Causes of Wage Stagnation

Research from the Economic Policy Institute points to potential causes of wage stagnation and the resulting economic inequality. This dismal wage growth is the result of intentional policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income,wealth, and political power. As explained below, these choices fall into five broad categories: the abandonment of fullemployment as a main objective of economic policymaking, declining union density, various labor market policies andbusiness practices, policies that have allowed CEOs and finance executives to capture ever larger shares of economicgrowth, and globalization policies. Collectively, these policy decisions have shifted economic power away from low- andmiddle-wage workers and toward corporate owners and managers

The State of Working America 2006/2007

[Excerpt] Yet, despite this unequivocally beneficial development, many Americans report dissatisfaction with where the economy seems to be headed, and many worry about their own and their children’s well-being. These concerns have led some policy makers and economists to ask: why aren’t people happier about the economy? The question seems reasonable to those who follow the top-line numbers of the economy, such as the growth of the total economy (e.g. gross domestic product), the stock market, or corporate profits. The question is easily answered, however, for those who follow and report on the data that fill the chapters of this book

The State of Working America, 2004/2005

The State of Working America, prepared biennially since 1988 by the Economic Policy Institute, includes a wide variety of data on family incomes, wages, taxes, unemployment, wealth, and poverty--data that enable the authors to closely examine the effect of the economy on the living standards of the American people

The State of Working America

[Excerpt] Like its predecessors, this edition of The State of Working America digs deeply into a broad range of data to answer a basic question that headline numbers on gross domestic product, inflation, stock indices, productivity, and other metrics can\u27t wholly answer: How well has the American economy worked to provide acceptable growth in living standards for most households? According to the data, the short answer is, not well at all. The past 10 years have been a lost decade of wage and income growth for most American families. A quarter century of wage stagnation and slow income growth preceded this lost decade, largely because rising wage, income, and wealth inequality funneled the rewards of economic growth to the top. The sweep of the research in this book shows that these trends are the result of inadequate, wrong, or absent policy responses. Ample economic growth in the past three-and-a-half decades provided the potential to substantially raise living standards across the board, but economic policies frequently served the interests of those with the most wealth, income, and political power and prevented broad-based prosperity

Using administrative data to estimate graduation rates: Challenges, Proposed solutions and their pitfalls.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in understanding the levels and trends in high school graduation in the U.S. A big and influential literature has argued that the “true” high school graduation rate remains at an unsatisfactory level, and that the graduation rates for minorities (Blacks and Hispanics) are alarmingly low. In this paper we take a closer look at the different measures of high school graduation which have recently been proposed and which yield such low estimates of graduation rates. We argue that the nature of the variables in the Common Core of Data, the dataset maintained by the U.S. Department of Education that is the main source for all of the new measures, requires caution in calculating graduation rates, and the adjustments that have been proposed often impart significant downward bias to the estimates

NEPC Review: How Much Are Public School Teachers Paid?

The Manhattan Institute report, How Much Are Public School Teachers Paid?, uses hourly earnings from the 2005 National Compensation Survey (NCS) to contend that teachers are better paid than most white-collar professionals, including many in occupations commonly understood to be quite lucrative. The report relies on hourly earnings data in an attempt to provide an apples-to-apples comparison of pay for a standard unit of work. Unfortunately, this approach is fundamentally flawed because the NCS calculation of weeks and hours worked is very different for teachers and other professionals. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics &mdash; which publishes the NCS &mdash; has explicitly warned its users not to use hourly rates of pay in this exact same context. It is unclear why the authors of this report have apparently have chosen to ignore that warning, but what remains is a measure of compensation that is of very little use in informing policy discussions of teacher pay.</p

Patients with chronic hepatitis C undergoing watchful waiting: Exploring trajectories of illness uncertainty and fatigue

We identified trajectories of illness uncertainty in chronic hepatitis C patients and examined their association with fatigue levels during 12 months of disease monitoring without treatment (watchful waiting). Sixty-two men and 63 women completed uncertainty and fatigue measures. Groups were formed by uncertainty scores (high, medium, low) at baseline. Baseline fatigue levels were higher in the high uncertainty group than in the medium and low groups. Over time, uncertainty levels did not change. Fatigue levels in the low uncertainty group remained constant, increased in the medium, and decreased in the high groups. Findings suggest that uncertainty and fatigue do not remit spontaneously. Being aware of this may help nurses identify those patients needing support for these two concerns

Association of Southeast Asian Nations, People's Republic of China, and India Growth and the Rest of the World: The Role of Trade

This paper explores the impact of past and future growth in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)1 Since the mid-1990s, ACI growth has improved the non-oil terms of trade of the developed countries. There have also been strong complementarities between ACI suppliers of intermediate inputs and PRC exports. More developed Asian countries have benefited from PRC capital goods demand. ACI growth has, however, put competitive pressures on other less-developed manufacturing exporters, worsening their terms of trade and constraining their pricing ability. ACI growth has been especially beneficial for oil and minerals commodity producers. On the other hand, net food importers and oil importing countries have been adversely affected by high import costs. , the People's Republic of China (PRC), and India - here referred to as the ACI countries - on aggregate welfare, relative wages, and global emissions in the rest of the world. It outlines several analytical frameworks, considers effects over the past decade and, based on consensus forecasts, the implications of that growth for the rest of the world in the decades to come. Future ACI growth provides opportunities and challenges for the rest of the world. For developed countries the opportunities are for selling high-end services and capital and consumer goods in the ACI markets and enjoying the benefits from intra-industry trade; the challenges will come from increased head-to-head competition in manufactured goods and services that should become more intense in future decades. For medium-income producers currently at between 30% and 60% of US levels, there will be a tougher tradeoff between more intensive competition with the PRC and serving the growing middle classes in ACI countries. For poorer countries, there will greater opportunities for becoming part of global supply chains in manufactured exports. Standard frameworks that assume internal factor mobility suggest continuing pressures for wage inequality in developed countries. But these hinge on the assumption that the ACI and developed countries will continue to produce similar products and that the ACI will specialize in unskilled labor-intensive products. In fact, as their exports become more technology - intensive and developed countries more specialized these pressures could be alleviated. On the one hand, as the "flying geese" process continues, exports from countries with lower incomes than the PRC are likely to displace PRC labor-intensive exports rather than domestic production in developed countries. On the other hand, while it may cause job loss and erode the returns to specific factors, PRC export growth is less likely to be a source of wage inequality in advanced economies