Think of Seattle’s workforce and you may imagine overworked tech employees at Amazon, Microsoft software developers, or Boeing engineers.

But the region’s workforce’s story is more complicated. Alongside the highly skilled workers driving the region’s strong growth since the Great Recession is an increasingly diverse youth population in South Seattle and its surrounding South King County suburbs often disconnected from the region’s trademark innovation economy.

As a result, the region faces a skills challenge as only one-quarter of the roughly one-half of King County adults who hold a bachelor’s degree are Washington natives. This limits both individual opportunity and long-term regional competitiveness: 67 percent of jobs in the state will demand postsecondary education within two years, according to an estimate from Georgetown University, but only 28 percent of students in South Seattle and the South King County suburbs receive a postsecondary credential by their mid-20s.

These challenges aren’t unique. Many regions are grappling with rising diversity’s impact on the labor force, and thinking about how educational programs and outreach need to adapt to reach diverse populations in an era of constrained resources and growing suburban poverty.

But Greater Seattle has an advantage over many communities: a committed group of cross-sector leaders working together as part of the Road Map Project and its ambitious goal “to double the number of students in South King County and South Seattle who are on track to graduate from college or earn a career credential by 2020 and to close racial/ethnic opportunity gaps.”

In the six years since it started, Road Map has tackled the region’s educational disparities in many ways: connecting students to scholarships, boosting parental involvement, and attracting a $40 million federal Race to the Top grant for the region’s school districts. Its approach follows the collective impact model, which emphasizes setting shared goals and coordinating resources and activities to magnify the impact beyond that of isolated interventions.

With four years left to meet its goal, Road Map released a report last month analyzing student success at the area’s community and technical colleges. This unique effort—marrying data from Road Map-area high schools with area community and technical colleges—produced a finely-grained view of 2011 high school graduates’ progress toward completion, tracking key criteria such as attaining college-readiness in math and completing 30 or more credits in the first year of college.

Community and technical colleges are critical institutions in the region—nearly one-third of 2011 Road Map-area high school graduates were direct enrollees—but the report found that only slightly more than one-third of those students successfully completed a degree or transferred to a four-year institution within three years. And outcomes for blacks, Latinos, and, in many cases, Native Americans, consistently trail those of whites and Asians.

In response, the Road Map report recommends a series of strategies aimed at attacking the problem from multiple directions, including working with high schools to boost college readiness, helping institutions improve their ability to deliver on student completion, adopting new culturally responsive strategies, and pushing for increased funding for both the institutions and student scholarships.

Filling these gaps and meeting the 2020 goal will be difficult. A different Road Map Project report highlights an improving high school graduation rate, but lagging enrollment of graduates directly into college. Nevertheless, the region’s collaborative approach of working across institutions and jurisdictions continues to hold great promise. As more regions confront similar demographic challenges and seek new solutions for boosting skills and opportunity, Greater Seattle offers a compelling case study in how to move beyond one-off collaborations and initiatives to achieve real systems change. 
 

       

Two years after the country entered the Great Recession, there are signs the national economy has slowly begun to recover. Thus far recovery has meant the return of economic growth, but not the return of jobs. And just as some communities have felt the downturn more than others, recovery has not and will not be shared equally across the nation’s diverse metropolitan economies.

Within metropolitan areas, many communities continue to struggle with high unemployment and increasing economic and fiscal challenges, while at the same time poverty and the need for emergency and support services continue to rise. Even under the best case scenario of a sustained and robust recovery, cities and suburbs throughout the nation will be dealing with the social and economic aftermath of such a deep and lengthy recession for some time to come.

An analysis of unemployment, initial Unemployment Insurance claims, and receipt of Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) benefits in urban and suburban communities over the course of the Great Recession reveals that:

• Between December 2007 and December 2009, city and suburban unemployment rates in large metro areas increased by roughly the same degree (5.1 versus 4.8 percentage points, respectively). By December 2009, the gap between city and suburban unemployment rates was one percentage point (10.3 percent versus 9.3 percent)—smaller than 24 months after the start of the first recession of the decade (1.7 percentage points) and the downturn in the early 1990s (2.2 percentage points).
  
  
• Western metro areas exhibited the greatest increases in city and suburban unemployment rates—5.8 and 5.6 percentage points—over the two-year period ending in December of 2009. Increases in unemployment rates tilted more toward primary cities in Northeastern metro areas (a 5.3 percentage-point increase versus 4.2 percentage points in the suburbs), while suburbs saw slightly larger increases in the South (5.0 versus 4.4 percentage points).
  
  
• Initial Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims increased considerably between December 2007 and December 2009 in urban and suburban areas alike. The largest increases in requests for UI occurred in the first year of the downturn—led by lower-density suburbs—with new claims beginning to taper off between December of 2008 and 2009.
  
  
• SNAP receipt increased steeply and steadily between January 2008 and July 2009 across both urban and suburban counties. Urban counties remain home to the largest number of SNAP recipients, though suburban counties saw enrollment increase at a slightly faster pace during the downturn—36.1 percent compared to 29.4 percent in urban counties.
  

Even as signs point to a tentative economic recovery for the nation, metropolitan areas throughout the country continue to struggle with high unemployment. Within these regions, the negative effects of this downturn—as measured by changes in unemployment and demand for safety net services—have been shared across cities and suburbs alike. Standardizing sub-state data collection and reporting across programs would better enable policymakers and services providers to effectively track indicators of recovery and need in the nation’s largest labor markets.

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Read the Related Report: Job Sprawl and the Suburbanization of Poverty »

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Recent events in Taiwan, including the Sunflower Movement and the November 29 municipal elections in 2014, indicate changes in Taiwan’s political landscape. Political parties and candidates will have to adjust to changing public opinion and political trends as the January 2016 presidential and legislative elections approach. The two main parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), face both opportunities and challenges in disseminating their messages and garnering public support. The strategies that each party develops in order to capture the necessary votes and seats will be critical. 

On April 22, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies co-hosted a public forum to identify and analyze the politics behind the 2016 elections in Taiwan. Leading experts from Taiwan and the United States assessed the new forces and phenomena within Taiwan politics; how the election system itself may contribute to election outcomes, especially for the Legislative Yuan; and how the major parties must respond to emerging trends.

 

 Join the conversation on Twitter at #TaiwanElections

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This is the first in a series of reports on the demographic and political dynamics under way in 10 “battleground” states, deemed to be crucial in deciding the 2008 election. As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program’s Blueprint for American Prosperity, this series will provide an electoral component to the initiative’s analysis of and prescriptions for bolstering the health and vitality of America’s metropolitan areas, the engines of the U.S economy. This report focuses on Pennsylvania. Among its specific findings are:

• Pennsylvania is becoming a demographic “bridge” between Midwestern states like Ohio and other Northeastern states like New Jersey, as its new growth is tied to urban coastal regions. While often classed as a so-called “Rust Belt” state, its eastern and south central regions are increasingly becoming part of the nation’s Northeast Corridor, with new growth and demographic profiles that warrant attention in upcoming elections.
• Eligible voter populations indicate a state in transition, where minorities, especially Hispanics, and white college graduates are increasingly important, but where white working class voters continue to play a central role. While white working class voters continue to decline as a share of voters and are less likely to work in manufacturing and goods production, they are still a critical segment of voters, including in the fast-growing Harrisburg and Allentown regions where their absolute numbers are actually increasing.
• Recent Democratic victories in Pennsylvania have featured strong support from groups like minorities, single women, and the young but have also benefited from relatively strong support among the white working class, especially among its upwardly mobile segment that has some college education. Compared to 1988, both the latter group and white college graduates have increased their support for Democrats. And both groups have increased their share of voters over the time period.
• Political shifts in Pennsylvania since 1988 have seen the growing eastern part of the state swing toward the Democrats, producing four straight presidential victories for that party. The swing has been sharpest in the Philadelphia suburbs, but has also been strong in the Allentown region and even affected the pro-Republican Harrisburg region. Countering this swing, the declining western part of the state has been moving toward the GOP.
• Key trends and groups to watch in 2008 include the white working class, especially whites with some college, who, unlike the rest of this group, are growing; white college graduates; and Hispanics, who have been driving the growth of the minority vote.

