On Tuesday, May 24, Nigerian Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele announced that the country will adopt a more flexible foreign exchange rate system in the near future. This move signals a major policy shift by Emefiele and President Muhammadu Buhari, who had until this point opposed calls to let the naira weaken. Many international oil-related currencies have depreciated against the dollar as oil prices began their decline in 2014. Nigeria, however, has held the naira at a peg of 197-199 per U.S. dollar since March 2015, depleting foreign reserves and deterring investors, who remain concerned about the repercussions of a potential naira devaluation. Following the announcement, Nigerian stocks jumped to a five-month high and bond prices rose in anticipation that a new flexible exchange rate regime would increase the supply of dollars and help attract foreign investors.

For now it remains unclear exactly what a more flexible system will entail for Nigeria, however, some experts suggest that the Central Bank may introduce a dual-rate system, which allows select importers in strategic industries to access foreign currency at the current fixed rate, while more generally foreign currency will be available at a weaker, market-related level. This new regime raises a number of questions, including how it will be governed and who will have access to foreign currency (and at what rate). On Wednesday, Nigeria’s parliament requested a briefing soon from Emefiele and Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun to provide additional clarity on the new system, although the date for such a meeting has not yet been set.

Earlier this month, Kenya announced plans to close the Dadaab refugee camp, located in northeast Kenya, amid security concerns. The move to close the camp has been widely criticized by international actors. United States State Department Press Relations Director Elizabeth Trudeau urged Kenya to “uphold its international obligations and not forcibly repatriate refugees.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated that the closure of the refugee camp would have “devastating consequences.” Despite these concerns, this week, at the World Humanitarian Summit, Kenya stated that it will not go back on its decision and confirmed the closure of the refugee camps within a six-month period.

The camp houses 330,000 refugees, a majority of whom fled from conflict in their home country of Somalia. Kenya insists that the camp poses a threat to its national security, as it believes the camp is used to host and train extremists from Somalia’s Islamist group al-Shabab. Kenya also argued that the developed world, notably the United Kingdom, should host its fair share of African refugees. This is not the first time Kenya has threatened to close the refugee camp. After the Garissa University attacks last April, Kenya voiced its decision to close the refugee camps, although it did not follow through with the plan.

From May 23-27, Lusaka, Zambia hosted 5,000 delegates and participants for the 2016 Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB), with the theme, “Energy and Climate Change.” Held in the wake of December’s COP21 climate agreement and in line with Sustainable Development Goals 7 (ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all) and 13 (take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts), the theme was timely and, as many speakers emphasized, urgent. Around 645 million people in Africa have no access to electricity, and only 16 percent are connected to an energy source. To that end, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina outlined the bank’s ambitious aim: “Our goal is clear: universal access to energy for Africa within 10 years; Expand grid power by 160 gigawatts; Connect 130 million persons to grid power; Connect 75 million persons to off grid systems; And provide access to 150 million households to clean cooking energy."

As part of a push to transform Africa’s energy needs and uses, Rwandan President Paul Kagame joined Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on a panel to support the AfDB’s “New Deal on Energy” that aims to deliver electricity to all Africans by 2025. Kenyatta specifically touted the potential of geothermal energy sources. Now, 40 percent of Kenya's power needs come from geothermal energy sources, he said, but there is still room for improvement—private businesses, which make up 30 percent of Kenya’s on-grid energy needs, have not made the switch yet.

As part of the meetings, the AfDB, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also launched their annual African Economic Outlook, with the theme “Sustainable Cities and Structural Transformation.” In general, the report’s authors predict that the continent will maintain an average growth of 3.7 percent in 2016 before increasing to 4.5 percent in 2017, assuming commodity prices recover and the global economy improves.  However, the focus was on this year’s theme: urbanization. The authors provide an overview of urbanization trends and highlight that successful urban planning can discourage pollution and waste, slow climate change, support better social safety nets, enhance service delivery, and attract investment, among other benefits.

For more on urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa, see Chapter 4 of Foresight Africa 2016: Capitalizing on Urbanization: The Importance of Planning, Infrastructure, and Finance for Africa’s Growing Cities.

In his wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump stressed the importance of fighting ISIS while declaring “we are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world.” For counterterrorism (and I would argue for security in general), such thinking is dangerously wrong-headed: Fighting ISIS and stopping other foreign terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland requires close alliances and deep engagement abroad.

Allies may also have better access to a terrorist stronghold due to geography or historic ties. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan are within easy bombing range of ISIS’ core: the U.S. homeland is not. Although military action against ISIS’ core in Iraq and Syria is vital, it is often quiet global intelligence cooperation that does much of the day-to-day counterterrorism lifting. Given the geographic span of ISIS operations, it is not realistic for the United States to have strong unilateral capabilities in every possible country where the terrorists might operate and use as a base for anti-U.S. operations. Foreign governments fill this gap, acting as a force multiplier for the United States. Shortly after 9/11, the United States was working with over 100 countries on counterterrorism; several years into the war on terror a senior CIA official testified that virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq involved at least some help from a foreign intelligence service. 

Many allies have skilled intelligence services, and they also use their police and their domestic intelligence services to gather information. These services of course know local languages and are culturally aware. They can also take advantage of the law in their efforts to disrupt terrorism: Terrorism, after all, is a crime. Allies, particularly less savory ones, use a government’s coercive power as well. Although people automatically think torture, governments at times threaten to jail a relative of a suspected terrorist or withhold a business permit or the right to attend university. These seemingly mundane threats are something that the United States cannot do outside its own borders. 

Many of the most basic homeland security tasks do not begin or end with the homeland.

Given these advantages, the primary role of U.S. intelligence is to cajole and strengthen allies, not replace them. The United States might provide technical assistance, as many U.S. allies are far weaker in this area. In addition, U.S. intelligence often acts as a conductor of global liaison services. In 2010, al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula tried to bomb two cargo planes as they approached the United States. Efforts to disrupt the plot involved not only the United States and Yemen, but also the countries in transit, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And Saudi Arabia provided a key intelligence tip. 

Many of the most basic homeland security tasks do not begin or end with the homeland. Foreign governments provide information on terrorist suspects, and there is considerable cooperation on those who might travel to the United States. Much of the screening to hinder terrorist travel and operations is done “over there,” not in the United States.

Our world is too small, and terrorists too global, to think of U.S. security narrowly. If we want to fight ISIS and other foes, we need allies. That doesn’t mean we should do whatever our allies want or support them unconditionally. But we must recognize that if we expect them to help America fight its enemies, we must stand by them as well.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released more detailed ACO-level data for participants in first two years of the Pioneer ACO Model. The program, which is designed for health systems with more experience assuming financial risk for patient populations, has generated savings and improvements in quality measures, but has also struggled to retain participants. The program began with 32 provider organizations; following a series of recent announcements there are now 19 total participants.

Last month, CMS announced that the Pioneer Program was able to yield total program savings of $96 million in its second year and resulted in ACOs sharing in savings of $68 million. CMS also reported that the Pioneers were able to improve mean quality scores by 19 percent and increased performance on 28 of 33 measures between performance year one and performance year two.

Financial Results

The latest financial results provide more participant-level data and allow for a new level of analysis of performance across all these ACOs. In year one of the program, financial performance for individual Pioneers ranged from a gross loss of $9.31 million to a gross savings of $23.34 million. Thirteen Pioneers reduced costs enough to qualify for shared savings, with an average of $5.85 million returned to the ACOs, ranging from $1.00 million to $14.00 million. One ACO owed shared losses of $2.55 million. The remaining eighteen ACOs were within the minimum savings or loss rate and did not earn shared savings or owe money to Medicare due to losses.

