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Articles by Nathan Joo
Strategies and Challenges in Feeding Out-of-School Students
See Full Report Author(s): Urban Institute Jonathan Schwabish Nathan Joo Elaine Waxman Natalie Spievack Published: Apr. 21, 2020 Report Intro/Brief: “In response to school closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s school nutrition programs have transformed into emergency community feeding systems, delivering meals to out-of-school students, their families, and in many districts, other members of the community.
Strategies and Challenges in Feeding Out-of-School Students
Strategies and Challenges in Feeding Out-of-School Students In response to school closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s school nutrition programs have transformed into emergency community feeding systems, delivering meals to out-of-school students, their families, and in many districts, other members of the community.
New Data Show about 1 in 10 Adults Turns To Charitable Food Assistance
This holiday season, many people will donate money, food, or time to a local food bank or soup kitchen. Yet how much do we know about the individuals and families who use charitable food assistance? New data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS) reveal that more Americans than previously estimated turn to charitable food services to feed their families.
How much social mobility do people really want?
Here’s a question I get asked a lot: “Ok, so what’s the ideal amount of social mobility?” Scholars interested in relative income mobility often use a quintile transition matrix, showing how much ‘stickiness’ there is in the income distribution between two generations: (Note that this version draws on data from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, but we’ve produced matrices using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, as well as one for educational mobility.) Four out of ten children...
Mississippi’s work requirements don’t account for a varying labor market by race and geography
The policy discussion around work requirements in public safety net programs typically assumes that jobs or training opportunities that lead to stable employment are readily available and that all we need are rules to ensure that people receiving benefits are not avoiding work. But a closer look at on-the-ground economic conditions in Mississippi indicates that employment opportunities are not available in all counties.
How Kentucky’s economic realities pose a challenge for work requirements
Kentucky has reinstated or seeks to introduce work requirements in two major social safety net programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. Over the past several months, Kentucky has reinstated SNAP work requirements and time limits for able-bodied adults without children in 112 of 120 counties, and earlier this year, it received federal approval of a waiver to require certain Medicaid enrollees to work but was blocked in June by a federal court.
Do school secessions worsen racial segregation? It’s complicated
What if a school could breakaway from its district to form its own school system? It turns out that in many parts of the country schools can, and these ‘school secessions’ are happening with increasing frequency. According to EdBuild, 71 communities have attempted to secede from larger districts in the recent past, with about 40 successfully doing so since 2000. Such efforts have taken place across the nation, from Alabama to Ohio and Wisconsin to Colorado and Utah.
Gown towns: A case study of Say Yes to Education
Postsecondary education is the entry ticket to the middle class. But for low-income Americans college success is rare. While education has long been seen as a force for social mobility, inclusion, and equity, it is too often the great stratifier in practice. Boosting social mobility requires interventions that widen the doors to college, and help more students succeed in post-secondary education.
Comeback kids: School suspension and high school graduation
People on track to success tend, obviously enough, to succeed. They complete their education, develop essential life skills, stay out of trouble, and plan for their futures. But not everybody succeeds at every stage. How can those who go ‘off-track’ get back on? What distinguishes them from those who go off-track and struggle to get back on? Suspended from school, but still graduating Take children or adolescents who get suspended from school.
The Costs, Opportunities, and Limitations of the Expansion of 529 Education Savings Accounts - Education Next
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act substantively changed 529 college savings plans. In an effort to promote school choice, the Act expanded the list of eligible 529 expenses to include K-12 private school tuition. This federal change in the definition of qualified expenses will impact many states, particularly those that offer 529 tax deductions and credits.
The costs, opportunities, and limitations of the expansion of 529 education savings accounts
Executive Summary The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act substantively changed 529 college savings plans. In an effort to promote school choice, the Act expanded the list of eligible 529 expenses to include K-12 private school tuition. This federal change in the definition of qualified expenses will impact many states, particularly those that offer 529 tax deductions and credits.
Asian-American success and the pitfalls of generalization
“There is but one race—humanity.” So says Millicent, paramour of the Irish protagonist in George Moore’s 1900 play, “The Bending of the Bough. But Millicent does not run the U.S. Census Bureau. Data on a myriad of economic and social factors can be analyzed by self-defined racial or ethnic category. The huge inequalities between people in different racial categories are one of the most pressing challenges for public policy in the 21st century.
Inventions and inequality: Class gaps in patenting
Here are two things Americans love: inventiveness and upward mobility.The idea that becoming an inventor can offer a way to climb the income ladder is therefore an intoxicating one. More entrepreneurialism and more equality: who could be against that? There are however some challenges here. First, entrepreneurs are, by definition, risk takers. When their risks pay off, they become rich and likely famous. But when they do not, they face financial ruin, unless they have a financial cushion.
