Race and the use of force by police matters to build a more equitable U.S. society and economy

Posted on by Emilie Openchowski
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There are widespread concerns in the United States about the treatment of Black Americans by state and local police forces across the country. These concerns are rooted in the long history of police mistreatment of Black Americans and are reflected in the fact that only 33 percent of Black civilians believe that police officers use the right amount of force for the situation and only 35 percent believe police treat racial and ethnic groups equally.

These concerns are voiced most forcefully in the ongoing protests over police shootings of unarmed Black civilians and by the Black Lives Matter movement. In the aftermath of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, this movement has grown exponentially, with more than 1,700 demonstrations across all 50 states in the immediate wake of his murder. This protest movement—alongside the ongoing economic and social harms that disproportionately continue to fall on Black workers and their families amid the coronavirus recession—lay bare the longstanding questions about the degree of systemic racism in the United States today.

Yet many police and political leaders continue to argue that these high-profile police-use-of-force incidents targeting Black Americans are largely one-off events. These leaders argue that these incidents are perpetrated by so-called “bad-apple” police officers rather than are a symptom of a broader problem with race and the police use of force

To be sure, it is hard to know even in any number of specific incidents whether it is race itself that matters or if there are certain police officers who may use too much force regardless of race. The purpose of my research co-authored with Mark Hoekstra at Texas A&M University and presented in this column is to demonstrate a way to distinguish between these competing hypotheses. 

Why is there no clear evidence on whether race matters systematically for police use of force?

Documenting whether race matters in the use of force by police is difficult. One reason is because researchers typically only observe interactions between police officers and civilians that end in force. This means researchers need to make some pretty strong “benchmarking” assumptions about the unobserved interactions that do not end in force. That is, they need to assume how many total interactions police have with Black and White civilians to determine whether race matters. 

Further, the underlying danger of the interactions themselves can be very different depending on the race of the officers and civilians involved. This is partly because police officers typically initiate interactions and partly because White and Black civilians do not always act the same. This makes it hard to distinguish the effect of race from other things. If one wants to know the impact of the race of the civilian in incidents, for example, one needs to quantify exactly what was different about the situations. In practice, that is impossible, at least in most contexts.

Here’s just one case in point. A recent study estimates that Black men are 2.5 times as likely as White men to be killed by police during their lifetimes. But this finding begs two questions. Do Black men have more or less than 2.5 times as many interactions with police as White men? And more importantly, are those interactions more or less dangerous than the police interactions with White men? 

Currently, these questions are unanswered, which forces researchers to make assumptions—perhaps better described as educated guesses. In our research, we move beyond educated guesses by designing a natural experiment.

Designing a natural experiment to assess race and the police use of force

In our paper, titled “Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls,” we wanted to look at a context that came as close as possible to the ideal experiment where Black and White police officers are randomly assigned to interactions with civilians of different races. We do this by looking at emergency 911 calls in two cities where municipal authorities agreed to share their data anonymously. Neither the dispatchers nor police officers in these two cities have any discretion as to which officer is first dispatched to a call. In this context, it is essentially conditionally random whether a Black or White cop is dispatched to the scene.

In addition, we observe all police interactions even if they don’t end in an arrest or use of force. We do so because in this way, we don’t need to make any potentially problematic assumptions about interactions that we do not observe in the data.

We then assess whether race matters in the interactions of the police officer and civilians. We ask: How much more force do White officers use in Black neighborhoods, compared to White neighborhoods? Do Black officers scale up their use of force just as much as their White peers? If so, this would suggest that perhaps race doesn’t matter much. But if Black officers scale up use of force less, then it would suggest there is, in fact, a race problem.

Our primary finding is telling. We find that Black police officers modestly increase their use of force when sent to neighborhoods with a higher proportion of Black civilians, but White officers use significantly more force as they are dispatched to more Black neighborhoods. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

The probability that a 911 call ends in use of force by the proportion of Black individuals in a neighborhood and the race of the officer

We document even more striking results for use of force with a gun. While White and Black officers fire their guns at similar rates in White neighborhoods, White officers are five times more likely than Black officers to fire their guns in predominantly Black neighborhoods. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2

The probability that a 911 call ends in the use of force with a gun by the proportion of Black individuals in a neighborhood and the race of the officer

Our findings also make clear that in one major city with a predominantly White and Black police force, the city seems to attract a different type of White candidate to its police force than Black candidates. Across all neighborhoods, White officers use force 60 percent more than Black officers and fire their weapons twice as often. This is true even though both White and Black police officers are responding to otherwise-similar calls due to the dispatch protocol. 

Conclusion

The central finding of our paper raises this important question: If calls in predominantly Black neighborhoods were that much more dangerous to respond to than calls in predominantly White neighborhoods, then why don’t Black police officers increase their use of force as much as White officers do? I and my co-author believe the only reasonable interpretation is that race matters in a systematic way with respect to the use of force by police. 

Beyond showing that race is an important determinant of police use of force, a major contribution of our work is showing there is a clear and transparent way to test whether race matters, without making a lot of assumptions that are difficult to validate. In many ways, the hardest part about what we did in our research was finding cities with the right kind of 911 protocols that were also willing to share data.

There is no reason why cities can’t adopt similar protocols and either share these data or perform the analysis internally with the help of researchers. Doing so would enable a simple yet compelling analysis of whether race systematically matters for use of force in that city. If any city wants to do this, we would be happy to help. 

—CarlyWill Sloan is an assistant professor of economic sciences at the School of Social Science, Policy & Evaluation at Claremont Graduate University. Her co-author on the working paper, Mark Hoekstra, is a professor of economics at Texas A&M University.

