Chairperson, Excellencies, distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have come to New York from Kampala where I attended last week’s African Union Special Summit of Heads of State and Government on refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons in Africa. There, I witnessed the historic moment of the adoption of the AU Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. The importance of this Convention cannot be underestimated. Building on the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement it is the first legally binding IDP-specific treaty covering an entire continent. The Convention is a tremendous achievement and a beacon of hope for the almost 12 million people in Africa internally displaced by conflict and the many more internally displaced by natural disasters, and hopefully serves as a model for other regions, too.  

I commend the African Union for its leadership in developing this Convention. I urge all African states to ratify it and implement its provisions, and I call on the international community to seize this momentum and to lend all support needed to its implementation. 

Mr. Chairperson, 

Reflecting on my mandate’s activities over the past 12 months, I would first like to highlight three topics: climate change and natural disasters, internal displacement and peace processes and the search for durable solutions for internally displaced persons. 

Climate Change and Internal Displacement

Climate change increases the frequency and magnitude of climate related disasters, both sudden-onset disasters like flooding and hurricanes and slow-onset disasters such as desertification. The negative impact of these disasters can be mitigated by adopting disaster risk reduction measures. Yet, it is expected that the number of persons displaced by climate related disasters will increase. Most of these people will remain within their own country; hence they will be internally displaced persons to whom the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement apply. It is therefore crucial to enhance capacities of governments and humanitarian actors to provide protection and assistance to these persons. I strongly call on states to ensure that the adaptation and risk management regime of the new UNFCCC framework agreement covers forced displacement. 

Internal Displacement and Peace Processes

Finding durable solutions for internally displaced persons is an essential element of a successful peace process. The way the issue is addressed in peace agreements often predetermines how internal displacement is dealt with in the aftermath of conflicts. Many peace agreements reflect the issue of internal displacement insufficiently or haphazardly. Therefore, over the past 18 months and in close cooperation with the Mediation Support Unit of the Department for Political Affairs of the UN and humanitarian, human rights and mediation experts, I developed a guide on internal displacement and peace processes for mediators. This guide provides advice on how to consult with internally displaced persons and engage them in the different phases of a peace process even if they do not sit at the negotiation table and on what kind of key displacement-specific issues should be addressed in the text of a peace agreement. It will be published later this year.[1] 

I deepened my engagement with the Peacebuilding Commission through a country-based engagement on Central African Republic. I am pleased to see that the country specific strategic framework reflects many of the recommendations that I submitted on the basis of a working visit to this country last February. I plan to remain engaged with the Peacebuilding Commission in the course of the coming year. 

I call on all actors presently involved in peace and peacebuilding processes to adequately address the specific needs of IDPs in the aftermath of armed conflicts. 

Durable Solutions for IDPs

In the many missions I carried out over the past five years, I noticed that finding durable solutions for IDPs is always a tremendous challenge. It is a multi-faceted, long, complex and often expensive process, which requires the coordination and cooperation of a variety of actors from among national and local authorities, and the humanitarian and the development communities. With policy guidance such as that provided by the Framework for Durable Solutions—a document developed by my office and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement a few years ago and presently being revised in close cooperation with relevant stakeholders[2]—we know what should be done, but we must improve on the ground. Too often the coordination between humanitarian and development actors is insufficient, the funding for early recovery activities is lacking or IDPs are simply not a priority in recovery, reconstruction and development plans resulting in gaps jeopardizing the sustainability of returns or local integration of the displaced when the humanitarian actors phase out and the development partners are not yet able to show tangible progress in restoring infrastructure, services and livelihoods. Based on my observations in many countries, I have come to the conclusion that the practical problems in this area are a consequence of systemic failures in bringing humanitarian and development actors together to work hand in hand at an early stage of recovery. In addition to differences in approaches and cultures, these failures can to a large extent be attributed to a lack of flexible funding mechanisms for early recovery and reconstruction in spite of some recent steps in the right direction, including the creation of the peace-building fund.  

Country Situations  

Mr. Chairperson, 

The second pillar of my mandate is the engagement in a constructive dialogue with governments. I am grateful that with a few exceptions the countries that I approached during this reporting period were open to engage with my mandate. 

Allow me to provide you with an update on important developments since the completion of my written report to the General Assembly:  

I carried out a mission to Somalia from 14 – 21 October. Lack of humanitarian access, security risks for humanitarian workers, and the sharp decline in donor contributions exacerbate this long-standing humanitarian crisis, and international attention to the plight of IDPs is largely insufficient. I was shocked by the degree of violence the civilian population and in particular internally displaced persons in South and Central Somalia suffer. Serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are committed in an environment of impunity. Such acts are a major cause of the displacement of 1.5 million persons, the majority of whom are women and children. They remain highly vulnerable and exposed to serious human rights violations, in particular sexual violence, during flight and in IDP settlements. Many of the displaced try to reach safety in Puntland or Somaliland, where the high number of internally displaced persons puts enormous strain on the limited existing resources and basic services available. Reception capacities for new internally displaced persons must be strengthened and basic services expanded to reduce the burden on host communities. Further robust development interventions are needed to transform humanitarian action into sustainable livelihoods and investing into education and job opportunities for the youth is a must in an environment where recruitment by radical forces is often the only opportunity offered to them. Present efforts by the authorities, humanitarian, development and human rights actors are largely insufficient to bring urgently needed change. I urgently call on the international community to strengthen these efforts and to reaffirm its commitment to Somalia. 

I was twice in Sri Lanka over the past six months; in April, shortly before the end of hostilities, and again in September at a time the security situation had vastly improved, although over 250,000 internally displaced were still held in closed camps. Restoration of their freedom of movement has become a matter of urgency, and immediate and substantial progress in this regard is an imperative for Sri Lanka to comply with its commitments under international law. I discussed a three-pronged strategy for decongesting the camps with the government, which is based on returns of IDPs to their homes, release of IDPs to host families and transfer of IDPs to small open welfare centers in the region of return as a transitional solution until return is possible. I urged the Government to pursue these options in parallel with highest priority, to speed up the screening procedures, and to immediately release those not deemed to pose a security threat. Since my visit, this process has started. I acknowledge the progress made so far in demining and reconstructing returnee areas and releasing and returning a good number of displaced people to Jaffna and Mannar, Trincomalee and Batticaloa as well as to Vavuniya and Killinochi. I underline that this return needs to happen according to international standards. At the same time, I continue to reiterate that the ultimate goal is the restoration of freedom of movement and finding durable solutions for all IDPs. 

During my visit to Georgia of last autumn, I reiterated that there should be no discrimination between different persons internally displaced in Georgia’s different waves of displacement. The approximately 220,000 individuals who have been displaced over the long-term in Georgia should be able to avail themselves of the same possibilities to improve their living conditions as are enjoyed by those more recently displaced. I welcome that in the meantime the government has adopted an action plan to improve the housing situation of the long-term displaced and started to implement it. I am also grateful that a solution was found allowing me to visit the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia region next week. 

I remain engaged on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In March 2010, six other special procedures and I will report to the Human Rights Council on progress the DRC made in implementing a series of recommendations we previously made on how to tangibly improve the situation on the ground. Despite encouraging returns of 110,000 persons in North Kivu Province over the last two months, I remain concerned about the overall deterioration of the humanitarian situation due to the continued attacks on civilian populations carried out by LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) militias and the impact of the military operations against the FDLR (Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda) armed group and the FDLR’s reprisals against the civilian population triggering new displacements.  

My working visits to Uganda and Serbia had a special focus on durable solutions. In Uganda, I was impressed to see that the majority of the formerly 1.8 million internally displaced persons have returned to their villages and I expressed my appreciation to the Government for its continued efforts. Sustaining returns remains a challenge that must be addressed by quick impact recovery and development activities, which requires stronger action by development agencies and support of donors. Despite the huge progress made thus far, the fate of a considerable number of particularly vulnerable individuals left behind in camps or living in transit sites as well as a general lack of synchronicity between the phasing out of humanitarian assistance and the increase of development activities in returnee areas continue to be a source of concern. 

Many of the 200,000 persons internally displaced from and within Kosovo (I am using the term in accordance with the U.N. position of strict neutrality on the status question) have not yet found a durable solution. I note with appreciation that all relevant authorities in Pristina expressed their commitment to facilitate returns of displaced persons, regardless of their ethnicity. However, due to entrenched patterns of discrimination in every sector of life and also a lack of support, in particular at the municipal level, there have only been a few sustainable returns. At the same time, I wish to reemphasize that the right for a dignified life and the right to return are not mutually exclusive. In this respect, I would like to commend the increased efforts of the Government of Serbia to improve the living conditions of internally displaced persons who have not returned.  

Mr. Chairperson, 

This is my last report which I present personally in my capacity as Representative of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly. Over the past five years, I have seen encouraging trends.  The UN Guiding Principles are now firmly rooted as the relevant framework for the protection of internally displaced persons, legislation and policies have been developed at national and regional level and the cluster approach has led to an improved humanitarian response. Overall, states and humanitarian and developmental actors are better prepared and equipped today to address the plight of the more than 50 million persons displaced within their countries. This is badly needed as the effects of climate change will lead to new displacement. At the same time, it is worrying to see that armed conflict are conducted with utter disregard for the civilian populations in several parts of the world, the humanitarian space is shrinking in many countries, and many displacement situations that were protracted when I assumed this mandate remain unchanged. 

A new mandate-holder will be named next summer and I trust that he or she will also benefit from the particular strengths that currently characterize my mandate. As a Representative of the Secretary-General, I enjoy excellent access to Governments and other important stakeholders, I receive remarkable support of the relevant entities of the United Nations and from donors, and my participation as a standing invitee to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee is key to reach out to the wider humanitarian community.  

Thank you.

      

Introduction

Guaranteeing the right to vote and to participate in public and political affairs for all citizens is an important responsibility. Given the precarious position that IDPs can find themselves in and considering the extent to which they may need to rely on national authorities for assistance, IDPs have a legitimate and a heightened interest in influencing the decisions that affect their lives by participating in elections.   

Internally displaced persons often exist on the margins of society and are subject to a number of vulnerabilities because of their displacement. For instance, IDPs face an immediate need for protection and assistance in finding adequate shelter, food, and health care. Over time, they can suffer discrimination in accessing public services and finding employment on account of being an IDP from another region or town. IDPs also face an especially high risk of losing ownership of their housing, property, and land, something which can lead to loss of livelihoods and economic security as well as physical security. Women and children, who often make up the majority of IDP populations, face an acute risk of sexual exploitation and abuse.  

In addition to influencing public policy, elections can also be about reconciliation and addressing divisions and inequities that exist within society. For these reasons and others, IDPs should be afforded an opportunity to fully participate in elections as voters and as candidates.   

As noted in a press release of the Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons following an official mission to Georgia in December 2005, 

“[IDP] participation in public life, including elections, needs promotion and support. Supporting internally displaced persons in their pursuit of a normal life does not exclude, but actually reinforces, the option of eventual return. … Well integrated people are more likely to be productive and contribute to society, which in turn gives them the strength to return once the time is right."[1]

---

[1] United Nations Press Release - U.N. Expert Voices Concern for Internally Displaced Persons in Georgia, 27 December 2005, available at http://www.brookings.edu/projects/idp/RSG-Press-Releases/20051227_georgiapr.aspx.

Downloads

• Download

      

Event Information

Register for the Event

Since the conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s, violence has erupted several times in Georgia, most notably in August 2008. Large-scale human rights violations characterized the August 2008 war, including the displacement of almost 150,000 people. By the time the fighting ended, Georgia had lost the last areas it controlled in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Russia subsequently recognized the independence of both. While most of those displaced in the August 2008 war have returned, over 200,000 people from earlier conflicts remain displaced.

On November 19, the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement will host a discussion of current issues around human rights, democracy and displacement in Georgia. The event will feature a presentation by Tinatin Khidasheli, international secretary of the Republican Party of Georgia, and Giorgi Chkheidze, executive director of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. Following their remarks, Sam Patten, senior program manager for Eurasia at Freedom House, and Nadine Walicki, country analyst for the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, will join the discussion.

Senior Fellow Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings-Bern Project, will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

Audio

• Human Rights, Democracy and Displacement in Georgia

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20101119_georgia_human_rights

      

Editor's Note: Launched at a December 5, 2011 event at Brookings, this study is based on a publication developed in 2005 by the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement: Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

It is a central tenet of international law that states bear the primary duty and responsibility to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of persons within their borders, including the internally displaced. While internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain entitled to the full protection of rights and freedoms available to the population in general, they face vulnerabilities that nondisplaced persons do not face. Therefore, in order to ensure that IDPs are not deprived of their human rights and are treated equally with respect to nondisplaced citizens, states are obligated to provide special measures of protection and assistance to IDPs that correspond to their particular vulnerabilities. Reflecting these key notions of international law, the rights of IDPs and obligations of states are set forth in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (hereafter, “the Guiding Principles”).

Using the Guiding Principles as a departure for analysis, this study examines government response to internal displacement in fifteen of the twenty countries most affected by internal displacement due to conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations: Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen. The analysis seeks to shed light on how and to what extent, if any, governments are fulfilling their responsibility toward IDPs, with a view to providing guidance to governments in such efforts. In so doing, this study also seeks to contribute to research and understanding regarding realization of the emerging norm of the “Responsibility to Protect.” To frame the analysis, the introduction to this volume examines the connections among the concepts of national responsibility, “sovereignty as responsibility” and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

The comparative analysis across the fifteen countries, presented in chapter 1, is based on a systematic application of the document Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility (hereafter, “Framework for National Responsibility,” “the Framework”). Seeking to distill the Guiding Principles, the Framework outlines twelve practical steps (“benchmarks”) that states can take to directly contribute to the prevention, mitigation and resolution of internal displacement:

1. Prevent displacement and minimize its adverse effects.
2. Raise national awareness of the problem.
3. Collect data on the number and conditions of IDPs.
4. Support training on the rights of IDPs.
5. Create a legal framework for upholding the rights of IDPs.
6. Develop a national policy on internal displacement.
7. Designate an institutional focal point on IDPs.
8. Support national human rights institutions to integrate internal displacement into their work.
9. Ensure the participation of IDPs in decision making.
10. Support durable solutions.
11. Allocate adequate resources to the problem.
12. Cooperate with the international community when national capacity is insufficient.

      

Event Information

On December 5, 2011, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement held a private launch event for its report, From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement, which examines government response to internal displacement in fifteen of the twenty countries most affected by internal displacement due to conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations. The analysis presented in the report is based on the first ever systematic use as an assessment tool of the document, Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility, developed by the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement in 2005 to provide guidance to governments in their response to internal displacement.

