As the nation still struggles with high healthcare costs that consume larger and larger portions of patient budgets as well as government coffers, the search for ways to get costs under control continues. Total healthcare spending in the U.S. now represents almost 18 percent of our entire economy. One promising cost-savings approach is called “reference pricing,” where the insurer establishes a price ceiling on selected services (joint replacement, colonoscopy, lab tests, etc.). Often, this price cap is based on the average of the negotiated prices for providers in its network, and anything above the reference price has to be covered by the insured consumer.

A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine by James Robinson and colleagues analyzed grocery store Safeway’s experience with reference pricing for laboratory services such as such as a lipid panel, comprehensive metabolic panel or prostate-specific antigen test. Safeway’s non-union employees were given information on prices at all laboratories through a mobile digital platform and told what Safeway would cover. Patients who chose a lab charging above the payment limit were required to pay the full difference themselves.

Employers see this type of program as a way to incentivize employees to think through the price of services when making healthcare decisions. Employees enjoy savings when they switch to a provider whose negotiated price is below the reference price, whereas if they choose services above it, they are responsible for the additional cost.

Robinson’s results show substantial savings to both Safeway and to its covered employees from reference pricing. Compared to trends in prices paid by insurance enrollees not subject to the caps of reference pricing, costs paid per test went down almost 32 percent, with a total savings over three years of $2.57 million – patients saved $1.05 million in out-of-pocket costs and Safeway saved $1.7 million.

I wrote an accompanying editorial in JAMA Internal Medicine focusing on different types of consumer-driven approaches to obtain lower prices; I argue that approaches that make the job simpler for consumers are likely to be even more successful. There is some work involved for patients to make reference pricing work, and many may have little awareness of price differences across laboratories, especially differences between those in some physicians’ offices, which tend to be more expensive but also more convenient, and in large commercial laboratories. Safeway helped steer their employees with accessible information: they provided employees with a smartphone app to compare lab prices.

But high-deductible plans like Safeway’s that provide extensive price information to consumers often have only limited impact because of the complexity of shopping for each service involved in a course of treatment -- something close to impossible for inpatient care. In addition, high deductibles are typically met for most hospitalizations (which tend to be the very expensive), so those consumers are less incentivized to comparison shop.

Plans that have limited provider networks relieve the consumer of much complexity and steer them towards providers with lower costs. Rather than review extensive price information, the consumer can focus on whether the provider is in the network. Reference pricing is another approach that simplifies—is the price less than the reference price? What was striking about Robinson’s results is that reference pricing for laboratories was employed in a high-deductible plan, showing that the savings achieved—in excess of 30 percent compared to a control—were beyond what the high deductible had accomplished.

While promising, reference pricing cannot be applied to all medical services: it works best for standardized services and where variation in quality is less of a concern. It also can be applied only to services that are “shoppable,” which is only about one-third of privately-insured spending. Even if reference pricing expanded to a number of other medical services, other cost containment approaches, including other network strategies, are needed to successfully contain health spending and lower costs for non-shoppable medical services.

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

President Barack Obama's April 17 debut before the hemisphere's main gathering of democratically elected leaders offers an important test of his administration's commitment to longstanding bipartisan support for democracy abroad. So far, the signals are not encouraging.

No doubt, the president inherits an unfortunate legacy on this front. President George W. Bush's over-the-top freedom agenda was seen by many as a veiled attempt, by military means or otherwise, to assert U.S. hegemony. At best, it was an overly ambitious and ham-handed effort to boost prospects for political reform in every corner of the world.

The more pragmatic Mr. Obama will take a different, more muted approach, bending U.S. advocacy on human rights to other concerns. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently suggested that in her February visit to Beijing, where she signaled to the Communist Party's leaders that the United States would not let human rights get in the way of other priorities. But how far will this pragmatism go? Are we entering a new era in which the rights of the hundreds of millions of people who still live under authoritarian rule are relegated to third-tier status in the U.S. agenda?

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the good news is that most citizens not only have a secure voice and vote in how they are governed, but live in increasingly free societies. Freedom of the press is robust, civil society is active and independent judiciaries are slowly consolidating. Threats to these critical components of any democratic society emanate less from a restless military and more from heavily armed criminals who create havoc in once safe neighborhoods and target investigative journalists and honest judges with "plata o plomo" - money or lead.

There are, however, a few exceptions to this generally positive trend. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez's tutelage, has deteriorated badly on several indicators of democratic life and is no longer invited to the Community of Democracies, a global association of governments committed to fundamental practices of democracy and human rights. Not far behind is Nicaragua which, under Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, is reverting to old-style tactics of repressing the opposition and clamping down on dissent. Other states worth watching closely are Ecuador and Bolivia which, as they undertake dramatic reform to incorporate once marginalized groups, are vulnerable to civil conflict.

And then there is Cuba. Raul Castro will not be at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago because Cuba does not adhere to the inter-American system's fundamental principles of democracy and human rights. That is as it should be. But Mr. Obama will face considerable pressure from his colleagues to fudge this bright line by engaging, rather than isolating Cuba, as they and nearly every other country has done. Indeed, the White House has already begun moving in this direction by easing restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island. Much more can and should be done in the coming months to continue this process of rapprochement between Washington and Havana. But lifting Cuba's suspension as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS), as many are advocating, would be a step too far.

The governments of the region, as they emerged from years of military dictatorship in the 1980s, agreed to lock arms and resist any attempt to overthrow civilian constitutional rule. This joint approach has served the region well when such countries as Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala and Haiti faced political turmoil. The commitment to core democratic standards, expressed through the Inter-American Democratic Charter, is central to the region's identity and compares well to the European model of integration based on common democratic values and forms of government.

All this progress is at risk if the region's governments decide to lift Cuba's suspension as a member of the OAS without preconditions. Unless the Castro regime takes serious steps toward meeting the region's basic human rights standards, including rights to free speech, fair elections and due process for political prisoners, it should not be considered for renewed membership. The Obama Administration, which appears determined to open new paths of dialogue with difficult countries like Cuba, Iran and Syria, must be careful not to lower the bar so far that its own neighborhood loses its distinct identity as a community of democratic states.

President Obama, thus, should walk a fine line at the Summit gathering. He needs to lead by example by implementing human rights reforms at home while reminding his colleagues they share a common responsibility to follow and promote universal democratic standards. This must include encouraging the Castro government to adopt genuine political reforms before it can be welcomed back to the OAS, as well as strengthening the region's collective defense of democracy in backsliding states. Anything less would surely set the human rights cause back for the region, and the world.

Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

Jennifer S. Vey, a fellow with the Centennial Scholar Initiative, discusses the current economic, social, and political situation in Baltimore a year after the riots.

“1/5 people in Baltimore lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty, and yet these communities are located in a relatively affluent metro area, in a city with many vibrant and growing neighborhoods,” Vey says. In this podcast, Vey describes the current state of Baltimore and urges the start of discussions about the abject poverty facing many cities in the United States.

Also in this episode: stay tuned for our presidential election update with John Hudak. Also, Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses global drug policy and the upcoming United Nations General Assembly special session on drug policy.

Show Notes

"The Third Rail"

One year after: Observations on the rise of innovation districts

Confronting Suburban Poverty in America

Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen in all the usual places, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu.

Stephen was still a teenager on the north side of St. Louis when his dad, a police officer, was killed during a robbery in their neighborhood. Despite the trauma, Stephen later joined the police force to continue his dad’s legacy and commitment to safe and inclusive neighborhoods. But even before the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, Stephen (not his real name) yearned to right local wrongs through broader approaches. “The darkest forces weren’t necessarily the ones getting arrested,” he observed. “So I retired from the police force after 22 years, essentially to chase after a different type of perpetrator.” Wanting to focus on policies at multiple levels of government that “were causing the disparities that fueled increasing crime and violence in St. Louis,” Stephen pivoted to civil rights enforcement, tracking policy violations and innovations at a government agency in the St. Louis region.

