"It is fortunate that a major feature of American social policy is a series of programs, often referred to as the safety net, that are designed to provide people with cash and other benefits when they fall on hard times—which they are more likely to do during a recession," write the authors of a new report on the response of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program—the major federal welfare program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in 1996—to the Great Recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.

In their report, "The Responsiveness of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program during the Great Recession," Ron Haskins, Vicky Albert, and Kimberly Howard write that "All in all, we conclude that the American system of balancing work requirements and welfare benefits worked fairly well, even during the most severe recession since the Depression of the 1930s."

Their report is based on three studies: (1) an examination of the changes in the TANF rolls compared to changes in AFDC rolls during previous recessions, plus changes in TANF rolls in relation to rising unemployment state-by-state; (2) a review of data on single mothers' likelihood to receive TANF benefits during the 2001 and 2007 recessions, their receipt of other program benefits, and what actions single mothers took to deal with the recession; and (3) interviews with 44 directors of state TANF programs to determine their state's response.

"An important question" noted by the authors at the outset "is whether the response of the nation's safety net program in general and the TANF program in particular was commensurate with the challenge posed by the huge level of unemployment during and following the Great Recession."

Some Results of the TANF Study

Haskins, Albert, and Howard arrived at a number of conclusions from the TANF/AFDC study, including:

• TANF rolls increased more in the 2001 recession and the 2007 Great Recession than did AFDC during previous, pre-welfare reform (1996) recessions.
• The increase in TANF rolls was greater during the period of rising unemployment in each state, which did not coincide exactly with the dates of the Great Recession, than during the official recession period nationally.
• The "nation's safety net as a whole performed well during the Great Recession and prevented millions of people from falling into poverty."

"The nation experienced 51 different recessions and 51 different responses by the TANF program to the recession,” they write. "But the key point is that measuring the rise of the TANF caseload in response to the unique increase in unemployment in each state reveals TANF to have been more responsive to the recession."

Some Results of the Single Mothers Study

• Compared with the 1990 recession before welfare reform, "single mothers were less likely to receive benefits from the TANF program during the 2001 and 2007 recessions."
• Single mothers were more likely to receive other "safety net" help such as Unemployment Compensation, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), Supplemental Security Income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and child care, school lunch and breakfast, and other benefits for their children.
• In all the 1990, 2001, and 2007 recessions, "single mothers took action on their own" by finding jobs, living with family, and other ways to "weather the recession."
• Based on income, "poverty among single mothers and their children was lower during the Great Recession than during the recession of 1990."

Given the array of available benefits, the authors conclude that:

a mother with two children earning even as little as $11,000 per year could and still can escape poverty, as measured by income that includes non-cash benefits and tax credits, because of the generosity of these benefits. In our view, the combination of strong work requirements and generous work support benefits is a reasonable policy, despite the fact that fewer mothers receive TANF now than in the past.

Some Results of the TANF Directors Study

"Arguably the people who know the most about the goals and operation of state TANF programs and how the programs responded to the recession are the state TANF directors," write Haskins, Albert, and Howard. "They were, after all, the point persons for state TANF programs before and during the Great Recession. Interviews with TANF directors can provide an insider's view of the TANF issues that we have so far analyzed from the outside." Some of their conclusions from these interviews include:

• Most states did not struggle to pay for growing TANF rolls during the Great Recession.
• Most state directors considered their state's response to the recession "as adequate or better."
• The directors had suggestions for improving the TANF program, including having more flexibility in work participation rates, gaining access to the Contingency Fund, and placing greater emphasis on job training.

Some Policy Recommendations

Although the authors believe that the TANF program worked well, especially in conjunction with other safety net programs, they suggest some potential reforms:

• TANF allows vocational training to count toward states fulfilling their work requirement, but only a maximum of 30 percent of the work requirement can be fulfilled by TANF recipients in education or training. In times of high unemployment, Congress could raise the percentage limit from 30 to 40 or even 50 percent when unemployment reaches some specified level in the state, given that most experts believe the unemployed should expand their skills through job training during recessions.
• Congress should consider changing the 12-week limit on job search during periods of high unemployment to as much as six months, given that the average period of search before finding a job increases sharply during periods of high unemployment.

