Editors' Note: U.S.-Israeli relations have taken a hit in recent years as the United States has become increasingly frustrated with the Netanyahu government's lack of initiative on advancing a peace process with the Palestinians. Tamara Wittes examines the domestic Israeli and American trends poised to further strain relations if the countries' leaders do not address these challenges head on. This article originally appeared in Haaretz on December 3, 2015—before the annual Saban Forum.

The past year brought unprecedented tensions in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, with many arguments and counterarguments about who is to blame. Beyond the tactical debates—about personality clashes, or the propriety of Israel parachuting into arguments between Congress and the U.S. president—are deeper challenges facing these two close allies. Last weekend, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings convened the Saban Forum in Washington to address these issues and to understand the future trajectory of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The first question that needs to be asked is why a bilateral relationship that for so long was kept above politics has now become a subject of bitter partisanship—in Israel, as well as in the United States. How did distasteful personal rhetoric become politically acceptable in a relationship that used to be carefully protected? Why did politicians lose their self-restraint about using the U.S.-Israel relationship as a wedge issue against their opponents? Why were opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, in Israel and in the United States, prepared to drag the American Jewish community and Democratic friends of Israel into the fray and force them to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their president?

Some argue that these trends result from differing levels of public support for Israel among Democratic and Republican voters. Polls show that Democratic voters are less supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies than Republican voters. If voters in the United States are splitting on partisan lines, the theory goes, then their elected representatives should follow. But polls that ask simplistic questions produce crude results.

A more detailed survey by my colleague Shibley Telhami shows us something deeper: the lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time. Today, Americans increasingly look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of human rights—and this is especially true for younger Americans, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. This makes them sensitive to the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and to heavy handed Israeli counter-terrorism policies. These groups form a larger proportion of the voting public than they have in past, and a growing proportion of the Democratic Party’s core constituency. Likewise, American Evangelical Christians look at Israel through a lens of prophetic fulfillment, which combined with their conservative political preferences puts them squarely on the side of more hawkish Israeli policies. And Evangelicals are a core constituency for the Republican Party. These underlying changes in attitudes have shifted the calculus for American politicians. But that doesn’t mean a partisan split on “support for Israel” is inevitable. It does point to specific aspects of Israeli policy that affect how Israel is viewed. As American society becomes “majority-minority,” where no group, including Americans of European origin, constitutes a majority of the population, Israelis should keep these underlying lenses in mind.

[T]he lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time.

A second issue to examine is Israelis’ combination of vulnerability and national pride. Even in a post-9/11 era, Americans have a hard time appreciating the sense of vulnerability and fear that Israelis face from ongoing terrorism and rocket fire. The Gaza War last year brought this vulnerability into sharp focus—the war went on longer than any in Israel’s history other than War of Independence, and the rocket threat affected most of the country’s civilian population. The large numbers of Palestinians killed and wounded led some in America to question Israeli tactics.  U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iron Dome produced impressive results and was trumpeted in the American media—but when you are walking outside and an air raid siren goes off, your faith in Iron Dome does not erase your sharp sense of fear.

Israelis’ sense of vulnerability is compounded by the asymmetric nature of the threats Israel is facing, and by the sense among many Israelis that their effort to reach a resolution of their conflict with the Palestinians has reached a dead end. The fear of another war and a sense that the neighborhood has turned deeply hostile, weigh heavily, in a way Americans have trouble understanding. Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

Paradoxically, though, this sense of vulnerability coexists for Israelis with a sense of greater self-confidence about Israel’s military strength, its economic dynamism, and its wider relationships with the world. Particularly on the Israeli political right, there is today a stronger strain of nationalism and national pride (as evidenced in the “No Apologies” slogan of the Jewish Home Party in the last elections). In many countries around the world, including U.S. allies, the rise of right-wing nationalism is marked in part by politicians thumbing their nose at the global superpower: the United States. Israel, it appears, is no longer an exception to that rule.

Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

These issues—Americans’ perceptions of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and Israelis’ combination of fear and self-confidence—go beyond the personalities of leaders or the choices of politicians. To bridge these gaps, the U.S.-Israel dialogue must reach beyond government meetings and Israel-Diaspora engagement— instead, Israelis and Americans must commit to understanding one another’s societies better than we do today.

Finally, and unavoidably, there is a policy problem driving U.S.-Israeli tensions—but it’s not what you might think. The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the Oslo Declaration was signed in September, 1993, Americans, Israelis and Palestinians shared an approach to settling the conflict: direct bilateral negotiations mediated by the United States. But after the failure of the Kerry talks last spring, the two leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah have no inclination to return to direct bilateral talks, and each of them in their own way emerged from the latest effort with questions about the role of the United States.

In the international community and the region, meanwhile, the loss of faith in the U.S.-led bilateral process has led to experiments with other modes of shaping the conflict, from economic pressure on Israel to new proposals for action by the UN Security Council. Netanyahu’s controversial words before Election Day last spring— that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch—were less of a unilateral declaration than a recognition of reality. The White House now more-or-less agrees, with Obama aides telling reporters that they did not expect peace on Obama’s watch. The longstanding, bilateral negotiating process was Washington’s main leverage in pushing back against other international efforts—and now that the negotiating process has ended, these efforts will inevitably escalate. Without U.S.-Israeli agreement on a way forward, further policy gaps are likely.