Roberta Cohen (nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and former co-director of the Project) moderated the event, which featured remarks from the co-authors of the report, Elizabeth Ferris (senior fellow at Brookings and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement), Erin Mooney (senior IDP and protection adviser at the United Nations and former deputy director of the Project) and Chareen Stark (senior research assistant, Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement). In attendance were representatives from the US Department of State and international NGOs, as well as researchers from think tanks and universities.

Cohen opened the event by discussing the background and significance of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. From the very beginning of discussions about internal displacement, there was an emphasis on the fundamental responsibility of national governments to protect and assist those displaced within their territory. And yet over the years there has been an awareness that international actors also have a role to play. She noted the positive strides that have occurred over the past twenty years in regards to government response to internal displacement. Country visits by the UN experts on IDPs—the Representatives of the Secretary-General on IDPs—have been instrumental to improving government response, in some instances leading governments to address internal displacement for the first time. Today, most governments understand their obligations and responsibilities to protect and assist IDPs; the challenge is often translating that understanding into concrete actions.

Elizabeth Ferris gave an overview of the Framework for National Responsibility, which was used to assess government response in each of the fifteen countries in the report (Afghanistan, The Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen). The Framework outlines twelve minimum steps—or benchmarks—that governments can take to address the protection and assistance needs of internally displaced persons within their territory, from preventing displacement to appointing a focal point on IDP issues, to facilitating the work of the international community. She explained the methodology used in the study and described the challenges the authors faced in conducting the research. For example, basic data on various aspects of government response was lacking in many instances and it was often difficult to determine the impact of a particular government policy in addressing internal displacement. In addition to analyzing the response of the fifteen governments on each of the twelve benchmarks, the study included four extended case studies commissioned for this report: Afghanistan, Georgia, Kenya and Sri Lanka.  Ferris discussed some of the overall findings of the study, noted that the Framework had proven to be a useful assessment tool for examining national responses to displacement, and suggested a number of areas where further research is needed. 

Erin Mooney briefed the audience on benchmark seven—designating an institutional focal point on IDPs—and benchmark ten—supporting durable solutions for IDPs. Mooney noted that designating a governmental focal point for addressing internal displacement is important for clarifying institutional responsibilities and, therefore, for increasing governmental accountability.  Of the 15 countries assessed, all but one had designated a national institutional focal point for addressing internal displacement. She discussed some of the challenges institutional focal points often face, including a lack of funding and a lack of political clout which often challenge their ability to coordinate across government agencies. Benchmark ten, the achievement of durable solutions, was one of the most complex and politicized areas of government action, and is  arguably the one in which government commitment to addressing displacement becomes most apparent. Governments tend to emphasize return as the primary solution to displacement, but, in situations where return has occurred, there is usually little information about whether IDPs have in fact achieved a durable solution. Mooney discussed some of the challenges the fifteen governments faced in finding durable solutions, noting that in none of the countries have durable solutions to displacement been fully achieved.

Chareen Stark discussed the report’s findings on benchmark one—the prevention of arbitrary displacement—and the study’s overall recommendations. Given that the study assessed governments already experiencing large-scale displacement and, in most instances, multiple waves of displacement, Stark said it was obvious that all fifteen governments had failed to prevent displacement. There were three major limitations to governments’ ability to prevent displacement: many of the governments are themselves parties to conflict; many of the governments assessed do not exercise effective sovereignty over all of their territory, due to the presence of nonstate armed actors and/or foreign militaries; and all of the assessed countries face financial and human capacity limitations. She explained that the study found that nearly half of the countries assessed had developed some sort of preventive measures (at least on paper), including several governments that had taken measures to prevent displacement from natural disasters but not conflict. Stark discussed some of these laws, policies and institutional mechanisms as well as the challenges to their effective implementation. She also outlined the report’s recommendations to governments of countries with IDP populations, such as developing and implementing laws and policies in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and devoting adequate resources at the national and local levels.

Concluding the discussion, the panel responded to questions from the audience on issues such as incentives for governments to address internal displacement using the Framework for National Responsibility and challenges in data reporting and analysis.  Specific questions were also raised on benchmarks five (laws on internal displacement), six (policies on internal displacement), three (designating an institutional focal point for IDPs) and twelve (working with the international community).

Event Materials

• From Responsibility to Response Nov 2011doc

      

Editor's Note: This is the first part of a two piece series on internal displacement that originally appeared online in TerraNullius. The second part is available here.

The Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement recently released a study entitled "From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National Response to Internal Displacement." The study examined 15 out of the 20 countries with the highest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) due to conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations—Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen.

According to estimates, these 15 countries represent over 70 percent of the world’s 27.5 million conflict-induced IDPs. Wherever possible, we also tried to include government efforts to address internal displacement by natural disasters. But in this and the subsequent blog post, we will focus on our main general conclusions as well as particular issues around housing, land and property (HLP) rights that emerged from our analysis (see Part II of this posting).

The study looks at how governments have fared in terms of implementing 12 practical steps (“benchmarks”) to prevent and address internal displacement, as outlined in the 2005 Brookings publication entitled "Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework for National Responsibility." The 12 benchmarks are as follows:

1. Prevent displacement and minimize its adverse effects.
2. Raise national awareness of the problem.
3. Collect data on the number and conditions of IDPs.
4. Support training on the rights of IDPs.
5. Create a legal framework for upholding the rights of IDPs.
6. Develop a national policy on internal displacement.
7. Designate an institutional focal point on IDPs.
8. Support national human rights institutions to integrate internal displacement into their work.
9. Ensure the participation of IDPs in decisionmaking.
10. Support durable solutions.
11. Allocate adequate resources to the problem.
12. Cooperate with the international community when national capacity is insufficient.

Stepping back from HLP issues (to be addressed in a subsequent set of comments in Part II of this guest posting), we drew several key observations on our overall findings.

The study found that political will was the main determining factor of response to internal displacement. Governments cannot always control the factors that cause displacement, or may themselves be responsible for displacement, but they can take measures to improve the lives and uphold the rights and freedoms of IDPs. Internal displacement due to con­flict derives from political issues, and all aspects of a government’s response to it therefore are affected by political considerations, including, for example, acknowledgment of displacement, registration and collection of data on IDPs, ensuring the participation of IDPs in decision-making, assistance and protection offered to different (temporal) caseloads of IDPs, support for durable solutions, which durable solutions are supported, and the facilitation of efforts by international organizations to provide protec­tion and assistance to IDPs.

While none of the governments surveyed was fully protecting and assisting IDPs, four stand out in particular—Colombia, Georgia, Kenya and Uganda—for implementing their responsibility toward IDPs while three others—Central African Republic, Myanmar and Yemen—had particular difficulties in fulfilling their responsibilities toward IDPs. In Myanmar, the obstacles were primarily political while in Yemen and the Central African Republic, as in many of the countries surveyed, the limitations appear to arise primarily from inadequate government capacity.

The other eight countries were somewhere in between. For example, some, such as Nepal, have demonstrated a significant commitment at one particular point in time but have failed to follow through. Others, such as Sri Lanka, have at times demonstrated blatant disregard for their responsibility and have moved swiftly to try to bring an end to displacement. Sudan, Pakistan, and to a certain extent, Turkey, have very problematic records with respect to preventing displacement in one part of the country yet have supported efforts to bring an end to displacement in others. In some cases, such as Afghanistan and Yemen, the continuing conflict and the role of nonstate actors (and in Afghanistan, the presence of foreign militaries as well) have made it difficult for the government to respond effectively to internal displacement.

Prevention of internal displacement is paramount, but is probably the most difficult measure to take and the least likely to be taken in the countries as­sessed, which all had large IDP populations. Given the scale of displacement in the fifteen countries surveyed, it was to be expected that these governments would not have been suc­cessful in preventing displacement. Nearly half of the fifteen countries assessed had adopted some preventive measures on paper, but all fifteen have fallen short of actually prevent­ing displacement in practice.

Moreover, many national authorities themselves have been or are perpetrators of violence or human rights abuses that have led to displacement, and many states foster a culture of impunity for alleged perpetrators of serious human rights violations. Further, the presence of foreign military forces and/or non-state armed actors limits the abil­ity of many states to exercise full sovereignty over their territory and therefore to prevent the conditions that drive people into displacement. Some countries have taken steps to prevent dis­placement due to natural disasters or develop­ment but not due to conflict, indicating that the former is perhaps less politically taboo and/or practically less difficult to implement than the latter.

Sustained political attention by the highest authorities is a necessary, though not suffi­cient, condition for taking responsibility for IDPs. Nearly all of the governments surveyed, at least at some point, have exercised their responsibility to IDPs by acknowledging the existence of internal displacement and their responsibility to address it as a national prior­ity, for example, by drawing attention to IDPs’ plight. However, government efforts to raise awareness of internal displacement through public statements was not always a useful indicator of a government’s commitment to upholding the fundamental human rights and freedoms of IDPs.

Among the five countries with laws on or related to internal displacement, there were notable limitations to the scope of the laws and gaps in implementing them. Legislation was quite comprehensive in scope in at least two cases and was narrow in others, address­ing specific rights of IDPs or a phase of dis­placement. Other countries lacked a national legislative framework on IDPs but had generic legislation relevant to IDPs. Still others had laws that violated or could violate the rights of IDPs. Laws on internal displacement must be viewed in the context of other legislation and administrative acts applicable to the general population (e.g., those related to documenta­tion, residency, housing, land and property, and personal status), which this study reviews to the extent possible, particularly in the case studies on Georgia, Kenya, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. In Africa, the region with the most IDPs, states have recognized in legally binding instruments the importance of addressing internal displace­ment by incorporating the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement into domestic legisla­tion and policy.

Many of the governments surveyed have adopted policies or action plans to respond to the needs of IDPs, but adequate implementa­tion and dissemination were largely lacking. Nine of the countries surveyed had developed a specific policy, strategy or plan on internal displacement, implemented to varying degrees; those in six of these countries were still active at the time of writing. In addition, at least two countries had national policies in draft form, and one country that does not recognize conflict-induced displacement had a plan for mitigating displacement by cyclones and a plan on disaster risk reduction, although it did not discuss displacement. While in some cases positive steps had been taken, by and large im­plementation of policies on internal displace­ment remains a challenge and has, in some cases, stalled. Available information indicates that efforts to raise awareness of IDP issues and policies have largely been inadequate.

It is difficult to assess governments’ com­mitment of financial resources to address internal displacement, but some trends were identified. Addressing internal displacement, especially over time, is a costly venture. While it was difficult to obtain a full picture of a coun­try’s expenditure on IDPs, several countries allocated funds to assist IDPs, including a few that had no national laws or policies on IDPs. In at least two countries, funds for assisting IDPs seemed to diminish in recent years. In many countries, difficulties arise at the district or municipal levels, where local authorities bear significant responsibility for addressing internal displacement but face many obstacles, including insufficient funds, to doing so. Allegations of corruption and misallocation of funds intended to benefit IDPs at certain points has been observed in some of the countries as­sessed. Some countries seem to rely on inter­national assistance to IDPs rather than national funds.

National human rights institutions (NHRIs) contribute invaluably to improving national responses to internal displacement in a number of countries. In recent years, an increasing number of NHRIs around the world have begun to integrate attention to internal displacement into their work. NHRIs have played an impor­tant role in raising awareness of internal dis­placement, monitoring displacement situations and returns, investigating individual complaints, advocating for and advising the government on the drafting of national policies to address inter­nal displacement, and monitoring and reporting on the implementation of national policies and legislation. In particular, the NHRIs of six of the countries surveyed stand out for their efforts to promote the rights of IDPs in their countries. Interestingly, almost all of their work with IDPs is funded by international sources, raising the question of whether national governments themselves should not be doing more to increase their funding of NHRIs in order to support their engagement with IDP issues.

International actors are valuable resources for efforts aiming to improve government response to IDPs. In many cases, the past Representatives of the UN Secretary-General (RSGs) mandated to study the issue of internal displacement (Francis Deng and his successor Walter Kälin) and the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (Chaloka Beyani) had exercised significant influence on governments in encouraging and supporting action on behalf of IDPs. Along with these actors, UNHCR and the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement have provided technical assis­tance to support governments’ efforts to de­velop national legal frameworks to ensure IDPs’ access to their rights.

Durable solutions: Return was the durable solution most often supported by the govern­ments assessed. The Framework for National Responsibility identifies three durable solu­tions—return, local integration and settlement elsewhere in the country. However, the fifteen countries surveyed herein reflect a global ten­dency to emphasize return, often excluding the other durable solutions. Yet for solutions to be voluntary, IDPs must be able to choose among them, and local integration or settlement else­where in the country may in fact be some IDPs’ preferred solution. Especially in situations of protracted displacement, those may be the only feasible solutions, at least in the near future.

The most difficult benchmarks to analyze were those whose underlying concepts are very broad and those for which data was seemingly not publicly available. Chief among these were the benchmarks on preventing internal displacement (Benchmark 1), raising national awareness (Benchmark 2), promoting the participation of IDPs in decisionmaking (Benchmark 9), and allocating adequate resources (Benchmark 11). Analysis on all other benchmarks also faced data constraints as in many cases data were outdated or incomplete or simply were not available. Nonetheless, we found that the twelve benchmarks all directed attention to important issues in governments’ responses to internal displacement.

We also found that while protection is central to the Framework, the issue is of such importance that there should be a benchmark explicitly focused on it—and specifically on protection as physical security, provided to IDPs during all phases of displacement. This benchmark would also underscore the responsibility of governments to protect the security of humanitarian workers engaged with IDPs.

Overall, the study found that the Framework for National Responsibility is a valuable tool for analyzing government efforts to prevent dis­placement, to respond to IDPs’ needs for protection and assistance and to support durable solutions. But this study also reveals certain limitations to using the Framework as an assessment tool, particularly in terms of accounting for the responsibility of nonstate actors; accounting for national responsibility for protection, particularly during displacement; and accounting for causes of displacement other than conflict, violence and human rights violations.

       

Editor's Note: This is the second part of a two piece series on internal displacement that originally appeared online in TerraNullius. The first part is available here.
 
This post continues our discussion of the study entitled "From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National Response to Internal Displacement" recently released by the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement.

Addressing housing, land, and property (HLP) issues is a key component of national responsibility. Principle 29 of the non-binding but widely accepted Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement emphasizes that competent authorities have a duty to assist IDPs to recover their property and possessions or, when recovery is not possible, to obtain appropriate compensation or another form of just reparation.

The 2005 Framework for National Responsibility – which set the benchmarks we applied in our current study – reaffirms this responsibility (in Benchmark 10, “support durable solutions”) and flags a number of the challenges that often arise, such as IDPs’ lack of formal title or other documentary evidence of land and property ownership; the destruction of any such records due to conflict or natural disaster; and discrimination against women in laws and customs regulating property ownership and inheritance. The Framework for National Responsibility stresses that, “Government authorities should anticipate these problems and address them in line with international human rights standards and in an equitable and non-discriminatory manner.”