These trends could have their strongest impact in the fast-growing Allentown region, which may move solidly into the Democratic column in 2008 and beyond, following the trajectory of the Philadelphia suburbs. The even-faster-growing Harrisburg region remains a GOP firewall, but the same trends could make that region more closely contested in 2008.

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SUMMARY

Replacing inefficient kerosene lighting with electric lighting or other clean alternatives can rapidly achieve development and energy access goals, save money and reduce climate warming. Many of the 250 million households that lack reliable access to electricity rely on inefficient and dangerous simple wick lamps and other kerosene-fueled light sources, using 4 to 25 billion liters of kerosene annually to meet basic lighting needs. Kerosene costs can be a significant household expense and subsidies are expensive. New information on kerosene lamp emissions reveals that their climate impacts are substantial. Eliminating current annual black carbon emissions would provide a climate benefit equivalent to 5 gigatons of carbon dioxide reductions over the next 20 years. Robust and low-cost technologies for supplanting simple wick and other kerosene-fueled lamps exist and are easily distributed and scalable. Improving household lighting offers a low-cost opportunity to improve development, cool the climate and reduce costs.

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Strong Growth and Changing Composition 

External financial flows to sub-Saharan Africa (defined as the sum of gross private capital flows, official development assistance (ODA), and remittances to the region) have not only grown rapidly since 1990, but their composition has also changed significantly. The volume of external flows to the region increased from $20 billion in 1990 to above $120 billion in 2012. Most of this increase in external flows to sub-Saharan Africa can be attributed to the increase in private capital flows and the growth of remittances, especially since 2005 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Sub-Saharan Africa: External Flows (1990-2012, in USD billions)

As also displayed in Figure 1, in 1990 the composition of external flows to sub-Saharan Africa was about 62 percent ODA, 31 percent gross inflows from the private sector, and about 7 percent remittances. However, by 2012, ODA accounted for about 22 percent of external flows to Africa, a share comparable to that of remittances (24 percent) and less than half the share of gross private capital flows (54 percent). Also notably, in 1990, FDI flows were greater than ODA flows in only two countries (Liberia and Nigeria) in sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa, but 22 years later, 17 countries received more FDI than ODA in 2012—suggesting that sub-Saharan African countries are increasingly becoming less aid dependent (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Sub-Saharan Africa: Number of Countries Where FDI is Greater than ODA (1990-2012)

But to what extent have these changes in the scale and composition of external flows to sub-Saharan Africa equally benefited countries in the region? Did the rising tide lift all boats? Is aid really dying? Are all countries attracting private capital flows and benefiting from remittances to the same degree? Finally, how does external finance compare with domestic finance? 

The False Demise of ODA

A closer look at the data indicates that, clearly, ODA is not dead, though its role is changing. For instance, middle-income countries (MICs) are experiencing the sharpest decline in ODA as a share of total external flows to the region, while aid flows account for more than half of external flows in fragile as well as low-income countries (LICs) and resource-poor landlocked countries (see Figure 3 and Appendix).

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In an era of fluid geopolitics and geoeconomics, challenges to the global order abound: from ever-changing terrorism, to massive refugee flows, a stubbornly sluggish world economy, and the specter of global pandemics. Against this backdrop, the question of whether leader summitry—either the G-7 or G-20 incarnations—can supply needed international governance is all the more relevant. This question is particularly significant for East Asia this year as Japan and China, two economic giants that are sometimes perceived as political rivals, respectively host the G-7 and G-20 summits. 

On April 18, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and the Project on International Order and Strategy co-hosted a discussion on the continued relevancy and efficacy of the leader summit framework, Japan’s and China’s priorities as summit hosts, and whether these East Asian neighbors will hold parallel but completely separate summits or utilize these summits as an opportunity to cooperate on issues of mutual, and global, interest.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #G7G20Asia

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Choosing a health plan on one of the new public or private exchanges is no easy task. That’s especially true for those with medical conditions who want to be very sure the plan they enroll in will provide the services they need.

This challenge is not unique to buying health plans, however. It’s always hard for consumers to buy complex and technical services or products when they have little or no expertise in the field. Health insurance can be especially daunting, with so many factors to consider, and even the terminology can be confusing.

Standardizing choices and terms can be helpful to a point. Grouping health plans according to premiums and out-of-pocket costs – bronze, silver, gold and platinum plans – has worked well in the public exchanges. But standardization will always be in tension with innovation, and the reality is that most exchanges will carry a larger inventory of plans than what the typical consumer wants to scroll through. So the question of “choice architecture” – how the plans are filtered or screened – will come to the fore. 

Consumers will have many questions.  What is the price? How do I assess the trade-off between lower premiums and higher cost sharing? Is my doctor in the plan’s network? Are the drugs I take in the formulary (whatever that is)? Things can get real complicated real fast, and it can feel like there are too many, not too few, choices. No wonder some call that “choice anxiety”.

But that view overlooks how technology is likely to reduce choice anxiety in health care, just as it has for other complicated searches.  It used to take a librarian to find an obscure article or a travel agent to plan a vacation. Today a few keystrokes on Google locates the article, and Travelocity makes vacation planning a cakewalk, with everything from on-time flight arrival data to pictures of hotel rooms and customer reviews arranged by star ratings.

Expect technology to have the same dramatic impact on buying health coverage in the near future. There are several reasons for this:

The presentation of consumer information will get better. When large new markets for products and services are created and the demand for buyers’ information rises sharply, the incentive for entrepreneurs – both for-profit and nonprofit – to provide customer-friendly information also rises. We’ve already seen this in parts of the health care market where there has been plenty of choice. Millions of federal employees have for many years been able choose among a wide range of plans with differing benefits.  Many have turned to the highly regarded Consumers’ Checkbook to help them understand and readily compare plans in the federal program.

Checkbook has launched a similar comparison tool for the  Illinois exchange and recently won the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) first "Plan Choice Challenge," a nationwide competition to design a technology application that helps people choose their best health plan options.

Navigation technology will make searches simple and quick.  Most consumers don’t want to spend a lot of time comparing plans; they want to find the best buy for their situation as quickly as possible.  That’s why brokers have traditionally encouraged employers to offer their employees a carefully limited set of shopping choices, but we expect plan navigation technology to constantly improve the shopping experience in ways that will help customers search a larger inventory and still make choices more easily.   Stride Health, a San Francisco startup and finalist in the RWJF Challenge, has developed a recommendation technology that searches massive data sets on networks and formularies in seconds to help consumers find a “match” that fits their budget and health care needs.  (Full disclosure – author Joel Ario is an investor).  

