The seventh annual India Policy Forum conference convened in New Delhi from July 13-14. This seventh volume of the India Policy Forum, edited by Suman Bery, Barry Bosworth and Arvind Panagariya, cover economic growth, infrastructure, and politics in India. The editors' summary appears below, and you can download a PDF version of the volume, or access individual articles by clicking on the following links:

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EDITORS' SUMMARY

The India Policy Forum held its seventh conference on July 13 and 14, 2010 in New Delhi. This issue of the journal contains the papers and the discussions presented at the conference, which cover a wide range of issues. The first paper examines the services sector in India, evaluating its growth and future prospects. The second paper looks at India’s corporate sector, analyzing the profitability of firms in the wake of liberalization. The third paper explores the reasons for the large time and cost overruns that have been endemic to Indian infrastructure projects. The final two papers focus on more political issues, looking at the impact of political reservations used to increase women’s political voice, as well as the politics of intergovernmental resource transfers.

Among fast-growing developing countries, India is distinctive for the role of the service sector. Whereas many earlier rapidly growing economies emphasized the export of labor-intensive manufactures, India’s recent growth has relied to a greater extent on the expansion of services. Although there are other emerging markets where the share of services in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) exceeds the share of manufacturing, India stands out for the dynamism of its service sector. Barry Eichengreen and Poonam Gupta critically analyze this rapid service-sector growth in their paper “The Service Sector as India’s Road to Economic Growth?”

Skeptics have raised doubts about both the quality and sustainability of the increase in service-sector activity. They have observed that employment in services is concentrated in the informal sector, personal services, and public administration—activities with limited spillovers and relatively little scope for productivity improvement. They downplay information technology and communications-related employment on the grounds that these sectors are small and use little unskilled and semi-skilled labor, the implication being that a labor-abundant economy cannot rely on them to move people out of low-productivity agriculture. Some argue that the rapid growth of service sector employment simply reflects the outsourcing of activities previously conducted in-house by manufacturing firms—in other words, that it is little more than a relabeling of existing employment. They question whether shifting labor from agriculture directly to services confers the same benefits in terms of productivity growth and living standards as the more conventional pattern of shifting labor from agriculture to manufacturing in the early stages of economic development.

This paper evaluates these claims, coming up with an in-depth look at the services sector in India. Eichengreen and Gupta find that the growth of the sector has been unusually rapid, starting 15 years ago from a very low level. The acceleration of service-sector growth is widespread across activities, but the modern services such as business services, communication, and banking are the fastest growing activities. Other rapidly growing service sectors are hotels, restaurants, education, health, trade, and transport. Some observers have dismissed the growth of modern services on the grounds that these activities constitute only a small share of output and therefore contribute only modestly to the growth of GDP. However, the results show that the contribution of the category communication, business services, and financial services has in fact risen to the point where this group contributes more to growth of GDP than manufacturing. A slightly broader grouping of communication, business services, financial services, education, health, and hotels accounted for roughly half of total growth of the service sector in 2000–08. These activities explain most of the post-1990 acceleration in service sector growth.

Modern services have been the fastest growing in India and their takeoff began at much lower incomes than in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. This, clearly, is a unique aspect of the Indian growth experience. Furthermore, the expansion of the modern service sector is not simply disguised manufacturing activity. Only a relatively small fraction of the growth of demand for services reflects outsourcing from manufacturing. Most production that does not go towards exports, in fact, derives from fi nal demand at home. Thus, the growth of service sector employment does more to add to total employment outside agriculture than outsourcing arguments would lead one to expect.

Looking at the proximate determinants of services growth, Eichengreen and Gupta show that tradable services have grown 4 percentage points a year faster than nontradable services, other things equal. Services that have been liberalized have also grown significantly faster than the average. Regulatory change has been an important part of the story: where essentially all services were heavily regulated in 1970, the majority have since been partially or wholly deregulated. The services segments which were both liberalized and tradable grew 7–8 percentage points higher than the control group (nontradable/nonliberalized services). All this implies that policy makers should continue to encourage exports of IT, communication, fi nancial, and business services while also liberalizing activities like education, health care, and retail trade, where regulation has inhibited the ability of producers to meet domestic demand.

The fact that the share of services has now converged more or less to the international norm raises questions about whether it will continue growing so rapidly. In particular, it will depend on the continued expansion of modern services (business services, communication, and banking). But, in addition, an important share of the growth will result from the application of modern information technology to more traditional services (retail and wholesale trade, transport and storage, public administration and defense). This second aspect obviously has more positive implications for output than for employment.

Finally, the authors find that the mix of skilled and unskilled labor in manufacturing and services is increasingly similar. Thus it is no longer obvious that manufacturing will need to be the main destination for the vast majority of Indian labor moving out of agriculture, or that modern services are a viable destination only for the highly skilled few. To the extent that modern manufacturing and modern services are both constrained by the availability of skilled labor, growth in both areas underscores the importance for India of increasing investments in labor skills.

