Media clips
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Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, agrees that the lower educational attainment rate among African-Americans plays a significant role in their current and disproportionately higher unemployment rates.
“As educational attainment increases, unemployment rates decrease,” he said. “Another factor is age. Black workers are somewhat younger than whites, and younger people have higher unemployment rates.”
BET February 8, 2013 -
According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, inflation-adjusted wages for young high school graduates declined by 11.1 percent between 2000 and 2011, and the real wages of young college graduates declined by 5.4 percent. EPI also saw evidence among millennials of a hesitation to seek new employment opportunities, with 30 percent fewer voluntary quits each month.
The Huffington Post February 8, 2013 -
Researchers know a lot about how various factors associated with income level affect a child’s learning: parents’ educational attainment; how parents read to, play with and respond to their children; the quality of early care and early education; access to consistent physical and mental health services and healthy food. Poor children’s limited access to these fundamentals accounts for a good chunk of the achievement gap, which is why conceiving of it instead as an opportunity gap makes a lot more sense.
But we rarely discuss the impact of concentrated poverty—and of racial and socioeconomic segregation—on student achievement. James Coleman’s widely cited 1966 report Equality of Educational Opportunity has drawn substantial attention to the influence of family socioeconomic status on a child’s academic achievement. However, as Richard Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation, notes: “Until very recently, the second finding, about the importance of reducing concentrations of school poverty, has been consciously ignored by policymakers, despite publication of study after study that confirmed Coleman’s findings.”
It’s time that we stop ignoring it. The past few decades have seen increasing income polarization, with the top 1 percent reaping the vast majority of societal gains, the middle class shrinking, and those at the bottom losing ground. As a result, concentrated poverty is more potent and relevant an issue than ever. Add to that the fact that 2012 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of William Julius Wilson’s groundbreaking book, The Truly Disadvantaged, and we have every reason to reexamine the life realities, impacts and policy implications of segregation and entrenched, concentrated US poverty.
The Nation February 8, 2013 -
“Given the track record of Foxconn on labor rights…we would all be wise to be skeptical until we see evidence that this is going to translate into something meaningful,” said Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium.
According to the University of Singapore sociologist Qi Dongtao [PDF], 73.7% of the Chinese workforce belongs to a single union: The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which often appears to work against its own members on behalf of employers or the Chinese Communist Party. If Foxconn factory workers were granted an active decision-making role in their union, it would represent a significant break from national historical precedent—however, merely holding elections does not make this inevitable.
Isaac Shapiro of the Economic Policy Institute said two important questions remain unanswered: “One, what type of authority would these committees [of elected workers] have? Two, how would you ensure that they are truly independent of management and can do what they want without repercussions?”
MSNBC.com February 8, 2013 -
Did you know that about 26 percent of black retirees and 25 percent of Latinos depended on Social Security for 100 percent of their income in 2011? That compares to just about 10 percent of Asian retirees and 14 percent of their white peers. One of my best and smartest sources, Algernon Austin at the Economic Policy Institute, (EPI) has done the research. Something serious to think about this morning. http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/more-americans-worried-about-having-enough-for-retirement/
The Huffington Post February 1, 2013 -
Rather than represent an area of possible compromise, the chained CPI has inspired the stiffest opposition from liberals to date. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that Nather did not consult, released a letter of opposition to the chained CPI this past autumn signed by 250 Ph.D. economists and 50 additional social insurance experts.
Politico February 1, 2013 -
A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.
Robert Reich Blog February 1, 2013 -
Here are three charts from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. When you look at the level of poverty in the United States compare with other developed countries, it is not pretty:
Economic Policy InstituteWhen you focus on child poverty, you go from bad to worse:
Economic Policy InstituteAnd how much of an investment does the United States government make in reducing poverty, compared with other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries?
The New York Times February 1, 2013 -
Larry Mishel and Nicholas Finio have a fascinating little study out on the distrubutional consequences of the Great Recession and the recovery that they’ve given the somewhat curious name “Earnings of the top 1.0 percent rebound strongly in the recovery.”
That’s true. But as their table makes clear, the top 1 percent’s bounceback since the bottom, though quite robust, has been small compared to the initial fall. On net, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have faired poorly and the top one percent of Americans has fared even worse. The real winners have been the “9 percent”—the rich-but-not-too-rich humble workaday doctors, dentists, corporate lawyers, medium-sized business owners and so forth who don’t quite make it into the elite. I would add that this 9 percent is doubly blessed, since Obama-era tax policy has been pretty hard on the top one percent while largely sparing the 9 percent.
Slate January 25, 2013 -
“We have an unemployment crisis that is almost entirely due to a lack of demand in the economy,” Nicholas Finio of the Economic Policy Institute said. “In the current economic environment, the most important thing for job growth is fiscal stimulus, such as fiscal relief to states in budget crisis, infrastructure investment, and direct job-creation programs in areas particularly hard-hit by unemployment. Unfortunately, the labor secretary doesn’t have the ability to create fiscal policy, but the new secretary can be an important voice in pointing out that we still have a terrible unemployment crisis.”
Campus Progress January 25, 2013