Stride is one of more than 40 “web brokers” that has met federal consumer protection and privacy standards enabling it to work with the federal exchange to enroll subsidy-eligible individuals in coverage.  Expect increasing collaboration between public exchanges and private vendors, with a surge of apps and gadgets to make navigation easier and easier in health exchanges.

Technology will allow choices to be tailored to medical history.  Advances in technology won’t just make it technically easier to pick and choose by price and reputation. These advances will also empower Americans to base their choices on their likely medical needs. Today, tailoring your coverage to your medical condition usually means trying to get a doctor– or several doctors– to help you figure out what you should look for in a plan. Even with that help, for the average person it’s still a hit-or-miss proposition. But new forms of choice technology are beginning to utilize questions about medical history to guide buyers towards the plans that are most suited to their condition.  

Checkbook and Stride already allow consumers to enter more detailed health histories and get more sophisticated assistance, and this will only improve as exchanges publish more data in machine readable formats.   Expect more and increasingly sophisticated customized navigators, especially as patients get more access to their electronic medical records.  Also expect sellers to respond with products than bundle services to meet the new demand.

Does this mean that an iPhone app will be all that’s needed to ensure that every consumer can find his or her perfect plan? Not quite.  Health insurance marketplaces will continue to present thorny regulatory challenges.  Insurance regulators will need to guard against unfair practices, such as insurers’ designing benefit plans to drive away applicants with certain health conditions; privacy concerns will be raised whenever apps ask for medical history; and new forms of provider integration will test antitrust doctrine.

But one thing is clear. Improving technology will soon make picking the right health plan a far more precise and simple process – easy enough for many of our children to do on their smart phones or whatever gadget comes next.

      

       

       

       

Editor's Note: Launched at a December 5, 2011 event at Brookings, this study is based on a publication developed in 2005 by the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement: Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It is a central tenet of international law that states bear the primary duty and responsibility to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of persons within their borders, including the internally displaced. While internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain entitled to the full protection of rights and freedoms available to the population in general, they face vulnerabilities that nondisplaced persons do not face. Therefore, in order to ensure that IDPs are not deprived of their human rights and are treated equally with respect to nondisplaced citizens, states are obligated to provide special measures of protection and assistance to IDPs that correspond to their particular vulnerabilities. Reflecting these key notions of international law, the rights of IDPs and obligations of states are set forth in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (hereafter, “the Guiding Principles”).

Using the Guiding Principles as a departure for analysis, this study examines government response to internal displacement in fifteen of the twenty countries most affected by internal displacement due to conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations: Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen. The analysis seeks to shed light on how and to what extent, if any, governments are fulfilling their responsibility toward IDPs, with a view to providing guidance to governments in such efforts. In so doing, this study also seeks to contribute to research and understanding regarding realization of the emerging norm of the “Responsibility to Protect.” To frame the analysis, the introduction to this volume examines the connections among the concepts of national responsibility, “sovereignty as responsibility” and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

The comparative analysis across the fifteen countries, presented in chapter 1, is based on a systematic application of the document Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility (hereafter, “Framework for National Responsibility,” “the Framework”). Seeking to distill the Guiding Principles, the Framework outlines twelve practical steps (“benchmarks”) that states can take to directly contribute to the prevention, mitigation and resolution of internal displacement:

1. Prevent displacement and minimize its adverse effects.
2. Raise national awareness of the problem.
3. Collect data on the number and conditions of IDPs.
4. Support training on the rights of IDPs.
5. Create a legal framework for upholding the rights of IDPs.
6. Develop a national policy on internal displacement.
7. Designate an institutional focal point on IDPs.
8. Support national human rights institutions to integrate internal displacement into their work.
9. Ensure the participation of IDPs in decision making.
10. Support durable solutions.
11. Allocate adequate resources to the problem.
12. Cooperate with the international community when national capacity is insufficient.

      

       

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On April 30, 2007, the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe held its fourth annual conference. As in previous years, the annual conference brought together scholars, officials, and policymakers from both sides of the Atlantic to examine the evolving roles of the United States and Europe in the global arena. Panel discussions covered some critical issues about Europe and the U.S.-Europe relationship: "The French Elections", "NATO and Afghanistan" and "Islam in Europe". Panelists included, among others, Lt. General Karl Eikenberry, Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee; Ashraf Ghani, former Finance Minister of Afghanistan; Tufyal Choudhury of Durham University; Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution; and Corine Lesnes from Le Monde.

8:30 a.m.		Continental breakfast available
8:50 a.m.		Welcome and Introduction Strobe Talbott, President, The Brookings Institution
9:00 - 10:30 a.m.		"The French Elections" Chair: Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post Panelists: Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, Skadden Arps; Notre Europe Corine Lesnes, Le Monde Philip Gordon, The Brookings Institution
10:30 - 10:45 p.m.		Break
10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.		"NATO in Afghanistan" Chair: Carlos Pascual, The Brookings Institution Panelists: Lt. General Karl Eikenberry, Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Ashraf Ghani, former Finance Minister of Afghanistan Marvin Weinbaum, Middle East Institute
12:15 - 1:30 p.m.		Buffet Lunch (Saul/Zilkha)
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.		"Islam in Europe" Chair: Jeremy Shapiro, The Brookings Institution Panelists: Daniel Benjamin, The Brookings Institution Tufyal Choudhury, Durham University Jonathan Laurence, Boston College

The Center on the United States and Europe Annual Conference is made possible by the generous support of the German Marshall Fund of the United States

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Gary Burtless, a senior fellow in Economic Studies, explains new research on the growing longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans, especially among the aged.

“Life expectancy difference of low income workers, middle income workers, and high income workers has been increasing over time,” Burtless says. “For people born in 1920 their life expectancy was not as long typically as the life expectancy of people who were born in 1940. But those gains between those two birth years were very unequally distributed if we compare people with low mid-career earnings and people with high mid-career earnings.” Burtless also discusses retirement trends among the educated and non-educated, income inequality among different age groups, and how these trends affect early or late retirement rates.

Also stay tuned for our regular economic update with David Wessel, who also looks at the new research and offers his thoughts on what it means for Social Security.

Show Notes

Later retirement, inequality and old age, and the growing gap in longevity between rich and poor

Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing

Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen on Stitcher, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu.

       

Everyone is struggling to understand why so many whites—including many who are not suffering economically—are rallying to the angry words and fearful music of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Meanwhile, blacks and other minorities are sticking with the status-quo incrementalism of Hillary Clinton. It's an odd juxtaposition, but there's an explanation, one with far-reaching ramifications. A wide and growing optimism gap has opened between poor and middle-class whites and their counterparts of other races—and the former are the congenital pessimists.

My research finds deep divisions in our country—not just in terms of income and opportunity, but in terms of hopes and dreams. The highest costs of being poor in the U.S. are not in the form of material goods or basic services, as in developing countries, but in the form of unhappiness, stress, and lack of hope. What is most surprising, though, is that the most desperate groups are not minorities who have traditionally been discriminated against, but poor and near-poor whites. And of all racial groups in poverty, blacks are the most optimistic about their futures.

Based on a question in a Gallup survey asking respondents where they expected their life satisfaction to be in five years (on a 0-10 point scale), I find that among the poor, the group that scores the highest is poor blacks. The least optimistic group by far is poor whites. The average score of poor blacks is large enough to eliminate the difference in optimism about the future between being poor and being middle class (e.g. removing the large negative effect of poverty), and they are almost three times more likely to be higher up on the optimism scale than are poor whites. Poor Hispanics are also more optimistic than poor whites, but the gaps between their scores are not as large as those between blacks and whites.