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Expert Focus: Intersections between racial equity and disaggregation of data

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Equitable Growth is committed to building a community of scholars working to understand how inequality affects broadly shared growth and stability. To that end, we have created the monthly series, “Expert Focus.” This series highlights scholars in the Equitable Growth network and beyond who are at the frontier of social science research. We encourage you to learn more about both the researchers featured below, those featured in prior installments, and our broader network of experts.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Groundwork Collaborative will co-host an event titled “Data Infrastructure for the 21st Century: A Focus on Racial Equity” (register here) on June 15. This latest installment of “Expert Focus” highlights the scholars who are participating in this virtual event and who are interested in racial equity and data disaggregation. Data are ever more urgent to address both scientific research and policy needs, exemplified by the establishment of the Equitable Data Working Group in the Biden administration.

Scholars and organizations are also calling for a focus on racial and gender equity and the use of categories such as race, gender, and ethnicity, along with other social and demographic factors, to be central goals in disaggregating data and giving us a better picture of how our economy is doing. To learn more about the opportunities to better reflect diversity in the data, join us for the event (register here). Among the panelists at tomorrow’s event are Rhonda Sharpe and Marie Mora, both of whom were featured in past installments of Expert Focus. Read on to see who else will be speaking at our event.

Randall Akee

University of California, Los Angeles

Randall Akee is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He serves on the National Advisory Council on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations at the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2019, Akee and colleagues launched the Association for Economic Research of Indigenous Peoples, and he was recently profiled by the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, which speaks to his longstanding commitment to support and advance underrepresented groups in economics. For the past decade, Akee has argued for the disaggregation of data. In 2021, Akee, along with Marcus Casey, another Equitable Growth grantee, highlighted the inadequate sample sizes in some federal surveys. Also, Akee and K.J. Ward of The Brookings Institution commented on how inadequate these surveys are at capturing hidden activities that are a result of systemic racism. Much of Akee’s own academic research uses administrative data or linked administrative or survey data to disaggregate economic outcomes and examine the current and historic examples of discrimination.

Quote from Randy Akee on the American Indian population and disaggregated data

Corey D. Fields

Georgetown University

Corey Fields is an associate professor and the Idol Family Chair of the Sociology Department at Georgetown University. Fields’ research centers on the role of identity at individual and collective levels and how these structure social life. By drawing on a cultural perspective, his work emphasizes the role of meaning and how identities are enacted in specific social contexts. In particular, Fields brings expertise about how methods and theories in sociology and in less structured or differently structured data collection can help to better capture the lived experiences of residents and families in the United States. Often, this information goes unnoticed in data research. For instance, Fields is part of a joint initiative of Stanford University and Princeton University called the American Voices Project, a national survey in the United States. He is currently using these data to examine racial differences in individuals’ experiences of the coronavirus pandemic and protests against police injustice. In a 2015 Social Currents article, Fields and other scholars explore how variation within ethnoracial “groups” presents a challenge to researchers who must adapt ethnographic and survey research practices to better understand the landscape for individuals and their families in the United States and the implications for issues relative to a person’s identity.

Quote from Corey Fields and co-authors on intra-group diversity and group identity

Rakeen Mabud

Groundwork Collaborative

Rakeen Mabud is the managing director of policy and research and chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative. Mabud is an expert on economic inequality and the 21st century workplace, with a particular focus on how structural factors such as racism and sexism perpetuate inequities. She has written extensively about the need to use disaggregated data to guide policy decisions. Most recently, Mabud was the senior director of research and strategy at TIME’S UP Foundation, where she spearheaded the organization’s signature Time’s Up, Measure Up initiative, a 5-year initiative to study and report on the impact of gender and racial inequities. The initiative seeks to fill critical knowledge gaps, drawing on quantitative data, qualitative research, and personal stories to develop a fuller picture of the myriad experiences of women in the U.S. economy. Mabud’s recent research prioritizes the disaggregation of data by race and gender. In 2020, a national survey she fielded, along with partners at the National Employment Law Project, Cornell University’s ILR School, and Color of Change, examined worker experiences with the coronavirus pandemic around the country, with a particular focus on underpaid and front-line workers, Black and Latino workers, and women workers. This survey oversampled Black and Latinx respondents to disaggregate data and capture demographic variation (for details, see the report’s findings).

Quote from Rakeen Mabud on disaggregating data

Tracey Ross

PolicyLink

Tracey Ross is the director for federal policy and narrative change at PolicyLink. With a focus on racial equity and placed-based strategies for economic inclusion, Ross led the organization’s All-in Cities initiative, working with cities across the country to adopt policies and practices to ensure one’s ZIP code does not determine their life outcomes. Recently, PolicyLink released a report detailing 10 priorities for advancing racial equity through the recently enacted American Rescue Plan. Two priorities in this report are to explicitly name racial equity as a goal, with specific targets to produce results at scale, and to track the disaggregation of data to ensure accountability to equity goals. In 2017, PolicyLink organized a series of convenings with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which informed the report “Counting a Diverse Nation: Disaggregating Data on Race and Ethnicity to Advance a Culture of Health.” Prior to joining PolicyLink, Ross worked at the Center for American Progress and focused on urban poverty and environmental justice, and at Living Cities, where she focused on building a green economy. Ross began her career in the offices of former U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO).

Quote from Tracey Ross on undercounting minority groups in the U.S. census

Danny Yagan

Chief Economist, Office of Management and Budget

Danny Yagan is the chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and a participant in the Biden administration’s Equitable Data Working Group. Yagan is currently on leave from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Economics. Yagan’s research has focused on a variety of topics, including U.S. tax policy, business investment, recession recovery, income inequality, and upward mobility. In 2017, a research project looked at persistent lags in the workforce after the Great Recession of 2007­–2009. Over the years, Yagan has been awarded multiple grants from Equitable Growth related to wealth inequality and intergenerational mobility, including work done with former Equitable Growth Steering Committee members Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez.

Quote from Danny Yagan and co-authors on incomes in American communities

Equitable Growth is building a network of experts across disciplines and at various stages in their career who can exchange ideas and ensure that research on inequality and broadly shared growth is relevant, accessible, and informative to both the policymaking process and future research agendas. Explore the ways you can connect with our network or take advantage of the support we offer here.