I met Stephen in February while in St. Louis for a conference his agency organized on HUD’s recently strengthened Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH ) rule, which increases local accountability in promoting residential integration. He wasn’t a speaker at the event, but hearing his story reinforced the importance of combating the deeply entrenched and often invisible causes of segregation.

Recent events and new academic research, including landmark findings by Raj Chetty and colleagues testifying to the benefits of low-poverty neighborhoods for low-income kids, the updated AFFH rule, and the Supreme Court’s disparate impact decision upholding other tools to fight segregation have brought renewed attention to these challenges. Meanwhile, underlying these developments, poverty has failed to decline since the recession and, as recent Brookings research shows, has become more concentrated in neighborhoods of extreme poverty.

How can regional leaders and practitioners respond to these challenges? I was in St. Louis to discuss one part of the solution—advancing more mixed-income neighborhoods. In the Chicago region, our housing and community development-focused firm, BRicK Partners, is collaborating with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA), and 10 metropolitan Chicago public housing authorities, with support and leadership from HUD, to develop and operate the Regional Housing Initiative (RHI)

RHI is a small, systemic, and potentially scalable “work around” of a very specific set of programs and policies that contribute inadvertently to regional inequities. A flexible and regional pool of resources working across the many traditional public housing authority (PHA) and municipal jurisdictions in the Chicago region, RHI increases quality rental housing in neighborhoods with good jobs, schools, and transit access and provides more housing options to households on Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) waiting lists. Recognizing that the federal formulas allocating HCVs to each individual PHA are not responsive to population, employment, or poverty trends, RHI partners convert and pool a small portion of their HCVs to provide place-based operating subsidies in support of development activity that advances local and regional priorities. RHI supports both opportunity areas with strong markets and quality amenities as well as revitalization areas where public and private sector partners are planning and investing toward that end. In both cases, the bulk of RHI investments are in the suburbs, where the PHAs are smaller and the rental stock more limited. 

RHI has committed over 550 RHI subsidies to nearly 40 mixed-income and supportive housing developments across Chicagoland, supporting more than 2,200 total apartments, over half of which are in opportunity areas. The pooling and transferring of subsidies has allowed RHI to support proposals that local jurisdictions wouldn’t be able to undertake otherwise.

Although a number of innovative programs around the country provide assistance to households moving to opportunity areas, RHI is unique its focus on increasing the supply of housing in opportunity areas regionwide. Its approach is consistent with lessons learned from Brookings’ work on Confronting Suburban Poverty in America: With CMAP as a strong quarterback, RHI has addressed the shortage of rental housing in the suburbs by working across jurisdictions, developing shared priorities, metrics and selection criteria, and by working with IHDA and other stakeholders to leverage greater private sector investment.

This recipe for success is now being deployed in communities beyond Chicago. Baltimore is preparing to advertise for its first round of developer applicants under the leadership of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, with regionwide PHAs, the State Housing Finance Agency, and a regional housing counselor lined up as supportive partners. In St. Louis, the regional planning and housing finance organizations both attended the February conference where I met Stephen, signaling the potential for greater collaboration for both these entities and the PHAs.

Like many housing advocates and professionals, my colleagues and I at BRicK Partners derive a lot of satisfaction from supporting communities like Baltimore and St. Louis and individuals like Stephen and his peers with replicable best practices. Given today’s political realities, we don’t expect major changes in the federal formulas and statutes behind some of the regional inequities, but “work arounds” such as RHI can still scale up. Nationwide, just a small percentage of HCVs have been converted for such flexible supply-side solutions, but there is reason to be hopeful that this will change. The Regional Mobility Demonstration proposed in the 2017 budget as well as federal public housing voucher legislation passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year are signs that there is real momentum to advance regional strategies that increase access to opportunity for low income residents and families. 

Baltimore police officer Edward Nero, one of six being tried separately in relation to the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, has been acquitted on all counts. The outcome for officer Nero was widely expected, but officials are nonetheless aware of the level of frustration and anger that remains in the city. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake said: "We once again ask the citizens to be patient and to allow the entire process to come to a conclusion."

Since Baltimore came to national attention, Brookings scholars have probed the city’s challenges and opportunities, as well addressing broader questions of place, race and opportunity.

• In this podcast, Jennifer Vey describes how, for parts of Baltimore, economic growth has been largely a spectator sport: "1/5 people in Baltimore lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty, and yet these communities are located in a relatively affluent metro area, in a city with many vibrant and growing neighborhoods."
• Vey and her colleague Alan Berube, in this piece on the "Two Baltimores," reinforce the point about the distribution of economic opportunity and resources in the city:
  

  In 2013, 40,000 Baltimore households earned at least $100,000. Compare that to Milwaukee, a similar-sized city where only half as many households have such high incomes. As our analysis uncovered, jobs in Baltimore pay about $7,000 more on average than those nationally. The increasing presence of high-earning households and good jobs in Baltimore City helps explain why, as the piece itself notes, the city’s bond rating has improved and property values are rising at a healthy clip."

• Groundbreaking work by Raj Chetty, which we summarized here, shows that Baltimore City is the worst place for a boy to grow up in the U.S. in terms of their likely adult earnings:

• Here Amy Liu offered some advice to the new mayor of the city: "I commend the much-needed focus on equity but…the mayoral candidates should not lose sight of another critical piece of the equity equation: economic growth."
• Following an event focused on race, place and opportunity, in this piece I drew out "Six policies to improve social mobility," including better targeting of housing vouchers, more incentives to build affordable homes in better-off neighborhoods, and looser zoning restrictions.
• Frederick C. Harris assessed President Obama’s initiative to help young men of color, "My Brother’s Keeper," praising many policy shifts and calling for a renewed focus on social capital and educational access. But Harris also warned that rhetoric counts and that a priority for policymakers is to "challenge some misconceptions about the shortcomings of black men, which have become a part of the negative public discourse."
• Malcolm Sparrow has a Brookings book on policing reform, "Handcuffed: What Holds Policing Back, and the Keys to Reform" (there is a selection here on Medium). Sparrow writes:
  

  Citizens of any mature democracy can expect and should demand police services that are responsive to their needs, tolerant of diversity, and skillful in unraveling and tackling crime and other community problems. They should expect and demand that police officers are decent, courteous, humane, sparing and skillful in the use of force, respectful of citizens’ rights, disciplined, and professional. These are ordinary, reasonable expectations."

Five more police officers await their verdicts. But the city of Baltimore should not have to wait much longer for stronger governance, and more inclusive growth.

Editor’s note: This week the Democrats gather in Philadelphia to nominate a candidate for president and adopt a party platform. Given that there are no minority reports to the Democratic platform, it is likely that it will be adopted as-is this week. And so we can begin the comparison of the two major party platforms. For those who say there are no differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, just read the platforms side-by-side. In many instances, the differences are—as Donald Trump would say, yuuuge. But in one surprising instance, the two parties actually agree. This piece walks readers through one of the biggest contrasts, while an earlier piece by Elaine Kamarck detailed a striking similarity.

When it comes to Republicans and the environment, black is the new green. In addition to denouncing “radical environmentalists” and calling for dismantling the EPA, the platform adopted in Cleveland yesterday calls coal “abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource” and unequivocally opposes “any” carbon tax.

Meanwhile, Democrats are moving in the opposite direction. By the time the party’s draft 2016 platform emerged from the final regional committee meeting in Orlando, it contained a robust section on environmental issues in general and climate change in particular. One of the many amendments adopted in Orlando contains the following sentence: “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals.” In plain English, there should be what amounts to a tax (whatever it may be called) on the atmospheric emissions principally responsible for climate change, including but not limited to CO2.