In terms of stress—a marker of ill-being—there are, again, large differences across races. Poor whites are the most stressed group and are 17.8 percent more likely to experience stress in the previous day than middle-class whites. In contrast, middle-class blacks are 49 percent less likely to experience stress than middle-class whites, and poor blacks are 52 percent less likely to experience stress than poor whites (e.g. their odds of experiencing stress are roughly half those of poor whites.

Why does this matter? Individuals with high levels of well-being have better outcomes; they believe in their futures and invest in them. In contrast, those without hope for their futures typically do not make such investments. Remarkably, the poor in the U.S. (on average) are less likely to believe that hard work will get them ahead than are the poor in Latin America. Their lack of hope is even evident in the words they use, as David Leonhardt (2015) found in a Google search. The words of the wealthy—such as iPads, foam rollers, and exotic travel destinations—reflect knowledge acquisition and health-conscious behaviors; those of the poor -- such as guns, video games, diabetes, and fad diets—reflect desperation, short-term outlooks, and patched-together solutions.

What explains optimism among poor blacks compared to their white counterparts? Some scholars, such as Jeremy Jackson at the University of Michigan, highlight high levels of resilience and a strong sense of community among blacks, something which our data also suggests. There also may be an Obama effect, given the historical marker made by the election of the first African-American president, and support for President Obama remained steady among blacks over the course of his tenure.

And despite visible manifestations of black frustration, as in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., and continued gaps in wage, mobility, and education outcomes, there has been black progress. As Eduardo Porter of the New York Times wrote in 2015, at the same time that the gaps in achievement and proficiency have widened across income groups, they have narrowed between blacks (and Hispanics) and whites: The proficiency gap between the poor and the rich is nearly twice as large as that between black and white children. The overall black-white wage gap has also narrowed (black males earned 69 percent of the median wage for white males in 1970 and 75 percent by 2013 [CPS, 2014]).The gap in life expectancy between blacks and whites has also narrowed to its lowest point in history—3.4 years , at 75.6 years for blacks and 79 years for whites.

Poor and high school-educated whites have fallen in status, at least in relative terms. Andrew Cherlin (2016) finds that poor and middle-class blacks are more likely to compare themselves to parents who were worse off than they are, while most blue-collar whites are insecure and facing much more competition for jobs than their parents did. And the markers of their desperation are increasingly evident. Take the increase in mortality rates related to opioid addiction, suicide and other preventable causes among uneducated whites—but not blacks and Hispanics—which was first highlighted in a 2015 study by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, and has since been reported by others, including Joel Achenbach, Dan Keating, and colleagues (2016) in the Washington Post.

Another part of this story is the increasing distance between the lives of those at the top and bottom of the income distribution. Fear of falling behind is even starker if “success” is increasingly out of reach. Sergio Pinto and I (2016), for example, find that poor respondents who live in more unequal cities and suburbs report more stress and worry than those in more equal ones (based on Gallup data). And both poor and rich respondents who live in more unequal areas are less likely to report having family and friends they can rely on in times of need.

The American Dream of prosperity, equal opportunity, and stable democracy is being challenged by increasing income inequality, the hollowing out of the middle class, decreasing wages and increased insecurity for low-skilled workers, and rising mortality rates. We were, until recently, caught by surprise by the depth and breadth of the problem. If it does nothing else positive for our country, the widespread alarm caused by Donald Trump’s political rise and his promises to build walls, ban trade, and create further divisions within our society has woken us up.

The depth and scope of this problem requires difficult political fixes, such as long-term investments in public health and education. It requires developing new forms of social assistance—and language—which encourage hope rather than stigmatize poor recipients—something that Latin Americans have done successfully in recent years. It also requires reducing the distance between the lives of the rich and the poor, so that attaining success—and living the American Dream—is not something that seems forever out of reach for the poor. Finally, tracking well-being as a complement to GDP, as many countries are already doing, would provide an important gauge of the happiness and health of our society in the future—and prevent us from being as surprised by such trends as we were this time.

Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Happiness for All? Unequal Lives and Hopes in the Land of the Dream” (Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

       

The Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon decision has reinvigorated the discussion on how campaign finance affects American democracy. Seeking to dissect the complex relationship between political parties, partisan polarization, and campaign finance, Tom Mann and Anthony Corrado’s new paper on Party Polarization and Campaign Finance reviews the landscape of hard and soft money in federal elections and asks whether campaign finance reform can abate polarization and strengthen governing capacity in the United States. The paper tackles two popular contentions within the campaign finance debate: First, has campaign finance reform altered the role of political parties as election financiers and therefore undermined deal making and pragmatism? Second, would a change in the composition of small and large individual donors decrease polarization in the parties?

The Role of Political Parties in Campaign Finance

Political parties have witnessed a number of shifts in their campaign finance role, including McCain-Feingold’s ban on party soft money in 2002. This has led many to ask if the breakdown in compromise and governance and the rise of polarization has come about because parties have lost the power to finance elections. To assess that claim, the authors track the amount of money crossing national and state party books as an indicator of party strength. The empirical evidence shows no significant decrease in party strength post 2002 and holds that “both parties have compensated for the loss of soft money with hard money receipts.” In fact, the parties have upped their spending on congressional candidates more than six-fold since 1980. Despite the ban on soft money, the parties remain major players in federal elections.

Large and Small Donors in National Campaigns

Mann and Corrado turn to non-party money and survey the universe of individual donors to evaluate “whether small, large or mega-donors are most likely to fuel or diminish the polarization that increasingly defines the political landscape.” The authors map the size and shape of individual giving and confront the concern that Super PACs, politically active nonprofits, and the super-wealthy are buying out American democracy. They ask: would a healthier mix of small and large donors reduce radicalization and balance out asymmetric polarization between the parties? The evidence suggests that increasing the role of small donors would have little effect on partisan polarization in either direction because small donors tend to be highly polarized. Although Mann and Corrado note that a healthier mix would champion democratic ideals like civic participation and equality of voice.

Taking both points together, Mann and Corrado find that campaign finance reform is insufficient for depolarizing the parties and improving governing capacity. They argue forcefully that polarization emerges from a broader political and partisan problem. Ultimately, they assert that, “some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.”

Click to read Mann and Corrado’s full paper, Party Polarization and Campaign Finance.

      

       

       

       

      

      

When California passed its 2016 budget late last month, it joined a growing list of states that have recently adopted or expanded state versions of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). First enacted in 1975, the EITC has become one of the country’s most effective antipoverty programs. We estimate that the federal EITC keeps millions of individuals and children out of poverty each year, reducing the national poverty rate by several percentage points. Others have shown how the EITC creates a strong incentive to work and works as a powerful tool for reducing income inequality.

How the federal EITC works

For an unmarried worker with one child in 2015, the federal EITC works like this: Up to her first $9,880 earned, the worker receives a tax credit equal to 34 cents on the dollar, for a maximum credit value of $3,359. The credit is reduced by 16 cents for each dollar earned beginning at $18,110, eventually phasing out at $39,100 in earnings. Phase-in and phase-out rates and ranges depend on a worker’s filing status and number of dependents claimed. Importantly, the EITC is refundable; a filer can still claim any credit in excess of her tax liability, contributing to refunds that can represent double-digit shares of annual income for lower-paid workers.