The future of work and worker power post-COVID a key topic at the 2021 Labor and Employment Relations Association annual conference

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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Last week, the Labor and Employment Relations Association, or LERA, held its 73rd annual conference. The virtual event, which took place over four days, featured more than 350 presenters from across disciplines, focusing on workers, worker power, and the workplace in a time of division and disruption. Speakers and participants from labor, management, government, advocacy, and academia attended the more than 85 sessions, from plenaries and workshops to skill-building and networking opportunities.

The interdisciplinary approach to the conference offered a chance for Equitable Growth and our network to deepen and broaden our network of scholars, as well as raise awareness of our work with representatives of diverse interests and fields. Equitable Growth grantees and members of our broader academic community were featured in at least 15 different plenaries, panels, and paper sessions.

  • At a plenary session on how COVID-19 will shape the future of work, Equitable Growth Research Advisory Board member and economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology David Autor discussed how labor markets have been and will continue to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic and recession. He predicted a greater shift to teleworking, but also cautioned that these benefits will be unequally distributed, with high-wage, higher-educated, and urban workers more likely to be able to continue working from home.
  • At another plenary session, on addressing the challenge of racial equity and justice in the workplace, Darrick Hamilton, an Equitable Growth grantee and Henry Cohen professor of economics and urban policy at the New School, emphasized the need for a redefinition of what constitutes economic well-being in the United States, a recognition of the expanded racial wealth gap and occupational segregation amid the coronavirus pandemic, and a decoupling of labor policy from industrial and trade policy.
  • At a panel session on unequal workplace bargaining power and policy solutions to rebalance this dynamic, Equitable Growth grantee and professor of economics and international and public affairs at Columbia University Suresh Naidu discussed evidence on employer wage-setting and how raising the minimum wage can have a neutral effect on employment.
  • In the same panel, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, an Equitable Growth grantee and now the U.S. Department of Labor’s deputy assistant secretary for research and evaluation, examined new research on the role of workplaces as civic spaces, allowing workers to interact with peers who share different views and learn new skills that translate to civic participation. Hertel-Fernandez’s research also explores how unions can get involved by providing opportunities for civic education, training, and skill-building.
  • A panel chaired by Equitable Growth grantee and Harvard University’s Daniel Schneider featured Director of Family Economic Security Policy Alix Gould-Werth as a discussant and several grantees who presented research. The panelists highlighted their findings on how workers have weathered the coronavirus pandemic and recession, including the disparate impact on workers of color, the consequences of unemployment and impact of Unemployment Insurance on service-sector workers, and the effects of unpredictable schedules on workers amid COVID-19 public health restrictions.

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth also organized four sessions for attendees with participation from staff and network members, as well as non-network experts. Panelists and speakers included both well-established and early career scholars from across disciplines and demographic groups typically underrepresented in economics and social sciences, tied together by the goal of fostering an equitable economy.

  • A panel session on racial and regional inequality chaired by Equitable Growth Labor Market Policy Analyst Kathryn Zickuhr featured grantee Robert Manduca of the University of Michigan, Chris Becker of Stanford University, Jaimie Worker of the Economic Policy Institute, and Zoe Willingham of the Center for American Progress. Manduca highlighted two important yet alarming trends in the United States: lack of progress in the reduction of racial economic inequality and growing geographic inequality between U.S. regions. Becker then explained how politicians use racist rhetoric in speeches about economic issues, which further entrenches racist policy. Worker discussed how preemption of pro-worker ordinances in the South holds back progress for Black workers, workers of color, women workers, and low-income workers. And Willingham brought up the diversity of rural communities and why researchers must adopt a racial justice lens when studying rural poverty.
  • In a panel session on worker surveillance and workplace control, Zickuhr presented research on how surveillance harms workers and what this means for policy solutions. She was joined by Alexandra Mateescu of the Data & Society Research Institute, who detailed her research on worker monitoring schemes in the domestic care industry; Luke Elliott-Negri of the City University of New York Graduate Center and a 2020 Equitable Growth grantee, who spoke about workplace collective action in platform businesses such as Instacart; and Equitable Growth grantee Jasmine Hill of Stanford University, who covered workers of colors’ challenges navigating the labor market in the information age.
  • Equitable Growth’s Director of Labor Market Policy Kate Bahn chaired a panel session about research on monopsony, labor market concentration, discrimination, and wage-setting norms in the United States. Bahn presented her co-authored policy report on racial and gender wage discrimination and U.S. worker exploitation; University of Pennsylvania’s Ioana Marinescu’s essay on boosting wages in noncompetitive labor markets, published recently in Equitable Growth’s Boosting Wages for U.S. Workers in the New Economy; and Ellora Derenoncourt’s Equitable Growth-funded research on the spillover effects of voluntary employer minimum wages. Then, SEIU’s Ahmer Qadeer and Towards Justice’s David Seligman joined for a roundtable discussion of monopsony and workplace fissuring, and policy solutions to correct unequal labor market outcomes.
  • Equitable Growth also organized a panel on labor market opportunity and economic security for Native Americans chaired by the AFL-CIO’s William Spriggs and featuring research presentations by Equitable Growth grantees Randall Akee of the University of California, Los Angeles and Blythe George of the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Jeffrey Burnette of the Rochester Institute of Technology. The symposium highlighted the limited data available to study workforce participation and income security among Native Americans, which has led to a lack of research that centers the unique experience of these communities, and demonstrated that cultural awareness, additional studies, and targeted policies would foster greater economic well-being and opportunities.

This year’s conference was an important opportunity for Equitable Growth to expand our network of interdisciplinary scholars and to learn about cutting-edge research on workplace dynamics, worker power, and inequality in this unprecedented era of modern history following the coronavirus recession. The papers presented and topics discussed will certainly inform our work as we navigate the economic recovery. We look forward to exploring additional opportunities for engagement and collaboration with LERA and at future conferences.