As Brookings’ Adele Morris pointed out in a recent paper, this proposal raises a host of design issues, including determining initial price levels, payers, recipients, and uses of revenues raised. It would have to be squared with existing federal tax, climate, and energy policies as well as with climate initiatives at the state level.

But these devilish details should not obstruct the broader view: To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that the platform of a major American political party has advocated taxing greenhouse gas emissions. Many economists, including some with a conservative orientation, will applaud this proposal. Many supporters and producers of fossils fuels will be dismayed.

It remains to be seen how the American people will respond. In a survey conducted in 2015 by Resources for the Future in partnership with Stanford University and the New York Times, 67 percent of the respondents endorsed requiring companies “to pay a tax to the government for every ton of greenhouse gases [they] put out,” with the proviso that all the revenue would be devoted to reducing the amount of income taxes that individuals pay. Previous surveys found similar sentiments: public support increases sharply when the greenhouse gas tax is explicitly revenue-neutral and declines sharply if it threatens an overall increase in individual taxes.

Once this plank of the Democratic platform becomes widely known, Republicans are likely to attack it as yet another example of Democrats’ propensity to raise taxes. The platform’s silence on the question of revenue-neutrality may add some credibility to this charge. Much will depend on the ability of the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee to clarify its proposal and to link it to goals the public endorses.

Justin Wolfers’ column titled “Debunking the Easterlin Paradox, Again” dismisses Richard Easterlin’s work as just plain wrong. I argue here, as I have elsewhere, that where you come out on the Easterlin paradox depends on the happiness question (and therefore the definition of happiness) that you use, as well as the sample of countries and the period of time.

Richard Easterlin finds no clear country-by-country relationship between average per capita GDP and life satisfaction (among wealthy countries), despite a clear relationship between income and happiness at the individual level within countries. Easterlin also found – and continues to find, based on methods different from Wolfers’ – an absence of a relationship between life satisfaction and long-term changes in GDP per capita.

Different well-being questions measure different dimensions of “happiness”, and, in turn, they correlate differently with income (something they themselves show at the end of their last paper, and admit that the relationship between income and well-being is complex). The best possible life question – which Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson primarily use in the first work, and also in the second – asks respondents to compare their life today to the best possible life they can imagine for themselves. This introduces a relative component, and, not surprisingly, the question correlates most closely with income of all of the available subjective well-being questions. Life satisfaction, which they use in the second work, also correlates with income more than open-ended happiness, life purpose or affect questions, but not as closely as the best possible life question.

Wolfers and Stevenson used the most recent and extensive sample of countries available from the Gallup World Poll, and, as the measure of “happiness”, the best possible life question therein, and challenged the Easterlin paradox. In more recent work, with Stevenson and Dan Sacks (2010), referenced in this blog, the authors look at the relationship between life satisfaction and economic growth, based on the World Values survey and GDP levels and the best possible life question, based on the Gallup World Poll. They isolate a clear relationship between life satisfaction and GDP levels, and their statistical analysis is spot on.

Recent studies by Kahneman and Deaton (2010), and Diener and colleagues (2010), for example, find that happiness in a life evaluation sense (as measured by the best possible life question) correlates much more closely with income than does happiness in a life experience sense (as measured by affect or more open ended happiness questions). This holds within the United States (Kahneman and Deaton) and across countries (Diener et al.).

My own work on Latin America, with Soumya Chattopadhyay and Mario Picon, tested various questions against each other and finds a similar difference in correlation, with affect and life purpose questions having the least correlation with income and the best possible life question the most. My work on happiness in Afghanistan found that Afghans were happier than the world average (on par with Latin Americans) as measured by an open ended happiness question, and 20 percent more likely to smile in a day than Cubans. Yet they scored much lower than the world average on the best possible life question. This is not a surprise. While naturally cheerful and able to make the best of their lot, the Afghans also know that the best possible life is outside Afghanistan.

Thus the conclusions that one draws on whether there is an Easterlin paradox or not in part rest on the definition of happiness, and therefore the question that is used as the basis of analysis. Wolfers and co-authors find a clear relationship between GDP levels and life satisfaction and best possible life – clearly important dimensions of well-being. Yet in the same paper they find much less clear relationships when they use happiness, affect and life purpose questions.  

There is also the question of the sample of countries, and whether one is examining cross section or time series data. The most recent debate with Easterlin is about the trends over time rather than cross-sectional patterns. Dropping the transition economies, as Easterlin does, may be a mistake, as Wolfers contends. But it is also important to recognize the extent to which including a large sample of countries that experienced unprecedented economic collapse and associated drops in happiness alters the slope in the cross-country income-happiness relationship (making it steeper). Wolfers also criticizes Easterlin for relying on financial satisfaction data for his Latin American time series sample (because there is not enough life satisfaction data); financial satisfaction correlates closely, but not perfectly, with life satisfaction. Easterlin’s technique allows for the inclusion of a much larger sample of middle income developing countries, a sample of countries that one can imagine is very important to the growth and happiness debate. Wolfers and co-authors use far fewer Latin American countries because comparable life satisfaction data is limited. Either approach is plausible and, as with all work with limited data, is not perfect. But I would not go as far as calling one or the other “plain wrong”.

Finally, there is the simpler question of giving credit where credit is due. We would not be having this debate, nor would we have a host of analysis on well-being beyond what is measured by income, had Easterlin not triggered our thinking on this with his original study of happiness and income over three decades ago (and his patient and thoughtful mentoring of many economists since then). In the big picture of things, Easterlin had the idea.

Editor's Note: At a Zócalo Public Square* event, several experts were asked to weigh in on the following question: How should we most effectively measure happiness? Here is Carol Graham's response-

We must make it a measure that’s meaningful to the average person

Happiness is increasingly in the media. Yet it is an age-old topic of inquiry for psychologists, philosophers, and even the early economists (before the science got dismal). The pursuit of happiness is even written into the Declaration of Independence (and into the title of my latest Brookings book, I might add). Public discussions of happiness rarely define the concept. Yet an increasing number of economists and psychologists are involved in a new science of measuring well-being, a concept that includes happiness but extends well beyond it.

Those of us involved focus on two distinct dimensions: hedonic well-being, a daily experience component; and evaluative well-being, the way in which people think about their lives as a whole, including purpose or meaning. Jeremy Bentham focused on the former and proposed increasing the happiness and contentment of the greatest number of individuals possible in a society as the goal of public policy. Aristotle, meanwhile, thought of happiness as eudemonia, a concept that combined two Greek words: “eu” meaning abundance and “daimon” meaning the power controlling an individual’s destiny. Using distinct questions and methods, we are able to measure both. We can look within and across societies and see how people experience their daily lives and how that varies across activities such as commuting time, work, and leisure time on the one hand, and how they feel about their lives as a whole—including their opportunities and past experiences, on the other. Happiness crosses both dimensions of well-being. If you ask people how happy they felt yesterday, you are capturing their feelings during yesterday’s experiences. If you ask them how happy they are with their lives in general, they are more likely to think of their lives as a whole.

The metrics give us a tool for measuring and evaluating the importance of many non-income components of people’s lives to their overall welfare. The findings are intuitive. Income matters to well-being, and not having enough income is bad for both dimensions. But income matters more to evaluative well-being, as it gives people more ability to choose how to live their lives. More income cannot make them experience each point in the day better. Other things, such as good health and relationships, matter as much if not more to well-being than income. The approach provides useful complements to the income-based metrics that are already in our statistics and in the GDP. Other countries, such as Britain, have already begun to include well-being metrics in their national statistics. There is even a nascent discussion of doing so here.