Following year one, nine Pioneer ACOs either left the Medicare ACO program entirely, or moved to the lower risk Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). Eight of the nine Pioneers that left the program failed to reduce spending in their first year. Out of the remaining 23 participants in the second performance year, three of these ACOs opted to defer reconciliation until the end of Performance Year 3. The 20 Pioneers with final Performance Year 2 data had financial performance ranging from a gross savings of $24.59 million to gross losses of $6.26 million. Fourteen ACOs reduced spending in Performance Year 2, eleven of which reduced enough to qualify for shared savings. The average shared savings for these ACOs was $6.55 million, ranging from $1.22 million to $13.41 million. Three Pioneers shared losses, averaging $2.33 million back to the Medicare program.

The table below shows the breakdown of ACOs according to whether they reduced spending, increased spending, shared in savings, or owed money back to Medicare due to losses. More than half of the Pioneers were able to reduce spending in year one (18/32) and year two (14/23), with more than one-third of total ACOs earning shared savings in each year as well.

The data also suggest that those ACOs that were most successful in reducing spending in the first year were also more likely to reduce spending in their second year. As the chart below shows, three ACOs that earned shared savings in year one owed money back to Medicare due to losses in year two, while no ACO that had shared losses in year one was able to attain shared savings in year two.  

Quality Results

CMS also released ACO-level performance on all 33 measures for Pioneer participants in year one and year two. The 23 ACOs that remain in the Pioneer Program showed overall improvement in average quality scores from the first to second performance year. The ACOs also improved overall on 28 of 33 measures, as the chart below shows.

The quality domain with the greatest improvement in year two was Domain 4 (At Risk-Populations) which saw an overall improvement from 67.5% to 83%. The marked improvement in this domain suggests that ACOs are making progress at better coordinating and delivery care for high-risk patients, many of whom have multiple chronic conditions. Chronic care management for conditions such as diabetes, coronary artery disease, and hypertension is critical for the continued success of accountable care efforts. All other domains saw average quality improvement as well, summarized below.

Likewise, almost all of the individual Pioneer ACOs improved their performance on quality measures from year one to year two. Of the ACOs that remained in the program for year two, all but one ACO was able to improve its overall quality score in its second year.

Additionally, the percentage of Pioneer ACOs performing in the 80^th or 90^th percentile in quality scores also increased from year one to year two, as shown in the chart below.

Putting Together Financial and Quality Results

In year one of the Pioneer Program there appeared to be no direct correlation between average quality scores and gross savings or losses for individual ACOs. This may not be unexpected, especially since Pioneer ACOs in their first year are eligible for shared savings simply by reporting their quality. In subsequent years, however, the ACO’s quality score impacts the level of shared savings that the Pioneers are eligible to receive, so we might expect a bit more alignment between quality and financial performance. Average quality scores and level of savings or losses for each of the 32 first year Pioneer ACOs is below.

After year two, there still does not appear to be a direct relationship between higher quality scores and level of savings or losses in the Pioneer Program. Further examination of results begs additional questions about why certain ACOs clustered in different parts of the grid relative to others.

Of those ACOs in the red circle above— higher total savings and relatively average quality scores—two of the ACOs are from the Boston area and the remaining ones from other large metropolitan areas (New York City; Orange County, CA; Phoenix, AZ; and Detroit, MI). The average per capita Medicare spending for the counties corresponding to these ACOs is $11,544, compared to an average of $10,384 for counties corresponding to all 23 of the Pioneer participants.

Meanwhile those ACOs within the yellow circle had the highest quality scores, but also experience financial losses or slight savings. Many of these ACOs are from less densely populated areas, such as Maine, Wisconsin, and Illinois. There are a number of factors that could be contributing to their quality success, but little financial savings—healthier patient populations, a smaller or more engaged patient population, financial baselines impacted by lower per capita spending in these areas, or other factors driven by their region. Further analysis of these ACOs and the other public and private ACO programs, including both their characteristics and regional market characteristics, will provide needed further insights on the factors most likely to drive success.

Next Steps

These ACO-level data reflect the range of experiences across Pioneer participants. Some ACOs have sustained positive performance to date, while others have seen diminishing rates of return. Those organizations more committed to clinical transformation, patient outreach, and organizational change may be more likely to do better, but further analysis of differences in performance could enable the Pioneer Program and ACOs to achieve bigger impacts over time.

It is hard to know what the third performance year of the Pioneer program will show, but as noted earlier, the Pioneer Program has already lost over a third of its original 32 participants. Despite the decline in participation and mixed results so far, CMS remains optimistic and committed to the program, and the overall number of Medicare, Medicaid, and privately-insured individuals in ACO arrangements continues to rise. We can anticipate a proposed rule impacting the MSSP, likely later this Fall, which will impact elements of the Pioneer ACO program. Regulatory changes that may help increase the ability of the Medicare ACO programs to support better care while ensuring sustainability include: adjustments to attribution methods, benchmark calculations, collection and sharing of data with ACOs, updating performance measures, linking to other ongoing payment and delivery reforms, and creating more financial sustainability for program participants. The current Pioneer program can be a key step toward effective payment reform, but further steps are needed to assure long-term success.

At the very heart of the American idea is the notion that, unlike in other places, we can start from nothing and through hard work have everything. That nothing we can imagine is beyond our reach. That we will pull up stakes, go anywhere, do anything to make our dreams come true. But what if that's just a myth? What if the truth is something very different? What if we are…stuck?

I. What does it mean to be an American?

Full disclosure: I'm British. Partial defense: I was born on the Fourth of July. I also have made my home here, because I want my teenage sons to feel more American. What does that mean? I don't just mean waving flags and watching football and drinking bad beer. (Okay, yes, the beer is excellent now; otherwise, it would have been a harder migration.) I'm talking about the essence of Americanism. It is a question on which much ink—and blood—has been spent. But I think it can be answered very simply: To be American is to be free to make something of yourself. An everyday phrase that's used to admire another ("She's really made something of herself") or as a proud boast ("I'm a self-made man!"), it also expresses a theological truth. The most important American-manufactured products are Americans themselves. The spirit of self-creation offers a strong and inspiring contrast with English identity, which is based on social class. In my old country, people are supposed to know their place. British people, still constitutionally subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, can say things like "Oh, no, that's not for people like me." Infuriating.

Americans do not know their place in society; they make their place. American social structures and hierarchies are open, fluid, and dynamic. Mobility, not nobility. Or at least that's the theory. Here's President Obama, in his second inaugural address: "We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."

Politicians of the left in Europe would lament the existence of bleak poverty. Obama instead attacks the idea that a child born to poor parents will inherit their status. "The same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American…."

Americanism is a unique and powerful cocktail, blending radical egalitarianism (born equal) with fierce individualism (it's up to you): equal parts Thomas Paine and Horatio Alger. Egalitarian individualism is in America's DNA. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "men are created equal and independent," a sentiment that remained even though the last two words were ultimately cut. It was a declaration not only of national independence but also of a nation of independents.

The problem lately is not the American Dream in the abstract. It is the growing failure to realize it. Two necessary ingredients of Americanism—meritocracy and momentum—are now sorely lacking.

America is stuck.

Almost everywhere you look—at class structures, Congress, the economy, race gaps, residential mobility, even the roads—progress is slowing. Gridlock has already become a useful term for political inactivity in Washington, D. C. But it goes much deeper than that. American society itself has become stuck, with weak circulation and mobility across class lines. The economy has lost its postwar dynamism. Racial gaps, illuminated by the burning of churches and urban unrest, stubbornly persist.