Factors limiting private sector investment in global health R&D
Private sector funding of drugs and vaccines designed to help people in the developing world lags what is needed to deal with illnesses such as HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, and malaria. There has been considerable progress in fighting these diseases, but more effort is needed since only around $6.3 billion is devoted to diseases prevalent in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).
How school district boundaries can create more segregated schools
To a very large extent, school segregation is a mechanical result of residential segregation. America’s public schools, by and large, look like America’s neighborhoods.
60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, how racially balanced are America’s public schools?
It’s been more than 60 years since the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, ruled “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional. In that time, school populations have diversified, thanks in large part to an increase in the numbers of Hispanic and Asian students attending U.S. schools. But how closely do America’s traditional public and charter schools look like the communities they serve? And if schools’ student bodies don’t reflect their neighborhoods’ racial makeup, how come?
Racial imbalances in U.S. public schools
How closely does the racial makeup of U.S. public schools resemble that of their surrounding neighborhoods? New research from the Center on Children and Families examines the racial makeup of public schools—both traditional and charters—across the country to identify schools whose racial imbalance with respect to their surrounding neighborhoods makes them ‘outliers’ within their states.
Inventions and inequality: Class gaps in patenting
Here are two things Americans love: inventiveness and upward mobility.The idea that becoming an inventor can offer a way to climb the income ladder is therefore an intoxicating one. More entrepreneurialism and more equality: who could be against that? There are however some challenges here. First, entrepreneurs are, by definition, risk takers. When their risks pay off, they become rich and likely famous. But when they do not, they face financial ruin, unless they have a financial cushion.
White, still: The American upper middle class
The American upper middle class is separating along educational, economic, cultural and geographical lines. At least, that’s my contention in Dream Hoarders. (For some voices of disagreement, look here or here…) My focus in the book is on class, rather than race, but of course the two are deeply intertwined.
Occupational hazard? The future of the gender pay gap
Why do women make less than men? You probably know that women earn about 80 cents on the dollar compared to men (specifically, this refers to median full-time wages). You may also know that after narrowing for decades, the gender pay gap has remained essentially stuck since the 1990s. Occupation and industry now explain gender pay gap We now have a firmer handle on what lies behind this disparity.
A tax break for ‘Dream Hoarders’: What to do about 529 college savings plans
Parents, students, and policymakers are increasingly worried about the cost of college. Much of this anxiety is overplayed in the media. A college education remains, for most, a sound investment. Debt levels remain at manageable levels, especially for those with the highest amounts, since they also earn the most.
The contribution of historically black colleges and universities to upward mobility
Black students have been (slowly) closing the gap on whites in terms of in high school test scores and graduation rates. But the divide at the college level remains wide. In 2007, the gap in postsecondary attainment (at least an associate degree) between blacks and whites was 13.3 percent (41.0 percent vs. 27.7 percent). The gap remained in the double digits, at 13.6 percent (46.9 percent vs. 33.3 percent), in 2015. Do black colleges help?
Fixing Washington’s budget process: Why co-opetition is needed | Brookings Institution
It is difficult to imagine anything other than a period of partisan trench warfare for at least a few years following this election. We may hope for compromise, but history suggests that in periods of competitive politics, where either party can imagine a future turnover of power on Capitol Hill and the White House, compromise on the substance of major issues is unlikely. In addition, the public has become frustrated and bad-tempered about Washington.
A college is cutting tuition for 529 savers. It shouldn’t. | Brookings Institution
Washington College in Maryland is planning to cut tuition fees by up to $2,500 a year for families who have saved into tax-favored savings vehicles like 529 plans. Let us cut straight to the chase: it shouldn’t. The plan will reward those from affluent backgrounds and potentially trigger a merit aid-style arms race as other colleges feel obliged to follow its lead.
Inequality built the Trump coalition, even if he won’t solve it | Brookings Institution
Inequality, the issue that set Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic nomination alight, has gone underground in the presidential contest. Hillary Clinton has occasionally tried to make political capital out of Donald Trump’s financial capital, most recently accusing him of proposing a child care tax-break that would “benefit wealthy families just like his own.” But this is difficult territory for Clinton. She blundered by describing Bill and herself as “dead broke” when they left the White House.
Why rich parents are terrified their kids will fall into the "middle class"
Politicians and scholars often lament the persistence of poverty across generations. But affluence persists, too. In the U.S. especially, the top of the income distribution is just as “sticky”, in intergenerational terms, as the bottom. The American upper middle class is reproducing itself quite effectively. Class reproduction is of course driven by a whole range of factors, from parenting and family structure through formal education, informal learning, the use of social networks, and so on.
Why rich parents are terrified their kids will fall into the “middle class”
Politicians and scholars often lament the persistence of poverty across generations. But affluence persists, too. In the U.S. especially, the top of the income distribution is just as “sticky”, in intergenerational terms, as the bottom. The American upper middle class is reproducing itself quite effectively.