Weekend reading: The impact of COVID-19 relief packages on the U.S. economy and workforce edition

Posted on by Maria Monroe

This is a post we publish each Friday with links to articles that touch on economic inequality and growth. The first section is a round-up of what Equitable Growth published this week and the second is relevant and interesting articles we’re highlighting from elsewhere. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope by taking a look back at the whole week, we can put them in context.

Equitable Growth round-up

After approving $5.3 trillion in coronavirus relief legislation since March 2020, policymakers in Congress are now debating whether to pass two additional medium- and long-term investment packages: President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan. Many are wary of increasing spending and want to make sure the new legislation will result in sustained economic growth that is equitable. Michael Garvey explains why the impact of previous coronavirus aid can provide helpful insights into the future economic impact of these two new investment proposals. Garvey looks at expanded Unemployment Insurance, the Paycheck Protection Program, and direct aid to specific sectors of the U.S. economy such as aviation and restaurants to discern whether investments these and others were effective. He then describes the relationship between these programs and others within President Biden’s two proposed investment packages, urging Congress to act to address the medium- and long-term challenges facing the United States with the same resolve with which it passed short-term emergency relief against the coronavirus pandemic and recession.

Join Equitable Growth and the Groundwork Collaborative next Tuesday, June 15 from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. for a virtual event on improving data infrastructure to address racial disparities in U.S. society and the economy. Shaun Harrison previews the event, explaining why data disaggregation is so important for economic and public health data amid the coronavirus pandemic and recession. Harrison shows how seemingly race-neutral or “colorblind” policies are a myth and how data disaggregation can effectively ensure that our nation’s collective statistics provide accurate views of the lived experiences of all Americans, thus guiding policy to be more effective and targeted as well.

Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ highly anticipated Employment Situation Report for May 2021 revealed gains of 559,000 jobs, with the overall unemployment rate declining to 5.8 percent. Kate Bahn and Carmen Sanchez Cumming break down the data in a column and a series of graphics. They write that the job gains have been especially strong in service-providing industries, which is good news for these hard-hit sectors, and economists predict that this trend will continue as vaccination rates keep rising and there is more public demand for entertainment, dining out, and other in-person services. While the May Jobs Day report was a welcome improvement from April’s report, which was unexpectedly low, it nevertheless reveals some troubling trends. The share of U.S. working-age adults with a job is still 3.3. percent below its pre-coronavirus recession level, the labor force participation rate remains at roughly the same level it was in June 2020, and workers of color still have significantly higher rates of unemployment compared to their White peers.

Earlier this week, the  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS, for April 2021. This report doesn’t get as much attention as the monthly Employment Situation Report, but it contains useful information about the state of the U.S. labor market. Bahn and Sanchez Cumming put together four graphs highlighting key trends, including that the quits rate reached a series high of 2.7 percent with nearly 4 million workers quit their jobs in April, signaling higher worker confidence about the labor market.

Links from around the web

Though some companies in specific sectors—mainly those that frequently don’t pay very well or ensure good working conditions—are complaining about not having enough job applicants for the number of openings they’re posting, cutting expanded Unemployment Insurance benefits or requiring proof of job searches is not the appropriate response, says Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams. She argues this just attempting to return the labor market to the way it was operating pre-pandemic. The problem is, many people don’t want to return to their previous employment situations. And requiring them to do so may fill short-term openings but won’t necessarily lead to sustainable, high-quality job matches. Adams looks at the long-term economic benefits of letting workers stay on unemployment a bit longer in order to make sure they’re able to get a better job that pays more and is well-suited to their skillset. These kinds of job matches are good for the economy and recovery because workers ultimately are more likely to stay in these positions, leading to prolonged employment, improved well-being, and positive overall economic growth.

The coronavirus pandemic is not the first one to create a shift in labor market dynamics in which workers make new demands of their employers. Those who argue that labor shortages are being driven by higher Unemployment Insurance checks are ignoring the likelihood that other factors, including caregiving responsibilities and health concerns, are keeping workers out of the labor force, in addition to a desire to be paid more. In fact, writes Spencer Strub in The Washington Post, labor shortages are well-documented occurrences in post-pandemic economies, dating back to the 14th century Black Death plague. Pandemics provide workers with so-called powers of exit, or the ability to quit their jobs, and worker voice, or the ability to assert demands for anything from better conditions to higher pay. Strub details the history of repression and strikes that followed the Black Death in which workers demanded more from their governments, employers, and leaders and were punished for doing so—but which also led to higher wages. Strub cautions against policymakers reacting harshly against the labor shortages of the post-pandemic economy, arguing that this is an opportunity to rebuild the structural deficiencies of the labor market.

A recent opinion essay in The New York Times by Paul Krugman looks at President Biden’s almost $5 trillion budget proposal and the $3.6 trillion of it that will come from new revenues. The Biden administration has promised repeatedly to not raise taxes on households making less than $400,000 per year, which means this revenue will have to come from higher taxes on corporations and high-income Americans. Krugman asks whether it’s possible, wise, and effective to pay for a better America by taxing the rich. To the first two questions—possible and wise—he says yes, but regarding effectiveness, Krugman replies that it’s complicated. He details the three main critiques of President Biden’s approach, rebutting them where appropriate, and concludes that the administration’s proposals are likely to accomplish their goals, while cautioning against watering them down to appease more moderate policymakers in Congress.

Friday figure

Net change in U.S. employment (in thousands) by industry, February 2021-May 2021

Figure is from Equitable Growth’s “U.S. jobs report: Amid robust employment gains in May policymakers need to consider the future direction of demand-driven employment growth across industries,” by Kate Bahn and Carmen Sanchez Cumming.

The imperative of focusing on racial equity in U.S. economic statistics

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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The coronavirus pandemic and resulting sharp recession put a glaring spotlight on the importance of data disaggregation. During the early stages of the pandemic, most states were not reporting coronavirus infections and COVID-19 fatalities by race. Consequently, policymakers did not know—but do now—that Black people in the United States died at 1.4 times the rate of White people from COVID-19, and that in certain states, Latinx people were 3.7 times more likely to have tested positive for the virus than their White neighbors. This lack of data disaggregation made it more difficult for policymakers to understand the contours of the pandemic and design policies to mitigate these disparities.