The extent to which a government has safeguarded HLP rights, including by assisting IDPs to recover their housing, land, and property thus was among the indicators by which we evaluated the efforts of each of the 15 governments examined in our study. Our findings emphasized the importance of both an adequate legal and policy framework for addressing displacement related HLP issues and the role that bodies charged with adjudication and monitoring can play in ensuring implementation.

HLP Law and Policy Frameworks

One of the most encouraging signs of governments taking seriously their responsibility to address internal displacement has been the development, adoption and implementation in all regions of the world of specific laws and policies that respect the rights of IDPs. Some of the countries surveyed have developed laws, decrees, orders, and policies that protect IDPs’ HLP rights, but these measures are also not without their limits and challenges. A few examples are presented below.

In Colombia, while Law 387 on Internal Displacement (1997) stipulates the right of IDPs to compensation and restitution (Article 10), the government has been hard-pressed to establish measures enabling them to realize that right (see further, below). In Colombia, the constitutional complaint process – the acción de tutela petition procedure – has made the government accountable to IDPs and has influenced government policy toward IDPs, including the policy of allocation of government assistance such as housing subsidies.

In Georgia, the legal framework for IDP protection includes a property restitution law for IDPs from South Ossetia, adopted in 2007, which provided for the establishment of a Commission on Restitution and Compensation; however, this body never became operational and the status of the law is unclear following the August 2008 conflict. The State Strategy on IDPs, also adopted in 2007, protects IDPs against “arbitrary/illegitimate eviction” and sets out a large-scale program for improving the living conditions of IDPs in their place of displacement, all the while reaffirming their right to property restitution.[1]

Displaced families whose homes were destroyed or damaged during the August 2008 received $15,000 from the government to rebuild their homes, although many IDPs have held off reconstruction efforts due to concerns about insecurity. The RSG on IDPs recommended in 2009 the established of a comprehensive mechanism for resolving HLP claims for both the South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts. In addition, in 2010, Georgia adopted procedures for vacating and reallocating IDP housing, which, among other things, addresses those cases in which removal of IDPs from a collective center is ordered by the government and may require an eviction, and spells out safeguards for guaranteeing the right of IDPs.[2]

Iraq’s 2005 Constitution protects Iraqis against forced displacement (Article 44(2)). Through its Property Claims Commission, formerly the Commission on the Resolution of Real Property Disputes established by Order No. 2 (2006), Iraq has sought to recover property seized between 1968 and 2003, although significant gaps and challenges remain. For those internally displaced between 2006 and 2008, Prime Ministerial Order 101 (2008) sets out a framework for providing property restitution for registered IDPs with a view to encouraging and facilitating their return to Baghdad governorate, the origin of the majority of post-2006 IDPs and the location of the majority of post-2006 returnees. However, there have been few claims; many IDPs lack the necessary documentation, do not trust government institutions, fear retribution or cannot afford the requisite costs.[3]

In Afghanistan, where national authorities have not yet defined “internally displaced persons,” property and land rights of IDPs are either specifically addressed or generally implicated in substantive and procedural provisions found in a series of executive acts that have been issued since 2001, including the most IDP-specific of them, Presidential Decree No. 104 on Land Distribution for Settlement to Eligible Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons (2005). This decree sets forth a basic framework for distributing government land to both IDPs and returnees as a means of addressing their housing needs. However, IDPs seeking access to land are required to provide their national identity cards (tazkera) and documentation proving their internal displacement status—documentation which they may have lost. Moreover, the decree does not recognize other fundamental rights or needs of the internally displaced; it is valid only in areas of origin; and its implementation has been marred by inefficiency and corruption within the very weak ministry that is tasked with its implementation.

Although the 2006 peace agreement in Nepal  included a commitment to return occupied land and property and to allow for the return of displaced persons, four years after the peace agreement (and three years after the adoption of a national policy), between 50,000 and 70,000 people remained displaced.  Nearly half of the returnees interviewed by the Nepal IDP Working Group reported serious land, housing and property problems.  Of the more than 10,000 claims for compensation for property filed in 2007 only 2,000 families had received support to reconstruct or repair their houses by 2009.  It is widely reported that IDPs with non-Maoist political affiliations have been the least likely to recover land and property.

In Turkey, the government has yet to take full responsibility for displacement caused by its security forces against a largely Kurdish population. In its Law 5233 on Compensation of Damages That Occurred Due to Terror and the Fight against Terror (27 July 2004) and its Return to Village and Rehabilitation Program, displacement is defined in terms of “terrorism” or the “fight” against it. This law does not specifically focus on internal displacement, but it does benefit IDPs among other affected populations. Law 5233 and its related amendments and regulations compensate for “material damages suffered by persons due to terrorist acts or activities undertaken during the fight against terror” between 1987 and 2004. Compensation is provided for three types of damage: loss of property; physical injuries, disabilities, medical treatment, death and funerals; and inability to access property due to measures taken during “the fight against terrorism.”

According to the law, compensation is to be determined by damage assessment commissions (DACs) at the provincial level, with funding provided by the Ministry of the Interior. From 2004 to August 2009, the commissions received just over 360,000 applications. Of those, over 190,000 claims were decided: 120,000 were approved and the claimants awarded compensation; the remaining 70,000 were denied. Around $1.4 billion in compensation was awarded, of which close to $1.1 billion has been paid.[4] The existing legal and policy framework do not adequately address the obstacles to return, including the village guard system, insecurity and the presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance.

In Kenya, the government’s promotion of return included a National Humanitarian Emergency Fund for Mitigation and Resettlement of Victims of 2007 Post-Election Violence which was to meet the full costs of resettlement of IDPs, including reconstruction of basic housing, replacement of household effects and rehabilitation of infrastructure. But in practice, the government has been criticized for promoting return before conditions were safe. The government has also tended to focus on IDPs who own land and to attach durable solutions to land; there is no clear strategy for dealing with landless IDPs, such as squatters and non-farmers.

Awareness among IDPs as to their housing, land, and property rights under existing law – where there is law addressing those rights – is inadequate in many instances. For example, in Turkey, about half of IDPs surveyed in 2006 were not aware of their entitlements under the Return to Village and Rehabilitation Program or the Law on Compensation. [5]

National Human Rights Institutions and Constitutional Courts

In some cases, national human rights institutions (NHRIs) and constitutional courts have a critically important role to play in supporting as well as in holding governments accountable to guarantee the rights of IDPs. In a number of the countries our study examined, the work of NHRIs on internal displacement has included a focus on HLP issues.

In Georgia, for example, the Public Defender has been actively monitoring and reporting on the country-wide housing program begun in 2009 and has raised concerns about evictions of IDPs and the quality of housing in relocation sites. The Public Defender’s office also has undertaken a study on the conditions of the hidden majority of IDPs living in private accommodation rather than in collective centers.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has reported on and raised concerns about the large number of IDPs living in urban slums and informal settlements and about the fact that many IDPs were unable to return to their homes due to disputes over land and property.

Constitutional courts have in some instances played a role in strengthening the national legal framework for protecting the property rights of IDPs. Notably, Colombia’s activist Constitutional Court, in its Decision T-821 in October 2007, ordered the government to ensure respect for IDPs’ right to reparation and property restitution. In January 2009, the Constitutional Court ordered the government to comprehensively address land rights issues and to establish mechanisms to prevent future violations.

Subsequently, the government has sought to ensure these rights by adopting in 2011 the historic and ambitious Law 1448, known as the Victims and Land Restitution Law. In this law, government acknowledges for the first time ever the existence of an internal armed conflict in Colombia, and recognizes as “victims” those individuals or communities whose rights were violated under international humanitarian law or international human rights law. The law regulates reparations for all victims of the armed conflict since 1985 – numbering over 5 million – including through land restitution or compensation for IDPs which is to occur over the next decade.

However, restitution of land does not guarantee returnees’ security and may even endanger people given that land disputes and seizures remain a driving force of displacement. Aiming to prevent further victimization of returnees as a result of insecurity and violence, the government established a new security body, the Integrated Center of Intelligence for Land Restitution (Centro Integrado de Inteligencia para la Restitución de Tierras, also known as CI2-RT) within the Ministry of Defense. Additional participants include the Office of the Vice President, the Ministry of Justice and Interior, the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), Social Action (Acción Social), Incoder, and organizations representing victims of violence. Time will tell how successful the implementation of this ambitious law will be.

In Georgia, the Constitutional Court has also played an important role by recognizing the rights of IDPs to purchase property without losing their IDP status or in any way jeopardizing their right to return.

Conclusion

Securing HLP rights for IDPs is, of course, a key component of finding durable solutions to displacement. The study found that land and property disputes are almost always sources or manifestations of lingering conflict and often an obstacle to IDPs’ free exercise of their right to return.  While some governments have made efforts to provide mechanisms for property restitution or compensation, those mechanisms have rarely been adequate to deal—at least in a timely manner—with the scale and complexity of the problem. National human rights institutions and constitutional courts can play a key role in holding governments accountable for HLP and other rights and freedoms of IDPs.

---

[1] Government of Georgia, State Strategy for Internally Displaced Persons–Persecuted Persons, Chapter V.

[2] The Standard Operating Procedures for Vacation and Reallocation of IDPs for Durable Housing Solutions (2010) (www.mra.gov.ge)

[3] IDMC, Iraq: Little New Displacement but around 2.8 Million Iraqis Remain Internally Displaced: A Profile of the Internal Displacement Situation, 4 March, 2010, p. 240 (www.internal-displacement.org)

[4] IDMC, Turkey: Need for Continued Improvement in Response to Protracted Displacement: A Profile of the Internal Displacement Situation, 26 October 2009, p. 12, citing correspondence with the government of Turkey, 17 September 2009 (www.internal-displacement.org)

[5] Hacettepe University, Institute of Population Studies, "Findings of the Turkey Migration and Internally Displaced Population Survey," press release, 6 December 2006, cited in IDMC, Turkey: Need for Continued Improvement in Response to Protracted Displacement: A Profile of the Internal Displacement Situation, 26 October 2009, p. 11 (www.internal-displacement.org)

       

Event Information

Register for the Event

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March and the continuing crisis in Ukraine have triggered the most heated confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The standoff over Ukraine has raised critical questions about Russia’s ambitions in the post-Soviet space and the future political perspectives of the countries caught between Russia and the European Union. Despite political and economic pressure and ongoing occupation by Russia, Georgia is pursuing democratic transformation and a path toward the West.

On May 5, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings hosted Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Alasania for an address on Georgia’s vision for Euro-Atlantic integration during a period of increased insecurity in the region. In his remarks, Minister Alasania shared his insights on the upcoming NATO summit and Georgia’s approach to enhancing its relations with the West while attempting to normalize relations with Russia to lower tensions still simmering from the war six years ago.

Irakli Alasania previously served as Georgia's permanent representative to the United Nations from 2006 to 2009 and before that as special representative of the president in Georgian-Abkhazian negotiations. He is the founder and chairman of the Our Georgia-Free Democrats Party and one of the founders of Georgian Dream Coalition.

CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

Audio

• Georgia's Euro-Atlantic Aspirations and Regional Security

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20140505_georgia_security_transcript

       

Today, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings hosted Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Alasania for an address on Georgia's vision for Euro-Atlantic integration during a period of increased insecurity in the region. In his remarks, Minister Alasania shared his insights on the upcoming NATO summit and Georgia's approach to enhancing its relations with the West while attempting to normalize relations with Russia to lower tensions still simmering from the war six years ago.

Minister Alasania said that his country's "path toward NATO and European integration is unchanged" and offered next steps on "how we're going to make sure that the credibility of the west, the credibility of NATO as an organization will continue to be relevant to safeguard the values that we all cherish: freedom, democracy, and a Europe whole and free."

"We are acting like a NATO country," he said. Continuing:

We are acting like a European country, because we believe that our future is within Europe. And we regard ourselves as a future member. And this is why we are preparing ourselves institution-wise, in terms of freedom, in terms of democracy, and the military capabilities when ... the historical opportunity will open up to Georgia to join NATO and the EU.

The defense minister added that "We are looking at the future." We:

cannot be dragged back to the confrontation of the early 1990s. And we want to make sure that our policies, our economic policies, our foreign policy, [are] specifically working to make sure that the Georgian people who elected us are now moving closer and closer to the European way of living standards. And this only can be done if the efforts that Georgia is making will be validated, will be appreciated by the NATO and the European countries.

One of the things we are looking forward to is the signing of the association agreement. The next step obviously is the NATO summit. And what the NATO summit will decide is how effectively they can assure the allies, but also the partners, like Georgia.

On Russia, Minister Alasania spoke in both hopeful and realistic terms, saying that:

We are now approaching foreign policy and specifically the issue with Russia with a rather mature approach. We don't have any illusions that Russia will change its behavior or policies toward Georgia's territorial integrity or NATO aspirations. But we do hope the diffusion of tensions, the decrease of the military rhetoric between the two countries, will serve Georgia's interests best.

And it will give us more space to develop ourselves, to develop our relationship with the Abkhazia and South Ossetian areas. This is the cornerstone of our policy actually. Be uncompromising on the territorial integrity. Be uncompromising on NATO aspiration, membership in NATO and the EU. But at the same time be sure that we are not going give a pretext to anybody in the region, specifically to Russians, to attack us politically or otherwise.

---

Listen to audio of the event below or on the event's web page to get the full conversation, which was moderated by CUSE Director Fiona Hill.

Audio

• Georgia's Euro-Atlantic Aspirations and Regional Security

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Event Information

Register for the Event

To build on its longstanding interest in the evolving transatlantic relationship and to address the serious differences that have emerged between America and Europe after the September 11 terrorist attacks and throughout the ongoing war on terrorism, Brookings announces the launch of its new Center on the United States and Europe. The center offers a forum for research, high-level dialogue, and public debate on issues affecting U.S.-Europe relations.

At the inaugural conference to launch the new center, experts discussed the theme "The United States and Europe: One Year after the War in Iraq." Panelists at this special event included Javier Solana, Robert Kagan, Charles Grant, Klaus Scharioth, Andrew Moravcsik, Martin Indyk, Ulrike Guerot, Pascale Andreani, Cesare Merlini, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Gilles Andreani and others.

