Advertisers can also measure outcomes that cannot be observed in print or broadcast advertising, such as how long an ad spends in front of a potential customer or how frequently it is clicked on. On the other side of advertising markets are the websites, platforms, and content providers (“publishers”) that monetize the eyeballs they draw and the data they generate. Publishers sell this inventory based on their content category (e.g., baking, sports, makeup) or the demographics of users (e.g., location, age). Advertisers provide information about their targeting strategies or ideal customer demographics. Sales of ad spaces are made by looking for overlaps between publishers’ and advertisers’ markets, placing ads in front of relevant audiences as precisely as possible.
The players: Data management platforms. Between the advertisers and publishers lie intermediary networks of software that manage advertisers’ placement of ads and publishers’ offering of inventory and ad performance metrics. These are data management platforms, which match up data from both advertisers and publishers with information from third-party sources such as data brokers. Such data can include information about an individual’s browser (e.g., device type, IP address, fonts installed on the device, websites visited), information users themselves provide (e.g., account information, survey responses, purchases), or information about a user’s behavior (e.g., time spent on a page or websites visited).
The systems: Data brokers. Behind these players and systems, data brokers provide a market for the data collected across advertising networks by purchasing and selling data to supplement databases within them. These brokers compile data both from private transactions and public-facing information sources such as social media and government records. In turn, they analyze this aggregated data to segment individuals by characteristics such as “families with kids in space camp” or “married moms.”
While individual profiles initially may be “anonymized” (i.e., stripped of unique identifiers like names or identification numbers), the aggregation of data makes it increasingly possible to link this data to individuals. For example, a 2019 Nature study found that 99.98% of Americans could be accurately re-identified by using 15 anonymized demographic data points, even if that dataset was “heavily incomplete.” This data can be reidentified so precisely that it has been used to determine the cost of health insurance or make loan evaluations. Even generalized information may enable identification of unique individuals, based on patterns of characteristics.
Connecting information to unique individuals becomes especially significant when sensitive information is involved. For instance, while much of the data collected by the LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr is innocuous, Grindr has formerly sold users’ location data to advertising companies and shared information on users’ self-reported HIV status and STD screening with external companies. A recent FTC complaint against Kochava charged that the data broker provided precise geolocation information from an array of mobile devices, including sensitive locations such as addiction recovery clinics, homeless shelters, abortion centers, religious institutions, and likely home addresses. The targeting of advertising relies heavily on predictive analytics and, as artificial intelligence is increasingly deployed, so will the granularity and power of these analytics to identify individuals and draw detailed inferences about them.
“Connecting information to unique individuals becomes especially significant when sensitive information is involved.”
The systems: Real-time bidding. Real-time bidding drives digital advertising. In the milliseconds during which a device loads an online site, an auction takes place among a myriad of advertisers and publishers, all swapping audience data through data management platforms. The sheer amount of information in play and the speed and frequency with which it is shared makes this landscape extremely leaky, with personal data passed through several hands and widely available for additional uses and sharing. The figure below illustrates the structure of the digital advertising market and its complexity.
Source: Programmatic Buying Ecosystem from Interactive Advertising Bureau Spain, 2014
Challenges to the systems. As the technology landscape has evolved, challenges to the typical digital advertising ecosystem have arisen. Various advertising industry groups have developed frameworks and codes for trustworthy, privacy-sensitive, and ethical use of data over the past 20 years. Browsers have added features or extensions to limit cookies and tracking across sites or devices. Ad-blocking software has become available. Still, despite these efforts and tools, advertisers have enduring financial incentives for advertisers to know as much as possible about their prospective targets. For example, in response to steps by browsers to reduce tracking, some third-party companies began to track users across sites using the unique metadata about their devices, such as device type, browser setting, and fonts installed, a process known as “browser fingerprinting.” This information is device-specific, so users cannot protect themselves by clearing their browsing history.
