Rebuilding Household Wealth: Implications for Economic Recovery

[Excerpt] Congress was an active participant in the policy responses to the 2007-2009 recession and its aftermath and has an ongoing interest in macro-economic conditions. Current macroeconomic concerns include whether the economy is in a sustained recovery, rapidly reducing unemployment, and speeding a return to normal output and employment growth. Faced with fiscal consolidation and limited further impetus from monetary policy, the momentum of the current economic recovery will likely be determined by the strength of spending by the private economy, particularly the strength of consumer spending. In the aftermath of the deep 2007-2009 recession, involving a huge loss of net worth and a large increase in the burden of debt, households’ actions to repair their balance sheets is thought by many economists to be a key factor dissipating the strength of consumer spending and, in turn, slowing economy-wide recovery and job creation. Where households currently stand in repairing their balance sheets is likely to have a strong effect on the strength of consumer spending. If substantially complete, it would point to the prospect of stronger consumer spending and increased momentum of the economic recovery; but if substantial wealth building is still needed, it would diminish that prospect. This report begins with a discussion (accompanied by graphics) of the slower than normal pace of the ongoing economic recovery and the likely role in that of weak consumer spending forced by a sharp loss of household net worth during the recession and the subsequent need to rebuild that lost wealth. Next, the report examines (also accompanied by graphics) where balance sheet repair currently stands, paying particular attention to the composition of assets that have been accumulated and the degree of debt reduction achieved. The report then considers the near-term prospect for stronger consumer spending and more rapid economic recovery. The report concludes with a discussion of the possible implications of household balance sheet repair for economic policy

Economic Recovery: Sustaining U.S. Economic Growth in a Post-Crisis Economy

[Excerpt] There is concern that this time the U.S. economy will either not return to its pre-recession growth path but perhaps remain permanently below it, or return to the pre-crisis path but at a slower than normal pace. Problems on the supply side and the demand side of the economy has so far led to a weaker than normal recovery. If the pace of private spending proves insufficient to assure a sustained recovery, would further stimulus by monetary and fiscal policy be warranted? One of the important lessons from the Great Depression is to guard against a too hasty withdrawal of fiscal and monetary stimulus in an economy recovering from a deep decline. The removal of fiscal and monetary stimulus in 1937 is thought to have stopped a recovery and caused a slump that did not end until WWII. Opponents of further stimulus maintain that the accumulation of additional government debt would lower future economic growth, but supporters argue that additional stimulus is the appropriate near-term policy

The Distribution of Household Income and the Middle Class

[Excerpt] The shape of the income distribution is not itself a subject of legislation, but Members of Congress appear to consider it in their decision-making process concerning a number of policy issues such as taxes, means-tested benefits, and social insurance programs. Congress also takes up legislation specifically in the name of those in the middle (however defined) of the income distribution who commonly are referred to as the middle class. Some Members have, for example, proposed bills to improve U.S. competitiveness as a means of increasing exports manufactured by workers in “good” (middle-class) jobs. (For example, P.L. 111-240, the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.) Similarly, training policy generally has been crafted to provide individuals with the skills thought necessary to attain a middle-class standard of living. (For example, P.L. 105-220, the Authorization of the Workforce Investment Act.) This report first presents a brief analysis of the distribution of income across households in 2012, the latest year for which annual data are available from the Census Bureau. It then attempts to put the term middle class into greater perspective: first, by applying results from public opinion surveys on social class to the Census Bureau’s data on the income distribution in 2012; and second, by reviewing findings from empirical studies on the contribution of relative (as opposed to absolute) income to the identity of the middle class