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ABSTRACT

In recent decades economists have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being. In this paper, we review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and that national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income. We find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related. Moreover, the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related.

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Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple datasets, multiple definitions of “basic needs” and multiple questions about well-being, we find no support for this claim. The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.

Introduction

In 1974 Richard Easterlin famously posited that increasing average income did not raise average well-being, a claim that became known as the Easterlin Paradox. However, in recent years new and more comprehensive data has allowed for greater testing of Easterlin’s claim. Studies by us and others have pointed to a robust positive relationship between well-being and income across countries and over time (Deaton, 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008; Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers, 2013). Yet, some researchers have argued for a modified version of Easterlin’s hypothesis, acknowledging the existence of a link between income and well-being among those whose basic needs have not been met, but claiming that beyond a certain income threshold, further income is unrelated to well-being.

The existence of such a satiation point is claimed widely, although there has been no formal statistical evidence presented to support this view. For example Diener and Seligman (2004, p. 5) state that “there are only small increases in well-being” above some threshold. While Clark, Frijters and Shields (2008, p. 123) state more starkly that “greater economic prosperity at some point ceases to buy more happiness,” a similar claim is made by Di Tella and MacCulloch (2008, p. 17): “once basic needs have been satisfied, there is full adaptation to further economic growth.” The income level beyond which further income no longer yields greater well-being is typically said to be somewhere between $8,000 and $25,000. Layard (2003, p. 17) argues that “once a country has over $15,000 per head, its level of happiness appears to be independent of its income;” while in subsequent work he argued for a $20,000 threshold (Layard, 2005 p. 32-33). Frey and Stutzer (2002, p. 416) claim that “income provides happiness at low levels of development but once a threshold (around $10,000) is reached, the average income level in a country has little effect on average subjective well-being.”

Many of these claims, of a critical level of GDP beyond which happiness and GDP are no longer linked, come from cursorily examining plots of well-being against the level of per capita GDP. Such graphs show clearly that increasing income yields diminishing marginal gains in subjective well-being. However this relationship need not reach a point of nirvana beyond which further gains in well-being are absent. For instance Deaton (2008) and Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) find that the well-being–income relationship is roughly a linear-log relationship, such that, while each additional dollar of income yields a greater increment to measured happiness for the poor than for the rich, there is no satiation point.

In this paper we provide a sustained examination of whether there is a critical income level beyond which the well-being–income relationship is qualitatively different, a claim referred to as the modified-Easterlin hypothesis. As a statistical claim, we shall test two versions of the hypothesis. The first, a stronger version, is that beyond some level of basic needs, income is uncorrelated with subjective well-being; the second, a weaker version, is that the well-being–income link estimated among the poor differs from that found among the rich.

Claims of satiation have been made for comparisons between rich and poor people within a country, comparisons between rich and poor countries, and comparisons of average well-being in countries over time, as they grow. The time series analysis is complicated by the challenges of compiling comparable data over time and thus we focus in this short paper on the cross-sectional relationships seen within and between countries. Recent work by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers (2013) provide evidence on the time series relationship that is consistent with the findings presented here.

To preview, we find no evidence of a satiation point. The income–well-being link that one finds when examining only the poor, is similar to that found when examining only the rich. We show that this finding is robust across a variety of datasets, for various measures of subjective well-being, at various thresholds, and that it holds in roughly equal measure when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country.

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Abstract

We explore the relationship between agency and hedonic and evaluative dimensions of well-being, using data from the Gallup World Poll. We posit that individuals emphasize one well-being dimension over the other, depending on their agency. We test four hypotheses including whether: (i) positive levels of well-being in one dimension coexist with negative ones in another;and (ii) individuals place a different value on agency depending on their positions in the well-being and income distributions. We find that: (i) agency is more important to the evaluative well-being of respondents with more means; (ii) negative levels of hedonic well-being coexist with positive levels of evaluative well-being as people acquire agency; and (iii)both income and agency are less important to well-being at highest levels of the well-being distribution. We hope to contribute insight into one of the most complex and important components of well-being, namely,people’s capacity to pursue fulfilling lives.

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Why is Springfield's economy proving so resilient?

Several reasons come to mind: You're a manageably sized regional hub. You've got a university and important hospital assets. And you stand at the brink of an enormously attractive natural area -- the Ozarks.

