A higher minimum wage will lead to less people on welfare: A 2014 study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that raising the minimum wage to 10.10 an hour would lead to a savings of 7.6 billion in social welfare programs.
The Huffington Post
October 23, 2015
From in-home daycare and child care centers to nannies and babysitters, parents often see their budgets strained by the high cost of child care. While the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends that families spend no more than 10 percent, a recent study by the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, found that very few people live in areas where child care costs are at all close to that threshold. In this hour of Midday, EPI’s Elise Gould and Maryland Family Network’s Margaret Williams join Sheilah to discuss the financial burden placed on American families with young children.
WYPR
October 22, 2015
Considering the nation already spends billions each year to treat, educate and incarcerate children and young adults with lead poisoning, according to available cost estimates, experts say the investment is worthwhile. For every dollar spent to control lead hazards, between $17 and $221 could be saved, a 2009 study by Elise Gould at the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute found.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
October 22, 2015
“It used to be when productivity went up in America, everybody got to share. The people who caused the productivity increase, they got to share. They got a piece of the action,” the vice president said last month. “Something is wrong.”
Biden was citing research by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which suggests that in recent years, workers’ wages have stopped increasing even though investments in technology and equipment are still allowing them to produce more per hour on the job. Clinton has used the same figures in her campaign.
The Washington Post
October 22, 2015
Elise Gould and Josh Bivens are the rare economists who cut across that divide. Both work at the Economic Policy Institute and generally support the Affordable Care Act. But both argue that the Cadillac tax is a bad policy that could lead to Americans skipping out on needed medical care. They think, much like most politicians, that the United States would be better off scrapping the new fee altogether.
VOX
October 22, 2015
Tapping into a common refrain, Sanders delved into the “crisis” of youth unemployment. He pointed to June research from the Economic Policy Institute that found nearly 20 percent of high school graduates ages 17 to 20 are unemployed and 37 percent are underemployed. (That research also found that 51 percent of young black high school graduates are underemployed).
Des Moines Register
October 20, 2015
It’s incredible that we’ve built a society that relies on women in the labor force yet makes no discernible effort to deal with this problem. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, recently divided the country into 618 “family budget areas” and determined that in more than 500 of them, the cost of child care for a family with a 4-year-old and an 8-year old would exceed housing costs. Also, if you’re a working single mother with those same two children in, say, Buffalo, child care probably eats up a third of your income.
The New York Times
October 19, 2015
African-Americans make up nearly half of the District of Columbia’s population of more than 650,000. But the unemployment rate among the city’s African-Americans is 15.8 percent, according to the progressive Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of official data. That’s more than twice the city’s overall jobless rate of 7.7 percent and more than five times white Washingtonians’ unemployment rate of 2.9 percent.
The Huffington Post
October 19, 2015
After a surprisingly weak series of employment reports and a good, but not great, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Friday, many analysts are beginning to question the state of the domestic labor market. Long hailed as one of the healthiest aspects of the domestic economy, it seems the state of employment in the U.S. is beginning to sag. “There is still a significant gap between the number of people looking for jobs and the number of job openings,” Elise Gould, senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a research note Friday. She cited a “broad-based lack of demand for workers” and “meager wage growth and employment growth” as “more evidence of a slow-moving economy.”
U.S. News and World Report
October 19, 2015
In February, Florida’s auditor general issued its findings that during a four-month period in 2014, 44 percent of the more than 408,000 claims processed were simply sent off into the web equivalent of the Twilight Zone. Applicants were instructed to submit their Social Security numbers, even though that was not a requirement. Moreover, the audit found weak security protections. In March, the Economic Policy Institute reported that 81.3 percent of the state’s short-term unemployed had received no benefits last year.
Miami Herald
October 19, 2015