Robert Manduca
Cambridge
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Articles by Robert Manduca
You’re probably richer than you think because of the safety net – but you’d have more of that hidden wealth if you lived in Norway
You may be wealthier than you realize. Deagreez/iStock via Getty Images Plus How wealthy are you? Like most people, you probably would do some math before answering this question. You would add up the money in your bank accounts, the value of your investments and any equity in a home you own, then subtract your debts, such as mortgages and car loans.
A review of the state of child care in the United States
This report explores major trends and opportunities in states’ child care policies through the lens of key challenges at the national and state levels, including legislative trends and updates in child care policies.
CSCAR should remain open
On August 13, the Office of the Vice President for Research announced that the Consulting for Statistics, Computing and Analytics Research unit will be permanently closed. OVPR provided only vague justification for this move, claiming it would make them more effective in meeting a variety of needs on campus.
States can support children and their economies using direct cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant program
Efficient, effective, and responsive income support programs can reduce economic inequality and support economic mobility. If targeted effectively, these programs can help children, families, and workers meet their needs and provide the greatest return on investment to enhance broader social welfare.
Americans Informed About the Distributional Effects of Republicans’ Budget Bill Overwhelmingly Oppose It
Download File 062525-WP-Americans Informed About the Distributional Effects of Republicans’ Budget Bill Overwhelmingly Oppose It-Hacker and Sullivan Authors: Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University Patrick Sullivan, Yale University Abstract: Republicans in the Senate are currently considering the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which, if enacted, would be the most regressive U.S. tax and budget law in at least the past four decades.
Financial and Transfer Income as Components of the Regional Economic Base
Download File 062425-WP-Financial and Transfer Income as Components of the Regional Economic Base-Manduca Authors: Robert Manduca, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Abstract: Economists and geographers have long divided industries into “basic” and “nonbasic” sectors depending on whether they bring money into a region from outside or serve local demand. Traditionally, the regional economic base has been defined as traded industries that export to other regions and countries.
You’re probably richer than you think because of the safety net
How wealthy are you? Like most people, you probably would do some math before answering this question. You would add up the money in your bank accounts, the value of your investments and any equity in a home you own, then subtract your debts, such as mortgages and car loans.
You’re probably richer than you think because of the safety net - but you’d have more of that hidden wealth if you lived in Norway
By Robert Manduca, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan How wealthy are you? Like most people, you probably would do some math before answering this question. You would add up the money in your bank accounts, the value of your investments and any equity in a home you own, then subtract your debts, such as mortgages and car loans.
You’re probably richer than you think because of the safety net - but you’d have more of that hidden wealth if you lived in Norway
How wealthy are you? Like most people, you probably would do some math before answering this question. You would add up the money in your bank accounts, the value of your investments and any equity in a home you own, then subtract your debts, such as mortgages and car loans.
After Free Trade
The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History Eric Helleiner Cornell University Press, $49.95 (cloth) On or around 1939 debates about international political economy changed. Over the course of the Cold War, economic nationalism—the attempt to use the state to advance a country’s economic interests—was crowded out of official discourse by two competing universalisms, communism on one side and liberalism on the other. Over the last few decades, however, this opposition has been scrambled.
Austerity policies in the United States caused ‘stagflation’ in the 1970s and would do so again today
In the current debate among economists and policymakers in the United States about the causes of inflation, one of the most persistent and most deeply rooted questions is whether today’s round of price increases are, fundamentally “macroeconomic” in scope—meaning they are happening because there is a general excess of demand over supply.
The Senate voted to advance Biden’s infrastructure bills. That’s a return to the U.S. tradition of government economic involvement.
Senate Democrats and Republicans announced a breakthrough Wednesday on one of the Biden administration’s high-priority physical and social infrastructure bills. If enacted, these measures would deliver the largest expansion of government economic activity in generations, and would abruptly shift the four-decade federal retreat from investment, spending, employment and regulation of the economy. Pundit David Brooks calls these measures a departure from the “American system” of economic governance.
In the Common Interest
The frontispiece to John Skinner’s Careyite agricultural journal, The Plough, the Loom and the Anvil (1848). Image: Wikimedia Commons How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South in the run-up to the Civil War.
The economic complexity of US metropolitan areas
ABSTRACT We calculate measures of economic complexity for US metropolitan areas for the period 1998–2015 based on employment data. We show that the concept translates well to the regional setting and to local and traded industries. Large cities and the Northeast have the highest complexity, while most traded industries are more complex than most local ones. In cross-section, metropolitan complexity is associated with higher incomes, though to a lesser extent recently than in the past.
The spatial structure of US metropolitan employment: New insights from administrative data
Scholars of cities have long sought to uncover regularities in the spatial structure of urban areas. In recent decades, a key portion of this effort has been directed at understanding the decentralization of employment. Following the suburbanization of the late 20th century, it is now clear that the monocentric city model formalized by Alonso (1964) is no longer adequate to explain the geographic profiles of American cities.