Perhaps what is most promising about well-being metrics is that they seem to be more compelling for the average man (or woman) on the street than are complex income measures, and they often tell different stories. There are, for example, endless messages about the importance of exercising for health, the drawbacks of smoking, and the expenses related to long commutes. Yet it is likely that they are most often heard by people who already exercise, don’t smoke, and bicycle to work. And exercise does not really enter into the GNP, while cigarette purchases and the gasoline and other expenses related to commuting enter in positively. If you told people that exercising made them happier and that smoking and commuting time made them unhappy (and yes, these are real findings from nationwide surveys), then perhaps they might listen?

Read other responses to this question at zocalopublicsquare.org »

*Zócalo Public Square is a not-for-profit daily ideas exchange that blends digital humanities journalism and live events. 

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Volunteerism remains a powerful tool for good around the world. Young people, in particular, are motivated by the prospect of creating real and lasting change, as well as gaining valuable learning experiences that come with volunteering. This energy and optimism among youth can be harnessed and mobilized to help meet challenges facing our world today and accomplish such targets as the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

On June 14, young leaders and development agents from leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based organizations, corporations, universities, the Peace Corps, and United Nations Volunteers came together at the Brookings Institution to answer the question on how to achieve impacts on the SDGs through international service.

This was also the 10th anniversary gathering of the Building Bridges Coalition—a multi-stakeholder consortium of development volunteers— and included the announcement of a new Service Year Alliance partnership with the coalition to step up international volunteers and village-based volunteering capacity around the world.

Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, who served as the lead author supporting the high-level panel advising the U.N. secretary-general on the post-2015 development agenda, noted the imperative of engaging community volunteers to scale up effective initiatives, build political awareness, and generate “partnerships with citizens at every level” to achieve the 2030 goals.  

Kharas’ call was echoed in reports on effective grassroots initiatives, including Omnimed’s mobilization of 1,200 village health workers in Uganda’s Mukono district, a dramatic reduction of malaria through Peace Corps efforts with Senegal village volunteers, and Seed Global Health’s partnership to scale up medical doctors and nurses to address critical health professional shortages in the developing world. 

U.N. Youth Envoy Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan energized young leaders from Atlas Corps, Global Citizen Year, America Solidaria, International Young Leaders Academy, and universities, citing U.N. Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security as “a turning point when it comes to the way we engage with young people globally… to recognize their role for who they are, as peacebuilders, not troublemakers… and equal partners on the ground.”

Service Year Alliance Chair General Stanley McChrystal, former Joint Special Operations commander, acclaimed, “The big idea… of a culture where the expectation [and] habit of service has provided young people an opportunity to do a year of funded, full-time service.” 

Civic Enterprises President John Bridgeland and Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. led a panel with Seed Global Health’s Vanessa Kerry and Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale on policy ideas for the next administration, including offering Global Service Fellowships in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs to grow health service corps, student service year loan forgiveness, and technical support through State Department volunteer exchanges. Former Senator Harris Wofford, Building Bridge Coalition’s senior advisor and a founding Peace Corps architect, shared how the coalition’s new “service quantum leap” furthers the original idea announced by President John F. Kennedy, which called for the Peace Corps and the mobilization of one million global volunteers through NGOs, faith-based groups, and universities.

The multi-stakeholder volunteering model was showcased by Richard Dictus, executive coordinator of U.N. Volunteers; Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; USAID Counselor Susan Reischle; and Diane Melley, IBM vice president for Global Citizenship. Melley highlighted IBM’s 280,000 skills-based employee volunteers who are building community capacity in 130 countries along with Impact 2030—a consortium of 60 companies collaborating with the U.N.—that is “integrating service into overall citizenship activities” while furthering the SDGs.

The faith and millennial leaders who contributed to the coalition’s action plan included Jim Lindsay of Catholic Volunteer Network; Service Year’s Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell; C. Eduardo Vargas of USAID’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and moderator David Eisner of Repair the World, a former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Jesuit Volunteer Corps President Tim Shriver, grandson of the Peace Corps’ founding director, addressed working sessions on engaging faith-based volunteers, which, according to research, account for an estimated 44 percent of nearly one million U.S. global volunteers

The key role of colleges and universities in the coalition’s action plan—including  linking service year with student learning, impact research, and gap year service—was  outlined by Dean Alan Solomont of Tisch College at Tufts University; Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley; and U.N. Volunteers researcher Ben Lough of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

These panel discussion directed us towards the final goal of the event, which was a multi-stakeholder action campaign calling for ongoing collaboration and policy support to enhance the collective impact of international service in achieving the 2030 goals.

This resolution, which remains a working document, highlighted five major priorities:

1. Engage service abroad programs to more effectively address the 2030 SDGs by mobilizing 10,000 additional service year and short-term volunteers annually and partnerships that leverage local capacity and volunteers in host communities.
2. Promote a new generation of global leaders through global service fellowships promoting service and study abroad.
3. Expand cross-sectorial participation and partnerships.
4. Engage more volunteers of all ages in service abroad.
5. Study and foster best practices across international service programs, measure community impact, and ensure the highest quality of volunteer safety, well-being, and confidence.

Participants agreed that it’s through these types of efforts that volunteer service could become a common strategy throughout the world for meeting pressing challenges. Moreover, the cooperation of individuals and organizations will be vital in laying a foundation on which governments and civil society can build a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world.

A number of policymakers and analysts in the United States have called for countries like China and India to “do more” in the Middle East. Arguably, both Beijing and Delhi are doing more—though perhaps not in the way these advocates of greater Asian engagement in the Middle East might have wanted. President Xi Jinping recently traveled to the region and India’s Prime Minister Modi will return there over the weekend. After quick trips to Brussels for the India-EU Summit and a bilateral, as well as to Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will head to Riyadh tomorrow. The trip reflects not just the importance of Saudi Arabia for India but also the Middle East (or what India calls West Asia) and the opportunity this particular moment offers to Indian policymakers.

The Middle East has been crucial for India for decades. It’s been a source of energy, jobs, remittances, and military equipment, and holds religious significance for tens of millions of Indians. It’s also been a source of concern, with fears about the negative impact of regional instability on Indian interests. But today, as Modi visits, there’s also opportunity for Indian policymakers in the fact that, for a number of reasons, India is important to Saudi Arabia and a number of Middle Eastern countries in a way and to an extent that was never true before. 

It’s a two-way street

As it has globally, India has a diversified set of partnerships in the Middle East, maintaining and balancing its relationships with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran, and Israel. The region remains India’s main source of imported oil and natural gas (58 percent of its oil imports and 88 percent of its liquefied natural gas imports in 2014-15 came from the Middle East). In addition, as of January 2015, there were 7.3 million non-resident Indians in the region (64 percent of the total). These non-resident Indians remitted over $36 billion in 2015 (52 percent of the total remittances to India). Add to that India’s Sunni and Shiite populations (among the largest in the world), counter-terrorism cooperation with some countries, India’s defense relationship with Israel, the desire to connect with Afghanistan and Central Asia through Iran, and the potential market and source of capital it represents for Indian companies, and it becomes clear why this region is important for India. 

But, with many Middle Eastern countries pivoting to Asia or at least giving it a fresh look, India arguably has more leverage than it has ever had in the past. There have been a number of reasons why these countries have been looking east recently: 

• traditional strategic partnerships in flux and questions about the U.S. role in the region; 
• the economic slowdown in Europe and the U.S. following the 2008 financial crisis; 
• changing global energy consumption patterns; 
• growing concerns about terrorism in the region; 
• And, in Israel’s case, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. 

In this context, India has some advantages. Its economy is doing relatively well compared to that of other countries and offers a market for goods and services, as well as potentially an investment destination. India, for example, has become Israeli defense companies’ largest foreign customer. 