The paper concludes that sustaining economic growth and raising living standards will require shifting labor out of agriculture into both manufacturing and services, not just one or the other. The argument that India needs to build up labor-intensive manufacturing and the argument that it should exploit its comparative advantage in services are often posed in opposition to one another. Eichengreen and Gupta argue that these two routes to economic growth and higher incomes are in fact complements, not incompatible alternatives.

In their paper “Sources of Corporate Profits in India: Business Dynamism or Advantages of Entrenchment?” Ashoka Mody, Anusha Nath, and Michael Walton ask whether the liberalization during the last two decades has led to increased competition, characterized by innovation and growth, or to profiteering through entrenchment and increased market power of the large firms. While the authors consider various indicators of market structures, the main focus of their analysis is the evolution of the profit rate at the firm level in the wake of liberalization. The authors find that while liberalization induced considerable new entry in the 1990s, that pattern did not continue into the 2000s. On the whole, the major business houses and public sector firms were able to maintain their dominance in terms of market share. 

The authors employ firm-level data from the Prowess database, which provides detailed information on large- and medium-sized companies in India. They focus on firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. While they present some trends for the period spanning 1989–2009, their core econometric analysis covers the shorter period from 1993 to 2007, during which the sample size increased from 1,000 to about 2,300 firms. Several significant conclusions emerge from the authors’ discussion of corporate and macroeconomic trends and their econometric analysis.

First, despite some deviations in the early years, they find a consistent pattern that the corporate profit rate—measured as a return on assets—has gone up and down in line with overall economic growth. Profit rates were high in the early 1990s (with a median rate of 10–12 percent) when growth accelerated and fell subsequently as GDP growth decelerated until around 2001 (reaching about 4 percent). The rates rose again (to about 8 percent in 2007–08) as growth in the Indian economy accelerated again.

Second, unless the expansion of the tradable sectors lagged behind the growth in nontradable sectors—a possibility that cannot be ruled out—the trade liberalization of the late 1980s did not have a major influence on corporate profi ts. There is a striking similarity in the evolution of profitability in the tradable and nontradable sectors, both moving in unison with domestic growth. Tradable sectors enjoyed a somewhat higher profit rate than nontradable sectors.

In contrast to trade liberalization, industrial deregulation was associated with a more definite impact on profitability. Following deregulation around 1991, the number of firms increased in virtually all sectors. This increase was associated with reduced market shares. The authors’ econometric analysis suggests that smaller market shares, in turn, were associated with reduced profitability. Thus, in the second half of the 1990s, slower GDP growth and the scramble for market shares both contributed to driving down profit rates. 

The bulk of new entry, in terms of numbers, was of Indian stand-alone firms, but both government-owned firms and business houses remain dominant in terms of sales and asset shares. Indeed, the share of business houses in the total sales rose slightly from 41 percent in 1989 to 42 percent in 2008.

Firm profitability does show substantial year-to-year persistence, raising the possibility of some market power. But the persistence declines when profitability is averaged over longer periods (up to four years), implying that some “super-normal” profits are whittled away over time. Also, more efficient firms tend to have more persistent profits. Thus, some part of the persistence reflects greater efficiency, although because of the overlap between efficient and large firms, the possibility that market power may play a role in maintaining the profit rate over time cannot be completely ruled out.

There is no consistent evidence of a general influence of market concentration on profitability: if anything, firms in less concentrated sectors have slightly higher profit rates. The 2000s witnessed some reconcentration in some sectors, affecting about a third of all the firms, but the profit behavior of firms in re-concentrating sectors appears to be similar to that in the overall sample. Firms with growing market shares do enjoy higher profitability, but the pattern of results is more consistent with causality fl owing in the other direction, that is, with the success of dynamism. In particular, this association is at least as strong for small firms and for less concentrated industries. 

This said, following significant new entry and competition for market shares in the first half of the 1990s, the pace of entry abruptly stalled in the late 1990s, market shares stabilized, and concentration rates started to rise again in some sectors. Thus, the findings are also consistent with the possibility that the phase of competitive dynamism may be diminishing, with incentives for the exercise of market power and investment in business– government relationships being on the rise.

Finally, the authors’ econometric results show that the faster a firm grew, the higher was its profitability. Supporting descriptive statistics add interesting nuances to this finding. The gap in firms’ growth rates opened up in the 2000–07 period. During that period, the fast-growing firms opened up the largest gap in profitability rates relative to the medium-growth firms. Slow growing firms, typically much smaller in size, have had particularly low profit rates and have actually been shrinking in terms of real sales. This suggests that efficiency was rewarded: the dynamic medium-sized firms were able to grow fast and garner sizeable profits, reinforcing their ability to grow. The smallest firms fell increasingly behind. Thus, the shakeout resulted in a potentially more efficient structure.