Linking racial stratification and poor health outcomes to economic inequality in the United States
The United States is marked by sharp racial divisions in who has access to the economic and social resources that enhance well-being and in who is exposed to conditions that deteriorate social and economic well-being.
Selling Keynesianism
An illustration from Tomorrow Without Fear (1946), by Chester Bowles. In the 1940s and ’50s, the general public understood and agreed upon Keynesian economic principles. Today, we can learn a lot from the popularizing efforts that led to that consensus and long-lasting economic success. This essay is featured in Boston Review’s Summer 2019 issue Economics After Neoliberalism. Order your copy today. “Let’s bring our editorial microscope into focus on a very significant phenomenon,” the video begins.
Selling Keynesianism
The long-lasting prosperity of the 1940s and ’50s thus owed, in large part, to the fact that the general public broadly understood and agreed upon the economic principle that fast-paced growth and high employment could be achieved on the back of consumer demand, but only if purchasing power was distributed widely enough. Once armed with this information, the general public went about enforcing it.
Ethnicity and Education
The politics of black education, 1780-1980. Since that warm spring day in 1954, when Earl Warren announced the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, black Americans have increasingly looked to the courts to secure our rights to public education. Our faith has not, by and large, been misplaced; court-mandated desegregation plans have significantly improved the educational opportunities of many Afro-Americans.
New board member Mehrsa Baradaran brings expertise on economic inequality and the racial wealth gap
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is pleased to announce that Mehrsa Baradaran, professor at University of California, Irvine School of Law, will join the Board of Directors. Baradaran is a leading scholar on banking law and financial inclusion and has developed a number of policies to address economic inequality and the racial wealth gap.
U.S. school segregation in the 21st century
Overview The United States experienced a sharp decline in black-white school segregation from the 1960s through the late 1980s following court cases and enforcement measures. Since then, school desegregation has stagnated and resegregation has returned.
Antitrust Enforcement as Federal Policy to Reduce Regional Economic Disparities
Ahern, Kenneth R., Harford, Jarrad. 2014. The importance of industry links in merger waves. Journal of Finance 69 (2): 527–76. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline Austin, Benjamin, Glaeser, Edward, Summers, Lawrence H. 2018. Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st century America. In Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring: 151–232. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Google Scholar Autor, David H., Dorn, David, Hanson, Gordon. 2017.
For Juneteenth: A look at economic racial inequality between white and black Americans
This Wednesday, June 19, is Juneteenth, the United States’ second independence day, marking the day in 1865 that many black American communities celebrate as the anniversary of their freedom. Juneteenth is now recognized as a holiday or special day of observance in 45 states and the District of Columbia, but these celebrations, while acknowledging how far we have come, also call out how far we still have to go. Juneteenth is a holiday known to many people, but perhaps not to enough.
Punishing and toxic neighborhood environments independently predict the intergenerational social mobility of black and white children
Significance Growing up in neighborhoods with concentrated violence, incarceration, and lead exposure predicts lower intergenerational income mobility and higher adult incarceration of poor black males, after accounting for commonly studied factors such as concentrated poverty and racial composition. Similar patterns emerge for the income mobility of poor white children and teenage birth among both poor black and poor white girls.
How national income inequality in the United States contributes to economic disparities between regions
One of the biggest challenges facing the United States today is the growing economic disparities between different regions of the country. In 1980, just 12 percent of Americans lived in metropolitan areas with a mean family income more than 20 percent higher or lower than the national average. By 2013, more than 30 percent did.
To Fix Regional Inequality, Target the One Percent
March 25, 2019 | 6:00 AM One of the greatest challenges facing the United States is the growing economic disparity between its different regions. Over the last forty years, a handful of prosperous areas have pulled away from the rest of the country. This is a remarkable reversal from the prior 100 years, when the poorer parts of the nation were the places that, economically speaking, grew fastest.
Robert Manduca
Robert Manduca is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on urban and regional economic development, asking why some places are more prosperous than others and how the economic conditions in which people live shape their life outcomes. Manduca received his Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University and his master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mark Lilla and the Crisis of Liberalism
Image: Karla Cote The critique of identity politics ignores the role that neoliberalism and neoconservatism have played in creating our present situation. This essay is featured in Boston Review’s print issue, Fifty Years Since MLK. Order your copy today. The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics Mark Lilla Harper, $24.99 (cloth) For a long time, a faction of U.S. liberals shouldered the burdens of a fully inclusive social compact.
Trends in US absolute income mobility since 1940
The fading American Dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940 One of the defining features of the ‘American Dream’ is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. This column examines rates of ‘absolute income mobility’ – the fraction of children who earn more than their parents – to assess whether the US is living up to this ideal.
The Geography of American Jobs
The latest employment numbers show that non-farm employment in America increased by 173,000. The American economy is now host to 142,288,000 jobs. That’s a lot of jobs! But where are these jobs located, exactly? This data visualization from Harvard PhD student Robert Manduca plots one dot for every job in the United States. The data is based on state unemployment insurance records, and tabulates the count of jobs by census block.
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