Crucially for the oil and natural gas-producing states in the region, India also continues to guzzle significant—and growing—quantities of both. But, today, Delhi has buyer’s power. Why? Because oil prices are relatively low and there’s a lot of gas on the market, traditional buyers are looking elsewhere for fossil fuels or looking beyond them to cleaner energy sources. India, too, has more options and has been diversifying its sources of supply (compare India’s 74 percent dependence on the Middle East for oil in 2006-07 to the lower 58 percent that it gets from there now). 

India might still be dependent on the Middle East for energy, but now the Middle East also depends on India as a market.

Thus, India might still be dependent on the Middle East for energy, but now the Middle East also depends on India as a market. This has altered dynamics—and India’s increased leverage has been evident, for example, in the renegotiated natural gas supply deal between Qatar’s RasGas and India’s Petronet, which came with lower prices and waived penalties. Even countries like Iran, which now have more options for partners and have not hesitated to point that out to Delhi, still have an interest in maintaining their India option. Regional rivalries might have made Delhi’s balancing act in the region more complicated, but it also gives each country a reason to maintain its relationship with India. 

And the Modi government has been looking to take advantage of this situation. While its Act East policy received a lot more attention over the last couple of years—from policymakers and the press—this region hasn’t been missing from the agenda or travel itineraries. For example, Modi has traveled to the United Arab Emirates and met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the last Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference, and the Indian president has traveled to Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. The Indian foreign minister has visited Bahrain, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Oman, and the UAE and also participated the first ministerial meeting of the Arab-India Cooperation Forum in Manama earlier this year. The Modi government has also hosted the emir of Qatar, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the Bahraini, Iranian, Omani, Saudi, Syrian, and UAE foreign ministers, as well as the Israeli defense minister to India.

China’s increased activity in the region, as well as Pakistan’s engagement with Iran and the rush of European leaders to the latter, have led to calls for speedier action.

But there have been concerns that this engagement is not sufficient, particularly relative to that of some countries. For example, China’s increased activity in the region, as well as Pakistan’s engagement with Iran and the rush of European leaders to the latter, have led to calls for speedier action. The Indian foreign secretary’s recent comment that “we are no longer content to be passive recipients of outcomes” in this region also seemed to reflect the understanding that Delhi needs to be more proactive about deepening its relationships with the countries in the region, rather than waiting for them to take shape organically or just reacting to events as they occur. 

The Saudi connection

It is in this context that Modi travels to Riyadh. The relationship with Saudi Arabia is one of the key pillars of India’s Middle East policy. A major source of oil, jobs, and remittances, it is also a destination for over 400,000 Indians who go to the country for Hajj or Umra every year. In addition, in recent years, there has been more security cooperation, with Riyadh handing over individuals wanted in India and the two countries working together on countering money laundering and terrorism financing. 

The relationship has not been without problems from Delhi’s perspective. Just to list a few: 

• the Saudi-Pakistan relationship; 
• diaspora-related issues, including the treatment of Indian workers in-country and efforts towards Saudization that might limit employment opportunities for Indian expatriates;
• ideology-related concerns, particularly funding from Saudi Arabia for organizations in India, which might be increasing the influence of Wahhabism in the country; and
• regional dynamics, including Saudi Arabia’s rising tensions with Iran that has had consequences for Indian citizens, for example, in Yemen from where Delhi had to evacuate 4,640 Indians (as well as 960 foreigners).

More recently, incidents involving Saudi diplomats in India have also negatively affected (elite) public perceptions of the country, though the broader impact of this, if any, is unclear. Over the medium-to-long term, there are also concerns about potential instability within Saudi Arabia.

During Modi’s trip, however, the emphasis will be on the positives—not least in the hope that these might help alleviate some of the problems. The prime minister will be hosted by King Salman, who visited India as crown prince and defense minister just before Modi took office. He will also meet a slate of Saudi political and business leaders. The Indian wish-list will likely include diversification of economic ties, greater two-way investment, as well as more and better counter-terrorism cooperation. 

There will not be a large diaspora event—as Modi has done in Australia, Singapore, the UAE, United Kingdom, and the United States—but the prime minister will engage privately with members of the Indian community. He will also meet with Indian workers employed by an Indian company that is building part of the Riyadh metro. It is not hard to assess the reason for this particular engagement, given increased sensitivity in India (particularly in the media) about the treatment of citizens abroad, as well as the government’s interest in making a pitch for Indian companies to get greater market access. But, with Riyadh’s interest in creating jobs for Saudis, Modi will also try to highlight that Indian companies are contributing to the training and employment of locals (especially women) by visiting another Indian company’s all-female business process service center.

This will reflect the broader theme of highlighting to Riyadh and Saudis that it is not just India that benefits from the relationship—they do too. Some in India hope this has an additional effect: of giving Riyadh a reason not to let its relationship with Pakistan limit that with India, and perhaps occasionally making it willing to use some of its leverage with that country to India’s benefit. Despite recent irritants in the Saudi-Pakistan relationship, however, Delhi is realistic about the limits of weaning Riyadh away from Islamabad.

So does all this mean India will “do more” in the Middle East? For all the reasons mentioned above, the country has been involved in the region for a number of years—though, as the Indian foreign secretary has noted, this involvement was not in large part the product of active state policy. Indian interests in the region will likely increase in the future and, thus, so will its corporate and official engagement. But that engagement might not be what some American observers have in mind. As India’s capabilities grow, it might do more in terms of providing maritime security, intelligence sharing, evacuating expatriates when necessary, and contributing to U.N. peacekeeping operations. It could also potentially do more in terms of capacity building within these countries with the support of the host governments. There might also be scope for India to expand its West Asia dialogue with countries like the United States. But it will likely remain wary of picking sides or getting involved in non-U.N.-sanctioned military interventions in the region unless its interests are directly affected (the previous BJP-led coalition government did briefly consider—and then reject—joining the United States coalition in the Iraq war, for instance).

Next week, Americans will be looking westward to the Tuesday Democratic primary in California. Meanwhile, in Washington, President Obama and then the U.S. Congress will host someone very familiar with electoral politics: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This will be the third Modi-Obama summit since the Indian prime minister took office two years ago. Since their first phone call on May 16, 2014, the two leaders have also met multiple times at regional and global gatherings or on the sidelines of those summits. This frequency has been a departure from the past and has even led some—particularly in the Indian media—to ask: why is Modi visiting the United States again? A simple answer would be “because he was invited,” and there are a few reasons why the White House extended that invitation and why Modi accepted.

At a time when [Obama] is being criticized for not having done enough or for doing the wrong thing on foreign policy, he can point to the U.S.-India relationship as a success.

Achievements logged

For President Obama, there’s the legacy issue. At a time when he is being criticized for not having done enough or for doing the wrong thing on foreign policy, he can point to the U.S.-India relationship as a success, particularly in the context of the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. U.S. popularity is up in India according to polls and three-quarters of those surveyed in India last year expressed confidence in Obama on world affairs. 

President George W. Bush left office after having signed the historic civil nuclear deal with India. Obama can claim to have put quite a few more runs on the board. At a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Biswal indeed laid out some key developments in the relationship in the Obama era: 

Strengthening friendships

For Prime Minister Modi and the Indian government, the visit represents another chance to strengthen India’s partnership with a country that Modi has called “a principal partner in the realization of India’s rise as a responsible, influential world power.” The United States is India’s largest trading partner and a crucial source of capital, technology, knowledge, resources, remittances, and military equipment. It can also help ensure multi-polarity in Asia, which is a crucial goal for Indian policymakers. 

The visit is also an opportunity for Modi to engage with legislators and the American private sector—two key constituencies that can help determine the pace of progress in the relationship. House Speaker Paul Ryan has invited the Indian leaders to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, and Modi will be the fifth Indian prime minister to do so (India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave back-to-back speeches to the House and Senate separately in 1949). But it’ll likely hold special significance for the prime minister and his supporters, given that from 2005 to 2014, then Gujarat Chief Minister Modi was denied entry into the United States. 