The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This begs a question many American officials and analysts are asking: If there is no prospect for renewed bilateral talks toward a two-state solution, what is Israel’s Plan B? Does the Israeli government have a clear vision for its future relationship with the Palestinians? Israel expects American understanding as it takes steps it deems necessary to protect its citizens and ensure their future security. But American patience with Israel’s control over the West Bank is predicated on that control being temporary. There is impatience in Washington that Israel’s leadership has not tried to articulate a path forward beyond the immediate crisis—indeed, my colleague Natan Sachs argues that the current Israeli leadership has embraced “anti-solutionism” as a strategy. That's a very difficult position for any American administration to support.

If their modern history is any guide, Israelis will not remain passive before the forces now reshaping the Middle East; instead, they will insist on charting their own path into the future. When Israelis finally do develop a clear view of their chosen road, their first stop to explain it and seek support will inevitably be Washington. But Washington may not wait forever—especially as the stalemate is generating sustained violence. The time is now to lay the foundations for that crucial policy discussion, by updating American and Israeli understandings of one another’s dynamic societies, and by building on the Saban Forum and similar platforms to enrich our bilateral dialogue.

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A conversation with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker

Video

• Economic opportunities and the liberal international order

Just weeks ago, Germany formally relinquished its title as the world’s top exporter to China. For 2009, China reported that its exports totaled $1.2 trillion as compared to Germany’s $1.1 trillion. The U.S. lost this title in 2003, when Germany surpassed our exports. What a difference a decade makes.

Even on the heels of their success, Germany has been cringing at the prospect of China surpassing them in total dollars generated by annual exports. In 2005, on the floor of the German Parliament, the state secretary for the Ministry of Transportation argued that Germany’s role in trade will slip without strategic, intermodal interventions to improve the movement of trade. His words highlighted the growing concern over the country’s competitiveness and conveyed that it was the federal government’s role to focus more intensively on freight. “There was a growing sense that freight was increasingly crucial to the country,” shared Johannes Wieczorek, head of freight transport and logistics for the Federal Ministry for Transport. Backed by Chancellor Merkel, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to support the development of a national strategy to strengthen the country’s logistics and freight. Less than two years later, Germany devised a national strategy that integrated all transportation modes, such as rail, roads, and waterways to accelerate the movement of freight across all parts of the country.

None of this was a minor accomplishment. In short order, the national government developed a strategy involving important stakeholders such as state and local leaders, ports, businesses, and environmental groups. 

The freight strategy, while vague on many details, outlines over 30 actions that signal where the federal government is headed: to shift more freight onto rail and waterways; to strengthen logistical gateways (such as ports) with more federal infrastructure money; and to increase funding for combined transport.

Germany’s National Port Concept is just one of these actions. It is essentially a list of priority ports that are to receive federal infrastructure investment funds given their national importance as trade gateways. Modeled after a similar effort for airports, both ports and airports will now use quantitative data to justify transportation funding. This empirically-driven process replaces a highly political one where earmarks are essentially designated by those in power. While it will clearly define who are the winners and losers, the Port Concept has sharpened federal decisionmaking on how and where to use transportation dollars wisely. Today, priority ports and airports will receive funding to create the best and most direct connections to high-speed railways and highways.

We could learn a great deal from Germany’s determination and focus. Although China surpassed Germany, a trend that was impossible to stave off in the long run, Germany is now well positioned to make sure they remain at the top of the list of the world’s top exporters. While we are just waking up to the reality that we need to increase our exports, as President Obama emphasized in his State of the Union Address, we have serious work in first improving our freight infrastructure to move our goods. Just a few days ago, U.S. DOT announced TIGER grants--funds largely focused on freight and ports. While a promising start, these grants are just a drop in the bucket in light of the level of investment needed. We would be wise to follow Germany and devise a national strategy to guide how and where to maximize every dollar for freight.

Even the most well-intentioned public policy can have unintended consequences. President Obama’s promise of doubling exports offers one thread of a broader strategy for getting our economy back on track.

Increasing our output of goods to ship and sell abroad implies that if all goes well, a growing number of goods will be transported to one of our 400 ports. Yet, as Rob Puentes has determined, our top 15 ports already move over 73 percent of the value of international freight. Increasing our exported goods means one of two possibilities: additional goods will be funneled to just a handful of ports or other ports will need to move international cargo.

And here is where the pain starts. Increasing port activities has real and often severe consequences for the cities, towns, and neighborhoods located nearby. The most immediate ramification is the increased volume in truck traffic on local roads and arterials. Back in 2005, the U.S. Department of Transportation surveyed 23 ports and found that 58 percent found local access to be below average conditions or, in other words, choked with congestion.

With more trucks carrying additional loads, some ports will likely find they have little choice but to push for port expansion to handle the supply. The process of local authorities approving port expansions is wrenching and emotional for the entire community--a controversy perhaps only superseded by the siting of jails.

If these costs seem reasonable to get our country back on track, try to argue this point to neighborhoods already burdened with these impacts. Accomplishing this national goal at the local level will not be so easy.

Yet, an easy answer for the feds is that they don’t have authority over local land use. This is also the case in Germany, where local land use decisions are determined by state and local governments. Yet on the issue of ports, Germany’s federal government has taken a keen interest in how local municipalities are supporting port activity. Their interest grew out of a desire to increase the volume of exports. In German cities and regions that contain “ports of national importance”, local municipalities will now be encouraged by the feds to change the hierarchy of land uses and activities within their zoning processes.

Specifically, local governments will be asked to consider how new uses, such as housing, will not hurt the competitiveness of the port. So instead of port noise needing to be mitigated by the port, homebuilders, and ultimately homeowners, could be responsible for mitigating the noise. One noise mitigation strategy is that homebuilders install heavy, noise-proof glass.