The most serious curb on digital advertising has come from Google and Apple. Although each has a different business model, both have used their management of operating systems, search engines, and app ecosystems to affect how online products and services collect data. Google introduced Topics API for Android apps, which limits data tracking, data retention periods, and the availability of what Google identifies as “sensitive categories” of data. Google also announced to phase out third-party cookies from its Chrome browser by 2023 (now postponed to 2024 as the marketplace struggles to adapt). Apple has taken similar steps through its iOS software and app store APIs to increase transparency and constrain collection, such as detailing the types of data apps collect in their App Store, requiring developers to ask for permission before tracking users’ activity through third-party apps, and informing users of exactly how apps use their data through App Privacy Reports. While these updates significantly reduce data collection and leakage in advertising information ecosystems, they are platform-specific, leaving an uneven patchwork in the absence of clear federal policy, and they have raised concerns about the effects on competition.
The digital advertising industry association Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has been warning members for several years that they need to adapt targeting methods in response to both regulatory changes and consumer unease. Its most recent report on the subject described “a disconnect among senior-level, data decisionmakers between their self-stated sense of preparedness for the loss of third-party cookies and identifiers and their recent knowledge of the factors beyond the deprecation of cookies that are driving the evolution of the privacy landscape.”
In steps the ADPPAThe American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) does not ban targeted advertising altogether. Instead, it distinguishes between “targeted advertising” (a defined term in the bill) and “contextual advertising,” i.e., advertising based on the context in which an ad appears, not based on specific information about each individual viewer. The ADPPA would only affect contextual advertising at the margins, to the extent that limits on the collection of personal data would constrict contextual information. Despite these limits, contextual advertising would likely experience a net gain due to the greater constraints on targeted advertising.
The constraints on targeted advertising are substantial. The ADPPA would allow “first parties”—entities that collect data directly from an individual—to target advertising to those individuals provided they are over the age of 17. This would allow first parties to promote new products or to sell advertising on their websites. Individuals would have the right to opt out of receiving any targeted ads, which advertisers, including first parties, would be obligated to offer prominently and to respect if exercised. The FTC would be charged with establishing mechanisms (like its Do Not Call list or otherwise) to make exercising this right convenient.
The bill distinguishes between the “first parties” permitted to cross-promote products and third parties that do not collect information directly from an individual. It is possible to read the provisions that permit first parties to target ads as permitting such advertising by third parties. As a practical matter, though, the overarching constraints on collection and processing make that extremely difficult.
Indeed, the ADPPA would place other significant limits on the information ecosystems that support online advertising in general and targeted advertising in particular:
- While the ADPPA allows collection of personal information for various purposes, these do not include advertising. Instead, advertising and marketing (whether targeted or not) are allowed only when utilizing “covered data previously collected.” In other words, data collected to provide a service otherwise permitted under the bill could be used (sometimes described as “secondary use,”) but a business could not collect simply for the purpose of targeting ads. The bill does carve out one exception related to advertising: It permits collecting data to measure the performance of advertisements. Such data powers the tools that enable advertisers to track views, clicks, leads, and success rates and calculate cost-effectiveness and return on investment. This provision could be exploited as a loophole, however, so it should be made clear that data collected under this exclusion must be “strictly necessary” for calculating metrics and not used for other purposes.
- Collection of “sensitive information”—a range of categories that include information about health, precise geolocation, communications, and race, color, ethnicity, or union membership, among several others—would be permitted, but only to the extent “strictly necessary” to provide a requested product or service or other purposes enumerated in the bill, but not for marketing. This would prohibit most advertising targeted based on sensitive information.
- The ADPPA would prohibit sharing “sensitive information” with any third party without carefully defined affirmative express consent. This would further limit the use of sensitive information as a basis for targeting advertising. It could allow such targeting where an individual has consented, for example, to sharing medical information in connection with a health app or sexual preference with a dating app, but within the bounds of what is strictly required for the products or services an individual requests.
- The bill’s definition of “personal data” specifically encompasses any “unique persistent identifiers,” which encompasses the various mechanisms used to identify individuals, devices, and browsers primarily for the purposes of delivering advertisements, like the iOS Advertising Identifier, Facebook’s Pixel, and a host of third-party cookies inserted via websites.
- The bill creates a category of “third party collecting entities,” companies that derive revenue from personal information they have not collected directly from individuals, and establishes a registry of such entities. This addresses the data brokers that aggregate data from other sources and develop individual profiles and databases that inform targeted advertising and marketing. Other than maintaining a registry, the ADPPA would not directly regulate data brokers, but the proposed limits on the collection and sharing of information would reduce the supply of information for their databases, as will the opt-out right and individual rights to seek access and deletion of information.