Greatly expanded level of infrastructure investment is critical to sustaining Indian economic growth. During the last decade, an increasing volume of funds has been allocated to building infrastructure, and successive governments have accorded infrastructure a high priority. Nevertheless, delays and cost overruns remain large and frequent. Moreover, owing to a paucity of research on the subject, our understanding of the causes behind the cost and time overruns and their remedies remains poor. These issues assume additional importance in view of the recent changes in the official procurement policy in infrastructure. The central government as well as state governments are increasingly looking to private funding for infrastructure projects principally through public–private partnerships (PPPs). Though a shortage of funds within the government sector is largely responsible for this shift, there is equally a belief that private-sector participation can reduce delays and cost overruns. However, there is insufficient empirical work to either support or repudiate this confidence in the superiority of the private sector.

In his paper “Determinants of Cost Overruns in Public Procurement of Infrastructure: Roads and Railways,” Ram Singh provides a detailed analysis of time and cost overruns in infrastructure projects in India using two large datasets that contain information on the key dates for implementing and completing projects and the difference between planned and actual costs. The first dataset includes 934 infrastructure projects completed during April 1992–June 2009. The second dataset includes 195 road projects under the supervision of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The analysis develops several hypotheses and subjects them to empirical testing. Among other issues, the paper compares delays and cost overruns in PPPs with traditionally funded projects.

A simple tabulation of the data shows large cost overruns, averaging 15 percent, and time delays of about 80 percent. However, the author also finds that delays and cost overruns have declined over time. It is also evident that time delays are the primary cause of cost overruns and that larger projects lead to larger percentage cost overruns. Projects in sectors such as roads, railways, urban development, civil aviation, shipping and ports, and power have experienced much longer delays and higher cost overruns than those in other sectors, but the author finds no evidence of any regional pattern of cost overruns or delays. He suggests that incompleteness in the initial planning and contracting is responsible for many of the cost overruns.

The study shows that the design of the contract has a significant bearing on the level of delays. Traditional item-rate contracts provide little or no incentives to avoid delays. In contrast, since a PPP allows contractors to reap returns as soon as the project is complete, it creates a strong incentive to complete the project at the earliest possible date. Moreover, by bundling responsibility for maintenance with construction, the PPP also motivates contractors to avoid compromising on quality. Somewhat surprisingly, PPP projects experience higher cost overruns even though they have significantly lower time delays. The author attributes the shorter time delays to the fact that the project revenues do not begin until it is complete. The larger cost overruns are more puzzling, but may reflect incentives to expand the scope of the project.

Finally, according to the author, a comparison of road with railways sector projects suggests that organizational factors also contribute to delays and cost overruns. The author identifies three specific aspects. The railways sector is slower during planning and contracting phases. Second, contract management by the railways sector is poorer than by the roads sector. While the NHAI awards most project works to a single contractor, the railways award different works to different contractors. This results in poor project coordination. Third, in the railways sector, projects are allocated funds only for the relevant fiscal year and this is done in the second half of the year. The NHAI’s project delivery mechanism is not subject to this constraint.

Despite recent progress in India toward the social inclusion and empowerment of women, their presence in the country’s state and national lawmaking bodies remains low, raising concerns about how well women’s interests are represented. Previous empirical evidence has substantiated these concerns: women have different policy preferences than men, and elected leaders tend to implement policies in line with their own personal policy preferences, regardless of earlier campaign promises. These arguments provide an important motivation for gender-based affirmative-action policies.

In order to increase women’s political voice, the Indian government amended its constitution in 1993, devolving significant decision-making powers to village-level councils called Gram Panchayats (GPs) and requiring a randomly selected third of all members and leaders (Pradhans) of these councils to be reserved for women. Most recently, in 2010, the upper house of the Indian parliament passed a bill applying similar reservation requirements to the state and national levels of government in the face of considerable resistance and skepticism. Despite the widespread adoption of such gender-reservation policies, several concerns about their effectiveness remain. First, little will change if husbands of female leaders elected to reserved seats lead by proxy, and second, reservation could leave fewer seats to be contested among other disadvantaged groups for which reservations were not established, such as India’s Muslims.

Using new data spanning 11 Indian states, the paper by Lori Beaman, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, and Petia Topalova, “Political Reservation and Substantive Representation: Evidence from Indian Village Councils,” assesses the impact of introducing political reservation in India’s GPs, with particular attention to the aforementioned concerns. In conducting their study, the authors collect GP meeting data across fi ve economically and socially heterogeneous states, obtain data on public-good provision from a nationwide survey, and conduct their own survey of 165 GPs within the Birbhum district of West Bengal.