If the Germans should be lauded for at least trying to reconcile national economic objectives with local priorities, I wonder if more can be done than create neighborhoods of glass.

November's U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report showed continued improvement in the job market, with employers adding 211,000 workers to their payrolls and hourly pay edging up compared with its level a year ago. The pace of job growth was similar to that over the past year and somewhat slower than the pace in 2014. For the 69^th consecutive month, private-sector payrolls increased. Since the economic recovery began in the third quarter of 2009, all the nation’s employment gains have occurred as a result of expansion in private-sector payrolls. Government employment has shrunk by more than half a million workers, or about 2.5 percent. In the past twelve months, however, public payrolls edged up by 93,000.

The good news on employment gains in November was sweetened by revised estimates of job gains in the previous two months. Revisions added 8,000 to estimated job growth in September and 27,000 to job gains in October. The BLS now estimates that payrolls increased 298,000 in October, a big rebound compared with the more modest gains in August and September, when payrolls grew an average of about 150,000 a month.

Average hourly pay in November was 2.3 percent higher than its level 12 months earlier. This is a slightly faster rate of improvement compared with the gains we saw between 2010 and 2014. A tighter job market may mean that employers are now facing modestly higher pressure to boost employee compensation. The exceptionally low level of consumer price inflation means that the slow rate of nominal wage growth translates into a healthy rate of real wage improvement. The latest BLS numbers show that real weekly and hourly earnings in October were 2.4 percent above their levels one year earlier. Not only have employers added more than 2.6 million workers to their payrolls over the past year, the purchasing power of workers' earnings have been boosted by the slightly faster pace of wage gain and falling prices for oil and other commodities.

The BLS household survey also shows robust job gains last month. Employment rose 244,000 in November, following a jump of 320,000 in October. More than 270,000 adults entered the labor force in November, so the number of unemployed increased slightly, leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 5.0 percent. In view of the low level of the jobless rate, the median duration of unemployment spells remains surprisingly long, 10.8 weeks. Between 1967 and the onset of the Great Recession, the median duration of unemployment was 10.8 weeks or higher in just seven months. Since the middle of the Great Recession, the median duration of unemployment has been 10.8 weeks or longer for 82 consecutive months. The reason, of course, is that many of the unemployed have been looking for work for a long time. More than one-quarter of the unemployed—slightly more than two million job seekers—have been jobless for at least 6 months.  That number has been dropping for more than five years, but remains high relative to our experience before the Great Recession.

If there is bad news in the latest employment report, it's the sluggish response of labor force participation to a brighter job picture. The participation rate of Americans 16 and older edged up 0.1 point in November but still remains 3.5 percentage points below its level before the Great Recession. About half the decline can be explained by an aging adult population, but a sizeable part of the decline remains unexplained. The participation rate of men and women between 25 and 54 years old is now 80.8 percent, exactly the same level it was a year ago but 2.2 points lower than it was before the Great Recession. Despite the fact that real wages are higher and job finding is now easier than was the case earlier in the recovery, the prime-age labor force participation rate remains stuck well below its level before the recession. How strong must the recovery be before prime-age adults are induced to come back into the work force? Even though the recovery is now 6 and a half years old, we still do not know.

Introduction

Ninety years after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Ankara appears to be on the verge of a paradigmatic change in its approach to the Kurdish question. It is too early to tell whether the current negotiations between Ankara and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) will manage to accommodate Kurdish cultural and political demands. Yet, for perhaps the first time in its history, the Turkish Republic seems willing to incorporate Kurds into the political system rather than militarily confront them. For decades, Turkey sought to assimilate its sizable Kurdish minority, about 15 million people, or around 20 percent of its total population. From the mid-1920s until the end of the Cold War, Ankara denied the ethnic existence of Kurds and their cultural rights. It took a three-decade-long PKK-led insurgency – which started in 1984 and caused a death toll of 40,000 – for the republic to start accepting the “Kurdish reality” and introduce cultural reforms. This perhaps explains why the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan is a national hero in the eyes of significant segments of Kurdish society.

Of the approximately 30 million Kurds in the Middle East, about half live in Turkey. Kurds also constitute a significant minority in neighboring Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Palestinians are often referred to as the most famous case of a “nation without a state” in the Middle East. But the Kurds, who outnumber the Palestinians by a factor of five, are by far the largest ethnic community in the region seeking national self-determination. The future of Turkey - and the Middle East - is therefore intimately linked to the question of Kurdish nationalism.

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• Turkey and the Kurds: From Predicament to Opportunity

ABSTRACT:

Early experience with federal campaign finance reform suggests that the new law is fulfilling its primary objective of severing links between policymakers and large donors, and thus reducing the potential for corruption in the political process. Instead of languishing or seeking to circumvent the law, the national political parties have responded to the ban on soft money by increasing their hard money resources. While outside groups appear active, particularly on the Democratic side, their soft money financing should remain a small fraction of what candidates and parties will raise and spend in the 2004 Elections.

To read the full article, please visit The Forum's website

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

Video

• Full Event Video Archive

Audio

• A Status Report on Congressional Redistricting

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20110718_congressional_redistricting

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The Center for 21st Century Security Intelligence seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium

On March 1, the seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium featured the independent research produced by members of the military services and federal agencies who are currently serving at think-tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key national security policy issues.

With presidential primary season well underway, it’s clear that whoever emerges in November 2016 as the next commander-in-chief will have their hands full with a number of foreign policy and national security choices. This year’s panels explored these developing issues and their prospects for resolution after the final votes have been counted. During their keynote conversation, the Honorable Michèle Flournoy discussed her assessment of the strategic threat environment with General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), who also provided opening remarks on strategic leadership and the importance of military and other federal fellowship experiences.