Public health in general benefits from disaggregating data. Recent studies on the expanding use of artificial intelligence in health and medicine find that these new technologies may, in fact, exacerbate existing health inequities. Just one case in point: Data from pulse oximeters—devices used to measure oxygen levels without drawing blood—are fed into algorithms that increasingly help determine medical decisions, such as patients receiving supplemental oxygen. Studies show, however, that these devices are three times more likely to report incorrect blood gas levels in Black patients compared to White patients. This racially disparate inaccuracy can have devastating effects, leading to patients not receiving proper treatment.

Data disaggregation is likewise critically important for better understanding the many racially disparate aspects of the U.S. economy and considering policies to address those disparities. Racial and ethnic discrepancies in economic outcomes have long been known, but improvements to data disaggregated by race and ethnicity by federal statistical agencies can help improve policymakers’ understanding of economic and social outcomes for all communities of color.

On June 15, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth will hold a virtual event, “Data Infrastructure for the 21st Century: A Focus on Racial Equity.” We are hosting a panel of academics to discuss some actionable areas of policy where the Biden administration could take steps to increase the quality and utility of economic data disaggregation and how these steps will lead to better policy outcomes. Speakers will include Randall Akee of the University of California, Los Angeles, Corey Fields of Georgetown University, Rakeen Mabud of Groundwork Collaborative, and Marie Mora of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The event will also feature a fireside chat between Rhonda Sharpe, president and CEO of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity, and Race, and Tracey Ross, director of federal policy and narrative change at PolicyLink.

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Data Infrastructure for the 21st Century: A Focus on Racial Equity

June 15, 2021 2:00PM – 3:30PM

Learn More

The Biden administration understands this imperative. As part of its public commitment to advance racial equity, President Joe Biden signed, on his first day in office, an executive order that establishes an Equitable Data Working Group. Across many domains, federal data collection and reporting can be improved to better reflect the diversity of our economy. These improvements could then guide policymakers in implementing more finely tuned policies to address the legacy of systemic racism and the differential impacts of recessions and other economic shocks on communities of color.

But amid a national public health crisis that highlights the need for disaggregating data by race, there is still significant work to be done to illustrate the importance of centering race in data collection and analysis. Indeed, centering race in economic analysis can give us a clearer picture of the U.S. economy as a whole. As Janelle Jones, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, describes, Black women are “among the last to recover from economic recessions and the last to reap economic benefits during periods of recovery or growth.”

When policymakers seek to help the average worker in seemingly race-neutral ways, Black women are left behind. Jones finds that in every economic recession since the 1970s, Black women consistently had an unemployment rate that was significantly higher than White men. Further still, the unemployment rate of Black men and women declined at a significantly slower pace than their White counterparts during periods of economic recovery. The most recent data on the U.S labor market show that Black unemployment remains persistently higher than White unemployment.

post

GDP 2.0: Measuring who prospers when the U.S. economy grows

By Austin Clemens,

July 11, 2023

Boosting Wages

Sovereignty and improved economic outcomes for American Indians: Building on the gains made since 1990

By Randall Akee,

January 14, 2021

Coronavirus Recession

The coronavirus pandemic highlights the importance of disaggregating U.S. data by race and ethnicity

By Austin Clemens,

April 17, 2020

Jones instead proposes putting Black women first through the framework of “Black Women Best,” which is the principle that “if Black women—who, since our nation’s founding, have been among the most excluded and exploited by the rules that structure our society—can one day thrive in the economy, then it must finally be working for everyone.” This reorientation would demonstrate the ways anti-Black and supposedly race-neutral policies hurt Black people and affect non-Black workers as well.

On this point, author Heather McGhee examines the role of racism in fiscal policy in her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. She demonstrates that White support for government spending was drastically reduced with the advent of the Civil Rights movement. This was a moment in which White Americans saw Black activists demanding the same economic guarantees afforded to White Americans. She argues White racial resentment against Black people continues to fuel a disapproval of government spending today.

Consider this: According to data analyst Sean McElwee and McGhee, based on data collected from the 2016 American National Election Studies, White people who exhibit low racial resentment against Black people are 60 percentage points more likely to support increased government spending than are those with high racial resentment. McGhee argues that the ideological backdrop for this dynamic is a zero-sum narrative between “makers and takers” or “taxpayers and freeloaders.” She concludes that policymakers can help overturn this harmful narrative by directly addressing the roots of systemic racism and encouraging investments that improve the lives of all people in the United States.

Disaggregating data by race and ethnicity helps to uncover the myth of “colorblind” policies. Without data disaggregation, our nation’s collective statistics inform incomplete narratives about the state of the U.S. economy that are inaccurate, and thus policy solutions that are inadequate. Speakers at Equitable Growth’s virtual event will cover these issues and provide actionable items for policymakers, advocates, and the interested public alike. It will take place on June 15, 2021 from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Registration information is available here. We hope to see you there.

Posted in Uncategorized

Sustained U.S. economic recovery depends on major equitable economic investments

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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When President Joe Biden made the case before a joint session of Congress in the spring for two new economic investment packages—a $2 trillion American Jobs Plan and a $1.8 trillion American Families Plan—the question in the minds of policymakers and the American public alike was whether this new round of investment spending would result in sustained equitable economic growth.

After all, Congress over the past year had already approved $5.3 trillion in economic relief amid the swift and steep coronavirus recession. These funds came in successive COVID-19 legislative relief packages. They included:

  • $8.3 billion in emergency funding, titled the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act (2020)
  • $192 billion for the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (2020)
  • $2.2 trillion for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act (2020)
  • $483 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (2020)
  • $869 billion in pandemic-related spending as part of the end of 2020 consolidated appropriations bill (2020)
  • $1.9 trillion for the American Rescue Plan (2021)

Even with all of these aid packages, though, the U.S. labor market is far from fully recovered. What’s more, the rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States has been matched by quickly evolving new and more infectious strains of the novel coronavirus here and around the world. Businesses small, medium, and large are still grappling with how their customers are going to respond as the pandemic continues. And the ongoing coronavirus recession continues to lay bare the deep economic inequalities that stand in the way of a robust, equitable economic recovery that is more stable and sustainable than the halfhearted recovery that followed the Great Recession.