In a nation where progress was once unquestioned, stasis threatens. Many Americans I talk to sense that things just aren't moving the way they once were. They are right. Right now this prevailing feeling of stuckness, of limited possibilities and uncertain futures, is fueling a growing contempt for institutions, from the banks and Congress to the media and big business, and a wave of antipolitics on both left and right. It is an impotent anger that has yet to take coherent shape. But even if the American people don't know what to do about it, they know that something is profoundly wrong.

II. How stuck are we?

Let's start with the most important symptom: a lack of social mobility. For all the boasts of meritocracy—only in America!—Americans born at the bottom of the ladder are in fact now less likely to rise to the top than those situated similarly in most other nations, and only half as likely as their Canadian counterparts. The proportion of children born on the bottom rung of the ladder who rise to the top as adults in the U.S. is 7.5 percent—lower than in the U.K. (9 percent), Denmark (11.7), and Canada (13.5). Horatio Alger has a funny Canadian accent now.

It is not just poverty that is inherited. Affluent Americans are solidifying their own status and passing it on to their children more than the affluent in other nations and more than they did in the past. Boys born in 1948 to a high-earning father (in the top quarter of wage distribution) had a 33 percent chance of becoming a top earner themselves; for those born in 1980, the chance of staying at the top rose sharply to 44 percent, according to calculations by Manhattan Institute economist Scott Winship. The sons of fathers with really high earnings—in the top 5 percent—are much less likely to tumble down the ladder in the U. S. than in Canada (44 percent versus 59 percent). A "glass floor" prevents even the least talented offspring of the affluent from falling. There is a blockage in the circulation of the American elite as well, a system-wide hardening of the arteries.

Exhibit A in the case against the American political elites: the U. S. tax code. To call it Byzantine is an insult to medieval Roman administrative prowess. There is one good reason for this complexity: The American tax system is a major instrument of social policy, especially in terms of tax credits to lower-income families, health-care subsidies, incentives for retirement savings, and so on. But there are plenty of bad reasons, too—above all, the billions of dollars' worth of breaks and exceptions resulting from lobbying efforts by the very people the tax system favors.

So fragile is the American political ego that we can't go five minutes without congratulating ourselves on the greatness of our system, yet policy choices exacerbate stuckness.

The American system is also a weak reed when it comes to redistribution. You will have read and heard many times that the United States is one of the most unequal nations in the world. That is true, but only after the impact of taxes and benefits is taken into account. What economists call "market inequality," which exists before any government intervention at all, is much lower—in fact it's about the same as in Germany and France. There is a lot going on under the hood here, but the key point is clear enough: America is unequal because American policy moves less money from rich to poor. Inequality is not fate or an act of nature. Inequality is a choice.

These are facts that should shock America into action. For a nation organized principally around the ideas of opportunity and openness, social stickiness of this order amounts to an existential threat. Although political leaders declare their dedication to openness, the hard issues raised by social inertia are receiving insufficient attention in terms of actual policy solutions. Most American politicians remain cheerleaders for the American Dream, merely offering loud encouragement from the sidelines, as if that were their role. So fragile is the American political ego that we can't go five minutes without congratulating ourselves on the greatness of our system, yet policy choices exacerbate stuckness and ensure decline.

In Britain (where stickiness has historically been an accepted social condition), by contrast, the issues of social mobility and class stickiness have risen to the top of the political and policy agenda. In the previous U.K. government (in which I served as director of strategy to Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister), we devoted whole Cabinet meetings to the problems of intergenerational mobility and the development of a new national strategy. (One result has been a dramatic expansion in pre-K education and care: Every 3- and 4-year-old will soon be entitled to 30 hours a week for free.) Many of the Cabinet members were schooled at the nation's finest private high schools. A few had hereditary titles. But they pored over data and argued over remedies—posh people worrying over intergenerational income quintiles.

Why is social mobility a hotter topic in the old country? Here is my theory: Brits are acutely aware that they live in a class-divided society. Cues and clues of accent, dress, education, and comportment are constantly calibrated. But this awareness increases political pressure to reduce these divisions. In America, by contrast, the myth of classlessness stands in the way of progress. The everyday folksiness of Americans—which, to be clear, I love—serves as a social camouflage for deep economic inequality. Americans tell themselves and one another that they live in a classless land of open opportunity. But it is starting to ring hollow, isn't it?

III. For black Americans, claims of equal opportunity have, of course, been false from the founding.

They remain false today. The chances of being stuck in poverty are far, far greater for black kids. Half of those born on the bottom rung of the income ladder (the bottom fifth) will stay there as adults. Perhaps even more disturbing, seven out of ten black kids raised in middle-income homes (i.e., the middle fifth) will end up lower down as adults. A boy who grows up in Baltimore will earn 28 percent less simply because he grew up in Baltimore: In other words, this supersedes all other factors. Sixty-six percent of black children live in America's poorest neighborhoods, compared with six percent of white children.

Recent events have shone a light on the black experience in dozens of U. S. cities.

Behind the riots and the rage, the statistics tell a simple, damning story. Progress toward equality for black Americans has essentially halted. The average black family has an income that is 59 percent of the average white family's, down from 65 percent in 2000. In the job market, race gaps are immobile, too. In the 1950s, black Americans were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. And today? Still twice as likely.

From heeding the call "Go west, young man" to loading up the U-Haul in search of a better job, the instinctive restlessness of America has always matched skills to work, people to opportunities, labor to capital.

Race gaps in wealth are perhaps the most striking of all. The average white household is now thirteen times wealthier than the average black one. This is the widest gap in a quarter of a century. The recession hit families of all races, but it resulted in a wealth wipeout for black families. In 2007, the average black family had a net worth of $19,200, almost entirely in housing stock, typically at the cheap, fragile end of the market. By 2010, this had fallen to $16,600. By 2013—by which point white wealth levels had started to recover—it was down to $11,000. In national economic terms, black wealth is now essentially nonexistent.

Half a century after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the arc of history is no longer bending toward justice. A few years ago, it was reasonable to hope that changing attitudes, increasing education, and a growing economy would surely, if slowly, bring black America and white America closer together. No longer. America is stuck.

IV. The economy is also getting stuck.

Labor productivity growth, measured as growth in output per hour, has averaged 1.6 percent since 1973. Male earning power is flatlining. In 2014, the median full-time male wage was $50,000, down from $53,000 in 1973 (in the dollar equivalent of 2014). Capital is being hoarded rather than invested in the businesses of the future. U. S. corporations have almost $1.5 trillion sitting on their balance sheets, and many are busily buying up their own stock. But capital expenditure lags, hindering the economic recovery.

New-business creation and entrepreneurial activity are declining, too. As economist Robert Litan has shown, the proportion of "baby businesses" (firms less than a year old) has almost halved since the late 1970s, decreasing from 15 percent to 8 percent—the hallmark of "a steady, secular decline in business dynamism." It is significant that this downward trend set in long before the Great Recession hit. There is less movement between jobs as well, another symptom of declining economic vigor.

Americans are settling behind their desks—and also into their neighborhoods. The proportion of American adults moving house each year has decreased by almost half since the postwar years, to around 12 percent. Long-distance moves across state lines have as well. This is partly due to technological advances, which have weakened the link between location and job prospects, and partly to the growth of economic diversity in cities; there are few "one industry" towns today. But it is also due to a less vibrant housing market, slower rates of new business creation, and a lessening in Americans' appetite for disruption, change, and risk.