Video

• Opening remarks and The future of the All-Volunteer Force
• The next generation of terrorism
• Harnessing technology in the future force
• Keynote discussion: Assessing the strategic environment
• To intervene, or not to intervene?

Audio

• Beyond 2016: Security challenges and opportunities for the next administration

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The year 2015 will be a milestone year, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda by world leaders in September; the Addis Ababa Accord on financing for development in July; and the conclusion of climate negotiations at COP21 in Paris in December. The draft Addis Ababa Accord, which focuses on the actions needed to attain the SDGs, highlights the key role envisaged for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the post-2015 agenda. Paragraph 65 of the draft accord notes: “We call on the international finance institutions to establish a process to examine the role, scale, and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda.”          

Against this backdrop, on April 18, 2015, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings held a private roundtable with the leaders of the MDBs and other key stakeholders to discuss the role of the MDBs in supporting the post-2015 development agenda.

The meeting focused on four questions:

1. What does the post-2015 development agenda and the ambitions of the Addis and Paris conferences imply for the MDBs?


Given the ability of the MDBs to leverage shareholder resources, they can be efficient and effective mechanisms for scaling up development cooperation, particularly with respect to the agenda on investing in people and to the financing of sustainable infrastructure. New roles, instruments and partnerships might be needed.

2. How can MDBs best take advantage of the political attention that is being paid to the various conferences in 2015?   


The World Bank and selected regional development banks have launched a series of initiatives to optimize their balance sheets, address other constraints and enhance their catalytic role in crowding in private finance. And new institutions and mechanisms are coming to the fore. But the responses are not coordinated to best take advantage of each MDB’s comparative advantage.

3. What are the key impediments to scaling up the role and engagement of the MDBs?


Views on constraints are likely to differ but discussions should cover policy dialogue, capacity building, capital, leverage, shareholder backing on volume, instruments on leverage and risk mitigation, safeguards, and governance. 

4. How should the MDBs respond to the proposal to establish a process to examine the role, scale and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda?   


A proactive response and engagement on the part of the MDBs would facilitate a better understanding of the contribution that the MDBs can make and greater support among shareholders for a coherent and stepped-up role.

Event Materials

• Participant List
• MDB PostEvent Summary

Editor's Note: The introduction to the 2015 Brown Center Report on American Education appears below. Use the Table of Contents to navigate through the report online, or download a PDF of the full report.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: Girls, Boys, and Reading

Part II: Measuring Effects of the Common Core

Part III: Student Engagement

INTRODUCTION

The 2015 Brown Center Report (BCR) represents the 14^th edition of the series since the first issue was published in 2000.  It includes three studies.  Like all previous BCRs, the studies explore independent topics but share two characteristics: they are empirical and based on the best evidence available.  The studies in this edition are on the gender gap in reading, the impact of the Common Core State Standards -- English Language Arts on reading achievement, and student engagement.

Part one examines the gender gap in reading.  Girls outscore boys on practically every reading test given to a large population.  And they have for a long time.  A 1942 Iowa study found girls performing better than boys on tests of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and basic language skills.  Girls have outscored boys on every reading test ever given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the first long term trend test was administered in 1971—at ages nine, 13, and 17.  The gap is not confined to the U.S.  Reading tests administered as part of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that the gender gap is a worldwide phenomenon.  In more than sixty countries participating in the two assessments, girls are better readers than boys. 

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that Finland, celebrated for its extraordinary performance on PISA for over a decade, can take pride in its high standing on the PISA reading test solely because of the performance of that nation’s young women.  With its 62 point gap, Finland has the largest gender gap of any PISA participant, with girls scoring 556 and boys scoring 494 points (the OECD average is 496, with a standard deviation of 94).   If Finland were only a nation of young men, its PISA ranking would be mediocre.

Part two is about reading achievement, too. More specifically, it’s about reading and the English Language Arts standards of the Common Core (CCSS-ELA).  It’s also about an important decision that policy analysts must make when evaluating public policies—the determination of when a policy begins. How can CCSS be properly evaluated? 

Two different indexes of CCSS-ELA implementation are presented, one based on 2011 data and the other on data collected in 2013.  In both years, state education officials were surveyed about their Common Core implementation efforts.  Because forty-six states originally signed on to the CCSS-ELA—and with at least forty still on track for full implementation by 2016—little variability exists among the states in terms of standards policy.  Of course, the four states that never adopted CCSS-ELA can serve as a small control group.  But variation is also found in how the states are implementing CCSS.  Some states are pursuing an array of activities and aiming for full implementation earlier rather than later.  Others have a narrow, targeted implementation strategy and are proceeding more slowly. 

The analysis investigates whether CCSS-ELA implementation is related to 2009-2013 gains on the fourth grade NAEP reading test.  The analysis cannot verify causal relationships between the two variables, only correlations.  States that have aggressively implemented CCSS-ELA (referred to as “strong” implementers in the study) evidence a one to one and one-half point larger gain on the NAEP scale compared to non-adopters of the standards.  This association is similar in magnitude to an advantage found in a study of eighth grade math achievement in last year’s BCR.  Although positive, these effects are quite small.  When the 2015 NAEP results are released this winter, it will be important for the fate of the Common Core project to see if strong implementers of the CCSS-ELA can maintain their momentum.