President Biden’s two new economic stimulus proposals will be measured by their effectiveness in addressing these immediate and long-term conditions facing the nation. One broad way to establish this benchmark is simply to look at the growth in Gross Domestic Product over the past year and projections for the rest of 2021. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the volatility of our economic safety net. Despite all of the financial injections made by Congress, we are still well below pre-pandemic levels

Growth in aggregate GDP, however, fails to disaggregate that growth by income and wealth, race and ethnicity, and other measures. Those measurements should help guide policymakers who want to ensure the economic recovery from the coronavirus recession is more equitable than the recovery from the Great Recession a decade ago. That’s why the details of the previous COVID-19 relief packages passed by Congress become so important.

So, let’s break out those details. Specifically, let’s look at three major relief initiatives: Unemployment Insurance, the Paycheck Protection Program, and direct aid to key sectors of the U.S. economy. Whether these investment programs were effective in 2020 and into 2021, and whether the continuation of these kinds of investments under the Biden administration this year and beyond keeps the U.S. economy on the path toward more equitable economic growth, may well determine just how sustained U.S. economic growth will be over the course of the next decade.

The coronavirus aid and relief programs in 2020 and 2021

When the pandemic first hit the United States, Congress provided an unprecedented amount of federal support. The financial infusion consisted of $856 billion in direct aid, $764 billion toward Unemployment Insurance, and $968 billion for the Small Business Paycheck Protection Program, though the PPP funding was delivered in two tranches, limiting its initial effectiveness. The total of this aid amounted to roughly 18 percent of annual consumer spending and, as noted in a previous study, ended too soon, while the virus was still raging and before a recovery could take hold. The boost to the U.S. economy lasted until July 2020 and as Congress adjourned for it summer recess, the United States began to again feel the suppressed pain of the coronavirus recession.

This made it clear that more aid should be administered, leading to former President Donald Trump’s signing of the December 2020 Pandemic Relief Bill. This bill provided $900 billion in federal support. Key components of this bill included the 11-week continuation of the UI benefits program, with the previous amount of $600 extra per week in emergency benefits that was in the CARES Act amended to $300 per week , as well as another round of direct payments to U.S. workers and their families.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also extended eviction moratoriums to June 30, 2021. This direct relief was truly helpful as many U.S. workers and their families were being forced to choose between buying food, paying utilities and rent, and celebrating the holiday season with their families. The Paycheck Protection Program was also reopened to continue supporting small businesses as they struggled to keep the doors open and pay employees, including $310 billion in new funding.

In addition, direct aid to specific sectors of the U.S. economy, such as $61 billion to the aviation industry and $28.6 billion to restaurants, was a hallmark of the 2020 and 2021 coronavirus relief packages, but their successes were hit and miss. Analysis of the Paycheck Protection Program demonstrated that economic relief was not distributed equitably to small businesses. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan fixed some of those problems by ensuring the next round of PPP funding was more equitably distributed. That plan also included more extended UI benefits, more PPP loans, and the expanded Child Tax Credit.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, however, predicts that a full U.S. economic recovery won’t happen until the third quarter of 2021, with significant drags remaining in terms of global economic growth well into next year. That’s where President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan come into the picture for policymakers.

The American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan

Will President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan lay the foundation for more sustained and equitable economic growth? These two economic investment packages are each large and complex. Examining several key elements within them, however, provides a window into their anticipated effectiveness. By taking a look back at what worked in the prior coronavirus relief packages, we can see specific evidence emerge as to what may be the best solution regarding new and long-term investments.

Let’s first examine the Unemployment Insurance program. Extended Unemployment Insurance and additional pandemic-related unemployment benefits for gig workers certainly are having their intended macroeconomic impact, boosting consumer spending and keeping workers engaged in looking for the best jobs as employment options return, as is now happening across various sectors of the economy. President Biden’s American Families Plan makes provisions for continued UI support as we near the September 5, 2021 expiration date. Should this plan get enacted by Congress more or less as proposed, one key addition should be a reformed UI program that looks to enact so-called automatic stabilizers, which proactively prepare the U.S. economy for the inevitable next recession.

post

The American anti-austerity tradition

By Nic Johnson, Robert Manduca, Chris Hong,

May 20, 2021

Coronavirus Recession

Fool Me Once: Investing in Unemployment Insurance systems to avoid the mistakes of the Great Recession during COVID-19

By Alix Gould-Werth,

April 30, 2020

post

Research on race and consumption shows why racial disparities in Unemployment Insurance receipt are detrimental to economic recovery in the United States

By Alix Gould-Werth,

March 1, 2021

Another key element of the American Rescue Plan was the expanded Child Tax Credit, which will start to be distributed monthly to families beginning in July, yet this is not envisioned as a permanent program in the Biden administration’s latest two plans. Congress should consider making these tax credits to families permanent, which would go a long way toward making the CTC program more effective at lowering the U.S. poverty rate and ensuring new generations of U.S. workers are more productive.

Other key programs in the American Jobs Plan include the Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, the Community Revitalization Fund, and the Unlocking Possibilities Program. Efforts to disaggregate data by income, race, and ethnicity will also be important to understand the composition of the recovery and inform future policymaking efforts. These are just select examples of programs in President Biden’s two 2021 economic development plans that bear watching for their expected efficacy in creating a more equitable and sustained economic recovery this year and into 2022.