This geographic settling is at odds with historic American geographic mobility. From heeding the call "Go west, young man" to loading up the U-Haul in search of a better job, the instinctive restlessness of America has always matched skills to work, people to opportunities, labor to capital. Rather than waiting for help from the government, or for the economic tide to turn back in their favor, millions of Americans changed their life prospects by changing their address. Now they are more likely to stay put and wait. Others, especially black Americans, are unable to escape the poor neighborhoods of their childhood. They are, as the title of an influential book by sociologist Patrick Sharkey puts it, Stuck in Place.

There are everyday symptoms of stuckness, too. Take transport. In 2014, Americans collectively spent almost seven billion hours stuck motionless in traffic—that's a couple days each. The roads get more jammed every year. But money for infrastructure improvements is stuck in a failing road fund, and the railophobia of politicians hampers investment in public transport.

Whose job is it to do something about this? The most visible symptom of our disease is the glue slowly hardening in the machinery of national government. The last two Congresses have been the least productive in history by almost any measure chosen, just when we need them to be the most productive. The U. S. political system, with its strong separation among competing centers of power, relies on a spirit of cross-party compromise and trust in order to work. Good luck there.

V. So what is to be done?

As with anything, the first step is to admit the problem. Americans have to stop convincing themselves they live in a society of opportunity. It is a painful admission, of course, especially for the most successful. The most fervent believers in meritocracy are naturally those who have enjoyed success. It is hard to acknowledge the role of good fortune, including the lottery of birth, when describing your own path to greatness.

There is a general reckoning needed. In the golden years following World War II, the economy grew at 4 percent per annum and wages surged. Wealth accumulated. The federal government, at the zenith of its powers, built interstates and the welfare system, sent GIs to college and men to the moon. But here's the thing: Those days are gone, and they're not coming back. Opportunity and growth will no longer be delivered, almost automatically, by a buoyant and largely unchallenged economy. Now it will take work.

The future success of the American idea must now be intentional.

Entrepreneurial, mobile, aspirational: New Americans are true Americans. We need a lot more of them.

There are plenty of ideas for reform that simply require will and a functioning political system. At the heart of them is the determination to think big again and to vigorously engage in public investment. And we need to put money into future generations like our lives depended on it, because they do: Access to affordable, effective contraception dramatically cuts rates of unplanned pregnancy and gives kids a better start in life. Done well, pre-K education closes learning gaps and prepares children for school. More generous income benefits stabilize homes and help kids. Reading programs for new parents improve literacy levels. Strong school principals attract good teachers and raise standards. College coaches help get nontraditional students to and through college. And so on. We are not lacking ideas. We are lacking a necessary sense of political urgency. We are stuck.

But we can move again if we choose.

In addition to a rejuvenation of policy in all these fields, there are two big shifts required for an American twenty-first-century renaissance: becoming open to more immigration and shifting power from Washington to the cities.

VI. America needs another wave of immigration.

This is in part just basic math: We need more young workers to fund the old age of the baby boomers. But there is more to it than that. Immigrants also provide a shot in the arm to American vitality itself. Always have, always will. Immigrants are now twice as likely to start a new business as native-born Americans. Rates of entrepreneurialism are declining among natives but rising among immigrants.

Immigrant children show extraordinary upward-mobility rates, shooting up the income-distribution ladder like rockets, yet by the third or fourth generation, the rates go down, reflecting indigenous norms. Among children born in Los Angeles to poorly educated Chinese immigrants, for example, an astonishing 70 percent complete a four-year-college degree. As the work of my Brookings colleague William Frey shows, immigrants are migrants within the U. S., too, moving on from traditional immigrant cities—New York, Los Angeles—to other towns and cities in search of a better future. Entrepreneurial, mobile, aspirational: New Americans are true Americans. We need a lot more of them.

This makes a mockery of our contemporary political "debates" about immigration reform, which have become intertwined with race and racism. Some Republicans tap directly into white fears of an America growing steadily browner. More than four in ten white seniors say that a growing population of immigrants is a "change for the worse"; half of white boomers believe immigration is "a threat to traditional American customs and values." But immigration delves deeper into the question of American identity than it does even issues of race. Immigrants generate more dynamism and aspiration, but they are also unsettling and challenging. Where this debate ends will therefore tell us a great deal about the trajectory of the nation. An America that closes its doors will be an America that has chosen to settle rather than grow, that has allowed security to trump dynamism.

VII. The second big shift needed to get America unstuck is a revival of city and state governance.

Since the American Dream is part of the national identity, it seems natural to look to the national government to help make it a reality. But cities are now where the American Dream will live or die. America's hundred biggest metros are home to 67 percent of the nation's population and 75 percent of its economy. Americans love the iconography of the small town, even at the movies—but they watch those movies in big cities.

Powerful mayors in those cities have greater room for maneuvering and making an impact than the average U. S. senator. Even smaller cities and towns can be strongly influenced by their mayor.

There are choices to be made. Class divisions are hardening. Upward mobility has a very weak pulse. Race gaps are widening.

The new federalism in part is being born of necessity. National politics is in ruins, and national institutions are weakened by years of short-termism and partisanship. Power, finding a vacuum in D. C., is diffusive. But it may also be that many of the big domestic-policy challenges will be better answered at a subnational level, because that is where many of the levers of change are to be found: education, family planning, housing, desegregation, job creation, transport, and training. Amid the furor over Common Core and federal standards, it is important to remember that for every hundred dollars spent on education, just nine come from the federal government.

We may be witnessing the end of many decades of national-government dominance in domestic policy-making (the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, welfare reform, Obamacare). The Affordable Care Act is important in itself, but it may also come to have a place in history as the legislative bookend to a long period of national-policy virtuosity.

The case for the new federalism need not be overstated. There will still be plenty of problems for the national government to fix, including, among the most urgent, infrastructure and nuclear waste. The main tools of macroeconomic policy will remain the Federal Reserve and the federal tax code. But the twentieth-century model of big federal social-policy reforms is in decline. Mayors and governors are starting to notice, and because they don't have the luxury of being stuck, they are forced to be entrepreneurs of a new politics simply to survive.

VIII. It is possible for America to recover its earlier dynamism, but it won't be easy.

The big question for Americans is: Do you really want to? Societies, like people, age. They might also settle down, lose some dynamism, trade a little less openness for a little more security, get a bit stuck in their ways. Many of the settled nations of old Europe have largely come to terms with their middle age. They are wary of immigration but enthusiastic about generous welfare systems and income redistribution. Less dynamism, maybe, but more security in exchange.

America, it seems to me, is not made to be a settled society. Such a notion runs counter to the story we tell ourselves about who we are. (That's right, we. We've all come from somewhere else, haven't we? I just got here a bit more recently.) But over time, our narratives become myths, insulating us from the truth. For we are surely stuck, if not settled. And so America needs to decide one way or the other. There are choices to be made. Class divisions are hardening. Upward mobility has a very weak pulse. Race gaps are widening. The worst of all worlds threatens: a European class structure without European welfare systems to dull the pain.

Americans tell themselves and the world that theirs is a society in which each and all can rise, an inspiring contrast to the hereditary cultures from which it sprang. It's one of the reasons I'm here. But have I arrived to raise my children here just in time to be stuck, too? Or will America be America again?

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Esquire.