Most states have their own EITCs

Of the 26 states and the District of Columbia with their own EITCs, most have structured their programs to mirror the federal EITC, by simply matching some percentage of the federal credit in a given tax year (see map). This year, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island all increased their state EITCs’ matching percentages. In three states, the EITC is non-refundable, making it a less effective incentive for very low-income workers (Maine this year made its credit refundable). California’s EITC joins a couple of others that, while still refundable, vary in the degree to which they mirror the federal credit based on filing status and income.

State EITCs: Not perfect but increasingly important

Through our work maintaining Brookings’ EITC Interactive, we hear regularly from stakeholders around the country engaged in efforts to expand the EITC and increase local participation to strengthen low-income families and communities. Although it is difficult to determine uptake rates locally, there are several factors associated with participation. Self-employed workers are less likely to claim the credit, as are workers with low English proficiency, and those who do not claim any dependents. The availability of tax preparation assistance tends to increase participation rates. For groups who hope to expand access to the EITC in their communities, these considerations are a good place to start.

To be sure, the EITC is not a silver bullet. Because it is explicitly tied to work effort, the credit does not support low-income families who can’t find work. And because states must balance their budgets, many have had difficulty sustaining their EITCs during periods of economic downturn. (Several of the recent state EITC expansions actually represent the restoration of benefits following drastic cuts during the Great Recession.) Additionally, the federal EITC and its state analogues provide only modest support to workers who do not claim any dependents on their tax return. As such, policy makers should consider state EITCs strong complements to other interventions, such as the growing number of increases in the minimum wage occurring in states and cities.

Nevertheless, the EITC remains one of the best tools we have to fight poverty. Despite bipartisan support for the federal EITC, it is unlikely to be expanded anytime soon. In that light, recent state EITC expansions may be helping to create a more responsive, sub-national safety net that better reflects a large and diverse nation where local priorities and needs differ markedly.

       

       

       

       

Policy Brief #177

Recommendations

The recent clash between a Chinese fishing vessel and the Japanese coast guard in the East China Sea demonstrates continuing potential for conflict between China and Japan over territory and maritime resources, one that could affect the United States. China’s stronger navy and air force in and over the waters east and south of the country’s coast is one dimension of that country’s growing power. But the deployment of these assets encroaches on the traditional area of operations of Japan’s navy and air force—and a clash between Chinese and Japanese ships and planes cannot be ruled out.

Unfortunately, civil-military relations in these two countries are somewhat skewed, with China’s military having too much autonomy and Japan’s having too little. And neither country is well equipped to do crisis management. Avoiding a naval conflict is in the interests of both China and Japan, and the two governments should take steps to reach agreement on the now-unregulated interaction of coast guard, naval, and air forces in the East China Sea. The two militaries should also continue and expand the exchanges and dialogues that have resumed in the last few years.

Finally, Japan and China should accelerate efforts to reach a follow-up agreement to implement the “political agreement” governing the exploitation of energy resources in the East China Sea. That will remove another potential source of tension. It is in neither country’s interest to see a deterioration of their relationship.

The Basic Problem

The clash on September 7 between a Chinese fishing vessel and ships of the Japanese coast guard exposes worrisome trends in the East Asian power balance. China’s power in Asia is growing. Its economy has just passed Japan’s as the biggest in the region. The capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are growing steadily while those of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are improving only slightly. The PLA’s budget has grown by double digits each year, while the SDF’s is essentially flat. Moreover, the focus of Chinese military modernization is power projection: the ability of its air and naval forces to stretch their reach beyond immediate coastal areas. Over the last ten years, the share of modern equipment in various platforms has increased (see table).

<not-mobile message="To see PLA Modernization Table, please visit the desktop site">
TABLE 1: Modernization of the PLA

Type	2000: percentage modern	2009: percentage modern
Surface ships	< 5%	~ 25%
Submarines	< 10%	50%
Air force	< 5%	~ 25%
Air defense	~ 5%	40 - 45 %

Source: Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010,” August 2010 p. 45.[http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2010_CMPR_Final.pdf].

</not-mobile>

Japan does have a significant military presence in East Asia, in collaboration with the United States, its ally. Surface and subsurface vessels of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force regularly patrol the East Asian littoral in order to protect vital sea lanes of communication and to assert the country’s maritime rights. Planes of the Air Self-Defense Force monitor Japan’s large air defense identification zone and scramble to challenge intrusions by foreign military aircraft. Both the maritime force and the Japan Coast Guard are responsible for protecting the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, located near Taiwan, which Japan regards as its sovereign territory.

China views the East China Sea differently. It claims the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands as Chinese territory. It has undertaken oil and gas drilling in the continental shelf east of Shanghai, partly in an area that Japan claims as its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and an appropriate site for its own drilling. China’s definition of its EEZ encompasses the entire shelf, while Japan argues that the two should split the area equitably. In 2004 and 2005, the contest for resources fostered concerns in each country about the security of its drilling platforms. There was a danger the dispute might become militarized. Tokyo and Beijing, seeking a diplomatic solution, reached a “political agreement” in June 2008, but efforts to implement it have made little progress.

More broadly, China seeks to establish a strategic buffer in the waters east and south of its coasts. So the People’s Liberation Army Navy and Air Force are expanding their area of operation eastward. China’s Marine Surveillance Force makes its own contribution to “defend the state’s sovereignty over its territorial waters, and safeguard the state’s maritime rights and interests.” By challenging Japan in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, expanding naval operations, sailing through maritime straits near Japan, surveying the seabed, and so on, China creates “facts on—and under—the sea.” Expanding air force patrols can create “facts in the air.”
Lurking in the background is the Taiwan Strait dispute, and the concern that Japan, as a U.S. ally, would be drawn into any conflict between the United States and China over the island.

Reinforcing the specifics of naval and air operations is a more general anxiety that each country has about the intentions of the other. Japanese watch China’s military modernization with deep concern, and are anxious about the long-term implications for their country’s strategic lifeline: sea lanes of communication. China has worried that looser restrictions on Japan’s military and a stronger U.S.-Japan alliance are designed to contain its own revival as a great power and prevent the unification of Taiwan. In addition, vivid memories of the past—particularly China’s memories of Japanese aggression in the first half of the twentieth century—darken the shadow of the future. Strategists in both countries cite with concern the old Chinese expression, “Two tigers cannot coexist on the same mountain.”

A Senkaku Scenario

These trends plus the salience of naval and air operations suggest that a clash between Japan’s formidable forces and China’s expanding ones is not impossible. As the recent clash demonstrates, the most likely site is the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, which are unpopulated but which each country believes strongly to be its sovereign territory. Indeed, a group of American specialists who reviewed Japan-China security relations in 2005 and 2006 concluded that “the prospect of incidents between Chinese and Japanese commercial and military vessels in the East China Sea has risen for the first time since World War II. If an incident occurs, it could result in the use of force—with consequences that could lead to conflict.” Further, trouble over oil and gas fields in the East China Sea is not out of the question.

To be clear, civilian leaders in China and Japan do not desire a conflict or a serious deterioration in bilateral relations. Each country gains much from economic cooperation with the other. Yet even if objective interests dictate a mutual retreat from the brink, they might be unable to do so. Once a clash occurred, other factors would come into play: military rules of engagement, strategic cultures, civil-military relations, civilian crisis management mechanisms, and domestic politics. In the end, leaders may lose control and regard some outcomes, especially the appearance of capitulation, as worse than a growing conflict.