Part three is on student engagement.  PISA tests fifteen-year-olds on three subjects—reading, math, and science—every three years.  It also collects a wealth of background information from students, including their attitudes toward school and learning.  When the 2012 PISA results were released, PISA analysts published an accompanying volume, Ready to Learn: Students’ Engagement, Drive, and Self-Beliefs, exploring topics related to student engagement.

Part three provides secondary analysis of several dimensions of engagement found in the PISA report.  Intrinsic motivation, the internal rewards that encourage students to learn, is an important component of student engagement.  National scores on PISA’s index of intrinsic motivation to learn mathematics are compared to national PISA math scores.  Surprisingly, the relationship is negative.  Countries with highly motivated kids tend to score lower on the math test; conversely, higher-scoring nations tend to have less-motivated kids. 

The same is true for responses to the statements, “I do mathematics because I enjoy it,” and “I look forward to my mathematics lessons.”  Countries with students who say that they enjoy math or look forward to their math lessons tend to score lower on the PISA math test compared to countries where students respond negatively to the statements.  These counterintuitive finding may be influenced by how terms such as “enjoy” and “looking forward” are interpreted in different cultures.  Within-country analyses address that problem.  The correlation coefficients for within-country, student-level associations of achievement and other components of engagement run in the anticipated direction—they are positive.  But they are also modest in size, with correlation coefficients of 0.20 or less. 

Policymakers are interested in questions requiring analysis of aggregated data—at the national level, that means between-country data.  When countries increase their students’ intrinsic motivation to learn math, is there a concomitant increase in PISA math scores?  Data from 2003 to 2012 are examined.  Seventeen countries managed to increase student motivation, but their PISA math scores fell an average of 3.7 scale score points.  Fourteen countries showed no change on the index of intrinsic motivation—and their PISA scores also evidenced little change.  Eight countries witnessed a decline in intrinsic motivation.  Inexplicably, their PISA math scores increased by an average of 10.3 scale score points.  Motivation down, achievement up.

Correlation is not causation.  Moreover, the absence of a positive correlation—or in this case, the presence of a negative correlation—is not refutation of a possible positive relationship.  The lesson here is not that policymakers should adopt the most effective way of stamping out student motivation.  The lesson is that the level of analysis matters when analyzing achievement data.  Policy reports must be read warily—especially those freely offering policy recommendations.  Beware of analyses that exclusively rely on within- or between-country test data without making any attempt to reconcile discrepancies at other levels of analysis.  Those analysts could be cherry-picking the data.  Also, consumers of education research should grant more credence to approaches modeling change over time (as in difference in difference models) than to cross-sectional analyses that only explore statistical relationships at a single point in time. 

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• Download the report

The 2016 presidential election confronts the U.S. electorate with political choices more fundamental than any since 1964 and possibly since 1932. That statement may strike some as hyperbolic, but the policy differences between the two major parties and the positions of candidates vying for their presidential nominations support this claim.

A victorious Republican candidate would take office backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, possibly with heightened majorities and with the means to deliver on campaign promises. On the other hand, the coattails of a successful Democratic candidate might bring more Democrats to Congress, but that president would almost certainly have to work with a Republican House and, quite possibly, a still Republican Senate. The political wars would continue, but even a president engaged in continuous political trench warfare has the power to get a lot done.

Candidates always promise more than they can deliver and often deliver different policies from those they have promised. Every recent president has been buffeted by external events unanticipated when he took office. But this year, more than in half a century or more, the two parties offer a choice, not an echo. Here is a partial and selective list of key issues to illustrate what is at stake.

The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare or the ACA, passed both houses of Congress with not a single Republican vote. The five years since enactment of the ACA have not dampened Republican opposition.

The persistence and strength of opposition to the ACA is quite unlike post-enactment reactions to the Social Security Act of 1935 or the 1965 amendments that created Medicare. Both earlier programs were hotly debated and controversial. But a majority of both parties voted for the Social Security Act. A majority of House Republicans and a sizeable minority of Senate Republicans supported Medicare. In both cases, opponents not only became reconciled to the new laws but eventually participated in improving and extending them. Republican members of Congress overwhelmingly supported, and a Republican president endorsed, adding Disability Insurance to the Social Security Act.  In 2003, a Republican president proposed and fought for the addition of a drug benefit to Medicare.

The current situation bears no resemblance to those two situations. Five years after enactment of Obamacare, in contrast, every major candidate for the Republican presidential nomination has called for its repeal and replacement. So have the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and Majority Leader in the Senate.  

Just what 'repeal and replace' might look like under a GOP president remains unclear as ACA critics have not agreed on an alternative. Some plans would do away with some of the elements of Obamacare and scale back others. Some proposals would repeal the mandate that people carry insurance, the bar on 'medical underwriting' (a once-routine practice under which insurers vary premiums based on expected use of medical care), or the requirement that insurers sell plans to all potential customers. Other proposals would retain tax credits to help make insurance affordable but reduce their size, or would end rules specifying what 'adequate' insurance plans must cover.

Repeal is hard to imagine if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016. Even if repeal legislation could overcome a Senate filibuster, a Democratic president would likely veto it and an override would be improbable. 

But a compromise with horse-trading, once routine, might once again become possible. A Democratic president might agree to Republican-sponsored changes to the ACA, such as dropping the requirement that employers of 50 or more workers offer insurance to their employees, if Republicans agreed to changes in the ACA that supporters seek, such as the extension of tax credits to families now barred from them because one member has access to very costly employer-sponsored insurance.

In sum, the 2016 election will determine the future of the most far-reaching social insurance legislation in half a century.