The study examines the effect of reservations in local village councils; the results are likely to be applicable to similar provisions within higher levels of government because the electoral process is the same, voter participation is high, and political parties invest significant resources in elections across all levels of government. Furthermore, by exploiting the random assignment of GP gender reservations, the authors are able to ensure that observed effects can be attributed to political reservations, rather than other factors, such as social attitudes toward women and local demand for public goods. The expansive data and novel study design allow the authors to shed light on three distinct elements of the debate on gender reservations in policymaking: politician selection, citizen participation in politics, and policymaking. 

First, the authors assess the degree to which reservation affects politician selection. Encouragingly, they fi nd no evidence that reservation for women has caused the crowding-out of other politically underrepresented social groups. Evidence does suggest, however, that women elected to reserved seats are less experienced and more likely to enlist their husband’s help in carrying out their duties as Pradhan. Nevertheless, two years into their tenure, female Pradhans from reserved GPs claim they are as comfortable and effective in their roles as their counterparts in nonreserved seats.

The study also reveals the causal mechanisms through which issues important to women might receive insufficient attention in local government. The authors hypothesize that underinvestment in what they determine are “female-friendly” issues occurs because male leaders either possess entirely different preferences, or discriminate against the viewpoints of the opposite gender, regardless of whether or not their preferences diverge. The study revealed that neither is the case. Leaders in reserved GPs are neither more likely to react positively to a female-friendly issue, nor more likely to respond favorably to the inquiry of a female participant in Village Council (Gram Sabha or GS) meetings. On the contrary, women in both reserved and nonreserved GPs were found to receive more constructive responses in these meetings then men. This suggests that the problem lies not in unsympathetic leadership, but in a lack of female constituent participation in the political process that would voice women’s policy concerns. Accordingly, the study also examines the effect of gender reservation on female participation in politics. Reservation does have a positive effect on whether women participate at all in the GS meeting, and the degree to which they remain engaged throughout the meeting. Therefore, inasmuch as electing women to Pradhan seats continues to encourage the participation of women in GS meetings, the reservations will continue to prove effective.

Finally, the study takes advantage of new data to elucidate earlier claims regarding the effects of political reservations on allocations of public goods. A first dataset, much broader in geographic scope than that of previous studies, confirms earlier findings that female Pradhans elected to reserved seats deliver more drinking water infrastructure, sanitation, and roads than their nonreserved counterparts. However, in exploiting the richer cross-time variation of a second dataset, the study reveals that reservations have a much broader impact across sectors than previously thought. The data from the Birbhum region of West Bengal allow the authors to compare public goods allocation patterns between newly reserved GPs, GPs reserved twice in a row, and GPs that are currently unreserved but were reserved before. These new data indicate that, while continuing to push drinking water investments, women elected in the second term under a reserved seat also invest more in “male issues” such as school repair, health center repair, and irrigation facilities. These investment patterns are found to be enduring, as even male Pradhans elected to previously reserved seats continue to invest in female friendly issues, after female reservation for their GP has expired.

Taken together, the findings of the study provide important insights into how leaders in reserved seats are elected, affect policymaking, and actual policy outcomes. While women elected in reserved GPs do differ from their male counterparts in their experience as leaders, they are able to increase female participation in the political process and make different policy decisions. The basic structure of India’s fiscal federalism was in place within fi ve years of the country’s independence on August 15, 1947. The division of expenditure responsibilities and sources of revenue across units of the federation as well as the institutions for allocating resources between levels of government gave substantial discretion to the central government, thereby concentrating economic and political power at the federal level. The design was understandable in light of the perceived need to combat incipient forces of separatism and the economic logic of planned development. This framework for fiscal federalism has been remarkably stable, however, even as the fears of separatism faded, political power dispersed and new parties representing state interests gained representation at all levels of government, and markets replaced planners in directing investment.

In their paper “Inelastic Institutions: Political Change and Intergovernmental Transfer Oversight in Post-Independence India,” T.N. Srinivasan and Jessica Seddon Wallack examine the persistence, and in some cases strengthening, of centralizing features in India’s fiscal federalism, which is a surprising exception to the general trend toward decentralization that other analysts of India’s political economy have described.

The paper focuses in particular on the two institutions—the Finance Commission (FC) and the Planning Commission (PC)—that oversee the bulk of intergovernmental resource transfers. The FC, a constitutional body designed to be independent of both Center and state constitutionally defined jurisdictions, was created to ensure that states had predictable and stable resources and autonomy in their use. In practice, the FC has played a limited role relative to its constitutional potential. Many have argued that it has unique constitutional authority to oversee intergovernmental revenue transfers, but a substantial portion of these transfers are determined and allocated through the PC instead.

