culture

Many American workers have not yet regained their footing in the aftermath of the Great Recession, yet unemployment insurance has become politically controversial even though jobs are still scarce. Critics claim that America’s unemployment insurance program “subsidizes leisure” by “paying people not to work.” Some critics have lampooned extended unemployment benefits for supposedly turning “our social safety net into a hammock.” Congressional Republicans deferred to such criticisms in January, 2014, when they blocked the sort of renewal of long-term unemployment aid that has been traditional after previous severe economic downturns. As a result, roughly one million of the long-term unemployed saw their benefits abruptly cut off.

How much truth is there in these criticisms of unemployment benefits? By easing the financial harm of job loss, does unemployment insurance actually undermine people’s desire to find work? Does it make work less attractive or encourage the jobless to enjoy their added “leisure” time?By easing the financial harm of job loss, does unemployment insurance undermine people’s desire to find work?

To address these questions, I used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to track thousands of people over time as many experience events that change their life circumstances—not just job loss, but other disruptions such as changes in income, giving up their house, suffering a debilitating illness or injury, having a child, and watching children leave the family nest. What comes through loud and clear in my study is that job loss is a severely disruptive occurrence that proves psychologically devastating to many people who experience it. The effects can also persist long after formerly unemployed people find new jobs. more...

Chronic diseases and injuries are the leading causes of premature death and preventable illnesses in the United States and around the world. Injuries cause many unnecessary deaths among young adults and children. Traffic crashes hurt 50 million worldwide each year, and firearms and alcohol are also leading threats. Meanwhile, half of all Americans suffer from chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer that account for seven out of every ten deaths and eat up three-quarters of health care dollars. By 2030, chronic diseases will cause more than three quarters of deaths worldwide, costing some $47 trillion over the next two decades.

Conventional wisdom attributes the growth of injuries and chronic illnesses to seemingly inevitable causes such as population aging and changing lifestyles. Such forces are at work, of course, but it is the task of public health scientists like me to probe more deeply.

A closer look reveals that many unnecessary injuries and chronic health problems are spurred by what might be dubbed the “corporate consumption complex” – a network of consumer products companies, financial institutions, trade associations, and public relations firms that deliberately urges people to buy unhealthy foods and unsafe products. In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the military industrial complex posed a danger to our democracy and well-being. Today, the consumption complex constitutes a similarly grave threat. more...

Almost half a century ago, the U.S. federal government expanded financial aid to college students to make college more affordable—but today the odds of getting a degree are more tightly linked to family income than ever before. Getting a college degree remains a good investment, but the current distribution of federal and state financial aid dollars leaves many families of modest means out in the cold. Between 1992 and 2004, the odds that a high school graduate who took at least Algebra II would decide not to go to college went up among all income-groups except the very wealthiest. Sadly, students from families of modest means have also become more likely to drop out from public colleges and universities—leaving with debts, not degrees. more...

After two decades of trial-runs, school voucher programs occupy a growing place across the U.S. educational landscape. In Arizona, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Utah and Wisconsin, public funding supports private school attendance by students with varied needs and limited family resources. At least ten states offset private tuition with refunds or credits offered through their tax codes. As such programs proliferate, it is important to take stock of what researchers have found so far about the impact of vouchers on student achievement and school performance. more...

In 1987, a United Nations report on “Our Common Future” highlighted the importance of environmental as well as economic and social factors in the development of societies that further human well-being. The reason for stressing environmental sustainability is clear. Resources garnered from the environment provide necessities for human life such as food, clothing, and shelter. Harnessing energy and harvesting resources are essential components of production processes that contribute to economic advancement. In fact, without a hospitable and supportive environment, societies cannot exist and economies cannot operate. more...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released its Fifth Assessment Report, presenting the latest accumulation of scientific evidence about the threat of global warming and calling for urgent actions to meet the threat. Earlier reports have pointed in the same directions, but the political, economic, and simple human obstacles to facing and coping with the dangers of global warming remain today as they were twenty-five years ago on the eve of the Intergovernmental Panel’s First Assessment Report. People in the United States and across the globe are no more likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically in 2014 or soon thereafter than they were in 1990. Modern political and economic systems are not geared to cope with this sort of challenge. And there is an enduring collective action problem: no single individual or organization, not even a few working together, can execute necessary solutions. Most must learn to act together, or the game is over—the causes and dire effects of increasing global warming simply will not be handled in time. more...

In 2006, the Massachusetts legislature passed and Governor Mitt Romney signed into law a health care reform with subsidized health insurance coverage for low-income people, a health insurance exchange to help people not otherwise covered choose among available plans, an individual mandate requiring residents to obtain coverage if affordable, and an expansion of Medicaid to include children and long-term unemployed adults. The reform in Massachusetts turned out to be a blueprint for the Affordable Care reforms passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. ObamaCare, as the federal reform law is sometimes called, is only now going into full effect, as debate continues to swirl about its provisions and its likely effects. No one can tell what the national reform’s impact on Americans’ health will turn out to be, but we can get an idea of possible benefits by looking at what is known so far about the aftermath of the earlier Massachusetts reforms. more...

“They just have too many people in prison that shouldn’t be here,” says Crystal, the 21-year-old wife of a prisoner. She goes on to comment on the system as a whole:

There’s a lot that’s in prison because they didn’t have an adequate lawyer, or they couldn’t afford it, so they got a public defender that didn’t care, you know, or that went along with the DA or somethin’ an’ that’s how they got here!… I don’t even feel like we have a justice system anymore. Cuz I mean, it’s crazy. I feel like everybody should be treated equal in the justice system, even if you have a lot of money, and even if you don’t have no money… what kind of justice system do we have if I can get off of a case because I have more money? more...

The Affordable Care Act aims to extend health insurance to tens of millions more Americans through two major routes: by giving people information and in many cases tax credits to help them purchase private insurance plans offered on state or national “exchanges,” or online marketplaces; and by giving the fifty U.S. states plus the District of Columbia additional federal funds to expand their Medicaid programs to insure all low-income people just above as well as below the federal poverty line. States have a key role in implementing health reform. Each state can choose to run its own exchange marketplace and help its residents learn about their options for purchasing affordable plans. Each state also decides whether or not to accept new federal subsidies to expand Medicaid (covering 93% of the costs from 2014 through 2022). What states do—or refuse to do—makes a big difference, as a comparison of the nation’s two largest states, California and Texas, makes clear. California is leading the way in showing that Affordable Care can work, while authorities in Texas are obstructing implementation with gusto. more...

New England is a compact and relatively liberal region, and its six states—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut—all had relatively high levels of health insurance coverage before the Affordable Care Act. Yet rates of prior coverage still varied, and these states have made different choices about implementing reform.

Leading into 2014, each U.S. state had two key decisions to make: whether to use federal funds appropriated by the Affordable Care Act to expand its Medicaid program to include people just above the poverty line; and whether to set up and run its own exchange, an online market place where residents can comparison shop for private health insurance plans and find out about their eligibility for federal subsidies to help pay the premiums. more...