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• cuse20040421

       

Event Information

Register for the Event

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)

Event Materials

• 20100602_eurozone

       

Event Information

Register for the Event

With many national economies slipping back into recession and voters in Greece, France and the United Kingdom rejecting austerity measures in recent elections, the European political and economic landscape has shifted again. Europe now seems headed towards a revised social contract and a new round of negotiations to respond to the continuing financial crisis. The United States, while experiencing a mild recovery, also strives to find the right balance between fiscal consolidation and growth preservation—a mission made more challenging with the upcoming November elections. A new loss of confidence in Europe may well imperil the U.S. economy’s fragile recovery. Will similar anti-austerity political currents cross the Atlantic and bring "change" to the United States? Despite the crisis, transatlantic cooperation has increased during the Obama administration, but U.S.-EU relations will be subjected to critical examination during the election year.

On May 23, the same day European leaders will gather for an extraordinary summit in Brussels, the Center on the United States at Brookings (CUSE) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted a discussion featuring experts and top officials from both sides of the Atlantic for the 2012 CUSE Annual Conference. Panelists explored critical issues shaping the future of transatlantic relations in a year of elections and political transitions, from the euro crisis and the future of NATO to relations with Russia, Turkey and the Middle East.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.

The event is available in full on C-SPAN »

Video

• NATO in Afghanistan: In Together, Out Together
• U.S. Has Enormous Stake in Euro Crisis
• U.S., European Allies United on Iran
• U.S. Will Move Forward with Russia on Areas of Mutual Interest

Audio

• Visions of Europe in an Election Year: Part 1
• Visions of Europe in an Election Year: Part 2
• Visions of Europe in an Election Year: Part 3

Transcript

• Intro And Remarks With Phillip Gordon (.pdf)
• Panel One Transcript (.pdf)
• Panel Two Transcript (.pdf)
• Complete Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20120523_europe_visions_gordon_transcript_corrected
• 20120523_europe_visions_panel_one_corrected
• 20120523_europe_visions_panel_two_corrected
• 20120523_europe_visions_complete_corrected

       

       

       

       

       

       

Americans often think of our country as being one of great opportunity – where anyone can rise from very modest circumstances, if they work hard and make good choices. We believe that often remains true.

But, for children and youth growing up in poverty, such upward mobility in America is too rare. Indeed, just 30 percent of those growing up in poverty make it to middle class or higher as adults. Though we’ve made progress in reducing poverty over the past several decades, our poverty rates are still too high and our rate of economic advancement for poor children has been stuck for decades. That is an embarrassment for a nation that prides itself on everyone having a shot at the American Dream.

What can we do to reduce poverty and increase economic mobility? In our polarized and poisoned political atmosphere, it is hard to reach consensus on policy efforts. Both progressives and conservatives want lower poverty; but progressives want more public spending programs to improve opportunity and security for the poor, while conservatives generally argue for more responsibility from them before providing more help.

Even so, progressives and conservatives might not be as far apart as these stereotypes suggest. The two of us—one a conservative Republican and the other a progressive Democrat—were recently part of an ideologically balanced group of 15 scholars brought together by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. Our charge was to generate a report with policy proposals to reduce poverty and increase upward mobility. An additional goal was simply to see whether we could arrive at consensus among ourselves, and bridge the ideological divide that has so paralyzed our political leaders.

Together we decided that the most important issues facing poor Americans and their children are family, education and work. We had to listen to each other’s perspectives on these issues, and be open to others’ truths. We also agreed to be mindful of the research evidence on these topics. In the end, we managed to generate a set of policy proposals we all find compelling.

To begin with, the progressives among us had to acknowledge that marriage is a positive family outcome that reduces poverty and raises upward mobility in America. The evidence is clear: stable two-parent families have positive impacts on children’s success, and in America marriage is the strongest predictor of such stability. Therefore marriage should be promoted as the norm in America, along with responsible and delayed child-bearing.

At the same time, the conservatives among us had to acknowledge that investing more resources in the skills and employability of poor adults and children is crucial if we want them to have higher incomes over time. Indeed, stable families are hard to maintain when the parents – including both the custodial mothers and the (often) non-custodial fathers – struggle to maintain employment and earn enough to support their families. Investing in proven, cost-effective, education and training programs such as high-quality preschool and training for jobs in high-growth economic sectors can improve the skills and employability of kids from poor families and lift them out of poverty through work.

Another important compromise was that progressives acknowledged that expecting and even requiring adults on public assistance to work can reduce poverty, as we learned in the 1990s from welfare reform; programs today like Disability Insurance, among others, need reforms to encourage more work. And reforms that encourage innovation and accountability would make our public education programs for the poor more effective at all levels. We need more choice in public K-12 education (through charter schools) and a stronger emphasis on developing and retaining effective teachers, while basing our state subsidies to higher education institutions more heavily on graduation rates, employment, and earnings of their graduates.

Conservatives also had to acknowledge that requiring the poor to work only makes sense when work is available to them. In periods or places with weak labor markets, we might need to create jobs for some by subsidizing their employment in either the private or public sector (as we did during the Great Recession). We agreed that no one should be dropped from the benefit rolls unless they have been offered a suitable work activity and rejected it. And we also need to “make work pay” for those who remain unskilled or can find only low-wage jobs – by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (especially for adults without custody of children) and modestly raising the minimum wage.

We also all agreed on other topics. For instance, work-based learning—in the form of paid apprenticeships and other models of high-quality career and technical education—can play an important role in raising both skills and work experience among poor youth and adults.  And, if we raise public spending for the poor, we need to pay for it—and not increase federal deficits. We all agree that reducing certain tax deductions for high-income families and making our retirement programs more progressive are good ways to finance our proposals.

As our report demonstrates, it is possible for progressives and conservatives to bridge their differences and reach compromises to generate a set of policies that will reduce poverty and improve upward mobility. Can Congress and the President do the same?

Editor's Note: this piece first appeared in Inside Sources.

Downloads

• Explore the full report

      

DC KIDS COUNT, housed at the nonprofit DC Action for Children, is the DC chapter of a nationwide network of local-level organizations aiming to provide a community-by-community picture of the conditions of children. The 26 year-old project is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and its aim is to provide high-quality data and trend analysis as well as help local governments monitor budget and legislative decisions based on evidence of what works for children and families. As we pointed out in our recent papers and a blog, developing reliable and comprehensive data is a critical step to building effective community partnerships and producing outcomes that improve economic mobility and health in a neighborhood.

We discussed these issues with HyeSook Chung, Executive Director of DC Action for Children.

Q. Please summarize the history of the DC Kids Count project. What motivated it, and how it has evolved over the last years?

A. As part of the nationwide Kids Count network, each chapter tracks a number of indicators on child and family well-being through an online database called Kids Count Data Center. Each chapter also releases a yearly data book which summarizes the state of child well-being within their state or locality. When DC Action for Children became the host of DC Kids Count in 2012, I wanted to rethink the way we presented our data to move beyond the traditional print format into the exciting realm of visualizing data. This led to the beginning of our partnership with DataKind, a group of dedicated pro-bono data scientists who worked with us to create an interactive, web-based data tool that maps out indicators of child well-being across DC’s 39 neighborhood clusters.

We know that the neighborhood children grow up in, and the resources they have access to, plays a huge role in shaping children’s future opportunities. The maps we created with our Data Tool 2.0  reveal sharp disparities in DC neighborhoods: some DC neighborhoods are wealthy and have many assets, while others are characterized by high levels of poverty. The many challenges that come with high poverty neighborhoods include: poorer performing schools, more crime, and less access to libraries, parks, and healthy foods.  

Q. What type of indicators do you gather? How many years does the data cover? What level of granularity does the data have?

A. We track a variety of indicators of child well-being, including demographics, economic well-being, health and safety. The data is housed online in two places: The KIDS COUNT Data Center and our Data Tool 2.0. The Data Tool 2.0 maps the most recent available data at the neighborhood cluster, while the Data Center allows for a wider range of geographies (citywide and ward level) and different timeframes.  Many of the indicators have data from 1990 to the present.

Q. How do you measure the data tool’s impact on policy and legislation?

A. We have made it a priority to conduct internal evaluations to assess the utilization of the online tool, but we also believe that measuring the tool’s impact must go beyond traditional web analytics. We regularly use the Data Tool 2.0 in our work with city officials and direct service providers to offer an overview of the social context in the city’s different neighborhoods.     

In a city where the allocation of resources is often guided by personal relationships and old-school politics, it is important to show clearly whether budget decisions are aligned with the needs of our children. We believe that our Data Tool 2.0 project can bring much needed transparency to the allocation of the DC government budget and help achieve agreement.

Q. The DC Kids Count project is helping build data capacity across organizations, with the aim of creating a more “data-literate” city. Could you tell us about some of these initiatives? 

A. Businesses like Amazon and Netflix increasingly focus on finding “actionable” insights from their data. For them, “big data” analytics can help answer tough business questions. With the right platforms for analytics, they can increase efficiency or even improve operations and sales.

In a similar manner, we at DC Action for Children believe that big data opens up the opportunity for us to improve and reshape our strategy and decision making process to better align services with the needs of DC children in the same way Amazon or Netflix does with their customers.

For instance, we are offering the Child and Family Services Agency technical and data analysis support for their Healthy Families Thriving Communities Collaboratives, which are a citywide network of community-based organizations designed to embed family supports in their communities. Their mission is to strengthen and stabilize families and to prevent child abuse and neglect by offering services in the form of case management and support. We use KIDS COUNT data at the ward and neighborhood levels to highlight needs in the community and inform their planning. This encourages the Collaboratives’ staff to look at data differently—integrating it as a vital part of their program planning and strategy.

Q. What are some of the obstacles and challenges you face in integrating the data, and updating it?

A. Historically, our data analysis looked at more traditional indicators, such as program enrollment and the number of child welfare cases. But now we think we can use our access to big data to pull out patterns within our datasets and help guide the decisions of the city administrators. For example, if we are trying to prevent future child abuse cases, we can look at patterns analyzing family and child data in specific neighborhoods. We can use the type of predictive analysis practiced in the for-profit business to help us serve DC children more efficiently and effectively.

One of the most significant obstacles we face is ensuring that the indicators are up-to-date. This can be an issue with government agencies since some of them are slow in their release of new data.  Moreover, there is also no standard format across local agencies for how data is collected and released. Furthermore, data is often aggregated at different geographical units, like zip codes or census tracts. To get the data ready to upload to our Data Tool, we must recalculate the data into neighborhood clusters.  

Q. What policy changes would help produce better data-sharing ecosystems? 

A. DC has in many ways demonstrated leadership in data sharing. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer works to make a large variety of datasets publicly available. We have also seen large investments over the years to create new data systems that track progress and service delivery for different agencies. But our city can do more to promote a data-sharing ecosystem. So can other cities.

While multiple agencies are adopting innovative data systems, the systems are often siloed and do not speak to each other. Moreover, since data is tracked differently across agencies, based on needs and requirements for reporting, it is difficult for agencies to share data both publicly and internally. It is also often difficult to get access to de-identified disaggregated data for richer analysis. We are glad that many agencies recognize the value of robust data collection, but more data transparency policies would give us a better understanding of the challenges that lie behind improving the wellbeing of children in the city.

Q. What are the next steps for the DC Kids Count project, and how do you expect it to grow over the next few years?

A. We just finished wrapping up some of the final work on our DataTool 2.0. In terms of next steps, we are working on a handbook that explains how we created our Data Tool so that other Kids Count chapters and organizations can replicate and adapt our tool.

We would also like to add local budget data to the asset maps to see if public investments align with the neighborhoods that need it the most. This would give us a more nuanced understanding of the geography of DC budget investments, including inequities in investments by geography and demographics.

Big data analytics has changed the way we focus our priorities and engage in business practices. I’m committed to this movement. I think that, through big data, we can also revolutionize the way we do policy.

***

In conclusion, DC Kids Count, housed at the nonprofit DC Action for Children, belongs to a larger, nationwide group of organizations helping to better coordinate regional development through data-driven decision making. By centralizing different government databases, and providing real-time, community level data, DC Kids Count can help local government entities allocate their resources more efficiently and creatively and help foster place-conscious strategies. The process behind compiling the data also illustrates many of the challenges—data sharing, interoperability of data systems, access to real-time data involved in building “data- sharing ecosystems.”

      

There has been no shortage of news about South Africa’s recent economic and political turmoil—from its plummeting currency and slowing economy, to President Zuma’s cabinet shake-up, to weeks-long student protests over rising tuition fees in October.

Understanding what is driving political volatility requires understanding the central economic challenge facing South Africa’s major metropolitan regions: insufficient labor market opportunities for young people.

A recent Brookings report found that the unemployment rate among youth (ages 15 to 34) in Gauteng, the home province of the Johannesburg region, was nearly 40 percent, exceeding the 37 percent national rate. Young people continue to flock to Johannesburg, and the broader Gauteng City-Region that surrounds it, in search of economic opportunity. But the city-region has only created jobs at a 1.3 percent annual clip since 2000, far lower than peer regions like Shenzhen (8.2 percent), Istanbul (2.8 percent), and Santiago (2.4 percent), limiting its ability to absorb young workers. At the same time, the skills demands of the labor market have shifted as the region’s economy has transitioned from mining to more advanced services, creating a mismatch between what education and training systems are providing and what the labor market demands. This employment crisis matters for both economic competitiveness (output per worker growth, a rough measure of productivity, has stagnated since 2010) and economic justice (the unemployment rate for black South Africans is four times the rate for whites).

At a recent Global Cities Initiative event in Johannesburg local private, public, and civic leaders discussed both the immense scale of the youth unemployment challenge and an ambitious proposed solution: the youth skills empowerment initiative “Vulindlel’ eJozi” (a Zulu phrase meaning “open the way in Johannesburg”) created by the city of Johannesburg in partnership with the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator. Of the approximately 1.6 million Johannesburg residents aged 19-34, just under half are not engaged in employment, education, or training. Vulindlel’ eJozi’s seeks to “reach 200,000 of these young people to meaningfully include and engage them in our economy over the next year.”

Vulindlel’ eJozi stands out for at least two reasons. Most glaringly is its sheer scale. Through its work with Harambee and other initiatives, the city of Johannesburg provided over 45,000 opportunities for youth to move towards employment during the first quarter of 2015. Second, the partnership leverages the resources and competencies of the private and civic sectors. Harambee has successfully trained and placed 20,000 youth in sustained formal employment with over 200 employers and ambitiously wants to engage 500,000 South African youth in their training programs. Constant employer feedback on what skills are demanded is one of the accelerator’s hallmarks, helping Harambee achieve higher trainee retention rates than industry averages.  

Youth unemployment, of course, is not a problem unique to South Africa. Recent Brookings research found that labor force participation, employment, and median earnings among American teens and young adults all declined between 2000 and 2014. How effectively the city of Johannesburg can build the institutional architecture to engage with private and NGO actors on a youth employment initiative at this scale will ultimately determine its success. These lessons could serve other cities well as they seek to deliver economic opportunity to their young people.