The PC, an entity created by a cabinet resolution and hence a part of the constitutional sphere of the Center, was to advise the Center on planning and plans for national development. In contrast to the FC, the PC has in fact played a much larger role in allocating transfers than advising would necessarily imply. As a transfer mechanism, it facilitates Central government oversight of states’ development policies and has ample scope for Central government discretion in transfers. The centralizing aspects of this arrangement have been highlighted in various high-profile public discussions questioning the division of responsibilities between the FC and the PC as well as the various mechanisms for transfers by the PC. Yet, little has changed in terms of the institutional oversight over resource flows.

The authors explore various explanations for the persistence of these centralizing features and conclude that the most likely explanation lies in the barriers that India’s federal institutions pose to collective action by states. State leaders have ample political reasons to seek greater control over their finances and in fact do appear to care about the centralizing implications of the fiscal federal framework. However, they are divided both by design—state boundaries were in many cases drawn on the basis of linguistic or cultural differences—as well as by the economic reality of diverging fortunes and varying dependence on transfers.

India’s institutions also offer no authoritative forum for states and Central government to discuss federal arrangements and propose alternatives. The available arenas for intergovernmental discussions are either toothless or have structures that create incentives for individualist behavior. The Union Parliament, for example, would be able to effect changes to the federal structure through instruments available to it under the constitution or through constitutional amendments if needed. However, the parliamentary system also gives those state parties that are part of the government a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Srinivasan and Wallack’s analysis implies that there will be limited change in the intergovernmental transfer system, a conclusion that they find worrisome for India’s ability to adjust economically and politically to changing circumstances. Not only does conventional public finance theory favor decentralization of decision making with respect to the financing and provision of public goods and services, especially in heterogeneous societies, but “voices from below” are increasingly valuable as an information source about what is needed in a fast-changing world. They argue that India’s record of government performance also suggests a dearth of accountability, and that real decentralization of roles and responsibilities—not delegated expenditure duties—can be more effective in creating stronger performance incentives.

       

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With the 2010 Census a little over a year away, the nation is at a critical juncture in its planning and preparation for the next decennial enumeration.

There is much at stake. Without a full count of the U.S. population, Congress and the administration will lack the accurate data necessary for reapportionment and redistricting, to make critical decisions about community services, and to distribute $300 billion in federal funds to state and local governments every year.

On March 18, the Brookings Institution and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) hosted a discussion on urgent and emerging issues affecting the coming census. Brookings Vice President and Director of Governance Studies Darrell West set the context on new political realities and how this weighs on the 2010 Census. The panelists, moderated by NPR’s Ron Elving, considered the capacity of the Census Bureau to effectively carry out the enumeration, including an examination of the funds provided in the economic stimulus plan and the Obama administration's budget for the 2010 Census.

The forum also explored the issues facing the Census Bureau as it prepares to implement its communications and outreach plan–a key element in meeting the challenge of reaching Latinos and other hard-to-count populations–with an emphasis on the impact of the nation's changing demographics and political climate. Brookings Fellow Andrew Reamer provided introductory and closing remarks.

After the program, panelists took questions from the audience. 

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• Politics, Policy and the 2010 Decennial Census

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It's almost that time: the once-a-decade-moment when the U.S. Census Bureau tries to determine the population.

Counting more than 300 million residents is a complex and costly operation (an estimated $14 billion), but the results yield the basis for how we apportion Congress, distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds and understand basic changes to the number and geographic distribution of U.S. residents.

The largest challenge that the Census Bureau faces is ensuring everyone is counted, regardless of where they live, who they live with and perhaps most controversially, regardless of whether they are authorized to live in the United States.

Most households will receive a census form by mail in mid-March to be filled out as of Census Day, April 1. First results of state counts for redistricting purposes must be delivered by December 31. The rest of the results will be released over a period of time that ends in 2013.

Filling out a census form is mandatory by law. The 2010 Census will have 10 basic questions for each household member, but it is viewed as a burdensome task by some, because they see the questions as too personal or the process too intrusive. Others distrust what the government will do with the information or fear that it may be used against them. Some are hampered by language barriers. Still others have more than one residence.

Every decade, the Census Bureau works hard to make sure everyone is counted once and only once. And it makes an extra effort to count those who have traditionally been hard to count: racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and the poor.

This coming census -- the largest count of the U.S. population with more immigrants and minorities than ever -- will be complicated further by the economic downturn and foreclosure crisis because many people are "doubling up" or otherwise living in temporary quarters.

The Census questionnaire asks for a count of all people who live and sleep in the household "most of the time," as of April 1, but not those who are living away at college or in the military or those who are living in a nursing home or who are in a jail, prison or detention facility. (They are counted separately from households.)

"Home" may have changed recently for those whose hardship leaves them little choice but to live with relatives or friends, however temporary that may be. "Home" for displaced residents of the Gulf Coast may be miles away from where they lived before the devastation that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wrought in their communities.