A busy calendar

Modi’s has a packed schedule in Washington. On June 6, he’ll visit Arlington National Cemetery, meet with the heads of think tanks, and participate in an event involving the recovery and return of stolen Indian antiquities. On June 7, he’ll meet with President Obama, who will also host a lunch for him, and then Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. That will be followed by meetings with business leaders and an address to the U.S.-India Business Council. Expect to see Modi highlight and defend his government’s two-year record on the economy and make a pitch for U.S. businesses to increase their involvement in India—and particularly some of Modi’s flagship initiatives such as Make in India and Digital India.

Expect to see Modi highlight and defend his government’s two-year record on the economy and make a pitch for U.S. businesses to increase their involvement in India.

June 8 will be devoted to Congressional engagement, including the joint address, a lunch hosted by Speaker Ryan, and a reception hosted by the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, as well as the India Caucus. Modi will acknowledge the legislature’s role and significance in developing the U.S.-India relationship, and will likely highlight the democratic values the two countries share, as well as how India and Indians have contributed to the United States, global growth, and the international order. Importantly, in an election year, Modi will likely note the bipartisan nature of the relationship—there’s no indication yet that he will or wants to meet any of the presidential candidates on this visit, though the sessions potentially offer opportunities for him to do so. Republican members of Congress will also seek to highlight their role in the development of the partnership. The interactions on Capitol Hill will also be a chance for Modi to address some Congressional concerns—such as human rights, Iran, non-proliferation, the investment climate—and for Modi to call for the two countries to “accommodat[e] each other’s concerns.”

Do not, however, expect to hear the word “Pakistan”—the Indian government wants to avoid hyphenation and get Americans to think of India beyond India-Pakistan terms. Nor should you expect to hear the word “China,” though there might be subtle attempts to note the contrast with that other Asian giant and make the case for the United States to support the rise of a large Asian democracy that can demonstrate that democracy and development aren’t mutually exclusive.

Parting glance between Modi and Obama

And what’s on the agenda for the Modi-Obama meeting? In one sense, the last few years have signaled a regularization of U.S.-India leader-level summits (with bilateral meetings in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016). Over the last two years, high-level meetings have been effective as action-forcing events. This time, officials have been managing expectations, broadly describing the visit as “part of consolidating and celebrating the relationship.” So this is a chance to recognize the steps that the other side has taken to increase the run-rate of the relationship—particularly on defense and security fronts—and tie up some loose ends with an eye towards sustaining momentum into the next administration (without necessarily tying its hands). 

In terms of focus areas, the governments have emphasized (to varying degrees) economic ties, energy and climate change, as well as defense and security cooperation. The Obama administration would like to India ratify the Paris agreement, for instance—unlike in the United States, India doesn’t require legislative approval. Indian officials recognize the importance of this issue to Obama, but are also concerned about U.S. policy continuity given the presumptive Republican nominee’s stand on the issue. Delhi, in turn, is partly using the shared desire for India to meet its clean energy commitments to make the case for an American full-court press to facilitate Indian membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)—similar to the Bush administration’s efforts to help India get an NSG waiver in 2008. The U.S. position has been that India is ready for NSG membership and meets requirements for membership of the Missile Technology Control Regime, and it has supported Indian application and eventual membership of both, as well as two other nonproliferation and export control regimes. Asked if Modi would ask Obama to “go to bat for India” with others on this, the Indian foreign secretary didn’t answer directly but noted: “countries that feel we’re doing the right thing...if they take it upon themselves to…articulate their positions and talk to others, this is what friends do for each other.” Modi himself will visit two other NSG members (Switzerland and Mexico) just before and after the U.S. visit partly to make the case for India’s membership.

The visit will also be a chance to cement and highlight cooperation in and on the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. In addition, observers will be watching to see whether the two countries will sign the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA)—the logistics support agreement that the Indian defense minister said in April that Secretary Carter and he had “agreed in principle to conclude”—or whether there’ll be further announcements with regard to the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative. There’ll also be interest in whether the countries get serious talks restarted on a Bilateral Investment Treaty, and whether Westinghouse and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India can finalize an agreement to set up reactors in India. Overall, there is a desire to take the relationship to the “next level” but not necessarily in terms of a big deal; rather there’s a search for ways to deepen, operationalize, and institutionalize cooperation—such as through arrangements to share information in the counterterrorism space—and facilitate interaction between an increasing number of stakeholders.

While highlighting areas of convergence, both sides will likely also discuss the divergences that remain—perhaps including the east-west divergence related to Pakistan, the north-south divergence related to Russia, the security-economic divergence with more progress in the partnership on the former than the latter, and the potential expectations-reality divergence. And while the direction of the U.S.-India relationship is likely to remain the same in the near future, how the two countries deal with these divergences will determine the trajectory and the pace of the relationship.

Quoting Walt Whitman in his speech to a joint meeting of Congress last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared: “there is a new symphony in play.” He was referring to the relationship, but there were some new themes in his speech as well, in addition to a few familiar, predictable ones.

The old

Shared Democratic Values. Modi’s speech covered some of the same ground on shared democratic values as his predecessors. Referring to Congress as a “temple of democracy”—a phrased he’s used in the past for the Indian parliament—and to India’s constitution as its “real holy book,” he stressed that freedom and equality were shared beliefs. In a section that elicited laughter, he also commented that the two countries shared certain practices—legislatures known for bipartisanship and operating harmoniously. Also par for the course was Modi’s emphasis on India’s diversity. An implicit response to critics of India on human rights (including minority rights), freedom of the press, and tolerance of dissent, Modi noted that India’s constitution protected the equal rights of all citizens and enshrined freedom of faith. Echoing former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s words on unity in diversity, he asserted “India lives as one; India grows as one; India celebrates as one.” 

Terrorism. Like Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh before him, Modi highlighted the challenge of terrorism, stressing it was globally the “biggest threat.” Acknowledging existing India-U.S. counter-terrorism cooperation, he called for more, including an approach “that isolates those who harbor, support and sponsor terrorists; that does not distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorists; and that delinks religion from terrorism.” Like his predecessors, Modi did not explicitly mention Pakistan, but alluded to it. He asserted that while it was a global problem, terrorism was “incubated” in India’s neighborhood. In what seemed like a reference to the Congressional hold on the subsidized sale of F-16s to Pakistan, the Indian prime minister also lauded that body for “sending a clear message to those who preach and practice terrorism for political gains. Refusing to reward them is the first step towards holding them accountable for their actions.” 

The Indian Economy. From Jawaharlal Nehru onward, prime ministers have outlined their domestic objectives in speeches to Congress, highlighting the reforms they’ve undertaken. Modi did too, highlighting India’s growth rate and economic opportunities, while acknowledging that much remained to be done. And there were also subtle responses to criticisms of Indian economic policy: for example, the remark about legislative gridlock suggested that American policymakers should understand why some reforms in India are taking time; the quip about India not claiming intellectual property rights on yoga was a rejoinder to those who give India a hard time about intellectual property rights (especially in the pharmaceutical sector). He also noted that in the past “wagers were made on our failure,” and yet Indians have time and again found a way to survive and succeed.

The new

Anti-Declinism. For those promising to make America great again, Modi had a message: it already is. In a speech to the U.S.-India Business Council the day before, he exuded optimism—not just about India, but the United States as well, asserting that, to him, “America is not just a country with a great past; it is a country with an exciting future.” In his speech to Congress, he referred to the U.S. as “great” at least four times and spoke of its “innovative genius.” Recalling that he’d thus far visited half of all American states, he noted what he believed was the United States’ “real strength”: Americans’ ability to dream big and be bold. 