      

Inequality remained a prominent theme in public debate during 2015, likely helped by the unexpected rise and resilience of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders' run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although the labor market continued its slow recovery, wage growth remained fairly weak—especially for middle and low earners. The upper middle class continues to pull away from the middle, not least in terms of income and wealth.

But it has also become much clearer that inequality is a geographical issue, as much as a social and economic one. Whether the focus is on the more immediate matter of income inequality or the slower-burning issue of intergenerational mobility, there is huge variation between different places in the United States.

Not all cities are created equal…

National income trends are important, of course. But they can often disguise deep differences by place. The income required to be ‘rich,’ at least by comparison to those around you, varies significantly between different cities, for example. A household income of $100,000 puts you on almost on the top rung (around the 95^th percentile) of the income ladder in Detroit. But to reach the same heights in San Jose, California, you’d need an income three times as great, according to calculations by my colleague Alan Berube.

There are also very large differences in the extent of income inequality in different metropolitan areas. Using the inequality measure used in another recent paper by Berube, the ratio between incomes at the 20^th percentile and the 95^th percentile, shows that while some cities have large gaps between rich and poor, others look almost Scandinavian in their egalitarian distributions. Here are the 20/95 ratios for the three most equal and unequal cities in the U.S.:

Intergenerational mobility varies—a lot—by place

In a groundbreaking research paper in 2014, Raj Chetty and his team at the Equality of Opportunity Project at Harvard showed that rates of intergenerational income mobility also vary considerably between different cities. It was always a stretch to compare the U.S. to Denmark on this front, given the colossal differences between the countries. But such comparisons became virtually unconscionable once the variations within the U.S. become apparent.

This year, Chetty and his co-author Nathaniel Hendren went a step further and a big step closer to showing a causal impact of place on the prospects for children raised in different locations. Again relying on large administrative datasets, the two scholars were able to show the variation in earnings for the folk hailing from, say, Baltimore versus Baton Rouge.

Professor Chetty presented his new research at a Brookings event in June (which you can view here), just weeks after the eruption of protest and violence in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. One striking finding was that the worst place in America to grow up, in terms of subsequent earnings, is Baltimore City. Critically, Chetty’s research design allows him to show that these differences do not reflect the characteristics of the people of Baltimore; but the characteristics of Baltimore itself. This downward effect on earnings is particularly bad for boys, as we highlighted in an earlier blog:

In related work, Chetty and his colleagues also show that children who move to a better place see an improvement in their own earnings—and that the younger they are when they move, the bigger the impact. The children of families who move as a result of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity program showed sizable improvements in their own outcomes, as Jonathan Rothwell highlighted in his blog, 'Sociology’s revenge: Moving to Opportunity (MTO) revisited.'

Race, place and opportunity

One of the findings from Chetty’s earlier work is that race, place, and opportunity intersect in important ways. Cities with more segregation, and those with larger black populations, tend to show weaker upward mobility patterns. In order to understand the obstacles to upward mobility, policymakers have to adopt both a place-conscious (Margery Turner) and a race-conscious perspective. This policy was the subject of another Brookings event in November, with contributions from the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, the Governor of Delaware, and the Mayor of Newton, Mass. (The event can still be viewed here; for my highlights see this piece.) Being poor and black is generally not the same as being poor and white. Being poor in Cleveland is not the same as being poor in Charlotte.

On equal opportunity: think local, act local

Many states and cities are upping their game on issues of equality and opportunity, for both bad and good reasons. The bad reason is the relative inertia of the federal government. The good reason is a growing recognition that many of the levers for improving opportunity lie in the hands of institutions and agents at the state and metro level. Colorado has adopted a life-cycle opportunity framework and is pioneering efforts to integrate health and social policy. Charlotte has a high-profile taskforce (which I advise) on improving opportunity. Cincinnati has pledged to lift 10,000 children out of poverty within five years. Louisville is leading a push on school desegregation. Kalamazoo is adding greater student supports to its existing promise of free college. Baltimore’s program to reduce infant mortality has shown remarkable success. Durham, N.C. has rolled out a universal home visiting program.

Many of these efforts are building on the emerging ideas around 'collective impact,' harnessing local resources of many kinds around a clearly-articulated, shared goal. Given the scholarship showing just how much particular places influences individual and broader outcomes, this is likely to be where much of the most important policy development will take place in coming years. In terms of equality—and especially equality of opportunity—we need to think local, and act local, too.

      

This year shone a bleak light on the deep racial divides of the U.S. The flash-points of Ferguson, Baltimore and Chicago gave new impetus to movements to reform the criminal justice system and policing. But behind the headlines, the evidence for wide, stubborn race gaps on economic and social indicators is perhaps more troubling still. 

Especially for black Americans, race gaps in family formation, employment, household income, wealth, educational quality, and neighborhood segregation have shown little­—if any—sign of improvement in recent years. The very first Social Mobility Memos was about the barriers to black upward mobility, and in recent months, we have been focusing increasingly on issues of race, place, and opportunity, and here, to close 2015, we recap 15 of our pieces on the subject, including pieces from our colleague Jonathan Rothwell on college, drugs and neighborhoods, and the first Brookings piece from our new nonresident scholar, William Julius Wilson. 

Our hope is that 2016 will see a much greater focus on race and opportunity in America. 

1. Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity, Richard V. Reeves and Edward Rodrigue

What would Martin Luther King Jr. think of America in 2015 if he’d lived to see his eighty-sixth birthday? No doubt, he’d be pleased by the legal and political advances of black Americans, crowned by the election and re-election of President Obama.

2. Four charts that show the opportunity gap isn’t going away, Richard V. Reeves

Child poverty rates are coming down slowly, according to figures from the Pew Research Center, except among one racial group: African Americans. This is the latest reminder that the economic gap between black and white Americans is not closing over time. Indeed, on some dimensions, it is widening.

3. Obama’s Post-Presidency? Tackling the Social Mobility Challenge for Black Men, Richard V. Reeves

President Obama’s initiative to boost opportunities for young black men—My Brother’s Keeper—looks to be a post-presidential plan, as much as presidential one. Valerie Jarrett, his closest aide, said that it was a vocation the president and first lady Michelle Obama will undertake “for the rest of their lives…That’s a moral, social responsibility that they feel will transcend the time that he’s president.”

4. School readiness gaps are improving, except for black kids, Richard V. Reeves

Between 1998 and 2010, inequality in school readiness—in terms of math, reading, and behavior—declined quite significantly, according to Reardon and Portilla’s analysis of ECLS data, being presented today at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Annual Conference. This positive trend can be seen for gaps in both income and race (or at least, for Hispanic-white differences).

5. Rich Neighborhood, Poor Neighborhood: How Segregation Threatens Social Mobility, Patrick Sharkey

Racial segregation in American cities has declined slowly, but steadily over the past four decades. This is good news. Over the same timeframe, however, the level of economic segregation has been rising. Compared to 1970, the rich are now much more likely to live in different communities than the poor.

6. Segregation and concentrated poverty in the nation’s capital, Stuart M. Butler and Jonathan Grabinsky

The social mobility gap between black and white Americans has barely narrowed in the last decades, and sharp differences in access to opportunity persist. This racial opportunity gap can, in part, be traced back to the neighborhoods where whites and blacks grow up: research from urban sociologists like Patrick Sharkey and Robert Sampson shows the damaging effects racial segregation and concentrated neighborhood poverty can have on children’s life chances. Washington, D.C. is a case in point.

7. The other side of Black Lives Matter, William Julius Wilson

Several decades ago I spoke with a grieving mother living in one of the poorest inner-city neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. A stray bullet from a gang fight had killed her son, who was not a gang member. She lamented that his death was not reported in any of the Chicago newspapers or in the Chicago electronic media.

8. Guns and race: The different worlds of black and white Americans, Richard V. Reeves and Sarah Holmes

“The nation’s consciousness has been raised by the repeated acts of police brutality against blacks. But the problem of public space violence—seen in the extraordinary distress, trauma and pain many poor inner-city families experience following the killing of a family member or close relative—also deserves our special attention.”

9. Measuring the Racial Opportunity Gap, Richard V. Reeves and Quentin Karpilow

The U.S. is sharply divided by race, not least in terms of the opportunities for children—a point that a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation vividly shows. At every life stage, there are gaps between kids of different colors.

10. How the War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility, Jonathan Rothwell

The social mobility of black Americans has suffered collateral damage from the “War on Drugs.” Being convicted of a crime has devastating effects on the employment prospects and incomes of ex-felons and their children, as my Brookings colleagues and other scholars have found. These findings are often used to motivate efforts to reduce criminal behavior. They should also motivate changes in our criminal justice system, which unfairly punishes black Americans—often for victimless crimes that whites are at least as likely to commit.

11. Black Students at Top Colleges: Exceptions, Not the Rule, Jonathan Rothwell

A generation has been lost in the journey towards race equality in terms of income. The income gap between blacks and whites has been stuck since 1980. Why? Dozens of factors count, of course, but one in particular is worth further exploration: the underrepresentation of black students in elite colleges. As I noted in a previous blog, this could help to explain why blacks earn less than whites, even in the same occupation and with the same level of education.

12. The stubborn race and class gaps in college quality, Jonathan Rothwell

Increasing the number of low-income adults going to—and through—college is an important step towards greater social mobility and reduced income inequality. College is also an important tool for tackling race gaps. But the challenge is not just about quantity: college quality counts for a good deal, too.

13. Single black female BA seeks educated husband: Race, assortative mating and inequality, Edward Rodrigue and Richard V. Reeves

There is a growing trend in the United States towards assortative mating—a clunky phrase that refers to people’s tendency to choose spouses with similar educational attainment. Rising numbers of college-educated women play a key role in this change. It is much easier for college graduates to find and marry each other when there are more equal numbers of each gender within an educational bracket.

14. Sociology’s revenge: Moving to Opportunity (MTO) revisited, Jonathan Rothwell

Neighborhoods remain the crucible of social life, even in the internet age. Children do not stream lectures—they go to school. They play together in parks and homes, not over Skype. Crime and fear of crime are experienced locally, as is the police response to it.

15. Space, place, race: Six policies to improve social mobility, Richard V. Reeves and Allegra Pocinki

Place matters: that’s the main message of Professor Raj Chetty’s latest research. This supports the findings of a rich body of evidence from social scientists, but Chetty is able to use a large dataset to provide an even stronger empirical foundation. Specifically, he finds that children who move from one place to another have very different outcomes, depending on whether they move to a low-opportunity city or a high-opportunity one.

      

As the income inequality discussion continues to simmer across the country, municipal minimum wage ordinances have become hot topics of conversation in many cities. In January 2016, Seattle will implement its second step-up in the local minimum wage in 9 months, reaching $13 for many employers in the city and edging closer to a $15 an hour minimum that will apply to most firms by 2019. San Francisco will reach a $15 an hour minimum by July 2018. Yet cities as diverse as Birmingham, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Louisville have enacted or proposed similar minimum wage laws. It is too early to discern true impact of these local wage ordinances, but speculation abounds regarding whether or how the higher wage will affect firms and the earnings of low-wage workers.

Less prominent in debate and discussion about the minimum wage is the potential impact that higher minimum wage rates may have for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits perform many critical functions in our communities—often serving the most at-risk and disadvantaged. Yet, fiscal constraints often place a low ceiling on what many nonprofits can pay frontline staff. As a result, many different types of nonprofit organizations—child care centers, home health care organizations, senior care providers—pay staff at rates near or below the targets set by the recent crop of local minimum wage laws. Our popular image of a minimum wage worker is the teen-age cashier at a drive-through window or the sales clerk at a retail store in the local strip mall, but many workers in these “helping professions” are being paid low wages.

Increases in the minimum wage are occurring at the same time that many nonprofit service organizations are confronted with fixed or declining revenue streams. Facing fiscal pressure, nonprofit service organizations may pursue one or more coping strategies. In addition to reductions in staffing or hours, commonly expected responses, nonprofits may cut back services offered, scale back service areas, or favor clients that can afford higher fees.

Such responses could reduce the amount and quality of the services provided to vulnerable populations. For example, elderly populations on fixed incomes may have fewer options for home care. Working poor parents may find higher child care costs prohibitively expensive. Employment service organizations may find it harder to place hard-to-serve jobseekers in jobs due to more competitive applicant pools.

At the same time, higher minimum wages could have positive consequences for nonprofit staffing and capacity. Higher wages could reduce employee turnover and increase staff morale and productivity. Organizations may not have to grapple with the contradiction of serving low-income persons, but paying modest wages.

The most recent set of wage ordinances take cities to unknown territory. Anticipating potential negative effects, Chicago has exempted individuals in subsidized employment programs from its recent minimum wage ordinance. The city of Seattle has set aside funds to help nonprofits meet the higher local minimum wage, but many nonprofit funding streams are beyond the city’s control and are not seeing similar adjustments.

In the coming years, more research on how local nonprofits are affected by local minimum wage laws needs to occur. We should expect there to be a mix of positive and negative effects within a particular nonprofit organization and across different types of organizations. Nonprofit organizations should be engaged as stakeholders in debates around higher local minimum wages. And, nonprofits should actively engage in research efforts to document the impact of higher wages. In particular, nonprofits should work to compile data that can compare staffing, service delivery, and program outcomes before and after wage laws phase-in. Such data could provide important insight into the impact of local wage ordinances.

We also should be careful not to confuse other challenges confronting the nonprofit sector with the impact of higher minimum wages. For example, private philanthropy to human service nonprofits has failed to keep up with rising need and declining public sector revenue streams in most communities—realities that may pose more serious challenges than minimum wage laws, but ones without an obvious scapegoat.

In the end, ongoing debate around local minimum wage ordinances should provide us with the opportunity to re-examine how we support community-based nonprofits as a society and assess whether that support fits with all that we expect the nonprofit sector to accomplish for children and families in our communities. 

      

There are lots of good reasons to go to college, but the vast majority of prospective students in this country report[i] that they’ll go to college because they believe that it will improve their employment opportunities and financial wellbeing. And for the most part, they’re right. Despite many suggestions to the contrary, it’s very well documented[ii] that investments in higher education pay large dividends in the form of future earnings. This makes higher education one of the most important tools we have for generating social mobility. Regardless of an individual’s starting point in life, higher education offers access to greater financial well-being. Unfortunately, it’s not a fail proof system.

Investments in education, like investments in the stock market, do not come without risk. In financial markets, access to information is one way investors mitigate risk. Mutual funds, for example, disclose average returns over various time periods for certain categories of investments (e.g. large-cap funds, emerging market funds, technology funds, etc.), in addition to other information. These data, moreover, are widely and freely available through consumer-oriented websites like Yahoo Finance, Vanguard, and E-Trade. Yet, for higher education, students have had access to no analogous information until quite recently.

