Are teachers underpaid? Teacher pay has been in the news recently as a wave of teacher walkouts and strikes has hit red states like West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, and a recent CBS News poll found that most people say yes. Overall, 68 percent of people said teachers were underpaid, but there were striking regional differences, with just 60 percent of people in the northeast agreeing while 76 percent in the south said so. Turns out, whatever state you live in, if you think your state’s teachers are underpaid, you’re right. An Economic Policy Institute analysis shows that: (snapshot figure included)
Daily Kos
April 6, 2018
I, then, discuss with EPI’s John Bivens how unemployment is tied to a too-secret search for the new head of the Federal Reserve Board of New York, one of the most powerful jobs in the system. (Josh’s interview ~21:00 mark)
Working Life
April 5, 2018
Our schools are more racially divided than before the Brown decision in1954. The Economic Policy Institute shows a vast gap between black and white earnings and wealth. Our public schools and teachers are funded less today than in the 1980s, with many new teachers unable to afford a home.
PennLive
April 5, 2018
According to the Economic Policy Institute’s recent report, “With respect to homeownership, unemployment and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African-Americans over the last five decades. In these areas, their situation either has failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. In 2017, the black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 percent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. And the share of African-Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.”
The Hill
April 5, 2018
From the Economic Policy Institute: 50 years after the Kerner Commission, black Americans are not economically equal “Black Americans have clearly put a tremendous amount of personal effort into improving their social and economic standing, but that effort only goes so far when you’re working within structures that were never intended to give equal outcomes,” said economist Valerie Rawlston Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.
The Washington Post
April 5, 2018
Yet 50 years after the Kerner Commission delivered a report to President Lyndon Johnson on the unrest in African American communities, recent data show much of what King fought to dismantle remains in place. An Economic Policy Institute report released in February found: “With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades. In these areas, their situation has either failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened. In 2017 the black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 percent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. And the share of African Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.” Another report from the EPI showed the wage gap between blacks and whites is the worst it has been in nearly four decades.
The Washington Post
April 5, 2018
“The NY Fed should go back to the drawing board and draw from the deep, diverse, and highly qualified list of candidates provided to it by the Fed Up coalition (as well as surveying the views of other public interest groups),” the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens said in a recent statement. “This is too important a decision to make on institutional autopilot.”
CNBC
April 5, 2018
The exile of overt white-supremacist sentiment to the margins of American society is no insignificant achievement (a reality that many progressives have come to appreciate as such sentiment has begun creeping back toward the American mainstream over the past two years). The retreat of that rancid ideology — formally declared through the passage of anti-discrimination laws — cleared the way for African-Americans to make profound material and cultural gains. Since 1968, black Americans’ life expectancy has increased by 11.5 years, their infant mortality rate has fallen by roughly two-thirds, while their likelihood of attaining a college diploma has more than doubled, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute. While these developments are the result of myriad factors, the end of de jure discrimination in public education, employment, and accommodations was surely a critical one.
New York Magazine
April 5, 2018
It is therefore a surprise to some that 50 years after King’s death, the black community has stagnated and even reversed in many areas. As economist Valerie Wilson notes, “Race far too often remains a deciding factor in the economic status of African Americans” in many areas of life. Black unemployment, from the late 1960s to the present, continues to be about twice that of whites even when controlling for education attainment. The Economic Policy Institute notes the black median household income in 2016 was 61 per cent that of whites. This is 2 per cent lower than the 63 per cent in 1968. The EPI also notes that black poverty is 2.5 times higher than white poverty, only slightly lower than in 1968. In addition, while high-profile police killings of African Americans remain a serious issue, the entire criminal justice system, particularly disproportionate incarceration rates, has deeply harmed the black community.
The Independent
April 5, 2018
Last month, the Economic Policy Institute released a report that found no progress since 1968 in how Blacks fare in comparison with whites when it comes to homeownership, unemployment and incarceration. They also found the wealth gap between whites and Blacks tripled between 1968 and today. Individual Black people have surely been successful in modern day America, but what does that mean if the Black community as a whole has not moved in half a century? Where is the “change” in incremental change? What good is the King monument in Washington, D.C., and the federal holiday in his name if we can’t advance the dream?
ACLU
April 5, 2018