Social Security faces a projected long-term gap between what it takes in and what it is scheduled to pay out. Every major Republican candidate has called for cutting benefits below those promised under current law. None has suggested any increase in payroll tax rates. Each Democratic candidate has proposed raising both revenues and benefits. Within those broad outlines, the specific proposals differ.

Most Republican candidates would cut benefits across the board or selectively for high earners. For example, Senator Ted Cruz proposes to link benefits to prices rather than wages, a switch that would reduce Social Security benefits relative to current law by steadily larger amounts: an estimated 29 percent by 2065 and 46 percent by 2090. He would allow younger workers to shift payroll taxes to private accounts. Donald Trump has proposed no cuts in Social Security because, he says, proposing cuts is inconsistent with winning elections and because meeting current statutory commitments is 'honoring a deal.' Trump also favors letting people invest part of their payroll taxes in private securities. He has not explained how he would make up the funding gap that would result if current benefits are honored but revenues to support them are reduced. Senator Marco Rubio has endorsed general benefit cuts, but he has also proposed to increase the minimum benefit. Three Republican candidates have proposed ending payroll taxes for older workers, a step that would add to the projected funding gap.

Democratic candidates, in contrast, would raise benefits, across-the-board or for selected groups—care givers or survivors. They would switch the price index used to adjust benefits for inflation to one that is tailored to consumption of the elderly and that analysts believe would raise benefits more rapidly than the index now in use. All would raise the ceiling on earnings subject to the payroll tax. Two would broaden the payroll tax base.

As these examples indicate, the two parties have quite different visions for Social Security. Major changes, such as those envisioned by some Republican candidates, are not easily realized, however. Before he became president, Ronald Reagan in numerous speeches called for restructuring Social Security. Those statements did not stop him from signing a 1983 law that restored financial balance to the very program against which he had inveighed but with few structural changes. George W. Bush sought to partially privatize Social Security, to no avail. Now, however, Social Security faces a funding gap that must eventually be filled. The discipline of Trust Fund financing means that tax increases, benefit cuts, or some combination of the two are inescapable. Action may be delayed beyond the next presidency, as current projections indicate that the Social Security Trust Fund and current revenues can sustain scheduled benefits until the mid 2030s. But that is not what the candidates propose. Voters face a choice, clear and stark, between a Democratic president who would try to maintain or raise benefits and would increase payroll taxes to pay for it, and a Republican president who would seek to cut benefits, oppose tax increases, and might well try to partially privatize Social Security.

On no other issue is the split between the two parties wider or the stakes in their disagreement higher than on measures to deal with global warming. Leading Republican candidates have denied that global warming is occurring (Trump), scorned evidence supporting the existence of global warming as bogus (Cruz), acknowledged that global warming is occurring but not because of human actions (Rubio, Carson), or admitted that it is occurring but dismissed it as not a pressing issue (Fiorina, Christie). Congressional Republicans oppose current Administration initiatives under the Clean Air Act to curb emission of greenhouse gases.

Democratic candidates uniformly agree that global warming is occurring and that it results from human activities. They support measures to lower those emissions by amounts similar to those embraced in the Paris accords of December 2015 as essential to curb the speed and ultimate extent of global warming.

Climate scientists and economists are nearly unanimous that unabated emissions of greenhouse gases pose serious risks of devastating and destabilizing outcomes—that climbing average temperatures could render some parts of the world uninhabitable, that increases in sea levels that will inundate coastal regions inhabited by tens of millions of people, and that storms, droughts, and other climatic events will be more frequent and more destructive. Immediate actions to curb emission of greenhouse gases can reduce these effects. But no actions can entirely avoid them, and delay is costly.  Environmental economists also agree, with little partisan division, that the way to proceed is to harness market forces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” 

The division between the parties on global warming is not new. In 2009, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act. That law would have capped and gradually lowered greenhouse gas emissions. Two hundred eleven Democrats but only 8 Republicans voted for the bill. The Senate took no action, and the proposal died.

Now Republicans are opposing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations under the Clean Air Act to lower emissions by power plants, which account for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The Clean Power Plan is a stop-gap measure. It applies only to power plants, not to other sources of emissions, and it is not nationally uniform. These shortcomings reflect the legislative authority on which the plan is based, the Clean Air Act. That law was designed to curb the local problem of air pollution, not the global damage from greenhouse gases. Environmental economists of both parties recognize that a tax or a cap on greenhouse gas emissions would be more effective and less costly than the current regulations, but superior alternatives are now politically unreachable.

Based on their statements, any of the current leading Republican candidates would back away from the recently negotiated Paris climate agreement, scuttle the Clean Power Plan, and resist any tax on greenhouse gas emissions. Any of the Democratic candidates would adhere to the Clean Power Plan and support the Paris climate agreement. One Democratic candidate has embraced a carbon tax. None has called for the extension of the Clean Power Plan to other emission sources, but such policies are consistent with their current statements.

The importance of global policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions is difficult to exaggerate. While the United States acting alone cannot entirely solve the problem, resolute action by the world’s largest economy and second largest greenhouse gas emitter is essential, in concert with other nations, to forestall climate catastrophe.

If the next president serves two terms, as six of the last nine presidents have done, four currently sitting justices will be over age 86 and one over age 90 by the time that presidency ends—provided that they have not died or resigned.

The political views of the president have always shaped presidential choices regarding judicial appointments. As all carry life-time tenure, these appointments influence events long after the president has left office. The political importance of these appointments has always been enormous, but it is even greater now than in the past. One reason is that the jurisprudence of sitting Supreme Court justices now lines up more closely than in the past with that of the party of the president who appointed them. Republican presidents appointed all sitting justices identified as conservative; Democratic presidents appointed all sitting justices identified as liberal. The influence of the president’s politics extends to other judicial appointments as well.