For decades, economists discussed the average benefits of a college education compared to a high school education with no regard to either field of study or institution. Finally, in 2009, the Census Bureau started collecting data that could be used to assess which majors pay the most,[iii] and then just a few months ago, the Department of Education released data on the earnings of alumni by institution, for all students who receive federal grants or loans. These data can be further analyzed, as we have done, to estimate the economic contribution of schools (or value-added) as distinct from the outcomes attributable to student characteristics (like test scores).[iv] Still, even with these data advances, students cannot compare earnings by major across institutions, except in a handful of cases using state data systems.

Here, we illustrate how data by major and institution can inform the decision of what to study and where using data from Texas. Suppose first that this student is a Texas resident and has decided she would like to pursue a bachelor’s degree at a public institution in her state.

Our data on alumni earnings by major comes from the Texas Higher Education Board, and we combine it with information on the net cost of tuition from the Department of Education’s IPEDS database as reported in the College Scorecard.[v] We use these data to estimate the ten-year return on investment for each institution in the state of Texas by major.   

We calculate an estimate of ten-year return by summing the average earnings faced by graduates over the first ten years following graduation[vi] and subtracting off the wage they would have received as a high school graduate without a degree (taking into account additional years of earnings when they would have been enrolled in college). To estimate this benchmark, we used data on Texas residents from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, obtained via IPUMS CPS.[vii] We then subtract the institution specific costs[viii] to get the ten-year financial return. Since education pays off over a lifetime, this isn’t the ideal exercise, but it’s still informative. We’ve estimated these returns based on the population of individuals who both complete their degree and do not go on to complete graduate study. Ideally, these estimated expected returns would be adjusted to account for how earnings and costs are affected by non-completion. Indeed, the average rate of completion across these schools is only 48 percent. This is a quick and dirty method for estimating returns that fails to take into account a number of selection issues,[ix] but we believe that it still provides an effective illustration of risk in higher education. 

Figure 1 illustrates the potential average outcome facing our Texas student, who is deciding between bachelor’s degree programs from the set of public institutions in her home state. We’ve plotted the distribution of financial returns for the set of potential expected outcomes, which are defined as all combinations of institution and major. To be clear, the distribution of potential outcomes would be far wider if we were using individual specific variation (i.e. the fact that some students will ultimately earn more than others, even with the same degree from the same institution) and the real possibility of non-completion.

We know that, on average, this student will face a positive return on her investment, wherever she chooses to go. The average rate of return across all possible choices facing this student is quite a sizeable 11.3 percent (or $216,000 in undiscounted 2014 dollars). At a systemic level that’s important.  Still, the standard deviation is 6.7, with a low return of a -6.6 percent (Animal Science at Sul Ross State) and a high return of 79.8 percent (Registered Nursing at UT Brownsville). Out of 1065 combinations of majors and schools, 19 yielded average negative returns. This was true even for two programs at the selective UT Austin campus (Visual and Performing Arts and Classics). 1.1 percent of students who graduated in 2004 were in a major-institution combination that yielded a net return below 4 percent. In such cases, they would have been better off putting their dollars into treasury bills.

Figure 1. Mean return on bachelor’s degree investment by institution and major, for Texas residents who graduated in 2004 from a Texas public college

Students who know what they want to major in could benefit greatly from knowing which school is likely to generate the largest pay off (it would be nice to know this in terms of learning as well as money, but that is another more complicated matter).

We’ve illustrated the distribution of potential outcomes for two different popular majors, Liberal Arts and Sciences and Electrical Engineering.[x] Both majors clearly offer a significant average rate of return across all institutions (12 for Liberal Arts and 20 for Electrical Engineering), but depending on which major they choose the student will face a different level of risk in their future earnings. The variation (standard deviation) in the expected rate of return across institutions is much larger for Liberal Arts majors (5.7) than for Electrical Engineering majors (3.7). Yet, while these facts may discourage people from pursuing a Liberal Arts major in the abstract, the plot below does show that some Liberal Arts majors out-earn their peers in electrical engineering. For example, Liberal Arts majors from UT Austin earned a higher return than electrical engineering majors at UT Dallas, the University of Houston, and three other UT campuses. Thus, these more detailed facts can actually encourage students to pursue majors that look economically bad for the average student but quite attractive at a particular school with a strong program.

Figure 2. Distribution of earnings 10 years after graduation for bachelor’s degree holders with an Electrical Engineering or Liberal Arts degree, for Texas residents and 2004 graduates from Texas public colleges 

The point is that college degrees, like other investments, are risky, but information goes a long way to clarify the nature of that risk and improve the quality of investment decisions. In addition to providing students and the public greater access to data on market performance of alumni, there are a number of innovations both in the policy arena and in the private market that could help make college investments less risky. First of all, innovative financing systems that allow students to pay for their investment over a longer period of time and tie repayment to earnings would greatly limit downside risk for students.  Second, institutions have the capacity to shoulder some of this risk, and a proposal known as risk-sharing[xi] is gaining some traction and would require schools to pay the federal government some portion of loan default losses. On a voluntary basis, some colleges have offered on-time graduation guarantees[xii] and wage guarantees.[xiii] And last, new business models in higher education could help mitigate risk. Part of the problem in the current system comes from the all-or-nothing regime in which students have to invest in a bundle of coursework (i.e. a degree) in order to reap significant returns. The growing prominence of new models, like micro-credentials[xiv] and coding boot camps,[xv] can offer alternatives that don’t require students to put all of their eggs in one basket.

       

Gary Burtless, a senior fellow in Economic Studies, explains new research on the growing longevity gap between high-income and low-income Americans, especially among the aged.

“Life expectancy difference of low income workers, middle income workers, and high income workers has been increasing over time,” Burtless says. “For people born in 1920 their life expectancy was not as long typically as the life expectancy of people who were born in 1940. But those gains between those two birth years were very unequally distributed if we compare people with low mid-career earnings and people with high mid-career earnings.” Burtless also discusses retirement trends among the educated and non-educated, income inequality among different age groups, and how these trends affect early or late retirement rates.

Also stay tuned for our regular economic update with David Wessel, who also looks at the new research and offers his thoughts on what it means for Social Security.

Show Notes

Later retirement, inequality and old age, and the growing gap in longevity between rich and poor

Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing

Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen on Stitcher, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu.

       

MEDIA RELEASE

Low-Income Boys in Higher Inequality Areas Drop Out of School More Often than Low-Income Boys in Lower Inequality Areas, Limiting Social Mobility, New Brookings Paper Finds
“Economic despair” may contribute if those at the bottom do not believe they have the ability to achieve middle class status

Greater income gaps between those at the bottom and middle of the income distribution lead low-income boys to drop out of high school more often than their counterparts in lower inequality areas, suggesting that there is an important link between income inequality and reduced rates of upward mobility, according to a new paper presented today at the Brookings Panel on Activity. The finding has implications for social policy, implying a need for interventions that focus on bolstering low-income adolescents' perceptions of what they could achieve in life.

In “Income Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Decision to Drop Out Of High School,” Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and University of Maryland economics professor Melissa S. Kearney and Wellesley economics professor Phillip B. Levine propose a channel through which income inequality might lead to less upward mobility—often assumed to be the case but not yet fully proven. The conventional thinking among economists is that income inequality provides incentives for individuals to invest more in order to achieve the higher income position in society, but Kearney and Levine observe that if low-income youth view middle-class life as out of reach, they might decide to invest less in their own economic future.

---

See an interactive map of inequality by state, plus more findings »

---

The authors focus on income inequality in the lower half of the income distribution, as measured by income gaps between the 10th and 50th percentiles of the income distribution rather than income gaps between the the top and bottom of the income distribution, which has been more of a focus in popular culture. They show this "lower-tail" inequality is more relevant to the lives of poor youth because the middle is a more realistic ambition. Furthermore, their research could reconcile a puzzle: social mobility does not appear to be falling, despite the rise in income inequality. But, as Kearney and Levine point out, U.S. income inequality has been rising because the top of the distribution has been pulling away from the middle, not because the bottom is falling farther behind the middle.

The authors look specifically at high school drop-out rates through a geographic lens, noting the link between highly variable rates of high school completion and income inequality across the country. One-quarter or more of those who start high school in the higher inequality states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and the District Columbia fail to graduate in a four-year period, as compared to only around 10 percent in Vermont, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Nebraska—lower inequality states. Their econometric analysis goes on to show that low-income youth—boys in particular—are 4.1 percentage points more likely to drop out of high school by age 20 if they live in a high-inequality location relative to those who live in a low-inequality location.

Kearney and Levine examine a number of potential explanations for this link, including differences in educational inputs, poverty rates, demographic composition, and other factors. Ultimately, the evidence suggests that there is something specific about areas with greater income gaps that lead low-income boys there to drop out of school at higher rates than low-income boys elsewhere. The authors' research suggests that adolescents make educational decisions based on their perceived returns to investing in their educational development: a greater distance to climb to get to the middle of the income distribution could lead to a sense that economic success is unlikely—what they term “economic despair.”

"Income inequality can negatively affect the perceived returns to investment in education from the perspective of an economically disadvantaged adolescent,” they write. “Perceptions beget perceptions."

Digging into reasons students themselves give for dropping out, they find that low-income students from more unequal places are more likely to give up on their educational pursuits. Surprisingly, survey evidence shows that academic performance does not have as large an impact on low-income students in high inequality states: 51 percent of dropouts in the least unequal states reported that they dropped out because they were performing poorly, as compared to only 21 percent of students who dropped out in the most unequal states.

The finding suggests that economic despair could play an important role: if a student perceives a lower benefit to remaining in school, then he or she will choose to drop out at a lower threshold of academic difficulty. They also note that while the wage premium of completing high school should reduce the dropout rate, household income inequality has an offsetting negative effect.

The choice between staying in school and dropping out may reflect actual or perceived differences from the benefits of graduating. For instance, the authors note their past research showing that youth from low-income households who grow up in high lower-tail inequality states face lifetime incomes that are over 30 percent lower than similar children in lower inequality states. They also highlight other research showing that the overwhelming majority of 9th graders aspire to go to college, but by 11th grade, low-SES students are substantially less likely to expect they will enroll in college, even among those students with high test scores.

"There are important policy implications for what types of programs are needed to improve the economic trajectory of children from low-SES backgrounds," they write. "Successful interventions would focus on giving low income youth reasons to believe they have the opportunity to succeed. Such interventions could focus on expanded opportunities that would improve the actual return to staying in school, but they could also focus on improving perceptions by giving low-income students a reason to believe they can be the "college-going type." For example, interventions might take the form of mentoring programs that connect youth with successful adult mentors and school and community programs that focus on establishing high expectations and providing pathways to graduation. They could also take the form of early-childhood parenting programs that work with parents to create more nurturing home environments to build self-esteem and engender positive behaviors."

Read the full paper from Kearney and Levine here »

Downloads

• Download the full paper

Video

• How “economic despair” affects high school graduation rates for America’s poorest students

       

The mayoral election in Baltimore has brought local economic development strategies to the forefront. In a city in which inequality—by income, by race, and between neighborhoods—has increased in the past five years, the candidates have made it clear that more action must be taken to close disparities and improve economic outcomes for all residents. In a podcast segment, I commend the much-needed focus on equity but argue that the mayoral candidates should not lose sight of another critical piece of the equity equation: economic growth. Citing lessons from my recent paper, I outline strategies that Baltimore’s presumptive leaders should pursue—as well as several they should abandon—to place the city’s residents on the path to a more prosperous, equitable future.

Listen to the full podcast segment here: 

       

Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. is a stark reality.  Research from a variety of fields demonstrates that children born into poor families tend to end up less educated, less healthy, more prone to contact with the police, and less likely to accumulate wealth over a lifetime.  In contrast, children born into well-off families tend to exhibit better outcomes on all of these dimensions.

How should social scientists and policymakers understand and address intergenerational mobility in the U.S.? This question is difficult to answer—and highly politicized.  To start with, there are several possible mechanisms driving high intergenerational persistence of economic outcomes.  These are often characterized as factors related either to “nurture” or “nature.” 

The “nurture” hypothesis asserts that poor parents lack critical resources such as wealth or information.  Such parents may therefore find it difficult to make the education and time investments that would promote better economic outcomes for their children.  If this is true, then children born into poor families never reach their full potential because of a lack of household resources. 

A second possible mechanism is often referred to as the “nature” hypothesis.  Economically successful parents might be more likely to have successful children.  Such an account hinges on the idea that there are heritable biological traits or abilities that more successful parents “pass on” to their children.

To complicate the matter further, the mechanisms of nature and nurture almost certainly operate at the same time.  Moreover, it is likely that abilities and investments interact in complicated ways. For example, a particular investment might do more to improve the outcomes of a lower-ability child than a higher-ability child, or vice versa.  Understanding this process, and how it affects intergenerational mobility, is notoriously difficult.  However, greater clarity is precisely what is needed to guide effective policy. 

If a lack of investment is the dominant mechanism explaining intergenerational persistence in economic outcomes, then we as a society may be wasting human potential.  Policies correcting under-investments in human capital could therefore be justified as economically efficient. In contrast, if the intergenerational transmission of ability plays a role, then investments in poor children’s human capital may not be enough.  To clarify, it is critical to state that the distinction we make here between “high-ability” and “low-ability” individuals should not be interpreted as a claim that some people are naturally or biologically superior to others.  We use “ability” as shorthand to describe those traits that are rewarded in the existing labor market.  Even if these abilities are linked to heritable biological factors, this does not mean that their impact on life outcomes is immutable or fixed.  Modifying environments could substantially affect genetic disparities. The case of vision and eyeglasses offer one classic example.  There may well be biological factors that explain variation in eyesight “ability,” but these biological differences will matter more or less for life outcomes depending on the availability of glasses and other medical interventions.  In short, it is very possible that the consequences of biological differences can be moderated by appropriate changes in the environment.     

Until now, researchers have typically used variables such as cognitive test scores to measure ability endowments related to human capital.  Yet, these traditional measures are subject to the critique that they are the products of earlier investments in human capital. This makes it difficult to distinguish between the “nature” and “nurture” hypotheses using such data.  Two individuals with similar ability endowments but different levels of household resources are likely to exhibit different cognitive test scores, for example. 

Using genetic information to measure ability endowments can help us better understand the intergenerational transmission of human capital.  As a measure, genetic information has a clear advantage over cognitive test scores because it is fixed at conception. Advances in measuring differences in DNA across individuals, together with very recent advances in behavioral genetics research, now make it possible to link genetic differences across people to behavioral traits.  These new discoveries have even extended to educational attainment, which was once thought to be too complicated and removed from direct biological processes for genetic analysis.

