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"SAWHILL, ISABEL"
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The forgotten Americans : an economic agenda for a divided nation
One of the country's leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society--economic, cultural, and political--and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.
Book
Generation Unbound
Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage.
InGeneration Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change \"drifters\" into \"planners.\" In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts \"planners,\" who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with \"drifters,\" who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States.
Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of unplanned pregnancies to a culture in which adults only have children when they are ready to be a parent.
eBook
Improving the Fortunes of America’s Working Class
The prosperity of America’s working class depends on trends in their employment and earnings, but also on the social protection and income supplements they receive as a result of government policy. Since 2000, working-class wages climbed slowly once we account for the increase in consumer prices. Nonetheless, the total personal income of lower- and middle-income families increased considerably faster than their wages. As documented in the article, the income gains were in part the result of rising fringe benefits from employers and even more the result of rising government subsidies for health insurance and social protection. The article recommends a range of policies to increase the pace of working-class income gains, including macroeconomic policies that increase the duration of economic expansions, reforms in labor law to improve workers’ bargaining power, boosting the minimum wage, and revising occupational training of non-college-educated workers to boost their earning power.
Journal Article
The Decline of the American Family: Can Anything Be Done to Stop the Damage?
We have spent many years studying what has been happening to the American family. Haskins first addressed the issue when he was with the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over several social programs, especially the programs for adoption and foster care and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which required knowledge of research on family well-being. He began writing about family issues shortly after he joined the Brookings Institution in 2001 (Haskins and Sawhill 2003). Sawhill’s first book, coauthored with Heather Ross, and published in 1975, was about the growth of single-parent families and their consequences for children (Ross and Sawhill 1975).
Journal Article
The future of family-friendly policies
Families are under increasing stress from the rising cost of raising children, especially single-parent households and those where both parents work. Lack of paid family leave and dependable child care are issues receiving increased attention. A panel of experts explores different options for addressing these problems, including the issue of where funds may come from if added government spending is seen as part of the solution, as well as potential remedies that do not require government programs.
Journal Article
For Love and Money? The Impact of Family Structure on Family Income
What do the half-century decline in U.S. marriage and the attendant rise in single parenthood mean for the economic well-being of children, especially children living in single-parent families? Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill show how differing living arrangements can be expected to affect families' economic well-being. Married-parent and cohabiting households, for example, can benefit from economies of scale and from having two adult earners. The availability of child support for single-parent families and the marriage penalties in the tax and transfer system reduce but rarely completely offset the economic benefits of marriage. Consistent with these expectations, national data on family income show that across all races and for a variety of income measures, children in lone-parent families (single-parent households with no cohabiter) have less family income and are more likely to be poor than children in married-parent families. Cohabiting families are generally better off economically than lone-parent families, but considerably worse off than married-parent families. Thomas and Sawhill acknowledge the possibility that the link between family structure and family resources may not be causal. But new research that simulates marriages between existing single mothers and unattached men with similar characteristics suggests that family structure does affect family resources and that child poverty rates would drop substantially if these mothers were to marry. It does not necessarily follow, however, that policymakers ought to, or even can, do anything about family structure. Marriage is not an economic cure-all for the complex problem of child poverty. It would be a mistake for policymakers to focus on promoting marriage to the exclusion of encouraging and rewarding work or addressing problems such as early out-of-wedlock child-bearing. Still, Thomas and Sawhill conclude that a continuation of recent declines in single parenthood, linked most recently to declines in teen and out-of-wedlock births, offers great promise for improving the economic welfare of U.S. children.
Journal Article
Creating an Opportunity Society
Presents facts and factors that contribute to economic opportunity, looking at how poor, middle class, and rich have fared in recent decades. Proposes a cost-effective agenda for increasing opportunity, consistent with American values, and focuses on improving lives of the young and disadvantaged, emphasizing individual responsibility as indispensable for success.
eBook
Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget
The United States is standing at a critical juncture in its fiscal outlook. After experiencing a brief period of budget surpluses at the turn of the century, the federal government will run deficits that add about $4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Substantial deficits will likely continue long into the future because the looming retirement of the baby boom generation will raise spending in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. At the same time, the federal government appears to be neglecting spending in key areas of social and economic policy. The nation thus faces a vital choice: continue down a path toward future fiscal crisis while under investing in critical areas, or increase resources in high-priority areas while also reducing the overall budget deficit. This choice will materially affect Americans' economic status and security in the immediate future as well as over long horizons. In Restoring Fiscal Sanity,a group of Brookings scholars with high-level government experience provide an overview of the country's likely medium- and long-term spending needs and the resources available to pay for them. They propose three alternative fiscal paths that are more responsible than the current path. One plan emphasizes spending cuts, the second emphasizes revenue increases, and a third is a balanced mix between the two.
The contributors address the policy choices in such areas as defense, homeland security, international assistance, and programs targeted to the less advantaged, the elderly, and other domestic priorities. In the process, they provide an understanding of the short- and long-run trade offs and illustrate how the budget can be reshaped to achieve high priority objectives in a fiscally responsible way.
eBook
Following the Evidence to Reduce Unplanned Pregnancy and Improve the Lives of Children and Families
A growing number of policy-makers and program leaders at the federal, state, and community levels are committed to using unbiased evidence to guide them in solving tough problems. This progress should be celebrated. The bipartisan Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, which sought to ensure that policy-makers have reliable information and evidence to help them decide how best to manage and improve government programs and policies, has already played an important role in institutionalizing the use of evidence and scientific facts to create federal policy. In fact, many of its recommendations have already been incorporated in bipartisan legislation. Here, we illustrate the role that evidence can play in informing policy through an issue about which the three authors of this article care deeply - improving the lives of American children and families by reducing unplanned pregnancy. Specifically, we focus on evidence and policy regarding one of the most powerful and effective strategies to achieve this goal: increasing access to the most effective forms of contraception.
Journal Article
Modeling Equal Opportunity
We examine the themes of equal opportunity, intergenerational mobility, and inequality. We address the normative and definitional questions of selecting measures of mobility and summarize the current state of intergenerational mobility in the United States and abroad. We introduce a new microsimulation model, the Social Genome Model (SGM), which provides a framework for measuring success in each stage of the life cycle. We show how the SGM can be used not only to understand the pathways to the middle class, but also to simulate the impact of policy interventions on rates of mobility.
Journal Article