The IAB has criticized these limitations, asserting they harm “not only advertising companies, but anyone depending on data to succeed in today’s economy, including the average internet user enjoying speed and convenience.” The net effect of the ADPPA’s changes will be to curtail opportunities to collect and monetize personal information and to limit the current flows and leakage of personal information through the ecosystems of apps, ad tech, and data brokers.
As discussed above, fair and reasonable limits are needed on the unbounded data that advertisers collect. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that the medium serves legitimate and even beneficial purposes. The sale of advertising has been—for better and for worse—what has supported a free media in America. It also enables free services; while “free” comes with a hidden cost in personal information that needs to be more transparent and checked, the absence of cost still provides material value to many people. The First Amendment assigns value to advertising because, “however tasteless and excessive it may sometimes seem,” it disseminates “information as to who is producing and selling what product, and at what price” and informs consumer decisions in a free enterprise economy.
No one can predict reliably all the consequences to these and other interests from the ADPPA’s changes to advertising ecosystems. The changes also could affect smaller entities without large ad budgets, such as new entrants and small businesses seeking to find a market at the most efficient cost where narrowly targeted digital advertising can be cost-effective. The constraints on targeting might affect content providers that rely on advertising for revenue.
The third-party/first-party distinction and preferencing of contextual advertising over targeted advertising is likely to affect ad markets in ways that could be significant but are not fully understood. Given the increase in Google’s and Facebook’s shares of digital advertising within the European Union after the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation took effect, the ADPPA could strengthen their positions even though their combined 50.5% share of U.S. digital advertising is already the target of antitrust litigation and legislation. The impact on the effectiveness of advertising is less known; there is credible research showing that advertising targeted with cookies and other tracking is not as cost-effective as generally regarded, and some evidence that well-done contextual advertising may be more effective. Indeed, the New York Times successfully switched to offering only contextual advertising. But just because the strongest brand in the news business has succeeded with this model does not necessarily mean lesser brands without as much diverse content to offer or many subscribers to survey, much less the resources to develop their own first-party ad management platform, can do the same easily.
A provision for FTC rulemaking to fill in the precise boundaries for digital advertising would enable thoughtful and evidence-based decisions to get these boundaries right.
Why FTC rulemaking is the right approach to digital advertising Rather than leave these issues to the FTC’s existing Magnuson-Moss Act rulemaking authority, Congress should provide authority under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA,) as it has in other ADPPA rulemaking provisions. This would clarify agency authority on the subject, allow Congress to define the contours for regulations, and enable speedier implementation of the law in this area. There are several reasons rulemaking is an especially appropriate way to deal with the uncertainties within these contours:
- The issues that surround online advertising are highly complex, technical, and dynamic. Among advertisers, real-time bidding exchanges bring together multiple parties for microtransactions executed in milliseconds encompassing information, delivery of content, and payments. The technology and data that power these exchanges are constantly evolving. These are the kinds of issues where an expert agency can dive more deeply into the weeds than Congress usually can and adapt to changes in technology and the marketplace.
- The FTC has relevant expertise. The FTC has decades of experience in regulating advertising. Advertising has been woven through its regulation of unfair and deceptive practices since the establishment of the Consumer Protection Bureau in 1970. The agency’s docket of privacy and security issues in recent decades has exposed it to data flows across a wide variety of online platforms and players. Its role in competition policy and its Competition Bureau brings this knowledge to the competitive effects of advertising and changes to advertising ecosystems. The FTC staff includes technologists, economists, and competition experts who can deconstruct these systems and markets. Fortunately, the ADPPA proposes to expand these capabilities with additional appropriations and the establishment of a new Bureau of Privacy.
- FTC rulemaking would require thorough input. The broad stakeholder input needed to understand these issues is built into rulemaking under the APA and the FTC Act. Notice and comment would be required, ensuring a public process that provides the agency an avenue for broad input, gives stakeholders the opportunity to weigh in, and builds a record of the issues.