Let us explore a Senkaku scenario in detail. It would likely begin as China’s Marine Surveillance Force (MSF) challenges the perimeters that the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) maintains around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Because the JCG’s rules of engagement are ambiguous, a JCG ship then rams an MSF vessel. Surface ships of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force hurry to the area and take up positions. Planes of Japan’s air force and China’s Air Force soon hover overhead. Submarines lurk below. Ships of the two navies maneuver for position. And although fairly tight rules of engagement regulate the units of each military, those rules might not be exactly appropriate for this situation, leaving local commanders discretion to act independently in the heat of the moment.

Chinese strategic culture, with its emphasis on preemption and preserving initiative, could come into play. Perhaps the captain of a PLAN ship sees fit to fire at an MSDF vessel. The Japanese vessel returns fire, because its commander believes that doing so is the proper response and does not wish to be overruled by cautious civilian bureaucrats in Tokyo. Planes of the two air forces get involved. The longer the encounter goes on, predicts one American naval expert, the more likely it is that Japan’s “significantly more advanced naval capabilities would, if employed, almost certainly cause the destruction of PLAN units, with significant loss of life.”

Quite quickly, commanders in the field would have to inform their headquarters in each capital about the incident. Would they convey a totally accurate picture, or would they shade reality to put themselves in the best possible light? Would they necessarily know exactly what happened? When a Chinese naval fighter jet collided with a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft off the island of Hainan in April 2001, the local command probably lied to those higher up about which side was responsible. By the time the Central Military Commission in Beijing reported to civilian leaders, the story of the encounter between the two planes was very different from the truth. Failure to tell “the whole truth,” however, is certainly not unique to the PLA.

In the Diaoyu/Senkaku scenario, the odds are that civilian and military decision-makers in Tokyo and Beijing would not receive a completely accurate picture. They would have to respond in a fog of uncertainty, giving free rein to a variety of psychological and organizational factors that would affect the handling of information.

The military services would have a monopoly on information, impeding the voicing of contrarian views. The preexisting beliefs of each side about the other would distort their views of the reports from the field. Each side also would be likely to judge its own actions in the best possible light and those of the adversary in the worst. Groupthink, the temptation to shade reports so that they are consistent with what are assumed to be the leaders’ views and a tendency to withhold contrarian views in a tense situation would be at play.

So, there is a real chance that decision-makers in each capital would receive a picture of the incident that was at variance with the “facts,” a picture that downplayed the responsibility of its units and played up that of the other side. Working with distorted information, they then would have to try to prevent the clash from escalating into a full-blown crisis without appearing to back down. At that point, crisis management institutions in each capital would come into play, and they most likely would not respond well. Policymakers in each capital might miscalculate in responding.

The first response element to consider is the interface between senior military officers and civilian officials. In China, the interface between the military, party and government hierarchies occurs at only a few points. The most significant point of contact is at the top, in the Central Military Commission, where the party general secretary and PRC president (currently Hu Jintao) is usually chairman. But that person may be the only civilian among about ten senior military officers. Moreover, the PLA guards its right to speak on matters of national security and its autonomy in conducting operations, so the institutional bias in this instance is likely to be against restraint. On the Japanese side, civilian control has been the rule, but the autonomy of the Self-Defense Forces has increased since the late 1990s; moreover, senior officers have resented their exclusion from policymaking circles. Therefore, in the event of a clash there would likely be tension and disagreement between “suits” and “uniforms” over how to respond.

Next is the issue of the structure of decision-making in Japan and China. In both, bottom-up coordination between line agencies is difficult at best, so if initiatives are to occur, they have to come from the top down. Yet in theory and often in practice, the “top” in each system is a collective: the Cabinet in Japan and the Politburo Standing Committee in China. The need for consensus on matters of war and peace is particularly acute.
 
Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese system is flawless when it comes to handling fairly even routine matters. Coordination among line agencies is often contentious, which slows down any policy response. The Chinese system is segmented between the civilian and military wings of the hierarchy. Policy coordination mechanisms exist that facilitate top-down leadership, with Chinese leaders probably more dominant than their Japanese counterparts. But tensions still exist between the priorities of the core executive and those of the bureaucracies.

In more stressful situations, it is likely that, first, leaders receive information from below that is biased and self-serving, and ineluctably view that information through a lens that distorts the images of both their own country and the other. Second, they act in the context of a security dilemma, in which military capabilities, recent experiences on specific issues, and sentiments about past history shape the perception of each of the intentions of the other. Third, each decision-making collective relies for staff support on bodies that themselves are a collection of agency representatives: in Japan the group working under the deputy chief cabinet secretary for crisis management and in China both the appropriate civilian leading group and the Central Military Commission, each of which has its own perspective. Neither system has shown itself adept at responding to situations of stress that do not rise to the level of seriousness of a military clash. Neither, therefore, is likely to do well in the conflict scenario envisioned here.

Fourth is the matter of domestic politics. Although each government would have reason to keep such a clash secret, the Japanese side would probably be unable to do so because the government is rather porous and the media would see little advantage—commercial or otherwise—in suppressing a “hot” story. A leak from the Self-Defense Forces, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Ministry of Defense is all but certain. That would energize the Japanese press, with its predilection for viewing security issues in zero-sum terms. Once the news became public in Japan, it would undoubtedly stir up the Chinese public, whose hard-edged, anti-Japanese nationalism circulates quickly on the Internet and is a vocal and influential force. It is a tide against which Chinese leaders and officials, worried about domestic stability and defensive about inevitable charges of softness, are reluctant to swim. If in this instance, large demonstrations erupted, the regime would be more inclined to a tough response. Thus, the PLA’s preference for firmness and public nationalistic outrage would combine to squeeze civilian leaders.

To make matters worse, at least some of China’s nationalistic citizens have tools with which to mount their own tough response: cyber warfare. They would mount an array of attacks on Japanese institutions, which in turn would anger the Japanese public and incline the government to take a stronger stance itself. Inexorably, the spiral would descend.

None of the steps in this scenario is certain. If a clash between China and Japan occurred, it would not necessarily mean that the two governments could not contain and prevent the incident from escalating. Yet each loop in the downward spiral would increase the probability that subsequent, reinforcing loops would occur, and their cumulative effect would be to reduce Tokyo and Beijing’s chances of succeeding in their efforts to manage the crisis.

The United States Factor

If such a clash occurred, it would pose a serious dilemma for the United States. The U.S. commitment to defend Japan, enshrined in Article 5 of the Mutual Security Treaty, applies to “territories under the administration of Japan.” The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are under Japan’s administrative control, even though Washington takes no position on which state (China or Japan) has sovereignty over them under international law. Successive U.S. administrations have reaffirmed that application, suggesting that the United States would be legally obligated to assist Japan if the People’s Liberation Army attacked or seized the islands. In the more ambiguous contingency of a fight over oil and gas fields in the East China Sea, Washington would not be legally obligated to render assistance to Japan, but Tokyo would likely pressure it to do so.

In any clash over the islands or some other part of the East China Sea that could not be immediately contained, Tokyo would thus look to Washington for help in standing up to China’s probable reliance on coercive diplomacy. Washington seeks good relations with both China and Japan. It does not want to get drawn into a conflict between the two, especially one that it believed was not necessary to protect the vital interests of either. A Senkaku scenario is not, from the U.S. perspective, the issue where the American commitment to Japan is put to the test. But Washington would understand that not responding would impose serious political costs on its relations with Tokyo and would raise questions about U.S. credibility more broadly among other states that depend on the United States for their security. Congressional and public opinion would probably favor Japan or, at least, oppose China.