A second reason is that recent judicial decisions have re-opened decisions once regarded as settled. The decision in the first case dealing with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), NFIB v. Sibelius is illustrative.

When the ACA was enacted, few observers doubted the power of the federal government to require people to carry health insurance. That power was based on a long line of decisions, dating back to the 1930s, under the Constitutional clause authorizing the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court rejected an older doctrine that had barred such regulations. The earlier doctrine dated from 1905 when the Court overturned a New York law that prohibited bakers from working more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. The Court found in the 14^th Amendment, which prohibits any state from ‘depriving any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’ a right to contract previously invisible to jurists which it said the New York law violated. In the early- and mid-1930s, the Court used this doctrine to invalidate some New Deal legislation. Then the Court changed course and authorized a vast range of regulations under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.  It was on this line of cases that supporters of the ACA relied.

Nor did many observers doubt the power of Congress to require states to broaden Medicaid coverage as a condition for remaining in the Medicaid program and receiving federal matching grants to help them pay for required medical services.

To the surprise of most legal scholars, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled in NFIB v. Sibelius that the Commerce Clause did not authorize the individual health insurance mandate. But it decided, also 5 to 4, that tax penalties could be imposed on those who fail to carry insurance. The tax saved the mandate. But the decision also raised questions about federal powers under the Commerce Clause. The Court also ruled that the Constitution barred the federal government from requiring states to expand Medicaid coverage as a condition for remaining in the program. This decision was odd, in that Congress certainly could constitutionally have achieved the same objective by repealing the old Medicaid program and enacting a new Medicaid program with the same rules as those contained in the ACA that states would have been free to join or not.

NFIB v. Sibelius and other cases the Court has recently heard or soon will hear raise questions about what additional attempts to regulate interstate commerce might be ruled unconstitutional and about what limits the Court might impose on Congress’s power to require states to implement legislated rules as a condition of receiving federal financial aid. The Court has also heard, or soon will hear, a series of cases of fundamental importance regarding campaign financing, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, abortion rights, the death penalty, the delegation of powers to federal regulatory agencies, voting rights, and rules under which people can seek redress in the courts for violation of their rights.

Throughout U.S. history, the American people have granted nine appointed judges the power to decide whether the actions taken by elected legislators are or are not consistent with a constitution written more than two centuries ago. As a practical matter, the Court could not maintain this sway if it deviated too far from public opinion. But the boundaries within which the Court has substantially unfettered discretion are wide, and within those limits the Supreme Court can profoundly limit or redirect the scope of legislative authority. The Supreme Court’s switch in the 1930s from doctrines under which much of the New Deal was found to be unconstitutional to other doctrines under which it was constitutional illustrates the Court’s sensitivity to public opinion and the profound influence of its decisions.

The bottom line is that the next president will likely appoint enough Supreme Court justices and other judges to shape the character of the Supreme Court and of lower courts with ramifications both broad and enduring on important aspects of every person’s life.

***

The next president will preside over critical decisions relating to health care policy, Social Security, and environmental policy, and will shape the character of the Supreme Court for the next generation. Profound differences distinguish the two major parties on these and many other issues. A recent survey of members of the House of Representatives found that on a scale of ‘liberal to conservative’ the most conservative Democrat was more liberal than the least conservative Republican. Whatever their source, these divisions are real.  The examples cited here are sufficient to show that the 2016 election richly merits the overworked term 'watershed'—it will be the most consequential presidential election in a very long time.

SUMMARY:
With the U.S. poverty rate stuck at around 15 percent for years, it’s clear that something needs to change, and candidates need to focus on three pillars of economic advancement-- education, work, family -- to increase economic mobility, according to Brookings Senior Fellow Isabel Sawhill and Senior Research Assistant Edward Rodrigue.

“Economic success requires people’s initiative, but it also requires us, as a society, to untangle the web of disadvantages that make following the sequence difficult for some Americans. There are no silver bullets. Government cannot do this alone. But government has a role to play in motivating individuals and facilitating their climb up the economic ladder,” they write.

The pillar of work is the most urgent, they assert, with every candidate needing to have concrete jobs proposals. Closing the jobs gap (the difference in work rates between lower and higher income households) has a huge effect on the number of people in poverty, even if the new workers hold low-wage jobs. Work connects people to mainstream institutions, helps them learn new skills, provides structure to their lives, and provides a sense of self-sufficiency and self-respect, while at the aggregate level, it is one of the most important engines of economic growth. Specifically, the authors advocate for making work pay (EITC), a second-earner deduction, childcare assistance and paid leave, and transitional job programs. On the education front, they suggest investment in children at all stages of life: home visiting, early childhood education, new efforts in the primary grades, new kinds of high schools, and fresh policies aimed at helping students from poor families attend and graduate from post-secondary institutions. And for the third prong, stable families, Sawhill and Rodrique suggest changing social norms around the importance of responsible, two-person parenthood, as well as making the most effective forms of birth control (IUDs and implants) more widely available at no cost to women.

“Many of our proposals would not only improve the life prospects of less advantaged children; they would pay for themselves in higher taxes and less social spending. The candidates may have their own blend of responses, but we need to hear less rhetoric and more substantive proposals from all of them,” they conclude.