In a recent research paper, we use genetic information to better understand the nature of intergenerational mobility.  We follow the cutting edge in behavioral genetics research, which guides us in computing a type of genetic “score” for any individual.  We compute this so-called “polygenic score” for each person in a sample of over 8,000 individuals from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The score, which appears to be related to cognition, personality, and facility with learning, has some predictive power for educational attainment. In particular, it explains between 3.2 percent and 6.6 percent of the variation across individuals (depending on the specification). Thus, knowing the exact value of an individual’s score will tell you very little about that person (over 90 percent of the variation is explained by other factors).  However, the average relationship in the population between the score and human capital outcomes can offer some important lessons.  

Using the polygenic score, we believe we can gain new insights into how ability endowments interact with an individual’s environment to generate economic outcomes.  There is a long-standing debate in the economics literature about how ability and investments interact.  One idea is that both ability and investments are needed for success, i.e., that they complement one another. Though our findings show evidence of this type of interaction, the story that emerges from our analysis is somewhat more nuanced.  We show that ability and the environment (measured by parents’ socioeconomic status or SES) complement one another for generating higher degrees, such as college completion, but substitute for one another in generating lower levels of educational attainment such as a high school degree.  In other words, our findings suggest that ability or being born into a well-off family are enough to get an individual through high school.  For college, however, ability and a well-off family are important predictors of success.

"In other words, our findings suggest that ability or being born into a well-off family are enough to get an individual through high school. For college, however, ability and a well-off family are important predictors of success."

Another set of results concerns the wages of high-ability individuals.  We show that individuals who completed college earned substantial returns on their ability starting in the early 2000s.  Individuals without a college degree did not. The post-2000 rise in returns may be driven in part by “skill-biased technological change.”   As new technologies are adopted in the workplace, the people who benefit most are those with the skills required to adapt to and master new ways of working.  It is not difficult to imagine that people with genetic variants associated with higher education may have found it easier to adapt to computers and other new technologies.  However, we also find that a higher polygenic score was not helpful for individuals who did not complete college, likely because the lack of a college degree shut them out of careers that would have allowed them to creatively use new technologies.  This is a troubling finding given the role of childhood SES in predicting college completion.  It means that poor children with high abilities are less likely to attend college and, subsequently, are less likely to benefit from their ability.  Again, these findings suggest wasted human potential.

Using genetic data to compare individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds, we also find that children from lower SES backgrounds systematically acquire less education when compared to similarly capable individuals from high SES backgrounds.  Among other things, this suggests that access to education may be an important obstacle, even for the highest ability children.  Our analysis offers some suggestive evidence regarding which environments are especially harmful. For example, acute negative events like physical abuse in childhood can lead to a dramatic loss of economic potential—reducing financial wealth in late adulthood for the highest ability individuals by over 50 percent.

Of course, one must be very cautious when interpreting any genetic association.  In particular, it is important to think carefully about correlation versus causality.  The same parents that pass along genetic material predicting educational attainment may also be more likely to have the resources to invest in their children.  Still, since we base our comparisons on individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds, but with similar polygenic scores, we offer evidence that economic disparities are not solely due to nature.

In summary, recent advances in behavioral genetics have identified specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment.  The fact that such genes exist confirms previous work (largely using data on twins) showing that “nature” matters for economic outcomes.  Our research demonstrates that “nurture” matters, too.  Perhaps more importantly, our research demonstrates that the roles of “nature” and “nurture” are intertwined and that understanding the role of “nurture” (in the form of human capital investments over the life-cycle) is key to understanding how “nature” (in the form of ability endowments) operates.  In particular, we show that similarly apt individuals with different childhood SES see very different returns to their ability.  This means that policies helping children born into disadvantaged circumstances may be justified not solely for ethical reasons rooted in social justice, but perhaps also as an economically efficient way to mitigate wasted human potential.

Finally, we believe that continued progress in understanding the mechanisms underlying how “nature” affects economic outcomes will eventually lead to policies that help people who are born with different abilities.  For example, our findings suggest that some individuals had more difficulty than others in adapting to new workplace technologies, such as computers. With a fuller understanding of this process, policymakers may be able to devise better training programs or improved school curricula that help individuals of all levels of ability to better respond to a changing technological environment.  In other words we believe that our research shows that learning more about the specifics of “nature” may help us to better “nurture” all individuals in society to help them to reach their full potential.      

Editor’s note: The authors contributed equally to this posting and to the research upon which the posting is based. They are listed alphabetically by last name.

       

At the very heart of the American idea is the notion that, unlike in other places, we can start from nothing and through hard work have everything. That nothing we can imagine is beyond our reach. That we will pull up stakes, go anywhere, do anything to make our dreams come true. But what if that's just a myth? What if the truth is something very different? What if we are…stuck?

I. What does it mean to be an American?

Full disclosure: I'm British. Partial defense: I was born on the Fourth of July. I also have made my home here, because I want my teenage sons to feel more American. What does that mean? I don't just mean waving flags and watching football and drinking bad beer. (Okay, yes, the beer is excellent now; otherwise, it would have been a harder migration.) I'm talking about the essence of Americanism. It is a question on which much ink—and blood—has been spent. But I think it can be answered very simply: To be American is to be free to make something of yourself. An everyday phrase that's used to admire another ("She's really made something of herself") or as a proud boast ("I'm a self-made man!"), it also expresses a theological truth. The most important American-manufactured products are Americans themselves. The spirit of self-creation offers a strong and inspiring contrast with English identity, which is based on social class. In my old country, people are supposed to know their place. British people, still constitutionally subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, can say things like "Oh, no, that's not for people like me." Infuriating.

Americans do not know their place in society; they make their place. American social structures and hierarchies are open, fluid, and dynamic. Mobility, not nobility. Or at least that's the theory. Here's President Obama, in his second inaugural address: "We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."

Politicians of the left in Europe would lament the existence of bleak poverty. Obama instead attacks the idea that a child born to poor parents will inherit their status. "The same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American…."

Americanism is a unique and powerful cocktail, blending radical egalitarianism (born equal) with fierce individualism (it's up to you): equal parts Thomas Paine and Horatio Alger. Egalitarian individualism is in America's DNA. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "men are created equal and independent," a sentiment that remained even though the last two words were ultimately cut. It was a declaration not only of national independence but also of a nation of independents.

The problem lately is not the American Dream in the abstract. It is the growing failure to realize it. Two necessary ingredients of Americanism—meritocracy and momentum—are now sorely lacking.

America is stuck.

Almost everywhere you look—at class structures, Congress, the economy, race gaps, residential mobility, even the roads—progress is slowing. Gridlock has already become a useful term for political inactivity in Washington, D. C. But it goes much deeper than that. American society itself has become stuck, with weak circulation and mobility across class lines. The economy has lost its postwar dynamism. Racial gaps, illuminated by the burning of churches and urban unrest, stubbornly persist.

In a nation where progress was once unquestioned, stasis threatens. Many Americans I talk to sense that things just aren't moving the way they once were. They are right. Right now this prevailing feeling of stuckness, of limited possibilities and uncertain futures, is fueling a growing contempt for institutions, from the banks and Congress to the media and big business, and a wave of antipolitics on both left and right. It is an impotent anger that has yet to take coherent shape. But even if the American people don't know what to do about it, they know that something is profoundly wrong.

II. How stuck are we?

Let's start with the most important symptom: a lack of social mobility. For all the boasts of meritocracy—only in America!—Americans born at the bottom of the ladder are in fact now less likely to rise to the top than those situated similarly in most other nations, and only half as likely as their Canadian counterparts. The proportion of children born on the bottom rung of the ladder who rise to the top as adults in the U.S. is 7.5 percent—lower than in the U.K. (9 percent), Denmark (11.7), and Canada (13.5). Horatio Alger has a funny Canadian accent now.

It is not just poverty that is inherited. Affluent Americans are solidifying their own status and passing it on to their children more than the affluent in other nations and more than they did in the past. Boys born in 1948 to a high-earning father (in the top quarter of wage distribution) had a 33 percent chance of becoming a top earner themselves; for those born in 1980, the chance of staying at the top rose sharply to 44 percent, according to calculations by Manhattan Institute economist Scott Winship. The sons of fathers with really high earnings—in the top 5 percent—are much less likely to tumble down the ladder in the U. S. than in Canada (44 percent versus 59 percent). A "glass floor" prevents even the least talented offspring of the affluent from falling. There is a blockage in the circulation of the American elite as well, a system-wide hardening of the arteries.

Exhibit A in the case against the American political elites: the U. S. tax code. To call it Byzantine is an insult to medieval Roman administrative prowess. There is one good reason for this complexity: The American tax system is a major instrument of social policy, especially in terms of tax credits to lower-income families, health-care subsidies, incentives for retirement savings, and so on. But there are plenty of bad reasons, too—above all, the billions of dollars' worth of breaks and exceptions resulting from lobbying efforts by the very people the tax system favors.

So fragile is the American political ego that we can't go five minutes without congratulating ourselves on the greatness of our system, yet policy choices exacerbate stuckness.

The American system is also a weak reed when it comes to redistribution. You will have read and heard many times that the United States is one of the most unequal nations in the world. That is true, but only after the impact of taxes and benefits is taken into account. What economists call "market inequality," which exists before any government intervention at all, is much lower—in fact it's about the same as in Germany and France. There is a lot going on under the hood here, but the key point is clear enough: America is unequal because American policy moves less money from rich to poor. Inequality is not fate or an act of nature. Inequality is a choice.

These are facts that should shock America into action. For a nation organized principally around the ideas of opportunity and openness, social stickiness of this order amounts to an existential threat. Although political leaders declare their dedication to openness, the hard issues raised by social inertia are receiving insufficient attention in terms of actual policy solutions. Most American politicians remain cheerleaders for the American Dream, merely offering loud encouragement from the sidelines, as if that were their role. So fragile is the American political ego that we can't go five minutes without congratulating ourselves on the greatness of our system, yet policy choices exacerbate stuckness and ensure decline.

In Britain (where stickiness has historically been an accepted social condition), by contrast, the issues of social mobility and class stickiness have risen to the top of the political and policy agenda. In the previous U.K. government (in which I served as director of strategy to Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister), we devoted whole Cabinet meetings to the problems of intergenerational mobility and the development of a new national strategy. (One result has been a dramatic expansion in pre-K education and care: Every 3- and 4-year-old will soon be entitled to 30 hours a week for free.) Many of the Cabinet members were schooled at the nation's finest private high schools. A few had hereditary titles. But they pored over data and argued over remedies—posh people worrying over intergenerational income quintiles.

Why is social mobility a hotter topic in the old country? Here is my theory: Brits are acutely aware that they live in a class-divided society. Cues and clues of accent, dress, education, and comportment are constantly calibrated. But this awareness increases political pressure to reduce these divisions. In America, by contrast, the myth of classlessness stands in the way of progress. The everyday folksiness of Americans—which, to be clear, I love—serves as a social camouflage for deep economic inequality. Americans tell themselves and one another that they live in a classless land of open opportunity. But it is starting to ring hollow, isn't it?

III. For black Americans, claims of equal opportunity have, of course, been false from the founding.

They remain false today. The chances of being stuck in poverty are far, far greater for black kids. Half of those born on the bottom rung of the income ladder (the bottom fifth) will stay there as adults. Perhaps even more disturbing, seven out of ten black kids raised in middle-income homes (i.e., the middle fifth) will end up lower down as adults. A boy who grows up in Baltimore will earn 28 percent less simply because he grew up in Baltimore: In other words, this supersedes all other factors. Sixty-six percent of black children live in America's poorest neighborhoods, compared with six percent of white children.

Recent events have shone a light on the black experience in dozens of U. S. cities.

Behind the riots and the rage, the statistics tell a simple, damning story. Progress toward equality for black Americans has essentially halted. The average black family has an income that is 59 percent of the average white family's, down from 65 percent in 2000. In the job market, race gaps are immobile, too. In the 1950s, black Americans were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. And today? Still twice as likely.

From heeding the call "Go west, young man" to loading up the U-Haul in search of a better job, the instinctive restlessness of America has always matched skills to work, people to opportunities, labor to capital.

Race gaps in wealth are perhaps the most striking of all. The average white household is now thirteen times wealthier than the average black one. This is the widest gap in a quarter of a century. The recession hit families of all races, but it resulted in a wealth wipeout for black families. In 2007, the average black family had a net worth of $19,200, almost entirely in housing stock, typically at the cheap, fragile end of the market. By 2010, this had fallen to $16,600. By 2013—by which point white wealth levels had started to recover—it was down to $11,000. In national economic terms, black wealth is now essentially nonexistent.

Half a century after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the arc of history is no longer bending toward justice. A few years ago, it was reasonable to hope that changing attitudes, increasing education, and a growing economy would surely, if slowly, bring black America and white America closer together. No longer. America is stuck.

IV. The economy is also getting stuck.

Labor productivity growth, measured as growth in output per hour, has averaged 1.6 percent since 1973. Male earning power is flatlining. In 2014, the median full-time male wage was $50,000, down from $53,000 in 1973 (in the dollar equivalent of 2014). Capital is being hoarded rather than invested in the businesses of the future. U. S. corporations have almost $1.5 trillion sitting on their balance sheets, and many are busily buying up their own stock. But capital expenditure lags, hindering the economic recovery.

New-business creation and entrepreneurial activity are declining, too. As economist Robert Litan has shown, the proportion of "baby businesses" (firms less than a year old) has almost halved since the late 1970s, decreasing from 15 percent to 8 percent—the hallmark of "a steady, secular decline in business dynamism." It is significant that this downward trend set in long before the Great Recession hit. There is less movement between jobs as well, another symptom of declining economic vigor.

Americans are settling behind their desks—and also into their neighborhoods. The proportion of American adults moving house each year has decreased by almost half since the postwar years, to around 12 percent. Long-distance moves across state lines have as well. This is partly due to technological advances, which have weakened the link between location and job prospects, and partly to the growth of economic diversity in cities; there are few "one industry" towns today. But it is also due to a less vibrant housing market, slower rates of new business creation, and a lessening in Americans' appetite for disruption, change, and risk.

This geographic settling is at odds with historic American geographic mobility. From heeding the call "Go west, young man" to loading up the U-Haul in search of a better job, the instinctive restlessness of America has always matched skills to work, people to opportunities, labor to capital. Rather than waiting for help from the government, or for the economic tide to turn back in their favor, millions of Americans changed their life prospects by changing their address. Now they are more likely to stay put and wait. Others, especially black Americans, are unable to escape the poor neighborhoods of their childhood. They are, as the title of an influential book by sociologist Patrick Sharkey puts it, Stuck in Place.

