According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, massive infrastructure investments — like the one Sanders plans as part of his Green New Deal — can accelerate job growth and economic activity in the long term, but there isn’t a reliable way to determine whether they would “pay off” or “pay for themselves” long term (like Sanders claims they will).
Inside Sources
September 16, 2019
Women might actually come out ahead economically during a recession, though. Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, says that while women are generally at a disadvantage in the labor market, they might be more insulated from the effects of a recession because they tend to be concentrated in industries like education and healthcare.
“People still go to school during a recession,” she explains. “If you have a heart attack, you go to the hospital during a recession, and so the employment in education and healthcare is much less ‘cyclical.’ … It doesn’t go down as much in recession, if at all.”
Bustle
September 16, 2019
The “vast majority” of American households, note Economic Policy Institute analysts Elise Gould and Julia Wolfe, “have still not fully recovered from the deep losses suffered in the Great Recession.”
Inequality.org
September 13, 2019
But Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, noted some disturbing trends. Although median household income rose for four consecutive years, the rate of growth and the income level has slowed significantly and is slightly below where it was almost two decades ago. “It’s a step in the right direction, but most families barely made up the ground lost” with the recession, she said.
NPR
September 13, 2019
The folks at the Economic Policy Institute rerun the numbers each year to get an apples-to-apples snapshot — which presumably they’re doing furiously as we write. In last year’s figures, median household income still hadn’t surpassed its peak in 2007 — before everything fell apart in 2008.
Agora Financial
September 13, 2019
“While any reduction in poverty or increase in income is a step in the right direction, most families have just barely made up the ground lost over the past decade,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
September 13, 2019
After accounting for inflation and measurement changes, median household income is just above the prerecession mark in 2007 but slightly lower than the 2000 level, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
USA Today
September 13, 2019
Median household income is higher, after inflation, than it was a decade ago, Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a phone call with reporters. But it still remains slightly lower than it was in 2000, when the dot-com boom peaked. The Census reported no increase in income inequality in 2018 according to most standard measures, including the Gini index. (The Census did not include a calculation of income share for the top one percent in income distribution, which likely continued its decade-long rise.)
Politico
September 13, 2019
Elise Gould interview at 1:42.
Marketplace
September 13, 2019
Some experts highlighted this change as a troubling trend. “That is a very dramatic increase,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. A 0.7 percentage point decline in Medicaid coverage was likely a major contributor to the overall decline in coverage, she said.
Route Fifty
September 13, 2019