Skip to Navigation

RSF Review

RSF Review

Daniel Goldstein TED Talk: Connecting Present and Future Selves

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Tue, 2012-02-21 12:36
in

Rohan Mascarenhas, Russell Sage Foundation
February 21, 2012

Last year, we discussed a study that examined a new way to encourage people to save for retirement. The study, partially funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, attempted to align savers' present-day interests with those of their future, older selves by showing them, among other things, digitally aged photos of themselves. One of the study's authors, psychologist Daniel Goldstein, talks more about the evidence and theory behind the experiment in the TED Talk below. Read the full text of the study for more.

Read More

Tags: Behavioral Economics
View all posts by Rohan Mascarenhas

Perceptions of Wealth in America

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Fri, 2012-02-17 11:57
in

Rohan Mascarenhas, Russell Sage Foundation
February 17, 2012

In a famous 2011 study, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely conducted a survey that asked a sample of Americans to build their ideal distribution of wealth. They also asked respondents to estimate how much wealth each quintile in America actually had. The results, depicted in the graph below (Adobe Flash required), were surprising:

Read More

Tags: Behavioral Economics, social inequality
View all posts by Rohan Mascarenhas

An Interview with William Marsiglio and Kevin Roy: New Policies to Help Fathers

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Tue, 2012-02-14 10:46
in

Rohan Mascarenhas, Russell Sage Foundation
February 14, 2012

Fatherhood-PolicyWilliam Marsiglio (University of Florida) and Kevin Roy (University of Maryland) are the co-authors of Nurturing Dads: Social Initiatives for Contemporary Fatherhood (Russell Sage Foundation, 2012). The book explores the ways new initiatives can address the social, cultural, and economic challenges men face in contemporary families.

Q: Let’s start with your book’s title. You argue that contemporary models often equate “good” fathering with the ability to bring home a weekly paycheck. You say this framework is too narrow and is being redefined. What is the new model you propose?

A: To be clear, for a few decades now, part of the cultural narrative about fatherhood has included references to the “new age father” or the “new father.” Scholars and other commentators of family life have highlighted how fathers are increasingly more active with and nurturing toward their children. Thus we are not the first to call for the public to support men’s nurturance of their children.

But we do, in a fairly comprehensive way, draw attention to the limitations of formal federal and state policies that hinge on fathers’ lack of residence, marriage status, or financial contribution. At the same time, we advocate for a new cultural discourse about fathering that will guide an eclectic yet coordinated set of initiatives to help fathers in all sorts of circumstances become more nurturing and responsive to their children’s everyday needs. The social transformation we seek will ensure that good fathering is widely defined to accentuate nurturance to the same extent, perhaps more so, than financial support. We stress diverse initiatives to forge unconditional, positive bonds between fathers and their children.

Read More

Tags: Author Interviews, Rose Series
View all posts by Rohan Mascarenhas

An Interview with Julia Ott: The Rise of Mass Investment in America

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Mon, 2012-02-13 10:30
in

Rohan Mascarenhas, Russell Sage Foundation
February 13, 2012

Julia Ott and Wall StreetJulia Ott is an assistant professor of history at the New School. A former RSF Visiting Scholar, Ott is also the author of When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investor's Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2011), which chronicles the initial phase of mass investment at the turn of the 20th century and the issues surrounding it.

Q: Your book starts at the turn of the 20th century, when less than 1 percent of Americans owned stocks or bonds (compared to 50 percent of households in 2007). What was prevailing sentiment about financial securities and markets in that era?

A: No question about it – the prevailing sentiment was negative.

Since the nation’s founding, Americans for the most part had viewed financial securities, the individuals who traded bonds and stocks, and the private associations (like the New York Stock Exchange) that administered securities exchanges as antithetical to their most cherished economic ideals, political values, and savings practices. Popular economic thought held that economic value derived from diligent labor and steadfast thrift—qualities utterly absent in the scuffle of the stock exchanges’ trading floors. American political culture identified ownership and control of real property as the foundation of a citizen’s virtue and independence, of his investment in the nation. Bonds, stocks, and the malefactors who traded them seemed to imperil this ideal of proprietary democracy. The lure of speculative riches subverted the work ethic; it diverted capital from productive pursuits.

At the start of the twentieth century, financial securities and markets played a very limited role in the way in which most Americans saved money and most firms acquired funds. Most people considered the stock and bond markets to be insiders’ games, rigged against investors of modest means who lacked access to adequate information about the corporations whose securities they might purchase. And because New York City banks (which held the reserves of other banks across the nation) loaned money to securities brokers (these brokers’ loans paid a high rate of interested and could be called in at any time), stock market declines produced terrible consequences for the financial system.

Take the Panic of 1907 as one example. In October, an unsuccessful attempt to corner the market in the stock of the United Copper Company ended in the failure of participating brokerages. Frightened depositors clamored to recover their savings from banks associated with the scheme. The resulting collapse of the third-largest trust company in New York City wreaked havoc. Faith in financial institutions evaporated; even depositors at sound banks and trusts lined up to withdraw their money. Depositors’ demands forced regional banks to call in their reserves from the New York City banks. These, in turn, demanded the repayment of loans made to brokers, who sold stock to pay those banks. The stock market plummeted and credit markets froze, driving all kinds of borrowers into bankruptcy. With no central bank to step in, it fell to J. P. Morgan to stem the crisis. Americans weren’t particularly thrilled to discover just how much financial stability depended upon one man.