Foreign Outsourcing: Economic Implications and Policy Responses

Foreign outsourcing--the importing of some intermediate product (i.e., a portion of a final product or some good or service needed to produce a final product) that was once produced domestically--is not a new phenomenon, nor is it one that is economically distinct from other types of imports in terms of its basic economic consequences. A steadily rising level of trade in intermediate products is one of the salient characteristics of U.S. trade and world trade for the last 30 years. It has been estimated that as much as a third of the growth of world trade since 1970 has been the result of such outsourcing worldwide. While foreign outsourcing may seem different from traditional notions of trade in that it involves exchange of a productive resource (capital or labor) rather than an exchange of a final good and service, the ultimate economic outcome is exactly the same: a net increase in economic efficiency through the elimination of economic inefficiencies that occur when countries use only the productive resources found within their borders. This gain is not likely to be achieved, however, without causing costly disruptions for the particular workers and sectors tied to the now-imported good

Quasi-adiabatic Switching for Metal-Island Quantum-dot Cellular Automata

Recent experiments have demonstrated a working cell suitable for implementing the Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) paradigm. These experiments have been performed using metal island clusters. The most promising approach to QCA operation involves quasi-adiabatically switching the cells. This has been analyzed extensively in gated semiconductor cells. Here we present a metal island cell structure that makes quasi-adiabatic switching possible. We show how this permits quasi-adiabatic clocking, and enables a pipelined architecture.Comment: 40 preprint-style double-spaced pages including 16 figure

Primer selection impacts specific population abundances but not community dynamics in a monthly time-series 16S rRNA gene amplicon analysis of coastal marine bacterioplankton.

Primers targeting the 16S small subunit ribosomal RNA marker gene, used to characterize bacterial and archaeal communities, have recently been re-evaluated for marine planktonic habitats. To investigate whether primer selection affects the ecological interpretation of bacterioplankton populations and community dynamics, amplicon sequencing with four primer sets targeting several hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene was conducted on both mock communities constructed from cloned 16S rRNA genes and a time-series of DNA samples from the temperate coastal Santa Barbara Channel. Ecological interpretations of community structure (delineation of depth and seasonality, correlations with environmental factors) were similar across primer sets, while population dynamics varied. We observed substantial differences in relative abundances of taxa known to be poorly resolved by some primer sets, such as Thaumarchaeota and SAR11, and unexpected taxa including Roseobacter clades. Though the magnitude of relative abundances of common OTUs differed between primer sets, the relative abundances of the OTUs were nonetheless strongly correlated. We do not endorse one primer set but rather enumerate strengths and weaknesses to facilitate selection appropriate to a system or experimental goal. While 16S rRNA gene primer bias suggests caution in assessing quantitative population dynamics, community dynamics appear robust across studies using different primers

How Parents Use Time and Money

[Excerpt] This article examines weekday resource allocation decisions of married couples with a husband employed full time and with children under 18. These decisions relate, among other things, to working for pay; doing unpaid household work; purchasing services such as childcare, laundry and drycleaning, and food away from home; and eating out. Information about spending decisions was obtained from the 2009 Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) and information about time use was obtained from the 2009 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Results show that, Regardless of employment status, wives were more likely than husbands to spend time in household activities. On an average weekday, married fathers spent more time working than married mothers did, even married mothers employed full time. The proportion of families reporting childcare expenses and the average amount spent by those reporting were highest for families with full-time working wives and lowest for families with wives not employed for pay. Consistent with other research, working-wife families did not spend more on housekeeping and laundry services than did families with wives not employed for pay. Families with full-time working wives spent the greatest dollar amount on food away from home, but there was no significant difference in spending between families with part-time working wives and families with wives not employed for pay

An Annotated Checklist of Wisconsin Mutillidae (Hymenoptera)

A survey of Wisconsin velvet ants (Hymenoptera: Mutillidae) conducted from literature searches, collection inventories, and two years of field work (2001-2002) yielded 28 species in three subfamilies. Of these, 23 species (representing 82% of the Wisconsin fauna and a 460% increase in the known species richness) are new state species records, having not previously been recorded in the published literature from the state. The known distributions of all Wisconsin species are reported by region and county, along with pertinent phenological, natural history, and other collection information, when known