Avoiding a Tragedy

If such an accidental clash is not in Chinese, Japanese, or American interests, what should be done to avoid it?

First, the two governments should take steps to reduce the most likely source of conflict: the unregulated interaction of coast guard, naval and air forces in the East China Sea. There are a variety of conflict-avoidance mechanisms that could be employed. The U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement is a useful precedent.

Second, the two militaries should continue and expand the exchanges and dialogues that have resumed in the last few years. Moreover, they should be sustained even if minor tensions arise (China has a tendency to suspend exchanges in those cases).

Third, the two governments should accelerate efforts to reach a follow-up agreement to implement the “political agreement” governing the exploitation of energy resources in the East China Sea. That will remove another potential source of tension.

Objectively, these are relatively easy steps. They have been hard to take but they should be pursued. Even more difficult are initiatives that would remove the underlying sources of conflict: resolution of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute; reaching a broader and mutually acceptable approach to resource exploration in the East China Sea; remedying the institutional factors in each country that would turn small incidents into crises and make crisis containment difficult; creating mechanisms that would ameliorate the mutual mistrust fostered by China’s rise and any strengthening of the U.S.-Japan alliance; gearing the alliance to shape China’s rise in a positive, constructive direction; and mitigating memories of the past so they do not cloud the future.

All of these projects are very difficult. They are constrained by bureaucratic resistance and political opposition. But it is not in either country’s interest to see a deterioration of what can be a mutually beneficial and peace-promoting relationship.

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[1] In order to maintain neutrality on the territorial dispute, I use both the Japanese and Chinese names in this policy brief.
[2] “Sino-Japanese Rivalry: Implications for U.S. Policy,” INSS Special Report (Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, April 2007), p. 3 [http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/read/SRapr07.pdf].
[3] As it did concerning a Taiwan fishing vessel in 2008.
[4] Bernard D. Cole, “Right-Sizing the Navy: How Much Naval Force Will Beijing Deploy,” in Right-Sizing the People’s Liberation Army: Exploring the Contours of China’s Military, Roy D. Kamphausen and Andrew Scobell, eds. (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2007), pp. 543–44.
[5] Thus, the annual report on China of the U.S. Department of Defense warns that China’s neighbors could underestimate how much the PLA has improved; China’s leaders could overestimate the PLA’s capabilities; and both might ignore the effect of their decisions on the calculations of others. Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2009,” March 2009, p. 20 [www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/China_Military_Power_Report_2009.pdf.

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The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, hosted The Political Geography of America's Purple States: Five Trends That Will Decide the 2008 Election, a briefing on a new series of reports on the political demography of "purple" states in the 2008 election.

Purple states-or states where the current balance of political forces does not decisively favor one party or the other-will play an undeniably pivotal role in the upcoming election and include: Virginia and Florida in the South; the Intermountain West states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona; Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio in the Heartland; and Pennsylvania.

On October 10, 2008 at the National Press Club in Washington DC, authors William Frey and Ruy Teixeira highlighted the political and demographic trends in these 10 battleground states, focusing not only on their role in the 2008 election, but their position as toss-ups in years to come.

The session opened with an overview of the demographic shifts shaping all the contested states studied, and evolved into a detailed presentation of the trends that are testing and reshaping the balance of their voting populations, focusing particularly on five trends that Frey and Teixeira believe will decide the 2008 election. Feedback from James Barnes, political correspondent for the National Journal, helped shape the conversation.

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This is the fourth in a series of reports on the demographic and political dynamics under way in key “battleground” states, deemed to be crucial in deciding the 2008 election. As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program’s Blueprint for American Prosperity, this series will provide an electoral component to the initiative’s analysis of, and prescriptions for, bolstering the health and vitality of America’s metropolitan areas, the engines of the U.S. economy. This report focuses on two major battleground states in the South, Virginia and Florida, which serve as bookends to an emerging New South.

Virginia and Florida have eligible voter populations that are rapidly changing. White working class voters are declining sharply while white college graduates are growing and minorities, especially Hispanics and Asians, are growing even faster. These changes are having their largest effects in these states’ major metropolitan areas, particularly Miami and rapidly-growing Orlando and Tampa in Florida’s I-4 Corridor and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia. Other large metro areas in these states are also feeling significant effects from these changes and will contribute to potentially large demographically related political shifts in the next election.

In Virginia, these trends will have their strongest impact in the fast-growing and Democratic-trending Northern Virginia area, where Democrats will seek to increase their modest margin from the 2004 election. The trends could also have big impacts in the Richmond and Virginia Beach metros, where Democrats will need to compress their 2004 deficits. Overall, the GOP will be looking to maintain their very strong support among Virginia’s declining white working class, especially in the conservative South and West region. The Democrats will be reaching out to the growing white college graduate group, critical to their prospects in Northern Virginia and statewide. The Democrats will also be relying on the increasing number of minority voters, who could help them not just in Northern Virginia, but also in the Virginia Beach metro and the Richmond and East region.

In Florida, these trends will have their strongest impacts in the fast-growing I-4 Corridor (36 percent of the statewide vote), which, while Democratic2 trending, is still the key swing region in Florida, and in the Miami metro, largest in the state and home to 27 percent of the vote. The trends could also have big impacts in the South and North, where Democrats will be looking to reduce their 2004 deficits in important metros like Jacksonville (North) and Sarasota and Cape Coral (South). Across the state, the GOP needs to prevent any erosion of support among white working class voters, especially among Democratic-trending whites with some college. They will also seek to hold the line among white college graduates, whose support levels for the GOP are high but declining over time. Finally, the support of the growing Hispanic population is critical to GOP efforts to hold the state, but this group is changing generationally and in terms of mix (more non-Cuban Hispanics), which could open the door to the Democrats.

Both of these states are near the top of the lists of most analysts’ list of battleground states for November 2008. Florida was a very closely contested state in both 2000 and 2004 (especially 2000). But Virginia’s status as a battleground is new to 2008. Yet in both states the contested political terrain reflects the dynamic demographic changes occurring within them. With 27 and 13 electoral votes, respectively, all eyes will be on Florida and Virginia on election night.

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This is the third in a series of reports on the demographic and political dynamics under way in key “battleground” states, deemed to be crucial in deciding the 2008 election. As part of the Metropolitan Policy Program’s Blueprint for American Prosperity, this series will provide an electoral component to the initiative’s analysis of and prescriptions for bolstering the health and vitality of America’s metropolitan areas, the engines of the U.S. economy. This report focuses on three major battleground states in the Midwest—Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri—and finds that:

Ohio, Michigan and Missouri all feature eligible voter populations dominated by white working class voters. However, this profile is changing, albeit more slowly than in faster-growing states like Colorado or Arizona, as the white working class declines and white college graduates and minorities, especially Hispanics, increase. The largest effects are in these states’ major metropolitan areas— Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati in Ohio: Detroit in Michigan; and St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri— especially in their suburbs.

In Ohio, these trends could have their strongest impact in the fast-growing and Democratic-trending Columbus metro, where Democrats will seek to tip the entire metro in their favor by expanding their margin in Franklin County and reducing their deficit in the suburbs. The trends could also have big impacts in the Cleveland metro (especially its suburbs), in the Cincinnati metro (especially Hamilton County) and in the mediumsized metros of the Northeast (Akron, Canton, and Youngstown). Overall, the GOP will be looking to maintain their support among the declining white working class, especially among whites with some college, who have been trending Democratic. Also critical to their prospects is whether the growing white college-educated group will continue its movement toward the Democrats.