- The FTC’s role would be defined by Congress. The ADPAA currently provides sparingly for FTC rulemaking. Rather than any broad grant of regulatory authority, it confines rulemaking to discrete issues within specific provisions (adding to the definition of “sensitive covered data,” minimum “short form” disclosures, processes for covered entities to respond to individual requests for data, and algorithmic impact assessments by “large data holders”). It also calls for agency guidance on data minimization and privacy by design, both novel and complex aspects of the ADPPA. A provision giving the FTC authority to delineate specific aspects of the provisions on advertising and spelling out factors for the agency to consider would be in the same mold, targeting its authority specifically and bounding it accordingly.
At this stage of the legislative process, the bar for making changes is high. But adding a provision to allow FTC rulemaking on advertising would fit within the bipartisan compromises of the ADPPA and could preemptively address issues before the law is on the books.
Google, Apple, and Meta are unrestricted donors to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the authors and are not influenced by any donation.
- We’re at a moment of inflection for democracy—and corruption. In December, civil society organizations, private sector entities, and government representatives will gather to discuss the state of corruption around the world at the International Anti-Corruption Conference hosted in Washington, DC. Participants will have the opportunity to share lessons learned from the past year and…
This week, the Pentagon released its annual report on Chinese military and security developments over the past year. That capped a busy season for the Government Printing Office: the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review, and Missile Defense Strategy all came out publicly last month. All the documents, not just this most…
Idaho community schools are flexible for both urban and rural school districts The education landscape reflects the geography of the state—vast expanses of land with many rural school districts that students sometimes need to travel some distance to attend in person. When it comes to per pupil spending, Idaho ranks 51st out of 50 states and…
It is not local organizations that lack the capacity to work with USAID. Instead, it is USAID that lacks the capacity in its operating systems and organizational culture to work with local organizations. The Biden administration has made localization—generally defined as shifting contracts and grants from U.S. organizations to local non-governmental organizations (LNGOs)—a centerpiece of…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Nonprofessional investors pay attention to news on inflation Nonprofessional investors pay attention to…
Fighting corruption is an inherently complex challenge that requires transnational action. The stakes are high: Initiatives such as the Summit for Democracy and the United States Agency for International Development’s Combating Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge have underscored that multistakeholder efforts to combat corruption are a key pillar of advancing democratic renewal globally. Illicit financial flows…
Africa is the world’s youngest region, and its young population is seen as both a crisis and an opportunity. Youth unemployment is front and center in the minds of African policymakers and is a topic of much discussion and research. At the same time, Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate shocks,…
Pakistan’s rural population is disproportionately affected by the low quality of the public education system, with girls and young women the most underserved. Of the 20 million children not going to school, 4 out of 5 live in rural parts of the country, and of those, 60 percent are girls. Education exclusion for girls is…
Global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for 2022 will be 58 gigatons (GT), the largest annual level ever recorded. If current economic growth, demography, and emissions intensity trends continue, the level of emissions will continue to rise, reaching 62 GT by 2030. The gap between actual emissions and what is needed to keep the Paris Agreement…
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, existing structural and socio-economic inequities in Nepal excluded most adolescent girls from schooling. More than 80 percent of girls who have left school did not find the support needed for systemic issues like forced marriage, excessive household work, menstruation, harassment, and trafficking. As gender remains the single strongest determinant of…
Ahead of the U.S. midterms, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “The upcoming election will be decided at the kitchen table, as America’s families determine who they trust to fight for them in this challenging moment.” In an atypical political upset, the Democratic party maintained its Senate majority and edged out the highly anticipated red wave…
Public transportation advocates as well as proponents of dense, walkable cities have long drawn a connection between population density and the efficacy of public transit. But if population density is a good measure of a metro area’s car (in)dependence, why is Los Angeles—which has the nation’s second-highest population per square mile of developed land—a byword…
Calls to expand multilateral development bank financing Globalization, multilateralism, and multilateral organizations have been under threat based on the perception that they have not yielded the beneficial results they promised to deliver. Against this background, it is encouraging that in recent years there have been calls for stronger, more proactive multilateral development banks (MDBs) to…