In an election year when the nature and extent of American engagement with the world is being debated, Modi acknowledged the country’s global contributions and called for a continued U.S. role in the world. He applauded—and led members of Congress in a round of applause—for “the great sacrifices of the men and women from ‘The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave’ in service of mankind.” With the exception of Nehru, who paid his respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Indian premiers have tended not to mention American troops—partly a result of differing views on the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars. Modi, on the other hand, explicitly mentioned U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, where “the sacrifices of Americans have helped create a better life.” 

In a more challenging, complex, and uncertain world, he asserted that U.S.-Indian engagement could make an impact, by “promoting cooperation not dominance; connectivity not isolation; respect for global commons; inclusive not exclusive mechanisms; and above all adherence to international rules and norms.” (No prizes for guessing the country that went unnamed). 

The Open Embrace. Modi-Obama hugs have fueled many a tweet. But the speech signaled and reflected a much broader embrace—an India-U.S. one that has been in the works for at least the last 17 years but has become much more visible in the last two. In 2000, addressing Congress, Vajpayee called for the two countries to “remove the shadow of hesitation that lies between us and our joint vision.” Not all his compatriots will agree, but Modi declared: “Today, our relationship has overcome the hesitations of history” and recalled Vajpayee labeling the two as “natural allies.” Listing the ways the relationship had grown closer, he emphasized that this “remarkable story” was not a partisan effort: “[t]hrough the cycle of elections and transitions of administrations the intensity of our engagements has only grown.” He also talked about what the two countries could do together, and stressed that the relationship was good for India. While he’s previously called the United States “a principal partner in the realization of India’s rise as a responsible, influential world power,” he went further this time, stating: “In every sector of India’s forward march, I see the U.S. as an indispensable partner.” 

Not a Free-Rider. But throughout the speech, Modi asserted that this relationship benefited both countries “in great measure,” with a “positive impact on the lives” of people in each. Echoing Singh, he noted that many members of Congress indeed believed that “a stronger and prosperous India is in America’s strategic interest.” Modi made the case that India is not a free rider—that through its businesses, market, talent, and diaspora it is contributing to American economy and society. The day before, in his speech to business leaders, he stressed that India was also “poised to contribute as a new engine of global growth” (and made a pitch for support to such “democratic” engines).

Modi furthermore highlighted Indian contributions to global and regional peace and prosperity, noting, for example, that its “soldiers too have fallen in distant battlefields” for freedom and democracy (alluding to the millions that fought in the World Wars). He also highlighted India’s efforts in Afghanistan, its troop contribution to U.N. peacekeeping operations, its role in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and its evacuation operations in Yemen in which it rescued Americans as well. In addition, Modi noted India’s contributions of ideas, whether yoga or non-violent protest. And he stressed that India would be a responsible stakeholder and security provider—one that, in partnership with the United States, could “anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa and from Indian Ocean to the Pacific. It can also help ensure security of the sea lanes of commerce and freedom of navigation on seas.” But he also called for international institutions to reflect this role and “the realities of today.”

Members of Congress, for their part, will look to see whether and how Modi’s rhetoric will translate into reality. The prime minister suggested that it won’t always be the way the United States would like. He didn’t use the term “strategic autonomy,” but talked of “autonomy in decision-making”—while noting that it, as well as “diversity in our perspectives,” weren’t bad things for the partnership. And, as is his preferred style, he came up with 3Cs to characterize the state of the relationship: “comfort, candor, and convergence.” Whether they remain characteristic of the partnership, and to what degree, will partly depend on who is the next U.S. president and how she or he sees the U.S. role in the world and India’s place in it.

If the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is that Mother Earth is heading for trouble and we must collectively solve global problems, then the underfunding of global public goods (GPGs) must be addressed. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, the need for global public goods increases: from action on climate change, financial stability, limiting the spread of diseases, management of conflicts, responding to natural disasters, terrorism, and cyber-warfare. At some level even the eradication of extreme poverty and more inclusive and sustainable development could be considered a global public good because more poverty and unequal development breeds conflict, increases environmental stress, state failure, terrorism, and piracy, thereby increasing the need for the global public goods required to address these issues.

Missing in the recently agreed Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) and in the Paris Conference of Parties (COP21) are steps that should be taken at a global level that will positively impact many countries, such as:

• A global set of standards on migration to curb exploitation and human rights standards for the migrant population;
• Better coordination of monetary and fiscal policies so as to avoid huge volatility in financial markets, which have large costs on vulnerable countries;
• Strengthened global disaster response mechanisms to handle increasing climate volatility and natural disasters;
• No agreement on a global tax institution demanded by many developing countries and civil society groups; and,
• No progress on carbon taxation.

There is considerable underfinancing of GPGs as it is difficult to get countries to pay for activities outside their borders. Official Development Assistance (ODA) has fallen well short of the agreed target of 0.7 percent of GDP—and in fact is closer to just 0.2 percent. GPG funding from ODA is estimated at only about 10 percent of the total. This problem even afflicts other sources of financing. Multilateral development bank (MDB) financing also underfunds regional, multi-country projects for addressing regional public goods as countries are unwilling to use their country allocations for multi-country projects even if the return on them is higher than the marginal country project.

Global thematic funds to support specific development challenges—Global Alliance for Vaccination and Inoculation (GAVI), Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), Global Environmental Fund (GEF) and earlier funds like the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—have been successful in addressing specific development challenges through projects in specific countries, especially for agriculture, the environment, and health. They have also drawn in private philanthropic financing in addition to public resources. But global funding for global public goods has not had the same success, and systematic and sustained financing for disasters, biodiversity, desertification, and even for Ebola outbreaks has been difficult.

The Green Climate Fund, which will begin its work this year and will devote 50:50 share of funding for adaptation and mitigation has very limited funding so far – despite the commitment to provide $ 100 billion per year over and above ODA. But neither the AAAA, nor the SDG’s address many of the trade-offs involved between climate change and poverty eradication. COP 21 also did not provide greater guidance on these matters – despite high expectations that it would. Given the need for rapid economic growth to eradicate poverty for the LDC’s  as well as their need to deal with huge adaptation costs, it probably makes sense not to focus excessively on mitigation in these countries. These countries would increase their global carbon footprint by at best 2-3 percent of the total carbon emissions. The big tradeoffs will arise in the need for rapid growth in middle-income countries to address poverty and their increased emissions, which will accompany faster growth.

Protection of biodiversity is given specific mention in the AAAA, and the Global Strategic Plan for Biodiversity for 2011-20 is endorsed along with its 20 Aichi biodiversity targets. But progress in meeting these targets is slow and at current trends unlikely to be achieved. The AAAA does not address this slow progress or suggest ways to accelerate it. It does endorse the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification and the African Union Green Wall Initiative; but again with no specificity on how progress on these commitments will be accelerated. The same is true of the attention on oceans and marine resources, where the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea is mentioned but with no concrete steps on how to finance, enforce, and protect vulnerable areas, especially the small island developing states (SIDS).

Private philanthropic foundations have played important catalytic roles, such as efforts by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to help jump-start the Green Revolution in the 1960’s, and the eventual creation of the CGIAR. A somewhat similar role has been played by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for global public health. But no such foundations exist for many underfunded issues, such as disaster relief, peacebuilding, and desertification. These types of activities can be much better funded by more globalized revenue sources. The AAAA does not even mention the need for any such revenue sources.

A key GPG is peacekeeping, international security, and the prevention of conflict. Surprisingly, military spending is also not touched upon in the AAAA but has increased sharply. It dropped in the late 1990s following the end of the Cold War, from $1.5 trillion to around $1 trillion globally, but has increased again to almost $ 2 trillion today. Cutting military expenditure—especially in many developing countries where it exceeds 4 percent of GDP—would be an important step and shifting some of those resources to peacekeeping and conflict prevention would improve public spending.