In Michigan, these trends will likely determine whether the fast-growing and populous Detroit suburbs continue shifting toward the Democrats, a development which would tip the Detroit metro (44 percent of the statewide vote) even farther in the direction of the Democrats. The trends will also have a big impact on whether the GOP can continue their hold on the conservative and growing Southwest region of the state that includes the Grand Rapids metro. The GOP will seek to increase its support among white college graduates, who gave the GOP relatively strong support in 2004, but have been trending toward the Democrats long term.

In Missouri, these trends will have their strongest impact on the two big metros of Democratic-trending St. Louis (38 percent of the vote)—especially its suburbs— and GOP-trending Kansas City (20 percent of the statewide vote). The Democrats need a large increase in their margins out of these two metros to have a chance of taking the state, while the GOP simply needs to hold the line. The trends will also have a significant impact on the conservative and growing Southwest region, the bulwark of GOP support in the state, where the Republicans will look to generate even higher support levels. The GOP will try to maintain its support from the strongly pro-GOP white college graduate group, which has been increasing its share of voters as it has trended Republican.

These large, modestly growing states in the heartland of the United States will play a pivotal roll in November’s election. Though experiencing smaller demographic shifts than many other states, they are each changing in ways that underscore the contested status of their combined 48 Electoral College votes in this year’s presidential contest.



Table Of Contents:
Executive Summary » 
Introduction and Data Sources and Definitions » 
Ohio » 
Michigan » 
Missouri » 
Endnotes »

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After decades of neglect, Latin American governments are increasingly focusing on urban slums. What often spurs their policy interventions is a desire to counter violent criminality leaking out from the poor marginalized slums controlled by gangs into the city centers the better-off residents want to keep safe. But tackling the socioeconomic dynamics of slums -- the trap of poverty, discrimination, lack of public goods and social services, and rule by nonstate actors -- is not only complex, but also costly. Governments, elites, and middle classes tend not to want to spend resources on slums. Effective policies have to be sustained for decades, and political will and tax revenues for such complex state-building are frequently scarce.

Focusing on a discreet intervention – providing low-cost housing – becomes tempting. Rarely is it sufficient. The condition of the buildings alone is not what makes a slum a slum. Moving residents from slums to better low-cost housing has encountered systematic challenges not just in Latin America, but also in other places where it has been tried, such as Kenya. Instead, policies need to focus on broader community dynamics, including public safety, legal job creation with sufficient income, human capital development, and robust connectivity of slums to economically-thriving areas, something residents of the latter often don’t want.

Paradoxically, real estate dynamics can have pernicious effects. If broader pacification does take hold and public safety in slums increases, some slum areas can become desirable real estate with vast development possibilities. Developers may well seek to buy the land by offering “better” low-cost housing to slum residents to get them to move. Since many slum residents do not have title to their residences, forced displacement also occurs, albeit under the cloak of being nice to the poor.

Instead of being limited to the provision of alternative residences, policies to address slums need to be about inclusion, economic growth, safety, and connectivity of slums with the thriving city parts, and accountability of city-governance authorities.

This commentary was originally published by the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor. 

      

We are kicking off the new Millions Learning video series with a spotlight on Teach For All, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Teach For All is an international network of local, independent partner country organizations dedicated to improving educational opportunities for children and youth around the globe. From China to Bulgaria to Peru to Ghana, each partner organization recruits and trains recent top-performing graduates and professionals to teach in their country’s underserved communities for two years, with the ultimate goal of developing a cadre of education leaders, both inside and outside of the classroom.

In this video, Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, discusses Teach For All’s unique approach to building a pipeline of future “learning leaders and champions” and the role that a supportive policy environment plays in enabling this process. Kopp then explains how Teach For All grew from the original Teach For America and Teach First in the United Kingdom to an international network of 40 partner countries, sharing her own lessons learned along the way.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Wendy Kopp of Teach For All

       

In 2015 the international community agreed on a set of ambitious sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the global society, to be achieved by 2030. One of the lessons that the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG s) has highlighted is the importance of a systematic approach to identify and sequence development interventions—policies, programs, and projects—to achieve such goals at a meaningful scale. The Chinese approach to development, which consists of identifying a problem and long-term goal, testing alternative solutions, and then implementing those that are promising in a sustained manner, learning and adapting as one proceeds—Deng Xiaoping’s “crossing the river by feeling the stones”—is an approach that holds promise for successful achievement of the SDGs.

Having observed the Chinese way, then World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn in 2004, together with the Chinese government, convened a major international conference in Shanghai on scaling up successful development interventions, and in 2005 the World Bank Group (WBG ) published the results of the conference, including an assessment of the Chinese approach. (Moreno-Dodson 2005). Some ten years later, the WBG once again is addressing the question of how to support scaling up of successful development interventions, at a time when the challenge and opportunity of scaling up have become a widely recognized issue for many development institutions and experts.

Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.”

In parallel with the recognition that scaling up matters, the development community is now also focusing on social enterprises (SEs), a new set of actors falling between the traditionally recognized public and private sectors. We adopt here the World Bank’s definition of “social enterprises” as a social-mission-led organization that provides sustainable services to Base of the Pyramid (BoP) populations. This is broadly in line with other existing definitions for the sector and reflects the World Bank’s primary interest in social enterprises as a mechanism for supporting service delivery for the poor. Although social enterprises can adopt various organizational forms—business, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and community-based organizations are all forms commonly adopted by social enterprises—they differ from private providers principally by combining three features: operating with a social purpose, adhering to business principles, and aiming for financial sustainability. Since traditional private and public service providers frequently do not reach the poorest people in developing countries, social enterprises can play an important role in providing key services to those at the “base of the pyramid.” (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Role of SE sector in public service provision

Social enterprises often start at the initiative of a visionary entrepreneur who sees a significant social need, whether in education, health, sanitation, or microfinance, and who responds by developing an innovative way to address the perceived need, usually by setting up an NGO, or a for-profit enterprise. Social enterprises and their innovations generally start small. When successful, they face an important challenge: how to expand their operations and innovations to meet the social need at a larger scale. 

Development partner organizations—donors, for short—have recognized the contribution that social enterprises can make to find and implement innovative ways to meet the social service needs of people at the base of the pyramid, and they have started to explore how they can support social enterprises in responding to these needs at a meaningful scale. 

The purpose of this paper is to present a menu of approaches for addressing the challenge of scaling up social enterprise innovations, based on a review of the literature on scaling up and on social enterprises. The paper does not aim to offer specific recommendations for entrepreneurs or blueprints and guidelines for the development agencies. The range of settings, problems, and solutions is too wide to permit that. Rather, the paper provides an overview of ways to think about and approach the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Where possible, the paper also refers to specific tools that can be helpful in implementing the proposed approaches. 

Note that we talk about scaling up social enterprise innovations, not about social enterprises. This is because it is the innovations and how they are scaled up that matter. An innovation may be scaled up by the social enterprise where it originated, by handoff to a public agency for implementation at a larger scale, or by other private enterprises, small or large. 

This paper is structured in three parts: Part I presents a general approach to scaling up development interventions. This helps establish basic definitions and concepts. Part II considers approaches for the scaling up of social enterprise innovations. Part III provides a summary of the main conclusions and lessons from experience. A postscript draws out implications for external aid donors. Examples from actual practice are used to exemplify the approaches and are summarized in Annex boxes.

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