There has been a surge of global interest in Taiwan’s security in recent years. Amidst the noise, it can be easy to lose sight of broader trends that are shaping the environment within which Taiwan operates. Taking a broader view can bring into focus what tasks are most important for Taiwan to protect its democratic…
The first years of the 2020s have forced the United States to contend with a litany of major issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic, digital disruptions, climate change, racial and gender divides, and the continuing need for more middle-class jobs. But they have also ushered in a period of bold, urgent responses. Across the federal government,…
After Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the future of the platform remains uncertain. Musk promised big changes by encouraging a wide range of voices on the platform, introducing new services, and making people pay $8 per month to obtain the company’s blue check verification certification, which may lead to the spread of more mis- and…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Larger firms more likely to adopt advanced technologies Using novel data on 300,000…
“The bird is freed,” tweeted Elon Musk on October 27, 2022, as a celebratory endnote to his acquisition of Twitter. However, this begs the question, free for which type of birds? By show of his previous political statements, current missteps, and future plans for the platform, this so-called freedom may simply galvanize extremists and further expose…
It has been an eventful year for Twitter. With Elon Musk’s recent purchase, there have been dramatic changes. As a free speech advocate, he has encouraged a wider range of voices on Twitter, piloted new products, and asked people to pay $8/month to get special services and use the company’s blue check certification. Yet a…
On the sidelines of the 77th UN General Assembly, U.S. leaders gathered in New York City at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice for the fourth annual American leadership in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals hosted by the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution and the United Nations Foundation. The gathering showcased…
All 65 of greater Cincinnati’s schools are community learning centers, Ohio’s name for community schools. Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) is Ohio’s second largest school district. While it includes urban populations, it also covers a larger area called Greater Cincinnati, which includes rural communities in Appalachia. In the 91-square-mile area, CPS counts 36,000 students in preschool…
The final results of the 2022 midterm election in the United States are in. Journalists tell us that a key issue for voters was preservation of democracy. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed that while inflation was the top issue on voters’ minds, “preserving democracy” captured second place. The issue that claimed little attention was…
The White House has released the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights—which is likely the signature document reflecting the Biden administration’s approach to algorithmic regulation. Paired with a series of agency actions, the Biden administration is working to address many high-priority algorithmic harms—such as those in financial services, health care provisioning, hiring, and more.…
The pro-housing movement has grown rapidly over the past several years, winning legislative victories from Minneapolis to Raleigh, N.C. to Maine to Utah. The movement’s goals are to increase the production of moderately priced homes and create more diverse housing options. Policy levers to achieve these goals include zoning reforms that legalize duplexes, rowhouses, and…
As big cities across the country recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, they are staring down some formidable challenges in their downtown commercial and office districts, as well as in their labor markets. Today, most U.S. downtowns have lower levels of activity compared to before the pandemic, especially in larger cities—and the federal relief that has…
As Nancy Pelosi winds down her nearly two-decade tenure as the leader of House Democrats, including four terms as Speaker of the House, it is important to examine her time in leadership and learn from it. In many respects, Speaker Pelosi has been one of the most powerful leaders ever to hold the gavel. In…
The two-page fact-sheet released by the Department of Defense (DoD) in March 2022 served as an appetizer for the fully-cooked 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) that arrived seven months later. Whether the initial fact-sheet prepared its readers for disappointment or for satisfaction, the full document delivered. Those hungering for prioritization and a detailed alignment of…
Regional public universities (RPUs) are public, four-year, community-oriented universities, and they have long been anchor institutions for regions across the nation. [1] As our previous work has shown, the presence of a RPU in a community can help bolster employment growth and increase residents’ income and educational attainment. In recent months, policymakers and researchers have…
Californians are understandably proud of what their state has done to advance privacy protection by enacting comprehensive privacy legislation in 2018. That pride now stands in the way of federal privacy legislation. As a strong bill advanced to the House floor, California officials mounted a full court lobbying press against its preemption of provisions in…
At COP27, in early November 2022, South Africa positioned itself as the “champion of the South” in the global effort to curb carbon emissions. Not only did the country present the decommissioning of its first coal-fired plant (the so-called Komati project), Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, also unveiled an ambitious investment plan for a Just…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Skilled immigrants drive patent production more than other skilled workers French firms produced…