With the AAAA pushing for new modes of financing, its surprising that for GPG financing more global sources of finance are not considered. At least four such options exist and could go a long way towards financing the SDGs. The first is a carbon tax or auctioning of carbon emissions permits. This is an idea with huge appeal as it will also help dissuade use of fossil fuels and could lower emissions globally, but is opposed by all the major emitters. Carbon taxes have been used in several countries to reduce fossil fuel use without any damage to long-term growth. Emission permits have also been used in some countries to reduce emissions of some harmful chemicals. But they have not been used internationally.

The second is a so-called “Tobin tax,” a tax on all foreign exchange transactions, which might also discourage destabilizing short-term volatile capital movements. The third is to add a pollution tax on all shipping and air travel – whose pollutions costs are not fully captured by existing taxes and fees imposed on them. The fourth is to allow issuance of SDRs to finance GPG’s.

Unfortunately, all these proposals are currently opposed by the major G-20 countries for various reasons. While several European countries—and even some developing ones—have introduced carbon taxes, still more remain opposed to carbon taxation. The Tobin tax idea has been around now for several decades and is considered an anti-globalization proposal even if its revenues were to be used to finance GPGs.  At times in the past, some countries have imposed a tax on foreign exchange transactions, with the explicit purpose of slowing down volatility in capital markets.

Global taxation has the connotation of supra-nationality, which many rich country legislatures—especially in the U.S.—would oppose. One way around this might be to specify how these resources would be used or to use them through MDBs where the richer countries have a controlling vote. To some extent the Global programs—GAVI, GFATM, CGIAR, and now the Green Climate Fund—have done that, but their financing remains much too dependent on national budgets and not on automatic revenue-raising mechanisms. National lotteries have been used in some countries to raise resources for specific causes; global lotteries could be an option for financing some specific global goods. But the world must move to some global means of revenue-raising if it wants to address GPGs seriously. Private financing, innovative financing, and public-private partnerships touted in the AAAA and COP21 can be crowded in, but without more international public financing to address market failure, financing the SDG’s will be difficult.

The world needs to heed Ben Franklin advice in another context “We must hang together or surely we will hang separately.”

In this presentation Robert Puentes provides a deeper understanding of trends that are impacting metropolitan America and how those trends may impact the demand for multi-family housing in the coming decades. The presentation stresses several key points including dramatic changes in household formation, the plight of older, inner-ring "first" suburbs, and the increasing diversity reflected in both cities and suburban areas.

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Introduction

During 2006, the United States saw a considerable upswing in the number of new mortgage defaults and foreclosure filings. By 2007, that upswing had become a tidal wave. Today, national homeownership rates are falling, while more than a million American families have already lost their homes to foreclosure. Across the country, boarded houses are appearing on once stable blocks. Some of the hardest hit communities are in older industrial cities, particularly Midwestern cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis.

Although most media attention has focused on the role of the federal government in stemming this crisis, states have the legal powers, financial resources, and political will to mitigate its impact. Some state governments have taken action, negotiating compacts with mortgage lenders, enacting state laws regulating mortgage lending, and creating so-called “rescue funds.” Governors such as Schwarzenegger in California, Strickland in Ohio, and Patrick in Massachusetts have taken the lead on this issue. State action so far, however, has just begun to address a still unfolding, multidimensional crisis. If the issue is to be addressed successfully and at least some of its damage mitigated, better designed, comprehensive strategies are needed.

This paper describes how state government can tackle both the immediate problems caused by the wave of mortgage foreclosures and prevent the same thing from happening again. After a short overview of the crisis and its effect on America’s towns and cities, the paper outlines options available to state government, and offers ten specific action steps, representing the most appropriate and potentially effective strategies available for coping with the varying dimensions of the problem.

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Editors’ Note: Since President François Hollande’s 2012 election, France has launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region, write Philippe Le Corre and Michael O’Hanlon. This piece originally appeared on The National Interest.

On April 26, France’s defense shipbuilding company DCNS secured a victory in winning, against Japan and Germany, a long-awaited $40 billion Australian submarine deal. It may not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following France’s growing interest in the Asia-Pacific for the past five years. Since President François Hollande’s 2012 election, the country has launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region.

Visiting New Caledonia last weekend, Prime Minister Manuel Valls immediately decided on the spot to fly to Australia to celebrate the submarine news. Having been at odds in the 1990s over France’s decision to test its nuclear weapon capacities on an isolated Pacific island, Paris and Canberra have begun a close partnership over the last decade, culminating in the decision by Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in power since September 2015.

Unlike its Japanese competitor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), DCNS promised to build the submarine main parts on Australian soil, creating 2,900 jobs in the Adelaide area. The French also secured support from U.S. defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, one of which will eventually build the twelve shortfin Barracuda submarines’ combat systems. Meanwhile, this unexpected victory, in light of the close strategic relationship between Australia and Japan, has shed light on France’s sustained ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region. Thanks to its overseas territories of New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia and Clipperton Island, France has the world’s second-largest maritime domain. It is also part of QUAD, the Quadrilateral Defence Coordination Group that also includes the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and which coordinates security efforts in the Pacific, particularly in the maritime domain, by supporting island states to robustly and sustainably manage their natural resources, including fisheries.

France is also attempting to correct an excessive focus on China by developing new ties with India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries, which have all received a number of French ministerial visits. France’s overseas territories also include a presence in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, with the islands of Mayotte, Réunion and the Scattered Islands, and French Southern and Antarctic Territories, as well as the northwest region of the Indian Ocean through its permanent military presence in the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti. Altogether these presences encompass one million French citizens. This sets France apart from its fellow EU member states regarding defense and security in the Asia-Pacific, particularly as France is a top supplier of military equipment to several Asian countries including Singapore, Malaysia, India and Australia. Between 2008 and 2012, Asian nations accounted for 28 percent of French defense equipment sales, versus 12 percent during 1998–2002. (More broadly, 70 percent of European containerized merchandise trade transits through the Indian Ocean.)

Despite its unique position, France is also supportive of a joint European Union policy toward the region, especially when it comes to developments in the South China Sea. Last March, with support from Paris, Berlin, London and other members, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, issued a statement criticizing China’s actions:

“The EU is committed to maintaining a legal order for the seas and oceans based upon the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This includes the maintenance of maritime safety, security, and cooperation, freedom of navigation and overflight. While not taking a position on claims to land territory and maritime space in the South China Sea, the EU urges all claimants to resolve disputes through peaceful means, to clarify the basis of their claims, and to pursue them in accordance with international law including UNCLOS and its arbitration procedures.”

This does not mean that France is neglecting its “global partnership” with China. In 2014, the two countries celebrated fifty years of diplomatic relations; both governments conduct annual bilateral dialogues on international and security issues. But as a key EU state, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a significant contributor to the Asia-Pacific’s security, France has launched a multidimensional Asia policy.

All of this should be seen as welcome news by Washington. While there would have been advantages to any of the three worthy bids, a greater French role in the Asia-Pacific should be beneficial. At this crucial historical moment in China's rise and the region's broader blossoming, the United States needs a strong and engaged European partnership to encourage Beijing in the right direction and push back together when that does not occur. Acting in concert with some of the world's other major democracies can add further legitimacy to America's actions to uphold the international order in the Asia-Pacific. To be sure, Japan, South Korea and Australia are key U.S. partners here and will remain so. But each also has its own limitations (and in Japan's case, a great deal of historical baggage in dealing with China).

European states are already heavily involved in economic interactions with China. The submarine decision will help ensure a broader European role that includes a hard-headed perspective on security trends as well.