More and more in today's footloose economy, jobs and people flock to livable places with affordable housing, vibrant downtowns, cultural amenities and lots of close-by outdoor recreation.

And Springfield's got all that. Well, OK: Downtown hardly buzzes with "24-7" meeting and living as yet. But the university keeps students around, and meanwhile, nearby Branson remains one of the nation's foremost "drive-to" cultural attractions. Likewise, the beautiful "lake country" draws visitors and second-home buyers from all over the Midwest. In this case natural beauty really is natural capital: The famous Ozarks ambience continues to support a $1-billion-a-year tourist sector to cushion the blows of any national economic downturn.

No wonder the region paced the state's growth in the 1990s and now holds on better in bad times. Greater Springfield has service jobs, rolling hills, lakes, Andy Williams, retirees and their pensions, and reasonably priced new subdivisions. What's not to like?

But here's the harder question: Can Springfield stay attractive? Can it stay resilient? The worry is that signs of strain have now appeared after a decade of fast growth.

Many of these strains my colleagues and I detailed in a recent Brookings Institution report I co-authored, titled "Growth in the Heartland: Challenges and Opportunities for Missouri."

Springfield, we demonstrated, sprawled in the 1990s. Yes, the city proper grew by 8 percent. But mostly population moved ever outward during the decade, and that, we said, has brought problems.

Thousands of people flocked to smaller outlying towns like Willard, Strafford, Republic, Clever, Nixa and Ozark, which hit "hypergrowth" in the 1990s and struggled to keep up. Christian and Webster counties grew unsustainably by 66 and 31 percent, respectively. And even more disturbing some 28,000 people settled in unincorporated fringe areas ill-equipped to accommodate them with modern sewers and good services.

The result: Septic and fertilizer seepage from scattered new homes exacerbates the water-quality problems that have fouled Lake Taneycomo and Table Rock Lake. Taxes are increasing as local governments strain to provide the necessary roads, services or sewer lines in places that never needed them. And with more sprawl coming, more traffic and more mini-malls could cost the region its reputation as the heartland of rural America -- quaint, scenic and friendly. The bottom line: Highly dispersed, low-density development may well be undermining the durability of its growth.

In that sense, the real test of Springfield's resilience lies ahead and turns on its ability to manage its growth to make it sustainable. What is more, the best way for Springfield to continue to grow in high-quality ways would seem to be to continue to set the standard for land-use and environmental reform in Missouri -- a state that has lagged on promoting sensible land use and planning.

As a state, after all, Missouri needs to update its badly outmoded planning statutes to provide its regions more tools to manage change.

It needs to promote regional solutions among its many localities. And it needs to better align its transportation and infrastructure investment policies with the principles of sound land use and sensible planning.

In this regard, what the state does -- or doesn't do -- to manage growth matters for Springfield because, ultimately, it is the state that sets the rules for what type of growth occurs all over. By remaining virtually laissez-faire on growth and development topics, the state of Missouri may well be undercutting its future competitiveness.

Given that, Springfield should take seriously the fact that with its strong growth, fresh voice and signature environmental assets, it is well positioned to lead the state in promoting reform.

So Springfield should step forward on these issues -- as the state's new economic driver, and as its most progressive region.

Already southwest Missouri business leaders have come together to protect the lakes. Now the region should show the way in other ways, by hammering out a regional system for managing fast growth; rationalizing local government competition; and insisting on state action to allow all regions to make headway.

For that is the way for the Springfield region to prosper: To help itself, it must help nudge the entire state along. Only in that fashion will a distinctive region maintain its distinctive vitality.

Nigeria is facing a confluence of troubles: dramatically reduced oil prices have pummeled a country that depends on oil exports for two-thirds of its national revenues; the Boko Haram insurgency continues to wreak havoc particularly in the north of the country, where suicide bombings (many of which are now carried out by kidnapped girls) have killed hundreds; and corruption remains a drain on the country, which ranked 136th out of 168 countries on Transparency International’s 2015 Corruptions Perceptions Index.

But amidst this, Nigeria completed its first peaceful transition of power nine months ago—to Muhammadu Buhari, who has since made some progress in reforming the military, sacking corrupt leaders, and injecting energy into the counter-Boko Haram campaign. 