Over the past decade, “nudging” has gone from novel concept to standard practice across many higher education institutions. What can we say about whether–and when–nudging works and should be deployed to improve student outcomes? What is a nudge? “Nudging” refers to a wide set of interventions that guide, rather than mandate, individuals to act in…
Prior to the 2020 presidential election, I coauthored Blue Metros, Red States: The Shifting Urban-Rural Divide in America’s Swing States. This book examines how socio-cultural, demographic, economic, and political differences between Democratic leaning million-plus population metros and the more Republican non-metro areas of those states shape electoral and policy outcomes in the swing states. Much…
Just as the economies of the Western Balkans were looking to sustain a recovery from the shock of COVID, the region now faces a new combination of challenges. The war in Ukraine, the resulting sharp increase in energy prices, together with a slowdown in global growth and tightening of global finances, are weighing heavily on…
Creating healthier and more sustainable cities has become a global priority integral to achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and the World Health Organization’s health equity goals. With 56% of the global population now living in urban areas (with far higher rates in North America, South America, and Europe), city and national leaders will…
The Senate is set to remain under Democratic control in 2023, while the majority in the House of Representatives remains unsettled—though most projections suggest Republicans will enjoy a very narrow majority. Much attention is already being paid to what’s to come in January, but before the 118th Congress is sworn in, the 117th Congress must…
The recent election was very bad for the election denier movement, and the election of Katie Hobbs as governor of Arizona completed the bad news. Hobbs was the last in a long line of governors and state elected officials who held the line against people who, like their leader Donald Trump, believed that there was…
Stability and prosperity in the Horn of Africa is critical for the subregion and for the world. Until quite recently, the Horn of Africa appeared to be on a positive trajectory in the context of strengthened regional relations, political transitions, and encouraging economic growth and poverty reduction trends. For example, a recent analysis has shown…
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the largest global economic crisis in more than a century. Many of the households that faced sudden income losses and health expenses were ill-prepared to withstand shocks of that scale and duration. Women, in particular, were affected because they were likelier to be employed in sectors with lockdowns and social distancing measures,…
The 2022 Midterm Voter Election Poll, conducted by the African American Research Collaborative (AARC), has a nationally representative sample of Native American voters (n=500) that ensures Native American voters are included in discussions about the 2022 election. This post summarizes the main findings from the poll specific to Native American voters. Native Americans remained solidly Democratic…
Scores from the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress have captured national headlines, documenting unprecedented declines in student performance in math and reading. For lower-performing students, the drops were even more severe. The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted students’ academic progress by shuttering schools, but also because of the negative mental health effects caused by isolation…
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, known as COP27, leaders from around the world are gathering to discuss solutions to climate change and global warming. Brookings experts explain what is on the agenda, and how the negotiations may play out. MADIHA AFZAL (@MadihaAfzal) Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy and…
Despite the massive volume of funding currently flowing from multiple federal bills passed to invest in place and the national economy, officials in Washington, D.C. acknowledge a relatively small portion is directly earmarked for workforce training systems. This is despite the fact that high-functioning workforce training systems are core to enhanced economic mobility and community…
The Supreme Court’s decision to reverse nearly fifty years of precedent and send the abortion issue back to the states sent shock waves throughout the country. During the summer months the implications of that decision were widely held to be helping the Democrats in what had been shaping up to be a dismal midterm election…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Basel III bank regulations increased welfare in the US Bank liquidity and capital…
Reading the tea leaves from one election in order to predict the next is difficult but not impossible. There are two ways to do it. One way is to look at what the current election tells us about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the likely players in the next election. For that analysis, turn…
The 2022 midterm elections will have a huge impact on the 2024 presidential contest. Republican gains were much smaller than anticipated, and while they seem poised to assume control of the House with control of the Senate still hanging in the balance, there are some implications for 2024 that are not likely to change as…
This week in Class Notes: Mortality is increasing among less educated Americans. Taking away Supplemental Security Income increases the likelihood of crime. Administrative burdens negatively impact participation in programs. This week’s top chart shows that mothers spend more time on secondary child care than fathers. Policy itself notwithstanding, the delivery of the student loan forgiveness program is worth celebrating, argue Pamela Heard…