"Home" for some immigrants is in U.S. communities even though they are not legally residing in the United States. And "home" may be in a prison or detention center in a state far away from the inmate's hometown residence.

These are the very residents that the Census will try hardest to enumerate this spring. Abutting the challenges of where to call home are the public debates surrounding them:

• Civil rights leaders, recognizing the unique context of the Gulf Coast region, are working hard to ensure an accurate local census. At the same time, other regional leaders would like to see displaced Gulf Coast residents counted where they lived before the storms.
  
  
• A coalition of African-American leaders is lobbying for inmates to be counted in their place of residence before imprisonment.
  
  
• A tug-of-war has ensued between Latino leaders on one side who are working to get an accurate count of the population regardless of legal status, and those on the other side who are advocating a census boycott by immigrants as a way to put pressure on Congress to move forward with federal immigration reform.
  
  
• A recent amendment introduced in the Senate would have delayed the implementation and hiked up the cost of the Census, had it passed. In an attempt to exclude the unauthorized population from the official count for congressional apportionment purposes, it would have required questions on citizenship and immigration status for each respondent. That data is not collected to encourage participation in the census. The senators missed the deadline by two years to make a change of that order of magnitude.

Given the demands and challenges, it is vital that we bear in mind the importance of achieving an accurate count and the economic, political and policy implications if we fail.

• Understanding our changing population: State and local data on age, race and ethnicity, household size and composition help communities with projections for school enrollment, housing, transportation and health care. Businesses use Census data for decisions about where to locate and for marketing purposes. Information from the census is used to prepare for emergency services, research changes and advocate for various causes.
  
  
• Distributing federal dollars geographically: More than $400 billion a year is at stake, federal funds that go to states and localities to build schools, hospitals, highways and fund programs such as Medicaid.
  
  
• Apportioning Congress: The redistricting and apportionment of Congressional seats is contingent on census results. This is the primary purpose of the Census as written into the U.S. Constitution. States and localities also use the data to redistrict; therefore it is in every state's interest to be accurately represented based on their residents.

One debate that has been resolved: Census 2010 will not use statistical sampling, as many Republican leaders have feared. Sampling has been proposed as one way to mitigate the undercount of minority populations, the majority of whom are assumed to vote Democratic. The U.S. Bureau of the Census does use sampling in its annual American Community Survey that collects more detailed data, including social, economic, and demographic characteristics.

The political and equity arguments will continue to surface as we head into Census 2010. Public officials, advocacy groups, and community organizations will need to work together with census officials to get the most out of what will be a difficult enumeration, but one that sets the stage for the next decade.

      

Every 10 years, we have to count people. At least that's what Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution says. It doesn't sound too complicated. But it is. Who gets counted, and how, determines not only congressional representation but how funding is distributed for a slew of federal programs that affect all of us. As we prepare to stand and be counted in 2010 -- and the U.S. Census Bureau is spending a lot of advertising money to make sure that everyone is -- let's note a few misconceptions about our population and the efforts to tally us up.

1. Immigration is the biggest force behind the nation's racial and ethnic diversity.

If immigration stopped today, we would still see substantial gains in our minority populations for decades to come. Recent Census Bureau projections showed that under a "no further immigration" scenario, the minority share of our population would rise from about 35 percent today to 42 percent in 2050. The preschool (under age 5 ) population would become minority white. The greater minority presence would arise from higher natural-increase rates for minorities than for the aging white population. This momentum is already in place: Since 2000, natural population increase accounted for 62 percent of the growth of Hispanics, the country's largest minority group, with immigration responsible for the rest.

Already, the District and four states (Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas) are minority white, and in six more, whites are less than 60 percent of the population. Minorities now make up more than 30 percent of the residents in half of the nation's congressional districts, compared with a quarter in 1992.

The census will tell us more about the dispersal of Hispanics and other groups to traditional white enclaves -- suburbs and the country's midsection. A majority of all Hispanic, black and Asian residents of major metro areas now live in the suburbs. And since 2000, according to recent estimates, the fastest Hispanic growth occurred in South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Color lines within our population are blurring in a different way, too, with people who identify with more than one race. The number of mixed-race married couples more than doubled since 1990, and they make up nearly 8 percent of all marriages.

2. The country is getting uniformly older.

As a baby boomer, I am part of a demographic mob. As we age over the next 20 years, the nation as a whole will see a surge in senior citizens. But different parts of the country will be aging at different rates, largely because selective "younging" is going on. This is evident from census estimates showing that during the first nine years of this decade, 25 states -- mostly in the Northeast, Midwest and Great Plains -- and the District exhibited absolute declines in their child populations, while 25 others, led by Nevada and Arizona, showed gains.

This variation in where families and children live is poised to shape a young-old regional divide that could intensify over time. Census projections for 2020, made earlier this decade, showed median ages over 40 in Maine, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, compared with below 36 in Utah, Texas, Georgia and California.