On February 29, the Africa Security Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion on the current state of Nigeria, featuring EJ Hogendoorn of the International Crisis Group, Madeline Rose of Mercy Corps, Mausi Segun of Human Rights Watch, and Amadou Sy from Brookings. Brookings’s Mike O’Hanlon moderated the conversation.

As O’Hanlon argued at the start, Nigeria is one of the most important countries in the world, but appears little in policy debates. Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa’s largest economy, and security risks emanating in the country can have spillover effects. All of the participants stressed that Nigeria should factor more centrally in conversations about international security, economic development, and humanitarian issues.

Nigeria’s ups and downs

O’Hanlon started by framing three overlapping challenges in Nigeria:

• The struggle against Boko Haram, which is more complicated than a pure terror group, but has also pledged loyalty to ISIS.
• The question of reform, to include the army, the police, and the entire government.
• The state of the economy, since Nigerian livelihoods need to be improved if there is any hope to handle the first two situations. 

Hogendoorn praised the peaceful transition of power to President Buhari, calling it a “stunning achievement” for the country and those who helped from the outside. However, the problems facing Nigeria—namely the insurgency in the Niger Delta, declining oil prices, and corruption and government mismanagement (at state and federal levels)—are large, he said. He argued that declining oil prices and income are impacting the government’s ability to fulfill promises, and that state governments are powerful and difficult to reform. He praised some anti-corruption institutions in Nigeria, as well as a number of effective governors who have changed corruption situation dramatically over a short period of time. But in the end, he said, it comes down to good leadership. The Nigerian people must demand accountability. 

Rose detailed how things have changed in Nigeria since Mercy Corps became heavily involved in the area in 2012. Mercy Corps’ main missions there include violence reduction, education, and creating opportunity for young girls, as well as humanitarian response. While there has been progress on chronic violence in Nigeria, particularly in the northeast of the country, Rose stressed that there is much to be done. She concluded that there is not enough attention to the human element of the crisis. For example, Rose noted that displacement is common across the Northeast. The displaced are mainly women and children. In the displaced groups, the eldest becomes de facto head of household—sometimes forcing leading adolescent girls to turn to selling sex for food or money for food. Rose called on the government to address this. 

Segun agreed that the focus needs to change regarding crisis response in Nigeria. In the past, the focus has been almost entirely on a military response. This has not been a workable plan, she said, partly because the “military operates above the law.” The reforms in Nigeria must have a social component, Segun argued. Lack of access to opportunity, economic problems, and desertification of major water bodies have all combined to drive farmers and fisherman from the Northeast and into the heart of the conflict. 

Sy returned to the importance of economic interests in resolving the crises in Nigeria. He reminded the audience that the country is the largest economy of sub-Saharan Africa, and that is important for the entire continent. Since two-thirds of the government revenue comes from oil, the oil shock has dealt a huge blow. But there is hope for Nigeria, Sy noted. One reason is stimulus via investment outside the oil sector. There has been an increase in infrastructure spending, as well as on human development (namely in education and health). In both cases, he said the biggest issue will be implementation. Sy gave four recommendations to the Nigerian government: 1) increase infrastructure expenditure, 2) make government more lean and cost-effective, 3) increase taxation in non-oil revenue items, and 4) reduce corruption. 

Overall, the participants expressed cautious hope for Nigeria despite the problems it faces. The government there still has a long list of to-do’s, but there is reason to believe that it is on the right general track.

This paper lays out the fundamentals of a downtown turnaround plan and the unique "private/public" partnership required to succeed. Beginning with visioning and strategic planning to the reemergence of an office market at the end stages, these 12 steps form a template for returning "walkable urbanism" downtown.

Though every downtown is different there are still common revitalization lessons that can be applied anywhere. While any approach must be customized based on unique physical conditions, institutional assets, consumer demand, history, and civic intent, this paper lays out the fundamentals of a downtown turnaround plan and the unique "private/public" partnership required to succeed. Beginning with visioning and strategic planning to the reemergence of an office market at the end stages, these 12 steps form a template for returning "walkable urbanism" downtown.