To help low-income American households, we have to close the "work gap"
When Franklin Roosevelt delivered his second inaugural address on January 20, 1936 he lamented the “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” He challenged Americans to measure their collective progress not by “whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; [but rather] whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” In our new paper, One third of a nation: Strategies for helping working families, we ask a simple question: How are we doing?
One third of a nation: Strategies for helping working families
Employment among lower-income men has declined by 11 percent since 1980 and has remained flat among lower-income women. Men and women in the top and middle of the income distribution, on the other hand, have been working as much or more since 1980, creating a growing “work gap” in labor market income between haves and have-nots.
“Should we live together first?” Yes, say Democrats. No, say Republicans (even young ones) | Brookings Institution
There is a marriage gap in America. This is not just a gap in choices and actions, but in norms and attitudes. Each generation is more liberal, on average, when it comes to issues like premarital relationships, same-sex marriage, and divorce. But generational averages can obscure other divides, including ideology—which in many cases is a more powerful factor.
"Should we live together first?" Yes, say Democrats. No, say Republicans (even young ones)
There is a marriage gap in America. This is not just a gap in choices and actions, but in norms and attitudes. Each generation is more liberal, on average, when it comes to issues like premarital relationships, same-sex marriage, and divorce. But generational averages can obscure other divides, including ideology—which in many cases is a more powerful factor.
The glass barrier to the upper middle class is hardening
America is becoming a more class-stratified society, contrary to the nation’s self-image as a socially dynamic meritocracy. In particular, the barriers are hardening between the upper middle class and the majority below them.
Asian-American success and the pitfalls of generalization
“There is but one race—humanity.” So says Millicent, paramour of the Irish protagonist in George Moore’s 1900 play, The Bending of the Bough. But Millicent does not run the U.S. Census Bureau. Data on a myriad of economic and social factors can be analyzed by self-defined racial or ethnic category. The huge inequalities between people in different racial categories are one of the most pressing challenges for public policy in the 21st century.
Occupational hazard? The future of the gender pay gap
Why do women make less than men? You probably know that women earn about 80 cents on the dollar compared to men (specifically, this refers to median full-time wages). You may also know that after narrowing for decades, the gender pay gap has remained essentially stuck since the 1990s. We now have a firmer handle on what lies behind this disparity. Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn analyzed data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate the gender pay gap in 1980 and 2010.
How much social mobility do people really want?
Here’s a question I get asked a lot: “Ok, so what’s the ideal amount of social mobility?” Scholars interested in relative income mobility often use a quintile transition matrix, showing how much ‘stickiness’ there is in the income distribution between two generations: Four out of ten children born at the bottom will remain there as adults—and about the same stickiness can be seen at the top.
How upwardly mobile are Hispanic children? Depends how you look at it.
People often immigrate to a new country to seek a better life for their children. In their new country, immigrant children very often show rapid upward mobility. But immigrants are very far from being a homogenous group, arriving with very different levels of education, skills, and economic resources. So how are the children of one particular group—Hispanic immigrants—doing? The answer to that question hinges on the point of comparison.
Comeback kids: School suspension and high school graduation
People on track to success tend, obviously enough, to succeed. They complete their education, develop essential life skills, stay out of trouble, and plan for their futures. But not everybody succeeds at every stage. How can those who go ‘off-track’ get back on? What distinguishes them from those who go off-track and struggle to get back on? Take children or adolescents who get suspended from school.
The metric that matters more than male U.S. workers’ earnings
Full-time workers have had a steady increase in pay in recent decades. In 2014, median American workers earned 20% more than their counterparts in 1975, in real terms. (And this is using a measure of inflation that some economists think understates the real trend.) Now, a 20% increase in 30 years isn’t what we would call cause for huge celebration. But it is not nothing. So why were so many commentators downbeat? The short answer is because men aren’t doing so well.
The Fed as poverty fighter
This week sees the release of the poverty figures for 2014 from the Census Bureau. Given the weakness of the labor market, we expect only a modest drop in the number of poor Americans. As a corollary, we believe any premature tightening of monetary policy related to unwarranted fears of inflation would be especially damaging to the poor. Paid work is the most significant source of income for the vast majority of Americans, and especially for those on the bottom rungs on the socioeconomic ladder.
Not just the 1%: Upper middle class income separation
Is the upper middle class really pulling away from ordinary Americans, as we claimed in the first post in this series, or is it really just the top 1 percent? A lot of people have asked us that question, and it’s a good one. Short answer: No. It is certainly true that plotting the income growth of the top 1 percent adds drama to any graph.
Social mobility: low, and lower at the top than the bottom
The Stanford researchers adopt intergenerational elasticity (IGE) as their preferred measure. This captures the extent to which parental income influences their child’s income as an adult. (It also incorporates changes in overall income inequality, as we’ve discussed before). Estimates of the IGE typically hover around 0.4 (i.e. 40 percent of parental income differences showing up in children’s adult income).
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