3. Big states will keep getting bigger -- especially in Congress.

For much of the postwar period, the Sunbelt megastates of California, Florida and Texas just kept growing: They led all other states in adding congressional seats based on censuses since World War II. But the economic turbulence of this past decade will affect their political fortunes. Florida was one of the nation's growth leaders for the first half of the decade and was poised to gain as many as three congressional seats after the 2010 Census, tying or overtaking New York's congressional delegation. But the mortgage meltdown led to an unprecedented exodus from the state in the past two years. Florida's likely gain of one seat will be its smallest addition since the 1940 Census.

California is not positioned to gain any seats for the first time since statehood in 1850. Despite its status as an immigration magnet, the Golden State lost large numbers of people fleeing high housing costs during the bubble years. California might have even lost a seat had that bubble not burst.

Of the three Sunbelt behemoths, Texas will take the biggest prize, probably four congressional seats -- its largest increase since the 1880 Census. It was largely immune from the housing crisis late in the decade, while it gained Katrina-driven migrants from Louisiana.

4. The census is the main source of information about our population.

Not as much as before. Unlike previous censuses, the 2010 count will provide only bare-bones information that does little more than fulfill its constitutional mandate. The questions will include the age, sex, race, Hispanic origin and household relationship status of each individual, and the size and homeownership status of each household.

What happened to all the rich data on poverty, income, ancestry, immigration, marital status and some 30 other categories we have come to expect from the census? Those "long form" questions have been given to a sample of census respondents in every count going back to 1940 -- but they won't be handed out this year. The queries have been diverted to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

In 2005, the bureau began administering the ACS to 3 million households each year to elicit the same kind of information that was previously available only every 10 years. This large and sophisticated survey has already provided important and timely insights on changing poverty, immigration and migration patterns in this economic roller coaster of a decade.

5. New technology gives us much more demographic data than the census can.

Not true. Technological developments and data collected via the Internet do give us new ways of looking at the population, and complex surveys and estimates conducted by the Census Bureau and other organizations allow us to monitor change over the decade -- but there is no substitute for counting everyone. Aside from the census's constitutional mandate to provide the basis for congressional apportionment, a national headcount also allows us to know how many people live in the nation's cities, suburbs and neighborhoods and to break them down according to race, age and gender.

There are plenty of examples of a decennial census surprising the experts. The 2000 Census, for instance, discovered sharp population surges in many old, large cities. This was unanticipated for Chicago, which had experienced decades of decline. And the spread of the nation's Hispanic population into new states such as North Carolina far exceeded expectations.

Many government and private surveys, including the ACS, rely on the decennial census to make sure their work accurately reflects the population as a whole.

This census will also tell us more about small but growing groups, such as same-sex married partners and multiracial populations, whose presence and interests can change laws and public policies.

The Census Bureau's ad campaign urges Americans to answer "10 Questions in 10 Minutes" -- and those are still 10 very important questions, whose responses will guide us for the next 10 years.

      

Two years after the country entered the Great Recession, there are signs the national economy has slowly begun to recover. Thus far recovery has meant the return of economic growth, but not the return of jobs. And just as some communities have felt the downturn more than others, recovery has not and will not be shared equally across the nation’s diverse metropolitan economies.

Within metropolitan areas, many communities continue to struggle with high unemployment and increasing economic and fiscal challenges, while at the same time poverty and the need for emergency and support services continue to rise. Even under the best case scenario of a sustained and robust recovery, cities and suburbs throughout the nation will be dealing with the social and economic aftermath of such a deep and lengthy recession for some time to come.

An analysis of unemployment, initial Unemployment Insurance claims, and receipt of Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) benefits in urban and suburban communities over the course of the Great Recession reveals that:

• Between December 2007 and December 2009, city and suburban unemployment rates in large metro areas increased by roughly the same degree (5.1 versus 4.8 percentage points, respectively). By December 2009, the gap between city and suburban unemployment rates was one percentage point (10.3 percent versus 9.3 percent)—smaller than 24 months after the start of the first recession of the decade (1.7 percentage points) and the downturn in the early 1990s (2.2 percentage points).
  
  
• Western metro areas exhibited the greatest increases in city and suburban unemployment rates—5.8 and 5.6 percentage points—over the two-year period ending in December of 2009. Increases in unemployment rates tilted more toward primary cities in Northeastern metro areas (a 5.3 percentage-point increase versus 4.2 percentage points in the suburbs), while suburbs saw slightly larger increases in the South (5.0 versus 4.4 percentage points).
  
  
• Initial Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims increased considerably between December 2007 and December 2009 in urban and suburban areas alike. The largest increases in requests for UI occurred in the first year of the downturn—led by lower-density suburbs—with new claims beginning to taper off between December of 2008 and 2009.
  