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Good morning and welcome to the "future." At approximately 4:29 p.m. Hill Valley time on Oct. 21, Doc Brown and Marty McFly arrive at the present day. For many millennials especially, the 1985 film series Back to the Future represented the far-flung fantastical future that many dreamed would come. But how does the Reagan-era vision of a future where we don't need roads compare to our daily lives today?

Sadly, you probably came to work today on the same street you may have trodden as a child back in 1985 without a hover board. But our future is still pretty fantastic, and many of the outlandish futuristic devices you saw in the 1989 film Back to the Future II are closer than you think—or already here. Here are three predictions that the film made that today might actually turn the head of an ‘80s time traveler

Drone proliferation

When Doc Brown and Marty McFly arrived in 2015, the sky was filled with more flying cars than the drones that sometimes dot our skies, but the film did point to some potential uses for unmanned remote flying devices. In the future, the film envisioned drones for walking the dog and even remote photography drones reporting on the day's news. While drones today don't exactly fill these roles, that future is perhaps closer than you think.

"Private actors will soon operate drones in equal if not greater numbers than the government," Brookings Fellow Wells Bennett wrote in a report on civilian use of drones last year. Amazon has tested drones to aid in home and business delivery. CNN has been given clearance by the government to explore the use of drones for reporting. Even law enforcement and public safety officials have used drones to aid in policing and fighting fires.

The widespread use of drones in daily life is probably still part of our future rather than our present in 2015, but regulations for this future are being written today. Federal regulators just this week announced that recreational drones will need to be registered. Last year as part of our project on civilian robotics, Gregory McNeal offered his own suggestions for federal and state regulators on how best to tackle civilian drone regulations.

Cybernetic humans and wearable technology

In the 1989 film, Marty faces off against his son's cybernetic bully, Griff Tannen. The bullies of the present don't exactly resemble Griff or Locutus of Borg, but cybernetics is closer than you think—even resting in your palm right now.

Taking a walk through Hill Valley in the real 2015, a time traveler might see several pedestrians immersed in their smartphones or glancing at notifications on their wearable devices. In our homes, virtual reality is becoming more prominent as well. Systems like Oculus and Google Cardboard resemble very closely the remote television visors worn by Marty's kids in the future.

"The proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude that [cell phones] were an important feature of human anatomy," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2014 opinion referencing the cybernetic future we are living today. Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong acknowledge in their report on the emerging cyborg future that the connection we have with technology is becoming more personal. While surveillance laws of the past might make distinctions between human tissue and the devices we use in our daily lives, Wittes and Chong argue that perhaps the separation between the human being and technology in some cases is no longer there—and the law should adapt to acknowledge this.

Flying cars and the transportation of the future

The most-often panned prediction of the film is admittedly the most disappointing—there are no flying cars in our future. This has been a fantasy for even Baby Boomers who were thrilled by the Jetsons' view of the 21st Century. Flying cars do exist in a limited form, but they are more accurately described as ultra-portable planes that require a pilot’s license to fly. However, the future of transportation is even better than Marty or Doc Brown ever realized; they just needed to travel a few more years in the future to see it happen.

Driverless cars have the potential to be the biggest seismic shift in transportation that many of us will experience in our lifetime. Numerous automotive makers and even Google are preparing for the autonomous future. Imagine your vehicle circling the parking lot to pick you up after a film; traversing rush hour traffic to deliver your daughter to softball practice; even serving as designated driver on Friday night after drinks at the bar.

The future seems like a fantasy, but liability concerns about whom to sue when an automated vehicle gets in a fender bender—or worse—clouds this would-be future.

"While liability will always be important with respect to motor vehicle operation, automation will dramatically increase safety on the highways by reducing both the number and severity of accidents," writes John Villasenor in his report on how to tackle liability in the driverless era. Despite many reservations about driverless cars, Villasenor argues that current liability law frameworks would be well equipped to address concerns.

Of course, whether the DeLorean Motor Company will come out of mothballs and produce a driverless DeLorean remains to be seen.

Discuss the future's impact on the modern workforce

At least according to Robert Zemeckis, we've arrived in the future. Not that you’re here, join us at 2 p.m. Oct. 26 when we'll discuss one of the important consequences of all of this technological automation: its impact on the workforce and the availability of social benefits.