There are everyday symptoms of stuckness, too. Take transport. In 2014, Americans collectively spent almost seven billion hours stuck motionless in traffic—that's a couple days each. The roads get more jammed every year. But money for infrastructure improvements is stuck in a failing road fund, and the railophobia of politicians hampers investment in public transport.

Whose job is it to do something about this? The most visible symptom of our disease is the glue slowly hardening in the machinery of national government. The last two Congresses have been the least productive in history by almost any measure chosen, just when we need them to be the most productive. The U. S. political system, with its strong separation among competing centers of power, relies on a spirit of cross-party compromise and trust in order to work. Good luck there.

V. So what is to be done?

As with anything, the first step is to admit the problem. Americans have to stop convincing themselves they live in a society of opportunity. It is a painful admission, of course, especially for the most successful. The most fervent believers in meritocracy are naturally those who have enjoyed success. It is hard to acknowledge the role of good fortune, including the lottery of birth, when describing your own path to greatness.

There is a general reckoning needed. In the golden years following World War II, the economy grew at 4 percent per annum and wages surged. Wealth accumulated. The federal government, at the zenith of its powers, built interstates and the welfare system, sent GIs to college and men to the moon. But here's the thing: Those days are gone, and they're not coming back. Opportunity and growth will no longer be delivered, almost automatically, by a buoyant and largely unchallenged economy. Now it will take work.

The future success of the American idea must now be intentional.

Entrepreneurial, mobile, aspirational: New Americans are true Americans. We need a lot more of them.

There are plenty of ideas for reform that simply require will and a functioning political system. At the heart of them is the determination to think big again and to vigorously engage in public investment. And we need to put money into future generations like our lives depended on it, because they do: Access to affordable, effective contraception dramatically cuts rates of unplanned pregnancy and gives kids a better start in life. Done well, pre-K education closes learning gaps and prepares children for school. More generous income benefits stabilize homes and help kids. Reading programs for new parents improve literacy levels. Strong school principals attract good teachers and raise standards. College coaches help get nontraditional students to and through college. And so on. We are not lacking ideas. We are lacking a necessary sense of political urgency. We are stuck.

But we can move again if we choose.

In addition to a rejuvenation of policy in all these fields, there are two big shifts required for an American twenty-first-century renaissance: becoming open to more immigration and shifting power from Washington to the cities.

VI. America needs another wave of immigration.

This is in part just basic math: We need more young workers to fund the old age of the baby boomers. But there is more to it than that. Immigrants also provide a shot in the arm to American vitality itself. Always have, always will. Immigrants are now twice as likely to start a new business as native-born Americans. Rates of entrepreneurialism are declining among natives but rising among immigrants.

Immigrant children show extraordinary upward-mobility rates, shooting up the income-distribution ladder like rockets, yet by the third or fourth generation, the rates go down, reflecting indigenous norms. Among children born in Los Angeles to poorly educated Chinese immigrants, for example, an astonishing 70 percent complete a four-year-college degree. As the work of my Brookings colleague William Frey shows, immigrants are migrants within the U. S., too, moving on from traditional immigrant cities—New York, Los Angeles—to other towns and cities in search of a better future. Entrepreneurial, mobile, aspirational: New Americans are true Americans. We need a lot more of them.

This makes a mockery of our contemporary political "debates" about immigration reform, which have become intertwined with race and racism. Some Republicans tap directly into white fears of an America growing steadily browner. More than four in ten white seniors say that a growing population of immigrants is a "change for the worse"; half of white boomers believe immigration is "a threat to traditional American customs and values." But immigration delves deeper into the question of American identity than it does even issues of race. Immigrants generate more dynamism and aspiration, but they are also unsettling and challenging. Where this debate ends will therefore tell us a great deal about the trajectory of the nation. An America that closes its doors will be an America that has chosen to settle rather than grow, that has allowed security to trump dynamism.

VII. The second big shift needed to get America unstuck is a revival of city and state governance.

Since the American Dream is part of the national identity, it seems natural to look to the national government to help make it a reality. But cities are now where the American Dream will live or die. America's hundred biggest metros are home to 67 percent of the nation's population and 75 percent of its economy. Americans love the iconography of the small town, even at the movies—but they watch those movies in big cities.

Powerful mayors in those cities have greater room for maneuvering and making an impact than the average U. S. senator. Even smaller cities and towns can be strongly influenced by their mayor.

There are choices to be made. Class divisions are hardening. Upward mobility has a very weak pulse. Race gaps are widening.

The new federalism in part is being born of necessity. National politics is in ruins, and national institutions are weakened by years of short-termism and partisanship. Power, finding a vacuum in D. C., is diffusive. But it may also be that many of the big domestic-policy challenges will be better answered at a subnational level, because that is where many of the levers of change are to be found: education, family planning, housing, desegregation, job creation, transport, and training. Amid the furor over Common Core and federal standards, it is important to remember that for every hundred dollars spent on education, just nine come from the federal government.

We may be witnessing the end of many decades of national-government dominance in domestic policy-making (the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, welfare reform, Obamacare). The Affordable Care Act is important in itself, but it may also come to have a place in history as the legislative bookend to a long period of national-policy virtuosity.

The case for the new federalism need not be overstated. There will still be plenty of problems for the national government to fix, including, among the most urgent, infrastructure and nuclear waste. The main tools of macroeconomic policy will remain the Federal Reserve and the federal tax code. But the twentieth-century model of big federal social-policy reforms is in decline. Mayors and governors are starting to notice, and because they don't have the luxury of being stuck, they are forced to be entrepreneurs of a new politics simply to survive.

VIII. It is possible for America to recover its earlier dynamism, but it won't be easy.

The big question for Americans is: Do you really want to? Societies, like people, age. They might also settle down, lose some dynamism, trade a little less openness for a little more security, get a bit stuck in their ways. Many of the settled nations of old Europe have largely come to terms with their middle age. They are wary of immigration but enthusiastic about generous welfare systems and income redistribution. Less dynamism, maybe, but more security in exchange.

America, it seems to me, is not made to be a settled society. Such a notion runs counter to the story we tell ourselves about who we are. (That's right, we. We've all come from somewhere else, haven't we? I just got here a bit more recently.) But over time, our narratives become myths, insulating us from the truth. For we are surely stuck, if not settled. And so America needs to decide one way or the other. There are choices to be made. Class divisions are hardening. Upward mobility has a very weak pulse. Race gaps are widening. The worst of all worlds threatens: a European class structure without European welfare systems to dull the pain.

Americans tell themselves and the world that theirs is a society in which each and all can rise, an inspiring contrast to the hereditary cultures from which it sprang. It's one of the reasons I'm here. But have I arrived to raise my children here just in time to be stuck, too? Or will America be America again?

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Esquire.

       

On June 23, Brookings hosted the release of the Immigrants, Immigration Reform, and 2016 Election Survey, a joint project with the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The associated report entitled, How immigration and concern about cultural change are shaping the 2016 election finds an American public anxious and intensely divided on matters of immigration and cultural change at the forefront of the 2016 Election.

Dr. Robert Jones, CEO of PRRI, began the presentation by highlighting Americans’ feelings of anxiety and personal vulnerability. The poll found, no issue is more critical to Americans this election cycle than terrorism, with nearly seven in ten (66 percent) reporting that terrorism is a critical issue to them personally. And yet, Americans are sharply divided on questions of terrorism as it pertains to their personal safety. Six in ten (62 percent) Republicans report that they are at least somewhat worried about being personally affected by terrorism, while just 44 percent of Democrats say the same. 

On matters of cultural change, Jones painted a picture of a sharply divided America. Poll results indicate that a majority (55 percent) of Americans believe that the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence, while 44 percent disagree.  Responses illustrate a stark partisan divide:

74 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Trump supporters believe that foreign influence over the American way of life needs to be curtailed.  Just 41 percent of Democrats agree, while a majority (56 percent) disagrees with this statement. Views among white Americans are sharply divided by social class, the report finds. While 68 percent of the white working class agrees that the American way of life needs to be protected, fewer than half (47 percent) of white college-educated Americans agree.

Jones identified Americans’ views on language and “reverse discrimination” as additional touchstones of cultural change. Americans are nearly evenly divided over how comfortable they feel when they encounter immigrants who do not speak English: 50 percent say this bothers them and 49 percent say it does not. 66 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Trump supporters express discomfort when coming into contact with immigrants who do not speak English; just 35 percent of Democrats say the same.

 

Americans split evenly on the question of whether discrimination against whites, or “reverse discrimination,” is as big of a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities (49 percent agree, 49 percent disagree). Once again, the partisan differences are considerable: 72 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Trump supporters agree that reverse discrimination is a problem, whereas more than two thirds (68 percent) of Democrats disagree.

On economic matters, survey results indicate that nearly seven in ten (69 percent) Americans support increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans, defined as those earning over $250,000 a year. This represents a modest increase in the share of Americans who favor increasing the tax rate relative to 2012, but a dramatic increase in the number of Republicans who favor this position.

 

The share of  Republicans favoring increasing the tax rate on wealthy Americans jumped from 36 percent in 2012 to 54 percent in 2016—an 18 point increase. Democrats and Independents views on this position remained relatively constant, increasing from 80 to 84 percent and 61 to 68 percent approval respectively.

Finally, on matters of immigration, Americans are divided over whether immigrants are changing their communities for the better (50 percent) or for the worse (49 percent). Across party lines, however, Americans are more likely to think immigrants are changing American society as a whole than they are to think immigrants are changing the local community. This, Jones suggested, indicates that Americans’ views on immigration are motivated by partisan ideology more than by lived experience. 

At the conclusion of Dr. Jones’s presentation, Brookings senior fellow in Governance Studies, Dr. William Galston moderated a panel discussion of the poll’s findings. Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow and research coordinator at the American Enterprise Institute, observed that cultural anxiety has long characterized Americans’ views on immigration. Never, Bowman remarked, has the share of Americans that favor immigrants outpaced the share of those who oppose immigrants. Turning to the results of the PRRI survey, Bowman highlighted the partisan divide influencing responses to the proposition that the United States place a temporary ban on Muslims. The strong level of Republican support for the proposal--64 percent support among Republicans--compared to just 23 percent support among Democrats has more to do with fear of terrorism than anxiety about immigration, she argued.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, remarked that many Americans feel that government should do more to ensure protection, prosperity, and security -- as evidenced by the large proportion of voters who feel that their way of life is under threat from terrorism (51%), crime (63%), or unemployment (65%).  In examining fractures within the Republican Party, Olsen considered the ways in which Trump voters differ from non-Trump voters, regardless of party affiliation. On questions of leadership, he suggested, the fact that 57% of all Republicans agree that we need a leader “willing to break some rules” is skewed by the high proportion of Trump supporters (72%) who agree with that statement. Indeed, just 49% of Republicans who did not vote for Trump agreed that the country needs a leader willing to break rules to set things right.

Joy Reid, National Correspondent at MSNBC, cited the survey’s findings that Americans are bitterly divided over whether American culture and way of life has changed for the better (49 percent) or the worse (50 percent) since the 1950s. More than two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) and Donald Trump supporters (68 percent) believe the American way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Connecting this nostalgia to survey results indicating anxiety about immigration and cultural change, Reid argued that culture—not economics—is the primary concern animating many Trump supporters.

       

       

       

       

There is a lively debate today over whether or not campaign finance reforms have weakened the role of political parties in campaigns. This seems an odd argument in an era of historically high levels of party loyalty — on roll calls in Congress and voting in the electorate. Are parties too strong and unified or too weak and fragmented? Have they been marginalized in the financing of elections or is their role at least as strong as it has ever been? Does the party role in campaign finance (weak or strong) materially shape the capacity to govern?

In addition, the increasing involvement in presidential and congressional campaigns of large donors – especially through Super PACs and politically-active nonprofit organizations – has raised serious concerns about whether the super-wealthy are buying American democracy. Ideologically-based outside groups financed by wealthy donors appear to be sharpening partisan differences and resisting efforts to forge agreement across parties. Many reformers have advocated steps to increase the number of small donors to balance the influence of the wealthy. But some scholars have found evidence suggesting that small donors are more polarizing than large donors. Can that be true? If so, are there channels other than the ideological positioning of the parties through which small donors might play a more constructive role in our democracy?

In this paper, Thomas Mann and Anthony Corrado attempt to shed light on both of these disputed features of our campaign finance system and then assess whether campaign finance reform offers promise for reducing polarization and strengthening American democracy. They conclude that not only is campaign finance reform a weak tool for depolarizing American political parties, but some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.

Downloads

• Download the paper

      

The Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon decision has reinvigorated the discussion on how campaign finance affects American democracy. Seeking to dissect the complex relationship between political parties, partisan polarization, and campaign finance, Tom Mann and Anthony Corrado’s new paper on Party Polarization and Campaign Finance reviews the landscape of hard and soft money in federal elections and asks whether campaign finance reform can abate polarization and strengthen governing capacity in the United States. The paper tackles two popular contentions within the campaign finance debate: First, has campaign finance reform altered the role of political parties as election financiers and therefore undermined deal making and pragmatism? Second, would a change in the composition of small and large individual donors decrease polarization in the parties?

The Role of Political Parties in Campaign Finance

Political parties have witnessed a number of shifts in their campaign finance role, including McCain-Feingold’s ban on party soft money in 2002. This has led many to ask if the breakdown in compromise and governance and the rise of polarization has come about because parties have lost the power to finance elections. To assess that claim, the authors track the amount of money crossing national and state party books as an indicator of party strength. The empirical evidence shows no significant decrease in party strength post 2002 and holds that “both parties have compensated for the loss of soft money with hard money receipts.” In fact, the parties have upped their spending on congressional candidates more than six-fold since 1980. Despite the ban on soft money, the parties remain major players in federal elections.

Large and Small Donors in National Campaigns

Mann and Corrado turn to non-party money and survey the universe of individual donors to evaluate “whether small, large or mega-donors are most likely to fuel or diminish the polarization that increasingly defines the political landscape.” The authors map the size and shape of individual giving and confront the concern that Super PACs, politically active nonprofits, and the super-wealthy are buying out American democracy. They ask: would a healthier mix of small and large donors reduce radicalization and balance out asymmetric polarization between the parties? The evidence suggests that increasing the role of small donors would have little effect on partisan polarization in either direction because small donors tend to be highly polarized. Although Mann and Corrado note that a healthier mix would champion democratic ideals like civic participation and equality of voice.

Taking both points together, Mann and Corrado find that campaign finance reform is insufficient for depolarizing the parties and improving governing capacity. They argue forcefully that polarization emerges from a broader political and partisan problem. Ultimately, they assert that, “some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.”

Click to read Mann and Corrado’s full paper, Party Polarization and Campaign Finance.