  
• SNAP receipt increased steeply and steadily between January 2008 and July 2009 across both urban and suburban counties. Urban counties remain home to the largest number of SNAP recipients, though suburban counties saw enrollment increase at a slightly faster pace during the downturn—36.1 percent compared to 29.4 percent in urban counties.
  

Even as signs point to a tentative economic recovery for the nation, metropolitan areas throughout the country continue to struggle with high unemployment. Within these regions, the negative effects of this downturn—as measured by changes in unemployment and demand for safety net services—have been shared across cities and suburbs alike. Standardizing sub-state data collection and reporting across programs would better enable policymakers and services providers to effectively track indicators of recovery and need in the nation’s largest labor markets.

Read the Full Paper » (PDF)
Read the Related Report: Job Sprawl and the Suburbanization of Poverty »

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• Full Paper
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C

      

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From high-profile stabilization contexts like Afghanistan to global public health campaigns to a renewed focus on sustainable food security and the looming impacts of climate change, development effectiveness is a central and hotly debated issue. As traditional donors make progress in the international aid effectiveness dialogue, they must increasingly take into account the changing global development landscape and the slew of new actors, including emerging donors, multinational corporations, mega philanthropists, high-profile advocates, and a vocal and energized global public.

2010 Brookings Blum Roundtable: Related Materials
	Read the roundtable report - Aiding Development: Assistance Reform in the 21st Century »  Read the conference policy briefs »  Download the participant list » (PDF) Download the scene setter » (PDF) Download the full roundtable agenda » (PDF)

The seventh annual Brookings Blum Roundtable, led by Kemal Derviş and co-chaired by Richard C. Blum and Strobe Talbott, convened over 40 exceptional international thought leaders, entrepreneurs and practitioners to explore the relationship between efforts to promote aid effectiveness and the anticipated shape of the global development agenda over the next decade. The roundtable discussions provided an opportunity to look beyond questions of increased resources for anti-poverty services to the effectiveness of different approaches and to systemic issues associated with the delivery of development outcomes. The high-level group of participants explored opportunities for new commitment in engaging the private sector and multilateral actors, as well as the increasingly important role of climate assistance and operations in instable arenas. Over separate meal conversations, Dr. Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank, and Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), reflected on the current and future roles of their organizations, and how they could each act on the suggestions put forward at the roundtable.

       

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With a U.S. Administration still popular across Europe and a new Lisbon Treaty designed to enhance the diplomatic reach of the European Union, transatlantic relations should now be at their best in years. But this is clearly not the case, with the strategic partners often looking in opposite directions. While the United States channels its foreign policy attention on the war in Afghanistan, counterterrorism and nuclear non-proliferation, Europe is turning inward. Despite its ambitions, the European Union has yet to achieve the great global role to which it aspires, or to be the global partner that Washington seeks. Moreover, the Greek financial crisis has raised questions about the very survival of the European project.

On June 2, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings and the Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted experts and top officials from both sides of the Atlantic for the 2010 CUSE Annual Conference. Panelists explored critical issues shaping the future of transatlantic relations in the post-Lisbon Treaty era, including Europe’s Eastern neighborhood and the role Russia plays, and the impact of the Eurozone crisis.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.

Audio

• From the Lisbon Treaty to the Eurozone Crisis: A New Beginning or the Unraveling of Europe?
• From the Lisbon Treaty to the Eurozone Crisis: A New Beginning or the Unraveling of Europe?
• From the Lisbon Treaty to the Eurozone Crisis: A New Beginning or the Unraveling of Europe?

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20100602_eurozone

       

       

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As the recent primary in Delaware attests, this year's midterm elections continue to offer unexpected twists and raise large questions. Will the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate? Or has the Republican wave ebbed? What role will President Obama play in rallying seemingly dispirited Democrats -- and what effect will reaction to the sluggish economy play in rallying Republicans? Is the Tea Party more an asset or a liability to the G.O.P.'s hopes? What effect will the inevitably narrowed partisan majorities have in the last two year's of Obama's first term? And how will contests for governorships and state legislatures around the nation affect redistricting and the shape of politics to come?

On October 4, a panel of Brookings Governance Studies scholars, moderated by Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr., attempted to answer these questions. Senior Fellow Thomas Mann provided an overview. Senior Fellow Sarah Binder discussed congressional dynamics under shrunken majorities or divided government. Senior Fellow William Galston offered his views on the administration’s policy prospects during the 112th Congress. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald addressed electoral reapportionment and redistricting around the country.

Video

• Partisan Gridlock post-Elections?
• GOP Influence over Redistricting, Reapportionment
• Working Within Divided Government
• Good Conditions for GOP in 2010 Midterms

Audio

• Midterm Elections 2010: Driving Forces, Likely Outcomes, Possible Consequences

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20101004_midterm_elections