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Senior Fellows Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill are the first joint recipients of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize from the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS). The prize is awarded each year to a leading policymaker, social scientist, or public intellectual whose career focuses on advancing the public good through social science. It was named after the late senator from New York and renowned sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The pair accepted the award May 12 at a ceremony in Washington, DC. 

In their joint lecture delivered at the ceremony, Haskins and Sawhill emphasized the importance of evidence-based public policy, highlighting Sawhill’s latest work in her book, Generation Unbound (Brookings, 2014). Watch their entire speech here:

“Marriage is disappearing and more and more babies are born outside marriage,” Sawhill said during the lecture. “Right now, the proportion born outside of marriage is about 40 percent. It’s higher than that among African Americans and lower than that among the well-educated. But it’s no longer an issue that just affects the poor or minority groups.”

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The power of evidence-based policy is finally being recognized, Haskins added. “One of the prime motivating factors of the current evidence-based movement,” he said, “is the understanding, now widespread, that most social programs either have not been well evaluated or they don’t work.” Haskins continued:

Perhaps the most important social function of social science is to find and test programs that will reduce the nation’s social problems. The exploding movement of evidence-based policy and the many roots the movement is now planting, offer the best chance of fulfilling this vital mission of social science, of achieving, in other words, exactly the outcomes Moynihan had hoped for.

He pointed toward the executive branch, state governments, and non-profits implementing policies that could make substantial progress against the nation’s social problems.

Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at Brookings and co-director, with Haskins, of the Center on Children and Families (CCF), acknowledged Haskins and Sawhill’s “powerful and unique intellectual partnership” and their world-class work on families, poverty, opportunity, evidence, parenting, work, and education.

Haskins and Sawhill were the first to be awarded jointly by the AAPSS, which recognizes their 15-year collaboration at Brookings and the Center on Children and Families, which they established. In addition to their work at CCF, the two co-wrote Creating an Opportunity Society (Brookings 2009) and serve as co-editors of The Future of Children, a policy journal that tackles issues that have an impact on children and families.

Haskins and Sawhill join the ranks of both current and past Brookings scholars who have received the Moynihan Prize, including Alice Rivlin (recipient of the inaugural prize), Rebecca Blank, and William Julius Wilson along with other distinguished scholars and public servants.

Want to learn more about the award’s namesake? Read Governance Studies Senior Fellow and historian Steve Hess’s account of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s time in the Nixon White House in his book The Professor and the President (Brookings, 2014).

The Horatio Alger ideal of upward mobility has a strong grip on the American imagination (Reeves 2014). But recent years have seen growing concern about the distance between the rhetoric of opportunity and the reality of intergenerational mobility trends and patterns.

The related issues of equal opportunity, intergenerational mobility, and inequality have all risen up the agenda, for both scholars and policymakers. A growing literature suggests that the United States has fairly low rates of relative income mobility, by comparison to other countries, but also wide variation within the country. President Barack Obama has described the lack of upward mobility, along with income inequality, as “the defining challenge of our time.” Speaker Paul Ryan believes that “the engines of upward mobility have stalled.”

But political debates about equality of opportunity and social and economic mobility often provide as much heat as light. Vitally important questions of definition and motivation are often left unanswered. To what extent can “equality of opportunity” be read across from patterns of intergenerational mobility, which measure only outcomes? Is the main concern with absolute mobility (how people fare compared to their parents)—or with relative mobility (how people fare with regard to their peers)? Should the metric for mobility be earnings, income, education, well-being, or some other yardstick? Is the primary concern with upward mobility from the bottom, or with mobility across the spectrum?

In this paper, we discuss the normative and definitional questions that guide the selection of measures intended to capture “equality of opportunity”; briefly summarize the state of knowledge on intergenerational mobility in the United States; describe a new microsimulation model designed to examine the process of mobility—the Social Genome Model (SGM); and how it can be used to frame and measure the process, as well as some preliminary estimates of the simulated impact of policy interventions across different life stages on rates of mobility.

The three steps being taken in mobility research can be described as the what, the why, and the how. First, it is important to establish what the existing patterns and trends in mobility are. Second, to understand why they exist—in other words, to uncover and describe the “transmission mechanisms” between the outcomes of one generation and the next. Third, to consider how to weaken those mechanisms—or, put differently, how to break the cycles of advantage and disadvantage.

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On December 17, 2014, President Barack Obama and President Raúl Castro announced that the United States and Cuba would seek to reestablish diplomatic relations. Since then, the two countries have engaged in bilateral negotiations in Havana and Washington, the United States has made several unilateral policy changes to facilitate greater trade and travel between the two countries, and bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to lift the travel ban. Meanwhile, conversations are ongoing about ending the 50-plus-year embargo and Cuba has continued the process of updating its economic system, including establishing new rules for foreign investment and the emerging private sector.

In light of the significant shifts underway in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, new questions arise about Cuba’s development model, and its economic relations with the region and the world. On Tuesday, June 2, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted a series of panel discussions with various experts including economists, lawyers, academics, and practitioners to examine opportunities and challenges facing Cuba in this new context. Panels examined macroeconomic changes underway in Cuba, how to finance Cuba’s growth, the emerging private sector, and themes related to much-needed foreign investment.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #CubaGrowth

Video

• Panel 1: Trends in the Cuban economy in light of the new U.S.-Cuba context
• Panel 2: Financing Cuba’s growth, development, and trade
• Panel 3: Next steps for Cuba’s emerging private Sector–Cuentapropistas and cooperatives
• Panel 4: A New stage in foreign direct investment

Audio

• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 1 (English)
• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 2 (English)
• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 1 (español)
• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 2 (español)

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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