Read More

Tags: Author Interviews, Visiting Scholar
View all posts by Rohan Mascarenhas

E-Verify in Arizona: Lessons from the Legal Arizona Workers Act

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Wed, 2012-02-08 11:32
in

Linda Strean, Public Policy Institute of California
February 8, 2012

arizona-immigrationArizona reduced the number of unauthorized immigrants in the state by requiring employers to verify workers’ legal status with the national E-Verify system. But while the Legal Arizona Workers Act—which took effect in 2008— has so far achieved this intended goal, it has also had unintended results. It has pushed a substantial number of unauthorized immigrants into informal employment, as measured by increasing rates of self-employment. These are the results of a study released by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) with funding from the Russell Sage Foundation.

The study estimates that Arizona’s population of unauthorized immigrants of working age fell by about 17 percent, or about 92,000 people, from 2008 to 2009 as a result of the law. This decline is greater than those in comparison states—including California—during the recent recession.

Arizona’s law is the most restrictive and comprehensive effort by a state so far to reduce employment of unauthorized workers—those in the United States without proper documentation. It requires that a licensed business use the national online E-Verify database to confirm that newly hired employees are legally authorized to work and imposes sanctions on an employer who continues to hire them. Because the law excludes independent contractors from its definition of an employee, self-employment or other less formal arrangements are ways to avoid E-Verify.

Read More

Tags: immigration
View all posts by Linda Strean

The Votes of the White Working Class

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Tue, 2012-02-07 12:26
in

February 7, 2012

dorothy-sue-cobble-essayHow has the voting behavior of the white working class changed over the past 40 years? The question has generally divided pundits in two camps: the first, following Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, argues that workers prefer to vote on a values agenda (abortion, for example, or gay marriage) rather than on income-related issues (tax cuts for the wealthy, or higher spending). The other view holds that the data show the white working-class has largely stayed with the Democratic Party outside the South. 

Former Visiting Scholar Dorothy Sue Cobble enters into the fray in the latest issue of Dissent. In a powerful essay, she argues that too many in academia espouse an "anti-worker trope [that] runs deep and wide." She writes:

The popularity on the left of Thomas Frank...is but one example of how the stereotype of the reactionary, irrational worker still resonates. In 2004, surveying the scene in Kansas, Frank sadly concluded that the working classes just don't know their own best interests...This narrative, like all false consiousness narratives, reeks of condescension and arrogance. It presumes, for example, the existence of an obvious correct political alternative--the New Democrats?--and it judges as blind and delusional those who don't see the same mirage as the enlightened storyteller.

Read More

Tags: Visiting Scholar

Daniel Kahneman Talks to The Economist

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Mon, 2012-02-06 11:55
in

February 6, 2012

The Economist talked to Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman about his new book Thinking, Fast and Slow and his research on decision-making, well-being and behavioral economics. During the course of the interview, Kahneman, a member of RSF's Behavioral Economics Roundtable, offers suggestions for more reading and cites Nudge, a popular book about behavioral economics co-authored by RSF trustee Richard Thaler. Here is a sample of the interview:

Read More

Tags: Behavioral Economics

Reading List: Inequality and Economic Mobility

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Wed, 2012-02-01 17:13
in

Rohan Mascarenhas, Russell Sage Foundation
February 1, 2012

Earlier this month, economist (and former RSF trustee) Alan Krueger sparked an extended debate online after discussing the relationship between inequality and economic mobility in a speech at the Center for American Progress.

The Russell Sage Foundation has sponsored a number of studies on social mobility and will publish an edited volume this spring that compares whether and how parents' resources transmit advantage to their children at different stages of development and sheds light on the structural differences among countries that may influence intergenerational mobility.

Until then, those interested in the subject can browse through the journal articles and working papers collected below. This list is by no means exhaustive; suggestions for more citations can be sent here. Where possible, a link to a PDF copy has been included. While many of the papers below are of a technical bent, readers can find an excellent general introduction to the literature here.

Read More

Tags: social inequality
View all posts by Rohan Mascarenhas

Low-Wage Lessons

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Tue, 2012-01-31 11:23
in

January 31, 2012

john-schmittEconomist John Schmitt published a report for the Center for Economic and Policy Research on what policymakers can learn about low-wage work from the recent experiences of the United States and other rich economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Schmitt, co-editor of the RSF volume Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World says the low-wage sector remains a major part of labor markets in industrialized countries:

Over the last two decades, high – and, in some countries, rising – rates of low-wage work have emerged as a major political concern. According to the OECD, in 2009, about one-fourth of U.S. workers were in low-wage jobs, defined as earning less than two-thirds of the national median hourly wage (see first figure below). About one-fifth of workers in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, and Germany were receiving low wages by the same definition. In all but a handful of the rich OECD countries, more than 10 percent of the workforce was in a low-wage job.

If low-wage jobs act as a stepping stone to higher-paying work, then even a relatively high share of low-wage work may not be a serious social problem. If, however, as appears to be the case in much of the wealthy world, low-wage work is a persistent and recurring state for many workers, then low-wages may contribute to broader income and wealth inequality and constitute a threat to social cohesion.

Read More

Tags: Future of Work

Edward Telles Expands Study of Race and Inequality

Submitted by R Mascarenhas on Wed, 2012-01-25 10:40
in

January 25, 2012

edward tellesPrinceton University has published a fascinating profile of Edward Telles, a former RSF Visiting Scholar and co-author of Generations of Exclusions: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race. The article briefly explains the story behind the book:

When an old UCLA library was being retrofitted to meet earthquake-related building codes, workers found boxes in the basement with 1,200 surveys done in the 1960s of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in San Antonio and Los Angeles.

Telles and fellow UCLA sociologist Vilma Ortiz decided to follow up with the original respondents, as the surveys provided unique information about assimilation unavailable through census data.

"People were writing about what was going to happen to Mexicans, often with no data," Telles said.

Read More

Tags: immigration, Visiting Scholar