Conclusion

The coronavirus recession exposed several ways in which policymakers can invest in meaningful and sustained equitable economic growth. Even after the current pandemic subsides, the United States as a nation is not at all immune to pandemics or other possible future financial catastrophes. The one immediate lesson learned after spending $5.3 trillion in coronavirus aid and relief over the past year is that Congress can act quickly and in a bipartisan fashion when a crisis strikes. Now, policymakers in Congress need to consider the medium- and long-term investments in President Biden’s new economic plans with equal vigor. Policymakers should above all pay attention to how those investments foster broad-based and sustained economic growth well into the 2020s.

JOLTS Day Graphs: April 2021 Edition

Posted on by Carmen Sanchezcumming

Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS. Today, the BLS released the latest data for April 2021. This report doesn’t get as much attention as the monthly Employment Situation Report, but it contains useful information about the state of the U.S. labor market. Below are a few key graphs using data from the report.

The quits rate reached a series high of 2.7 percent as nearly 4 million workers quit their jobs in April.

Quits as a percent of total U.S. employment, 2001-2021. Recessions are shaded.

As job openings reached a series high of 9.3 million and hires stayed constant, the vacancy yield declined in April.

U.S. total nonfarm hires per total nonfarm job openings, 2001-2021. Recessions are shaded.

The ratio of unemployed-worker-per-job-opening was 1.06 in April, approaching its level of less than 1.0 prior to the recession. 

U.S. unemployed workers per total nonfarm job opening, 2001-2020. Recessions are shaded.

The Beveridge Curve moved sharply upwards with the historic level of job openings and continued to be in unprecedented territory compared to previous business cycles.

The relationship between the U.S. unemployment rate and the job opening rate, 2001-2020

Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, June 2-7, 2021

Posted on by Maria Monroe

Worthy reads from Equitable Growth:

1. Here’s a brand-new, very interesting, and very well-done working paper by Raissa Dantas and Jacob Robbins. Read their “Covid–19 Businesses Reopenings & Consumer Spending,” in which they write: :This paper studies … Covid–19 retail and restaurant shutdowns. … We find reopening policies substantially increased the dramatic ‘V’ shaped pattern of consumer spending for categories directly impacted by the laws: a 68.4 p.p. increase in non-essential in-store spending and a 16.7 p.p. increase in full-service indoor dining. For sectors not directly impacted—essential retail, limited-service restaurants, and online—we find a limited impact of reopenings. We estimate that retail reopenings are responsible for 34% of the total trough-to-peak recovery in spending, while restaurant reopenings are responsible for 15% of the recovery.”

2. I am greatly looking forward to this forthcoming event on June 15 by Equitable Growth because it is important and it is an area in which my ignorance is great: Data Infrastructure for the 21st Century: A Focus on Racial Equity. Here’s some of the event overview: “Large … racial divides in income, wealth, employment, and other markers of economic well-being … have a tragic human cost. … Pay discrimination, barriers to wealth accumulation, and other forms of systemic racism prevent people from developing and fully deploying their human capital. The Biden administration has … an Equitable Data Working Group. Across many domains, federal data collection and reporting can be improved to better reflect the diversity of our economy. These improvements could then guide policymakers in implementing more finely tuned policies to address the legacy of systemic racism and the differential impacts of recessions and other economic shocks on communities of color. This event will convene a panel of academics to discuss some actionable areas of policy where the Biden administration could take steps to increase the quality and utility of economic data disaggregation and how these steps will lead to better policy outcomes.”

Worthy reads not from Equitable Growth:

1. Here is a very nice video talk from Markus Brunnermeier’s series over at Princeton University: “Oliver Blanchard on Rethinking Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Post-COVID.” The presentation, however, lacks explicit consideration of the end-stage of what Larry Summers started us calling “secular stagnation.” What happens when the era of a safe-asset shortage ends? How can we make it end? And should we now be attempting to do so? Kicking the government debt can down the road is indeed a very profitable and good thing to do when interest rates are at their current values. And perhaps they will stay at their current values for so long that we will look back and see debt accumulation as a very effective way of boosting societal well-being, and wish that we had done more of it. But what happens if interest rates start to normalize is still a relevant question. My view is that it will require action, but that the costs of high debt if interest rates normalize cannot be greater than moderate, if only because the situation can always be handled by financial repression, and while the costs of financial repression are positive, they are moderate. However, I would like smarter people than me thinking about this.

2. Bloomberg Opinion’s Noah Smith tries to account for popular distaste for inflation by claiming that there is an inverse correlation between inflation and real-wage growth. And there is—for supply shock-caused inflation. But for Noah, the claim is that people hate inflation, not that people hate supply shock-caused inflation, which is the kind that reduces worker well-being. But there are other kinds of inflation as well: wage-push inflation and demand-pull inflation. Wage-push inflation is definitely associated with higher real wages for the working class and thus for the overwhelming bulk of the electorate. Demand-pull inflation produces wealth for those who find themselves holding positions at bottlenecks, but also tends to boost wages because it squeezes non-bottleneck profits when the labor market gets tight. And yet the claim I see in the public discourse is that demand-pull inflation—the kind we are hoping to get over the next eighteen months—is massively unpopular as well. Why? Smith does not have an answer. Read his “Why Do People Hate Inflation?,” in which he writes: “I don’t think we should be panicking about inflation yet. But … why do we even care … in the first place? … Inflation really made people very upset from maybe around 1974 to around 1983. That roughly coincides with when inflation was actually high in America. … When you look at a graph of nominal wages, it sure looks like inflation doesn’t affect it very much. … Now look at a graph of real wages! It’s all over the place! … It sure looks like nominal wages are sticky, meaning that inflation—if it happens for the wrong reasons—can reduce workers’ wages and real purchasing power. … Why is it so hard for workers to negotiate cost-of-living raises? Why was this so hard even in the late 60s and 70s, when unions were much stronger than they are today? What is broken in our wage-setting process? If we can answer that question, we might have a chance of fixing it.”