In the developing world, more than 200 million children under the age of five years are at risk of not reaching their full development potential because they suffer from the negative consequences of poverty, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate learning opportunities. Overall, 165 million children (one in four) are stunted, and 90 percent of these children live in Africa and Asia. And though some progress has been made globally, child malnutrition remains a serious public health problem with enormous human and economic costs. Worldwide, only about 50 percent of children are enrolled in preprimary education, and in low-income countries a mere 17 percent. And though more and more children are going to school, millions have little to show for it. By some accounts, 250 million children of primary school age cannot read even part of a sentence. Some of these children have never been to school (58 million); but more often, they perform poorly despite having spent several years in school, which reflects not only the poor quality of many schools but also the multiple disadvantages that characterize their early life.

Ensuring that all children—regardless of their place of birth and parental income or education level—have access to opportunities that will allow them to reach their full potential requires investing early in their development. To develop their cognitive, linguistic, socioemotional and physical skills and abilities, children need good nutrition and health, opportunities for play, nurture and learning with caregivers, early stimulation and protection from violence and neglect.

The Case for Early Interventions 

The arguments for investing in children early are simple and convincing. Early investment makes sense scientifically. The brain is almost fully developed by age three, providing a prime opportunity to achieve high gains. We know that the rapid rate of development of the brain’s neural pathways is responsible for an individual’s cognitive, social and emotional development, and there is solid evidence that nutrition and stimulation during the first 1,000 days of life are linked to brain development. 

Early investment makes sense in terms of equity. The playing field has the highest chances of being leveled early on, and we know that programs have a higher impact for young children from poorer families. In the United States, for example, increasing preschool enrollment to 100 percent for low-income children would reduce disparities in school readiness by 24 percent between black and white children and by 35 percent between Hispanic and white children. We also know that equalizing initial endowments through early childhood development (ECD) programs is far more cost-effective than compensating for differences in outcomes later in life. 

Early investment makes sense economically. Investing early prevents higher costs down the road, and interventions yield a high return on investment. There is evidence of the benefits for the individual and for society more broadly. For instance, at the level of the individual, in Jamaica children participating in an early childhood stimulation program were found to have 25 percent higher earnings 20 years later compared with children who did not participate. At the economy-wide level, eliminating malnutrition is estimated to increase gross domestic product by 1 to 2 percentage points annually, while countries with school systems that have a 10-percentage-point advantage in the proportion of students

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Once upon a time, innovation was an isolationist sport. In America’s innovative economy 20 years ago, a worker drove to a nondescript office campus along a suburban corridor, worked in isolation, and kept ideas secret.

Today, by contrast and partly a result of the Great Recession, proximity is everything. Talented people want to work and live in urban places that are walkable, bike-able, connected by transit, and hyper-caffeinated. Major companies across multiple sectors are practicing “open innovation” and want to be close to other firms, research labs, and universities. Entrepreneurs want to start their companies in collaborative spaces, where they can share ideas and have efficient access to everything from legal advice to sophisticated lab equipment.

These disruptive forces are coming to ground in small, primarily urban enclaves—what we and others are calling “innovation districts.” By our definition, innovation districts cluster and connect leading-edge institutions with startups and spin-off companies, business incubators, and accelerators in the relentless pursuit of cutting-edge discoveries for the market. Compact, transit-accessible, and highly networked, they grow talent, foster open collaboration, and offer mixed-used housing, office, retail, and 21st century urban amenities. In many respects, the rise of innovation districts embodies the very essence of cities: an aggregation of talented, driven people assembled in close quarters, who exchange ideas and knowledge. It’s in the vein of what urban historian Sir Peter Hall calls “a dynamic process of innovation, imitation and improvement.”

Globally, Montreal, Seoul, Singapore, Medellin, Barcelona, Cambridge, and Berlin offer just a few examples of evolving innovation districts. In the US, the most iconic innovation districts can be found in the downtowns and midtowns of cities like Atlanta, Cambridge, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and St. Louis, where advanced research universities, medical complexes, research institutions, and clusters of tech and creative firms are sparking business expansion, as well as residential and commercial growth. Even a cursory visit to Kendall Square in Cambridge, University City in Philadelphia, or midtown Atlanta shows the explosion of growth and mixed development occurring around institutions like MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgia Tech.

Other innovation districts can be found in Boston, Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Seattle, where former industrial and warehouse areas are charting a new innovative path, powered by their enviable location along transit lines, their proximity to downtowns and waterfronts, and their recent addition of advanced research institutions (reflected by Carnegie Mellon University’s decision to place its Integrative Media Program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard).

Perhaps the greatest validation of this shift is found in the efforts of traditional exurban science parks (like Research Triangle Park in Raleigh-Durham) to urbanize, in order to keep pace with the preferences of their workers for walkable communities and the preference of their firms to be near other firms and collaborative opportunities.

Innovation districts are already attracting an eclectic mix of firms in a diverse group of sectors, including life sciences, clean energy, design, and tech. We even see a return of small-scale and customized manufacturing, made possible by 3D printing, robotics, and other advanced techniques.

Unlike efforts to grow the “consumer city” via sports stadia, luxury housing, and high-end retail, innovation districts are intent on growing the firms, networks, and sectors that drive real, broad-based prosperity.

At a time of increasing concerns over inequality and resilience, innovation districts can spur productive, inclusive, and sustainable growth. If properly structured and scaled, they can provide a strong foundation for the commercialization of ideas, the expansion of firms, and the creation of jobs. They also offer the tantalizing prospect of expanding employment and educational opportunities for disadvantaged populations—many innovation districts are close to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods—as well as sparking more sustainable development patterns, given their embrace of transit, historic buildings, traditional street grids, and existing infrastructure.

Innovation districts represent one of the most positive trends that have emerged in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Smart cities, innovative companies, advanced universities, and financial institutions would be wise to embrace them.

This piece originally appeared on Quartz.

Mercutio: I am hurt. A plague a’ both your houses! I am sped. Is he gone and hath nothing? — Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, scene 1, 90–92

The eurozone crisis, which includes the Greek crisis but is not restricted to it, has undermined the credibility of the EU institutions and left millions of Europeans disillusioned with the European Project. The euro was either introduced too early, or it included countries that should never have been included, or both were true. High rates of inflation left countries in the periphery uncompetitive and the constraint of a single currency removed a key adjustment mechanism. Capital flows allowed this problem to be papered over until the global financial crisis hit.

The leaders of the international institutions, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, together with the governments of the stronger economies, were asked to figure out a solution and they emphasized fiscal consolidation, which they made a condition for assistance with heavy debt burdens. The eurozone as a whole has paid the price, with real GDP in the first quarter of 2015 being about 1.5 percent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008, seven years earlier, and with a current unemployment rate of 11 percent. By contrast, the sluggish U.S. recovery looks rocket-powered, with GDP 8.6 percent above its previous peak and an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent.

The burden of the euro crisis has been very unevenly distributed, with Greece facing unemployment of 25 percent and rising, Spain 23 percent, Italy 12 percent, and Ireland 9.7 percent, while German unemployment is 4.7 percent. It is not surprising that so many Europeans are unhappy with their policy leaders who moved too quickly into a currency union and then dealt with the crisis in a way that pushed countries into economic depression. The common currency has been a boon to Germany, with its $287 billion current account surplus, but the bane of the southern periphery. Greece bears considerable culpability for its own problems, having failed to collect taxes or open up an economy full of competitive restrictions, but that does not excuse the policy failures among Europe’s leaders. A plague on both sides in the Greek crisis!

During the Great Moderation, it seemed that the Bretton Woods institutions were losing their usefulness because private markets could provide needed funding. The financial crisis and the global recession that followed it shattered this belief. The IMF did not foresee the crisis, nor was it a central player in dealing with the period of greatest peril from 2007 to 2009. National treasuries, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank were the only institutions that had the resources and the power to deal with the bank failures, the shortage of liquidity, and the freezing up of markets. Still, the IMF became relevant again and played an important role in the euro crisis, although at the cost of sharing the unpopularity of the policy response to that crisis.