“Brazil is back!” Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva exclaimed in a victory speech delivered after the election was called in Brazil’s largest metropolitan city, São Paulo. Following a bruising campaign season, humbling run-off election, and narrow victory, Lula completed his “phoenix”- like comeback to return as president for four more years. The election…
We are gathered today to mourn the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores. The headlines rang forth as the New York Times proclaimed, “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading” and “Math Scores Fell in Nearly Every State, and Reading Dipped on National Exam.” The dip was particularly pronounced…
Last month marked a grim anniversary: 10 years since Hurricane Sandy hammered New York City, killing 44 people, displacing thousands, and exacting a $19 billion toll. Sandy flooded subways, cut off power, and plunged 51 square miles of the city underwater. This devastating storm underscored the lack of climate preparedness across New York City’s infrastructure…
Learning loss, mental health crises, escalating economic inequity … school district leaders recognize that these challenges students and families are facing, particularly after the pandemic, require strategies and enhanced coordination to meet the growing needs. These challenges also require shared responsibility with the community if we are to make real progress. Jeff Snell, superintendent of…
Learning loss, mental health crises, escalating economic inequity … school district leaders recognize that these challenges students and families are facing, particularly after the pandemic, require strategies and enhanced coordination to meet the growing needs. These challenges also require shared responsibility with the community if we are to make real progress. Jeff Snell, superintendent of…
Given how valiantly Ukrainians are defending the front lines of the free world, a morally and politically difficult job will fall to the leaders of the United States and the European Union: They will have to insist on sending Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars for recovery and reconstruction only if the aid architecture and reform agenda…
Given how valiantly Ukrainians are defending the front lines of the free world, a morally and politically difficult job will fall to the leaders of the United States and the European Union: They will have to insist on sending Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars for recovery and reconstruction only if the aid architecture and reform agenda…
The 2022-2023 school year’s staff shortages have dominated back-to-school conversations and gained the attention of the Biden-Harris administration. While educator shortages existed before the pandemic, this year’s recruitment challenges have been marked by increased teacher stress and burnout, additional positions to fill, enrollment declines in teacher-training programs, and competition from other job sectors. Nearly all of…
The 2022-2023 school year’s staff shortages have dominated back-to-school conversations and gained the attention of the Biden-Harris administration. While educator shortages existed before the pandemic, this year’s recruitment challenges have been marked by increased teacher stress and burnout, additional positions to fill, enrollment declines in teacher-training programs, and competition from other job sectors. Nearly all of…
Social safety nets are designed to support the most vulnerable part of the population. They do so by providing cash benefits to the most unfortunate families and individuals in society—often people who, for various reasons, have no or diminished earning opportunities because of a disability, care duties, or insufficient skills. An important question is if…
Social safety nets are designed to support the most vulnerable part of the population. They do so by providing cash benefits to the most unfortunate families and individuals in society—often people who, for various reasons, have no or diminished earning opportunities because of a disability, care duties, or insufficient skills. An important question is if…
When policymakers met in Washington D.C. last week, there was plenty of talk about the poor, the middle class, and the rich. In his 1969 poem “The Poor,” Roberto Sosa writes “The poor are many /and so/ –impossible to forget.” At that time, over half of the global population lived in extreme poverty ( less…
When policymakers met in Washington D.C. last week, there was plenty of talk about the poor, the middle class, and the rich. In his 1969 poem “The Poor,” Roberto Sosa writes “The poor are many /and so/ –impossible to forget.” At that time, over half of the global population lived in extreme poverty ( less…
With the 2022 midterm elections on the horizon, Democrats’ unified control of the House, Senate, and the presidency may be nearing its end. Investigations of the executive branch by House committees occur more often when the chamber is controlled by the opposite party from the White House. If Republicans take control of the House, then,…
With the 2022 midterm elections on the horizon, Democrats’ unified control of the House, Senate, and the presidency may be nearing its end. Investigations of the executive branch by House committees occur more often when the chamber is controlled by the opposite party from the White House. If Republicans take control of the House, then,…
Can he? Would he? Will he? Western capitals are abuzz with alarm over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated nuclear threats. Joe Biden, the U.S. president, invoked a possible “Armageddon” at a Democratic party fundraising event. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, explained to a primetime television audience how Paris would react to a Russian nuclear attack “on…