Posted in Uncategorized

U.S. jobs report: Amid robust employment gains in May policymakers need to consider the future direction of demand-driven employment growth across industries

Posted on by Maria Monroe
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The recovery in U.S. employment picked up some steam last month. According to the latest Employment Situation Summary by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy in May gained 559,000 jobs, compared to the unexpectedly low 278,000 jobs added in April. While still 3.3 percentage points below its pre-coronavirus recession level, the share of adults between the ages of 25 and 54 with a job—the prime-age employment-to-population-ratio—rose from 76.9 to 77.1. But the share of adults either employed or actively looking for a job declined slightly, with the labor force participation rate going from 61.7 percent in April to 61.6 percent in May. Troublingly, the U.S. labor force participation rate remains at roughly the same level as in June of last year.

A closer look at the report shows how different groups of workers are experiencing the U.S. labor market. The jobless rate for Black workers fell from 9.7 percent to 9.1 percent between mid-April and mid-May, but continues to be higher than for any major racial or ethnic group. For Latinx workers the unemployment rate now stands at 7.3 percent, for Asian American workers at 5.5 percent, and for White workers at 5.1 percent. After remaining flat between March and April, the share of women who are employed climbed from 52.8 percent to 53.1 percent between April and May. For men that same number rose from 63.3 percent to 63.4 percent. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

Share of the U.S. population that is employed, by gender, 2007-2021. Recessions are shaded.

In addition, over the past few months net job gains have been especially robust in service-providing industries as the U.S. labor market makes uneven progress toward a recovery. Between February and May, the leisure and hospitality industry recovered 847,000 jobs—more than any other major sector. It was followed by education and health services, which added 216,000 jobs. Other services—an industry that includes subsectors such as personal care and repair services— added 82,000 jobs. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2

Net change in U.S. employment (in thousands) by industry, February 2021-May 2021

As industries that experienced the brunt of the economic shock gain some ground, it is worth understanding how the economic recovery from this recession could be different from previous ones in order to best design and implement policies that will foster a more inclusive and thus more robust recovery.

At their onset, economic downturns tend to be hardest on goods-producing sectors such as  manufacturing, since consumption of durable goods tends to be especially sensitive to fluctuations in the business cycle. In other words, in bad times consumers tend to cut back on their spending of products such as cars and furniture more so than on food or services related to health or education.

Yet the coronavirus recession hit service-providing industries early and hard. This turmoil roiled groups of workers who are not usually among the most exposed to job losses at the start of recessions—namely women of color who suffered the deepest employment losses in part due to their overrepresentation in service-sector jobs. In addition, the concentration of the shock in services industries could have consequences for the progression of economic recovery based on demand effects.

Martin Bejara at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Christian Wolf at the University of Chicago, for example, propose that all else being equal, recessions driven by a drop in demand for services are followed by weaker recoveries than recessions driven by a shortfall in demand for durable goods. The reason is that as economic conditions improve consumers are more likely to go ahead with their plans to purchase, say, household appliances, than make up all their missing spending on services such as haircuts or dinning out. In the context of the continuing pandemic, this adds even more uncertainty to the U.S. economic outlook.

While there may be limits how much spending on services will increase to make up for the drop in demand as the economy begins to recover, some economists argue that as COVID-19 vaccination rates increase and more businesses reopen, pent-up demand for travel, entertainment, and postponed health care are helping drive a bounce back. In addition, research shows that policies such as expanded Unemployment Insurance benefits allowed many workers to keep up their spending and protected the overall economy from a shortfall in demand for goods and services—a finding that highlights the need to maintain enhancements to jobless benefits and address racial disparities in benefit take-up.

The upshot: Directing stimulus to those hardest hit in recessions can reduce the overall shock of a downturn, and Unemployment Insurance is an effective tool for targeted aid to those who have lost income.

Conclusion

Between February and April of last year the U.S. economy lost more than 22 million jobs. As of last month, the labor market continues to be at a 7.6 million deficit with respect to February 2020—a deficit that is even larger when comparing it to where the labor market would be absent the recession. In addition, there is evidence that there is more slack in the U.S. labor market than top-line statistics suggest, with new research by economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank finding that without accounting for the unique circumstances accompanying this recession, the metrics most often used to measure the health of the U.S. economy could be painting an overtly optimistic picture.

Despite evidence that millions of workers are still struggling, largely overstated fears over potential labor shortages led many state governors to prematurely opt-out of federal Unemployment Insurance programs. As of the release of this column, 25 states have decided to slash the additional $300 in weekly jobless benefits before they expire on Labor Day in September. Most of these states are also withdrawing from the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which extends the number of weeks workers can claim benefits for, and from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which also expires on Labor Day, meaning that many workers who are self-employed, cannot work due to COVID-19-related reasons, or have limited work histories will stop receiving UI benefits altogether.

This is all why policymakers and analysts should be cautious when claiming the U.S. economy has fully bounced back—overstating the health of the labor market can lead to policies that hold back a strong and equitable recovery.

Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: May 2021 Report Edition

Posted on by Carmen Sanchezcumming

On June 4, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of May. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth staff highlighting important trends in the data.

The prime-age employment-to-population ratio increased slightly in May from 76.9 percent to 77.1 percent as the labor market added 559,000 jobs.

Share of 25- to -54-year-olds who are employed, 2007, 2021. Recessions are shaded.

Unemployment rates seem to have fallen for all racial and ethnic groups, but remain significantly higher for Black workers at 9.1 percent and Latinx workers at 7.3 percent.

U.S. unemployment rate by race, 2000-2021. Recessions are shaded.

Women’s employment rate increased 0.3 percentage points to 53.1 percent while men’s employment rate increased 0.1 percentage point to 63.4 percent.

Share of the U.S. population that is employed, by gender, 2007-2021. Recessions are shaded.

An increasing proportion of unemployed workers reentered the labor force, while the unemployment rate declined to 5.8 percent in May.

Percent of all unemployed workers in the United States by reason for unemployment, 2019-2021

Fewer unemployed workers have been out of employment for more than 15 weeks, led by a decline in unemployed workers without jobs for 27 weeks or more.

Percent of all unemployed U.S. workers by length of time unemployed, 2019-2021