China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is the result of China’s growing power and influence and the failure of the West, particularly the United States, to come to terms with this seismic shift. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have deliberately excluded China, the largest economy in Asia and largest trading partner in the world. Reform of the governance structure of the World Bank and the IMF has stalled with disproportionate power still held by the United States and Europe. Unsurprisingly, China has decided to exercise its influence in other ways, establishing the new Asian bank and increasing the role of the yuan in international transactions. U.S. policymakers underestimated China’s strength and the willingness of other countries to cooperate with it, and the result has been to reduce the role and influence of the Bretton Woods institutions.

Can the old institutions be reinvented and made more effective? In Europe, the biggest problem is that bad decisions were made by national governments and by the international institutions (although the ECB policies have been generally good). The World Bank and IMF do need to reform their governance, but it may be too late to bring China back into the fold.

The promise of geoengineering is placing average global temperature under human control, and is thus considered a powerful instrument for the international community to deal with global warming. While great energy has been devoted to learning more about the natural systems that it would affect, questions of political nature have received far less consideration. Taking as a given that regional effects will be asymmetric, the nations of the world will only give their consent to deploying this technology if they can be given assurances of a fair compensation mechanism, something like an insurance policy. The question of compensation reveals that the politics of geoengineering are far more difficult than the technical aspects.

What is Geoengineering?

In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo exploded, throwing a massive amount of volcanic sulfate aerosols into the high skies. The resulting cloud dispersed over weeks throughout the planet and cooled its temperature on average 0.5° Celsius over the next two years. If this kind of natural phenomenon could be replicated and controlled, the possibility of engineering the Earth’s climate is then within reach.

Spraying aerosols in the stratosphere is one method of solar radiation management (SRM), a class of climate engineering that focuses on increasing the albedo, i.e. reflectivity, of the planet’s atmosphere. Other SRM methods include brightening clouds by increasing their content of sea salt. A second class of geo-engineering efforts focuses on carbon removal from the atmosphere and includes carbon sequestration (burying it deep underground) and increasing land or marine vegetation. Of all these methods, SRM is appealing for its effectiveness and low costs; a recent study put the cost at about $5 to $8 billion per year.¹

Not only is SRM relatively inexpensive, but we already have the technological pieces that assembled properly would inject the skies with particles that reflect sunlight back into space. For instance, a fleet of modified Boeing 747s could deliver the necessary payload. Advocates of geoengineering are not too concerned about developing the technology to effect SRM, but about its likely consequences, not only in terms of slowing global warming but the effects on regional weather. And there lies the difficult question for geoengineering: the effects of SRM are likely to be unequally distributed across nations.

Here is one example of these asymmetries: Julia Pongratz and colleagues at the department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science estimated a net increase in yields of wheat, corn, and rice from SRM modified weather. However, the study also found a redistributive effect with equatorial countries experiencing lower yields.² We can then expect that equatorial countries will demand fair compensation to sign on the deployment of SRM, which leads to two problems: how to calculate compensation, and how to agree on a compensation mechanism.

The calculus of compensation

What should be the basis for fair compensation? One view of fairness could be that, every year, all economic gains derived from SRM are pooled together and distributed evenly among the regions or countries that experience economic losses.

If the system pools gains from SRM and distributes them in proportion to losses, questions about the balance will only be asked in years in which gains and losses are about the same. But if losses are far greater than the gains; then this would be a form of insurance that cannot underwrite some of the incidents it intends to cover. People will not buy such an insurance policy; which is to say, some countries will not authorize SRM deployment. In the reverse, if the pool has a large balance left after paying out compensations, then winners of SRM will demand lower compensation taxes.

Further complicating the problem is the question of how to separate gains or losses that can be attributed to SRM from regional weather fluctuations. Separating the SRM effect could easily become an intractable problem because regional weather patterns are themselves affected by SRM.  For instance, any year that El Niño is particularly strong, the uncertainty about the net effect of SRM will increase exponentially because it could affect the severity of the oceanic oscillation itself. Science can reduce uncertainty but only to a certain degree, because the better we understand nature, the more we understand the contingency of natural systems. We can expect better explanations of natural phenomena from science, but it would be unfair to ask science to reduce greater understanding to a hard figure that we can plug into our compensation equation.

Still, greater complexity arises when separating SRM effects from policy effects at the local and regional level. Some countries will surely organize better than others to manage this change, and preparation will be a factor in determining the magnitude of gains or losses. Inherent to the problem of estimating gains and losses from SRM is the inescapable subjective element of assessing preparation. 

The politics of compensation

Advocates of geoengineering tell us that their advocacy is not about deploying SRM; rather, it is about better understanding the scientific facts before we even consider deployment. It’s tempting to believe that the accumulating science on SRM effects would be helpful. But when we consider the factors I just described above, it is quite possible that more science will also crystalize the uncertainty about exact amounts of compensation. The calculus of gain or loss, or the difference between the reality and a counterfactual of what regions and countries will experience requires certainty, but science only yields irreducible uncertainty about nature.

The epistemic problems with estimating compensation are only to be compounded by the political contestation of those numbers. Even within the scientific community, different climate models will yield different results, and since economic compensation is derived from those models’ output, we can expect a serious contestation of the objectivity of the science of SRM impact estimation. Who should formulate the equation? Who should feed the numbers into it? A sure way to alienate scientists from the peoples of the world is to ask them to assert their cognitive authority over this calculus. 

What’s more, other parts of the compensation equation related to regional efforts to deal with SRM effect are inherently subjective. We should not forget the politics of asserting compensation commensurate to preparation effort; countries that experience low losses may also want compensation for their efforts preparing and coping with natural disasters.

Not only would a compensation equation be a sham, it would be unmanageable. Its legitimacy would always be in question. The calculus of compensation may seem a way to circumvent the impasses of politics and define fairness mathematically. Ironically, it is shot through with subjectivity; is truly a political exercise.

Can we do without compensation?

Technological innovations are similar to legislative acts, observed Langdon Winner.³ Technical choices of the earliest stage in technical design quickly “become strongly fixed in material equipment, economic investment, and social habit, [and] the original flexibility vanishes for all practical purposes once the initial commitments are made.” For that reason, he insisted, "the same careful attention one would give to the rules, roles, and relationships of politics must also be given to such things as the building of highways, the creation of television networks, and the tailoring of seeming insignificant features on new machines."

If technological change can be thought of as legislative change, we must consider how such a momentous technology as SRM can be deployed in a manner consonant with our democratic values. Engineering the planet’s weather is nothing short of passing an amendment to Planet Earth’s Constitution. One pesky clause in that constitutional amendment is a fair compensation scheme. It seems so small a clause in comparison to the extent of the intervention, the governance of deployment and consequences, and the international commitments to be made as a condition for deployment (such as emissions mitigation and adaptation to climate change). But in the short consideration afforded here, we get a glimpse of the intractable political problem of setting up a compensation scheme. And yet, if the clause were not approved by a majority of nations, a fair compensation scheme has little hope to be consonant with democratic aspirations.

¹McClellan, Justin, David W Keith, Jay Apt. 2012. Cost analysis of stratospheric albedo modification delivery systems. Environmental Research Letters 7(3): 1-8.

²Pongratz, Julia, D. B. Lobell, L. Cao, K. Caldeira. 2012. Nature Climate Change 2, 101–105.

³Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus (109) 1: 121-136.

So we’ve almost reached the end of the year 2015, which could go down in the history of global sustainable development efforts as one of the more significant years, with the trifecta of the approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the agreement on the Addis Agenda on Financing for Development (FfD) and the (shortly to be completed) Paris COP21 Climate Summit. Yet, all will depend on how the agreements with their ambitious targets are implemented on the ground.

Effective implementation will require a theory of change—a way to think about how we are to get from “here” in 2015 to “there” in 2030. The key problem is what has very appropriately been called by some “the missing middle,” i.e., the gap between the top-down global targets on the one hand and the bottom-up development initiatives, projects, and programs that are supported by governments, aid agencies, foundations, and social entrepreneurs.

One way to begin to close this gap is to aim for scaled-up global efforts in specific areas, as is pledged in the Addis Agenda, including efforts to fight global hunger and malnutrition, international tax cooperation and international cooperation to strengthen capacities of municipalities and other local authorities, investments and international coopera­tion to allow all children to complete free, equitable, inclusive and quality early childhood, primary and secondary education, and concessional and non-concessional financing.

Another way is to develop country-specific national targets and plans consistent with the SDG, Addis, and COP21 targets, as is currently being done with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program’s MAPS program. This can provide broad guidance on policy priorities and resource mobilization strategies to be pursued at the national level and can help national and international actors to prioritize their interventions in areas where a country’s needs are greatest.

However, calling for expanded global efforts in particular priority areas and defining national targets and plans is not enough. Individual development actors have to link their specific projects and programs with the national SDG, Addis, and COP21 targets. They systematically have to pursue a scaling-up strategy in their areas of engagement, i.e., to develop and pursue pathways from individual time-bound interventions to impact at a scale in a way that will help achieve the global and national targets. A recent paper I co-authored with Larry Cooley summarizes two complementary approaches of how one might design and implement such scaling-up pathways. The main point, however, is that only the pursuit of such scaling-up pathways constitutes a meaningful theory of change that offers hope for effective implementation of the new global sustainable development targets.

Fortunately, over the last decade, development analysts and agencies have increasingly focused on the question of how to scale up impact of successful development interventions. Leading the charge, the World Bank in 2004, under its president Jim Wolfensohn, organized a high-level international conference in Shanghai in cooperation with the Chinese authorities on the topic of scaling up development impact and published the associated analytical work. However, with changes in the leadership at the World Bank, the initiative passed to others in the mid-2000s, including the Brookings Institution, ExpandNet (a group of academics working with the World Health Organization), Management Systems International (MSI), and Stanford University. They developed analytical frameworks for systematically assessing scalability of development initiatives and innovations, analyzed the experience with more or less successful scaling-up initiatives, including in fragile and conflict-affected states, and established networks that bring together development experts and practitioners to share knowledge.

By now, many international development agencies (including GIZ, JICA, USAID, African Development Bank, IFAD and UNDP), foundations (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation) and leading development NGOs (including Heifer International, Save the Children and the World Resources Institute), among others, have focused on how best to scale up development impact, while the OECD recently introduced a prize for the most successful scaling-up development initiatives. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is perhaps the most advanced among the agencies, having developed a systematic operational approach to the innovation-learning-scaling-up cycle. In a collaborative effort with the Brookings Institution, IFAD reviewed its operational practices and experience and then prepared operational design and evaluation guidelines, which can serve as a good example for other development agencies. The World Bank, while yet to develop a systematic institution-wide approach to the scaling-up agenda, is exploring in specific areas how best to pursue scaled-up impact, such as in the areas of mother and child health, social enterprise innovation, and the “science of delivery.”

Now that the international community has agreed on the SDGs and the Addis Agenda, and is closing in on an agreement in Paris on how to respond to climate change, it is the right time to bridge the “missing middle” by linking the sustainable development and climate targets with effective scaling-up methodologies and practices among the development actors. In practical terms, this requires the following steps:

• Developing shared definitions, analytical frameworks, and operational approaches to scaling up among development experts;
• Developing sectoral and sub-sectoral strategies at country level that link short- and medium-term programs and interventions through scaling-up pathways with the longer-term SDG and climate targets;
• Introducing effective operational policies and practices in the development agencies in country strategies, project design, and monitoring and evaluation;
• Developing multi-stakeholder partnerships around key development interventions with the shared goal of pursuing well-identified scaling-up pathways focused on the achievement of the SDGs and climate targets;
• Developing incentive schemes based on the growing experience with “challenge funds” that focus not only on innovation, but also on scaling up, such as the recently established Global Innovation Fund; and
• Further building up expert and institutional networks to share experience and approaches, such as the Community of Practice on Scaling Up, recently set up by MSI and the Results for Development Institute.

I had been mulling a rebuttal to my colleague and friend Jon Rauch’s interesting—but wrong—new Brookings paper praising the role of “hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals” in democracy. I thought the indictments of Chris Christie’s associates last week provided a perfect example of the dangers of all of that, and so of why Jon was incorrect. But in yesterday’s L.A. Times, he beat me to it, himself defending the political morality (if not the efficacy) of their actions, and in the process delivering a knockout blow to his own position.

Bridgegate is a perfect example of why we need fewer "hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals" in our politics, not more. There is no justification whatsoever for government officials abusing their powers, stopping emergency vehicles and risking lives, making kids late for school and parents late for their jobs to retaliate against a mayor who withholds an election endorsement. We vote in our democracy to make government work, not break. We expect that officials will serve the public, not their personal interests. This conduct weakens our democracy, not strengthens it.

It is also incorrect that, as Jon suggests, reformers and transparency advocates are, in part, to blame for the gridlock that sometimes afflicts our American government at every level. As my co-authors and I demonstrated at some length in our recent Brookings paper, “Why Critics of Transparency Are Wrong,” and in our follow-up Op-Ed in the Washington Post, reform and transparency efforts are no more responsible for the current dysfunction in our democracy than they were for the gridlock in Fort Lee. Indeed, in both cases, “hacks, machines, big money, and back room deals” are a major cause of the dysfunction. The vicious cycle of special interests, campaign contributions and secrecy too often freeze our system into stasis, both on a grand scale, when special interests block needed legislation, and on a petty scale, as in Fort Lee. The power of megadonors has, for example, made dysfunction within the House Republican Caucus worse, not better.

Others will undoubtedly address Jon’s new paper at length. But one other point is worth noting now. As in foreign policy discussions, I don’t think Jon’s position merits the mantle of political “realism,” as if those who want democracy to be more democratic and less corrupt are fluffy-headed dreamers. It is the reformers who are the true realists. My co-authors and I in our paper stressed the importance of striking realistic, hard-headed balances, e.g. in discussing our non-absolutist approach to transparency; alas, Jon gives that the back of his hand, acknowledging our approach but discarding the substance to criticize our rhetoric as “radiat[ing] uncompromising moralism.” As Bridgegate shows, the reform movement’s “moralism" correctly recognizes the corrupting nature of power, and accordingly advocates reasonable checks and balances. That is what I call realism. So I will race Jon to the trademark office for who really deserves the title of realist!

The eurozone has three problems: national debt obligations that cannot be met, medium-term imbalances in trade competitiveness, and long-term structural flaws.

The short-run problem requires more of the monetary easing that Germany has, with appalling shortsightedness, been resisting, and less of the near-term fiscal restraint that Germany has, with equally appalling shortsightedness, been seeking. To insist that Greece meet all of its near-term current debt service obligations makes about as much sense as did French and British insistence that Germany honor its reparations obligations after World War I. The latter could not be and were not honored. The former cannot and will not be honored either.

