Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?

Draws on research analysis to outline what economic mobility is, why it matters in today's economy, and why it is important for policy makers to focus on mobility as part of the ongoing national economic debate

Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America

Combines earlier research to present a comprehensive analysis of relative mobility, absolute mobility, and changes in income inequality. Focuses on intergenerational mobility, immigrants, comparisons by gender and race, and the role of education

Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: The Economist vs. Madmen in Authority

This lecture, given to the Society of Government Economists in January 1995, examines the influence of research on policy and vice versa using three widely believed propositions. The first is that government spending is wasteful or ineffective and can readily be cut back in order to reduce the deficit; the second is that welfare should be time limited and made conditional on people's behavior; the third is that education and training are (more than ever) the ticket to individual and national prosperity. The paper explores the interplay of facts of economic analysis with political and institutional constraints and public values.

Economic polcy in the reagen years

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Can child care and pre-K help reduce inflation?

Inflation has recently emerged as the top economic concern in the U.S. The Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates in an attempt to curb inflation, but their job would be easier, and the risk of a recession reduced, if we could directly address some of the job market bottlenecks that are contributing to inflation. This phenomenon has been called "the Great Resignation" – where there are too few workers to fill currently available jobs – because some have left the labor market, while others are reluctant to accept or keep jobs there. The aging of the U.S. population and a recent decline in immigration compound these effects.In his Wall Street Journal op-ed on May 31, President Biden listed a number of ways to reduce inflation – and one of them was cutting the cost of child care to families, so that the parents of small children could more easily enter the workforce. Indeed, his Build Back Better (BBB) agenda included policies such as greater access to child care and universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds, policies with the potential to boost labor supply and potentially reduce inflation. That legislation remains in limbo because of the opposition of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). But if it had been enacted a year ago, it could have made a difference – not just to the well-being of families and children but even to the inflationary pressures that have now emerged, pressures fueled in part by a lack of workers to produce the products and services people want

Defining and measuring the underclass

Research on the underclass has been hampered by the absence of a clear definition of the term. In this article we develop an operational definition of the underclass that is consistent with the emphasis of most of the underclass literature on behavior rather than poverty. Using this definition, we anlyze data for all census tracts in the United States in 1980. According to our definition, about one percent of the U.S. population lived in “underclass areas” in 1980, and this group was overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas. It was also disproportionately made up of minorities living in the older industrial cities of the Northeast.

Labor market implications of the growing internationalization of the U.S. economy /

"June 1986."Bibliography: p. 51-52.Mode of access: Internet