Can he? Would he? Will he? Western capitals are abuzz with alarm over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated nuclear threats. Joe Biden, the U.S. president, invoked a possible “Armageddon” at a Democratic party fundraising event. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, explained to a primetime television audience how Paris would react to a Russian nuclear attack “on…
As has been reported in these pages and in other publications around the country, there are many candidates on the November ballot who think the 2020 election was fraudulent (so-called, “election deniers”). A substantial portion of them seem poised to win. So, what will their victories mean for elections in 2024 and beyond? To better understand…
As has been reported in these pages and in other publications around the country, there are many candidates on the November ballot who think the 2020 election was fraudulent (so-called, “election deniers”). A substantial portion of them seem poised to win. So, what will their victories mean for elections in 2024 and beyond? To better understand…
While there is currently no clear end in sight to ongoing Russian military aggression against Ukraine, discussions are already active about Ukraine's reconstruction. At the Lugano conference in July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky underscored the urgent need to plan for reconstruction before the end of open conflict. On October 25th, the German G7 Presidency and…
While there is currently no clear end in sight to ongoing Russian military aggression against Ukraine, discussions are already active about Ukraine's reconstruction. At the Lugano conference in July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky underscored the urgent need to plan for reconstruction before the end of open conflict. On October 25th, the German G7 Presidency and…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Chances of delaying mortgage payments depended on the servicer Whether borrowers in 2020…
A gender-sensitive school environment report published in 2021 revealed that girls in Nepal are less likely than boys to complete secondary school, with an increased risk of dropout beginning in early adolescence mostly because of the barriers associated with emotional and mental well-being. With the onset of puberty, adolescent girls are more likely to be…
After a yearlong competition, today the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) made awards to 21 regions through its $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge (BBBRC). As the EDA’s signature American Rescue Plan Act recovery program, the BBBRC provides five-year grants ranging between $25 million and $65 million to urban, rural, and…
What’s the latest thinking in fiscal and monetary policy? The Hutchins Roundup keeps you informed of the latest research, charts, and speeches. Want to receive the Hutchins Roundup as an email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. Pandemic had little effect on overall productivity growth Productivity in the U.S. grew…
The summer of 2022 has seen a flurry of legal and policy efforts to expand publicly funded private school choice programs. These include: the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carson v. Makin, which ruled that voucher programs cannot exclude religious schools; Arizona’s creation of a near-universal voucher program; and various state-level actions, such as a…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnX4eE5o3-U There is increasing evidence that severe weather events are becoming more common due to climate change. For instance, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded 22 separate extreme weather disasters across the United States in 2020, shattering the previous annual record. Taxpayers and consumers often bear the costs of these disasters—and the costs…
Just a few years ago, no one would have called the vacant land underneath Miami’s elevated Metrorail particularly inviting, let alone transformative. But today, the city is reimagining this 10-mile corridor as a dynamic linear park: the Underline. The park will feature walking trails, biking infrastructure, and local art while also providing approximately 250,000 residents…
The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), particularly the flexible dollars it made available to state and local governments through State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF), marked a generational experiment in fiscal federalism. Not since the late 1980s has Washington engaged in general revenue sharing with state and local governments. And this time, the…
Raising children has always been expensive. The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly made the prospect more daunting for many, with fluctuating food and housing prices and a tumultuous job market. As a result, many potential parents decided to wait. But as the pandemic recedes, inflation has emerged as a new cost concern for parents. At the same…
Around 10 years ago, multimillion-dollar information communication technology (ICT) companies like Lyft, Pinterest, Slack, and Uber were nonexistent. Today, certain aspects within the industry have not kept pace with their same rapid evolutionary processes as the rest of the sector—gender equality disparity chief among them. As a member of the 11th cohort of the Echidna…
This has been quite a time for U.S. public schools, from pandemic-induced shutdowns to clashes across the country over one issue after the next. In this context, it’s fair to wonder—and maybe worry about—how Americans’ attitudes toward public education might be changing. Last week, Education Next released its 16th-annual survey of public opinion. A nice…