03/29/2024

News

California Losing Residents Via Domestic Migration

For many years, more people have been leaving California for other states than have been moving here. According to data from the American Community Survey, from 2007 to 2016, about 5 million people moved to California from other states, while about 6 million left California. On net, the state lost 1 million residents to domestic […]

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LA’s economy is strong — but not for all workers

According to a new economic forecast released Wednesday by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), the region’s GDP is growing faster than the nation’s as a whole. Unemployment is below five percent and still declining. And economists project that solid overall growth will continue over the next two years. But for many workers, […]

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Marriage Penalties and Bonuses under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

• Marriage bonuses can be as high as 21 percent of a couple’s income, and marriage penalties can be as high as 12 percent of a couple’s income.

• While research shows that marriage penalties and bonuses do not have much effect on whether a couple will marry, they do impact how much each spouse works.

• It is possible to completely eliminate both marriage penalties and bonuses, but it would require a significant overhaul of the tax code that drastically changes the current distribution of income taxes paid.

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Marriage is a great anti-poverty program. So why does government discourage it?

Marriage is one of the most effective anti-poverty programs around. But far too often, government assistance programs for people with low incomes discourage marriage, because tying the knot reduces government welfare assistance payments. . . . According to the Brookings Institution, the U.S. would have 25 percent less poverty today if we had the marriage […]

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Does the Bay Area have a problem supporting black politicians

Next year, it’s possible that the region that likes to think of itself as the most progressive place in the country will have zero black state legislators and zero black mayors of major cities. . . . Part of the reason why is a precipitous drop in the region’s black population. According to census data […]

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Though Valley economy seems healthy, some jobs lost in the Great Recession are still gone

In 2007, more people in Fresno County had jobs than at any previous point in the county’s history. The central San Joaquin Valley’s economy was relatively healthy, and the county’s annual unemployment rate was 8.6 percent – higher than the state average but the third-lowest measurement of any year since 1990. But there were harbingers […]

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California’s ambitious education reforms paying off in higher graduation rates and math scores, study finds

California’s sweeping education reforms championed by Gov. Jerry Brown have resulted in higher graduation rates and especially sizable gains in math among low-income students in the 11th grade, according to a new study. . . . The Learning Policy Institute’s Tanner said that because math scores increased more among low-income children than all children, if […]

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Money and Freedom: The Impact of California’s School Finance Reform

In this study, researchers Rucker C. Johnson, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and LPI Senior Researcher Sean Tanner found LCFF-induced increases in district revenue has a “strongly significant” impact on average high school graduation rates for all students in the state. For example, a […]

Research & Studies
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U.S. life expectancy falls for second straight year — as drug overdoses soar

Life expectancy in the United States fell for the second year in a row in 2016 — and it’s clear the epidemic of drug overdoses is at least in part to blame, government researchers said Thursday. Overall life expectancy for a baby born in 2016 fell to 78.6 years, a small decline of 0.1 percent, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) team found. At the same time, mortality from drug overdoses rose by 21 percent. “This was the first time life expectancy in the U.S. has declined two years in a row since declines in 1962 and 1963,” the NCHS, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement.

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The Withering California Dream, by the Numbers

The California dream isn’t dead. It just upped and moved to South Dakota. Less than half of people born in California in 1980 are making more money than their parents did as young adults. That’s the lowest percentage of children out-earning their parents that California has seen since at least 1940. By contrast, 62 percent of people born in South Dakota in 1980 out-earn their parents. That’s the highest percentage for any state in the country.

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America’s Retailers Have a New Target Customer: The 26-Year-Old Millennial

The biggest single age cohort today in the U.S. is 26-year-olds, who number 4.8 million, according to Torsten Slok, chief international economist for Deutsche Bank . People 25, 27 and 24 follow close behind, in that order. Many are on the verge of life-defining moments such as choosing a career, buying a house and having children.

Companies looking to grab a piece of that business, however, have run into a problem. This generation, with its over-scheduled childhoods, tech-dependent lifestyles and delayed adulthood, is radically different from previous ones. They’re so different, in fact, that companies are developing new products, overhauling marketing and launching educational programs—all with the goal of luring the archetypal 26-year-old.

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Minorities and Americans without college degrees showed greatest gains in wealth since 2013, new data says

Nearly all Americans have now emerged from the Great Recession with more money than before — with African American and Hispanic families and Americans without high school diplomas showing the greatest gains, according to new data released Wednesday from the Federal Reserve. It’s a sign that the recovery from the devastating Great Recession and financial crisis of 2008 is picking up as more people are able to get jobs, pay off debt and invest more. Household wealth for African-American and Hispanic families and Americans without high school diplomas rose the fastest from 2013 to 2016, according to the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which surveys over 6,000 households about their pay, debt and other finances.

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U.S. Families’ Wealth, Incomes Rose, Fed Survey Says

U.S. families’ wealth and incomes rose across the board as the economic recovery continued in recent years, a shift after they stagnated for all but the most well-off in the aftermath of the recession, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday.

Minority households and families with less education had larger proportional gains in income than others between 2013 and 2016, suggesting the fruits of the recovery spread to a wider swath of society, the Fed said.

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Declining Male Workforce Participation Reflects Supply, Not Demand, Says New Paper

Weakness in the labor market doesn’t adequately explain why fewer men are working or seeking jobs, according to a new paper published by economist Scott Winship and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. One big contributor is the rising number of men in their prime working years–aged 25 to 54–who are getting federal disability benefits, or report being disabled, and who are not actively searching for jobs, Mr. Winship concludes. This suggests there is less slack in the labor market—such as people who could be drawn in off the sidelines—than many policy makers believe.

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What’s behind Declining Male Labor Force Participation

Many are concerned about the state of the American job market, convinced that improving employment indicators mask pervasive hardship. In particular, some are concerned about the increase in the number of prime-age men who are neither working nor looking for work—men who are out of the labor force, or inactive. While this upward trend is routinely taken as a sign of the economy’s weakness, other interpretations are possible.

Scott Winship considers why inactivity in the labor force among prime-age men—those between the ages of 25 and 54—has grown so steadily for so long. The study examines trends in a number of labor market indicators to assess the extent to which rising inactivity rates reflect a worsening of the job market (lower demand) or reduced job-seeking (lower supply). It takes a detailed look at four different types of prime-age inactive men: the disabled, the retired, those who want a job, and those who do not.

Policymakers should focus on helping the unemployed and inactive men who want jobs and on reforming disability programs to promote independence. The unemployment rate provides a reliable indicator of changes in the labor market’s strength, even if it understates the level of involuntary joblessness. The Bureau of Labor Statistics should consider adopting a new “U5b” rate that includes inactive people who want a job along with those counted by the existing unemployment rate, in order to institutionalize a broader measure of joblessness and increase faith in our jobless statistics.

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