The medium-term problem is that, given a single currency, labor costs are too high in Greece and too low in Germany and some other northern European countries. Because adjustments in currency values cannot correct these imbalances, differences in growth of wages must do the job—either wage deflation and continued depression in Greece and other peripheral countries, wage inflation in Germany, or both. The former is a recipe for intense and sustained misery. The latter, however politically improbable it may now seem, is the better alternative.

The long-term problem is that the eurozone lacks the fiscal transfer mechanisms necessary to soften the effects of competitiveness imbalances while other forms of adjustment take effect. This lack places extraordinary demands on the willingness of individual nations to undertake internal policies to reduce such imbalances. Until such fiscal transfer mechanisms are created, crises such as the current one are bound to recur.

Present circumstances call for a combination of short-term expansionary policies that have to be led or accepted by the surplus nations, notably Germany, who will also have to recognize and accept that not all Greek debts will be paid or that debt service payments will not be made on time and at originally negotiated interest rates. The price for those concessions will be a current and credible commitment eventually to restore and maintain fiscal balance by the peripheral countries, notably Greece.

If you’re reading this article, chances are you know people who are still getting married. But it’s getting rarer, especially among the youngest generation and those who are less educated. We used to assume people would marry before having children. But marriage is no longer the norm. Half of all children born to women under 30 are born out of wedlock. The proportion is even higher among those without a college degree.

What’s going on here? Most of today’s young adults don’t feel ready to marry in their early 20s. Many have not completed their educations; others are trying to get established in a career; and many grew up with parents who divorced and are reluctant to make a commitment or take the risks associated with a legally binding tie.

But these young people are still involved in romantic relationships. And yes, they are having sex. Any stigma associated with premarital sex disappeared a long time ago, and with sex freely available, there’s even less reason to bother with tying the knot. The result: a lot of drifting into unplanned pregnancies and births to unmarried women and their partners with the biggest problems now concentrated among those in their 20s rather than in their teens. (The teen birth rate has actually declined since the early 1990s.)

Does all of this matter? In a word, yes.

These trends are not good for the young people involved and they are especially problematic for the many children being born outside marriage. The parents may be living together at the time of the child’s birth but these cohabiting relationships are highly unstable. Most will have split before the child is age 5.

Social scientists who have studied the resulting growth of single-parent families have shown that the children in these families don’t fare as well as children raised in two-parent families. They are four or five times as likely to be poor; they do less well in school; and they are more likely to engage in risky behaviors as adolescents. Taxpayers end up footing the bill for the social assistance that many of these families need.

Is there any way to restore marriage to its formerly privileged position as the best way to raise children? No one knows. The fact that well-educated young adults are still marrying is a positive sign and a reason for hope. On the other hand, the decline in marriage and rise in single parenthood has been dramatic and the economic and cultural transformations behind these trends may be difficult to reverse.

Women are no longer economically dependent on men, jobs have dried up for working-class men, and unwed parenthood is no longer especially stigmatized. The proportion of children raised in single-parent homes has, as a consequence, risen from 5 percent in 1960 to about 30 percent now.

Conservatives have called for the restoration of marriage as the best way to reduce poverty and other social ills. However, they have not figured out how to do this.

The George W. Bush administration funded a series of marriage education programs that failed to move the needle in any significant way. The Clinton administration reformed welfare to require work and thus reduced any incentive welfare might have had in encouraging unwed childbearing. The retreat from marriage has continued despite these efforts. We are stuck with a problem that has no clear governmental solution, although religious and civic organizations can still play a positive role.

But perhaps the issue isn’t just marriage. What may matter even more than marriage is creating stable and committed relationships between two mature adults who want and are ready to be parents before having children. That means reducing the very large fraction of births to young unmarried adults that occur before these young people say they are ready for parenthood.

Among single women under the age of 30, 73 percent of all pregnancies are, according to the woman herself, either unwanted or badly mistimed. Some of these women will go on to have an abortion but 60 percent of all of the babies born to this group are unplanned.

As I argue in my book, “Generation Unbound,” we need to combine new cultural messages about the importance of committed relationships and purposeful childbearing with new ways of helping young adults avoid accidental pregnancies. The good news here is that new forms of long-acting but fully reversible contraception, such as the IUD and the implant, when made available to young women at no cost and with good counseling on their effectiveness and safety, have led to dramatic declines in unplanned pregnancies. Initiatives in the states of Colorado and Iowa, and in St. Louis have shown what can be accomplished on this front.

Would greater access to the most effective forms of birth control move the needle on marriage? Quite possibly. Unencumbered with children from prior relationships and with greater education and earning ability, young women and men would be in a better position to marry. And even if they fail to marry, they will be better parents.

My conclusion: marriage is in trouble and, however desirable, will be difficult to restore. But we can at least ensure that casual relationships outside of marriage don’t produce children before their biological parents are ready to take on one of the most difficult social tasks any of us ever undertakes: raising a child. Accidents happen; a child shouldn’t be one of them.

We have known for some time that children who grow up in single parent-families do not fare as well as those with two parents – especially two biological parents.  In recent years, some scholars have argued that the consequences are especially serious for boys.  Not only do boys need fathers, presumably to learn how to become men and how to control their often unruly temperaments, but less obviously, and almost counterintuitively, it turns out that boys are more sensitive or less resilient than girls. Parenting seems to affect the development of boys more than it affects the development of girls.  Specifically, their home environment is more likely to affect behavior and performance in school.

Up until now, these speculations have been based on limited evidence.  But new research from Harvard professor Raj Chetty and a team of colleagues shows that the effects of single parenthood are indeed real for all boys, regardless of family income, but especially for boys living in high-poverty, largely minority neighborhoods.

When they become adults, boys from low-income, single-parent families are less likely to work, to earn a decent income, and to go to college: not just in absolute terms, but compared to their sisters or other girls who grew up in similar circumstances.  These effects are largest when the families live in metropolitan areas (commuting zones) with a high fraction of black residents, high levels of racial and income segregation, and lots of single-parent families.  In short, it is not just the boy’s own family situation that matters but also the kind of neighborhood he grows up in.  Exposure to high rates of crime, and other potentially toxic peer influences without the constraining influence of adult males within these families, seems to set these boys on a very different course than other boys and, perhaps more surprisingly, on a different course from their sisters.

The focus of a great deal of attention recently has been on police practices in low-income minority neighborhoods.  Without in any way excusing police brutality where it has occurred, what this research suggests is that the challenge for police is heightened by the absence of male authority figures in low-income black neighborhoods.  In his gripping account of his own coming of age in West Baltimore, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates recounts being severely punished by his father for some adolescent infraction.  When his mother protested, Ta-Nehisi’s father replied that it was better that this discipline come from within the family than be left to the police.  But Coates’ family was one of the few in his neighborhood where a father still existed.

Repairing families is difficult at best.  Most single-parent families are initially formed as the result of an unplanned birth to an unmarried young woman in these same communities.  Perhaps girls and young women simply suffer in a different way.  Instead of becoming involved in crime and ending up in prison or the informal economy, they are more likely to drift into early motherhood.  With family responsibilities at an early age, and less welfare assistance than in the past, they are also more likely to have to work.  But in the longer run, providing more education and a different future for these young women may actually be just as important as helping their brothers if we don’t want to perpetuate the father absence that caused these problems in the first place.  They are going to need both the motivation (access to education and decent jobs) and the means (access to better forms of contraception) if we are to achieve this goal.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Real Clear Markets.