In a new article for the American Prospect, RSF Visiting Scholar William Darity and co-authors Darrick Hamilton, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Alan Aja, and Carolyn Ash examine the challenges faced by historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the U.S. today.
HBCUs have long played a crucial role in nurturing black scholars, writers, and politicians, with alumni that include Thurgood Marshall, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, today the existence of these schools is threatened by dwindling funds. Several HBCUs have reached out to alumni for increased donations, but Darity and his colleagues believe that alumni donations alone are unlikely to lift these institutions out of crisis. They write, “Do blacks generally have the financial capacity to save HBCUs with their own donations to their respective alma maters? Given the historical, cumulative, and persistent black-white wealth gap in the U.S., this is not only unlikely, but a distraction.”
Darity’s research at RSF focuses on the persistent racial wealth gap in the U.S. As he and his colleagues note in the American Prospect, the vast majority of black wealth is held in home equity, which cannot be tapped for alumni donations. Furthermore, the typical black family holds about $7,113 in net worth whereas the median net worth of white families is over $100,000. Instead, the authors recommend reviving HBCUs through a series of broader public policies that would not only fund education, but also help to build black wealth and income. Such initiatives could include a federal jobs-guarantee program, “baby bonds” that ensure trust funds to children born to families whose net wealth falls below the median, and the expansion of Pell Grants for nonprofit institutions.
On October 21, RSF president Sheldon Danziger delivered the 2015 Bicknell Lecture, titled “Poverty, Public Policy and Public Health,” at the Boston University School of Public Health. Danziger, who is co-editor of the 2013 RSF book Legacies of the War on Poverty, has argued that since the early 1970s, economic gains in the U.S. have primarily benefited the elite, while wages for the average worker have remained stagnant.
“The conventional wisdom is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats. But it no longer works that way,” Danziger said in a new interview with BU Today. “The last 40 years have been a period of very slow wage growth and rising inequality.”
These growing disparities in income have led to disparities in health—which, in turn, exacerbate cycles of inequality. As Danziger noted, “Health disparities are tied to poverty rates. Those at the bottom have lower life expectancies, higher unemployment. And the causation goes both ways—people in poor health are less likely to work.”
Danziger’s Bicknell Lecture, which explored the connections between inequality and public health, was followed by a panel discussion with Charles E. Carter (Harvard), Molly Baldwin (Roca Inc.), and Perri Klass (NYU).
RSF president Sheldon Danziger recently participated in a panel discussion titled “Consequences of Global Inequality” with Leila Janah (The Sama Group), Edmund Phelps (Columbia University), and Emira Woods (Thought Works) as part of the Blouin Creative Leadership Summit. Moderated by journalist Eduardo Porter of the New York Times, the panelists discussed the causes and consequences of the decades-long rise of economic inequality among industrialized nations, and in particular, the United States.
Danziger attributed the growing national interest in the topic of income inequality in the U.S. to economic shifts that occurred after the 1960s. Unlike the economic boom following World War II, which allowed many Americans to prosper, the country’s economic gains since the early 1970s have largely failed to reach the poor and the middle class. For several decades, wage increases for most workers have not kept up with inflation, and the social safety net has weakened considerably. As Danziger noted, “For the last thirty years, a rising tide has not lifted all boats.” He added, “The economy has become more hostile to the typical worker.”
The panelists also discussed policies that could alleviate the widening income gap, changes to the global labor market, and the role of the private sector in combating inequality.
Carrie Leana (University of Pittsburgh), a member of RSF’s working group on care work and contributor to the RSF book For Love and Money, has co-authored a new working paper drawing from research supported by the Foundation. In the study, Leana and colleagues Jirs Meuris and Cait Lamberton look at how empathy affects turnover and patient safety among nursing aides who care for the elderly. What does it mean to perform caregiving job with empathy, and how does empathy affect the outcomes of both those who receive care and those who provide it? The abstract states:
In this paper we use inductive and deductive methods to explore the role of empathy in caregiving jobs: Specifically, the relationship between empathetic care, patient safety and employee turnover. We argue that empathetic care is evidenced by extra-role behavior, emotional engagement, and relational richness between paid caregivers and clients. We develop our model using qualitative interviews with paid caregivers, and test it using quantitative case studies in six skilled nursing facilities. We find that empathetic care predicts patient safety but not employee turnover. Moreover, we find that job and life circumstances moderate the relationship between empathetic care and safety. Specifically, patient load, overtime work, and financial hardship dampen the otherwise positive relationship between empathetic care and safety. We find some evidence of a moderating effect of employee self-efficacy in influencing the relationship between empathetic care and turnover. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design of care jobs.