Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion 20240703

Conversation about a recently released science census report card reducing generational poverty. My pleasure this morning is to introduce you to the panelists today. We will from the people coauthors on the report telling you he highlights from the report. I encourage you to read the report, theres a lot of detail we will be able to cover today and then a broader discussion. Introducing greg duncan, the university of california irvine he has a Long Research career. He previously spent 25 years that diversity of michigan and was director claimed by harry halter, senior fellow garrett georgetown. Also in the black these department, her research focuses on shaping black communities, families. Look at policies and structural for income and other factors across generations. Fellow of the american economics. This conversation will be moderated as the visiting fellow here at brookings and economics programs. We join after spending 36 years as a staff writer at the Washington Post covering social policy shared Pulitzer Prize for her coverage as 9 11. Thank you. Thank you for coming. A bit of an introduction for the committee and the recommendations in 2021 Congress Passed National Academies to put together a Consensus Panel to come up with ideas for programs and policies for which evidence indicated that a chance of reducing intergenerational poverty. Some of you may know the report in 2019, roadmap Child Poverty was all about short term policy. What can we do to reduce short poverty tomorrow . What can we do today for children, their families and environment 20 or 30 years from now will reduce the chance of being poor when they become adults bus the National Academies request in the committee. The full committee is quite numerous consensus committees everyone agree so it is an interesting process. They are given a statement in the assignment is to write a report and focused. For the committees . First with the drivers in the policies and programs shown to reduce intergenerational poverty and structural contributes generational poverty and identify the data and research that our efforts to learn more about intergenerational poverty. Its very straightforward, a situation in which children grow up lower income families and the income and ms. Defined as a child within the case in the bottom 20 of the Income Distribution. In this case they were in the 30s, 39. Erica results and its 20 . In his 34 and when i use numbers, i think the averages about 2 , 60 maybe but its 34 . A lot of those who rise above month is 34 chances still twice as high chance of a child growing up in a family outside the data is the extent to which rates differ by race and ethnic. 34 is 29 growing on in the low income for asians its much less. For latinos, every is similar to white that is across different majors on economic mobility or in mobility what stands out our black children and native American Children who have higher rates persistence any other group. Information you can find intergenerational processing with income data in the ranking shows up so rates for black children and interracial art particularly high quite a bit of attention. More descriptive results, i would encourage you to report. The first 250 pages to report, its very. Designed to read like a novel but there is an appendix the most important thing identify the drivers of poverty and come up with policies and programs proven to intergenerational poverty so heres the actual wording identifying policies and programs that have Proven Ability committee spent a lot of time with a standard that. Thousands of operational studies. Some studies are strong the higher test was and poverty. They had to be longterm studies to adulthood at least think about their Higher Education and completed education something about that Health Earnings in adulthood. It had to be a long enough study a particular program or policy for the next generation. Its not included with that evidence but once you relax and open up to many more questions about which does have a long affect or not so with that introduction, drivers and programs and policies the drivers of intergenerational artery. And these factors influence longterm poverty and that we have evidence policies can reduce that. And structure and treatment. And were also impact of these factors on longterm poverty as well as policy evidence that reduces while i start marching into the house. We saw with education, its not hard in the area of education to show two things, number one there is large lasting disparities in Educational Achievement and attainment between income groups racial and ethnic groups in number two disparities have large impacts on earnings and income for adults so an important area to look for evidence that we found evidence in these three realms caps on policies seem to have Lasting Impacts. He might notice Early Childhood education is missing and what to differ during the q a but we did not find we had a number of conditions for cap policy, is relatively at least since the 1990s another one that had scale evaluated and Early Childhood programs that have Lasting Impacts and ill just put it there and follow later but we did find good evidence. We found evidence that increasing k12 spending really did have an impact and you may remember theres conventional wisdom education and i think that was overturned in regard evidence. There were two other areas that were strong. Increasing teacher Workforce Diversity you can match teachers and students by race and gender so having black male teachers to be an effective way to teach black boys school in the other thing is reducing School Discipline which is very harmful for children and young men of color. We got that was Foreign Policy as well. On the secondary front we found two buckets of lessees important. One, expanding effective Financial Aid programs from college students. Pell grants it turns out, the evidence was more but to programs for for your programs and they generated strong success in increasing campus supports such as tutoring and Case Management and career guidance, quite a few rigorous studies improving completion rates but this was that will get College Degrees we found evidence of Occupational Training programs that have Lasting Impacts. Highquality career and three examples of the career academies, high schools and pathway programs and they have generated long and Lasting Impacts and Occupational Training programs for adults in the training is designed to match employers in high demand actors and wellknown programs and vocational programs and others in project quest generates impacts. How do we improve income employment . There is strong evidence employed matters. How do we improve that . The best way is one i recovered. What about for people who dont improve their skills enough for strong labor market earnings . A win win win programs up with income in the pockets of people who needed and encourages employment and positive effects on children and families. We came up with a number of possible ways. You may notice we dont have the child tax and a Panel Discussion later in the tax credit raises shortterm and reduces poverty shortterm but not longterm although we did include combining itc in one of the several ways which they could increased. On health the most important one in regards to assistant medicaid coverage among 12 month eligibility for people and postpartum coverage and given the importance given the persistence of poverty for native americans and access to Health Services improves for native americans. The snap benefits for all legal permanent resident and undocumented parents and air quality for poor kids. It turns out we had strong evidence to distinct crime and criminal justice. Number one, exposure of children to Violent Crime turns out negative. Going in ways that hurts their outcomes but juvenile detention has negative impact. It turned out to have negative effects. And it turns out time right. In high crime. If the cops are abusive, it will offset positive effects use of effective strategies Like Community policing. Reducing gun violence, the evidence that bonds are tied to harvest homicide is overwhelming. We know Second Amendment issues are important we came up with a number of examples promoting limited child access to guns restricting and addons for violence of our firms. A few other programs were investing in children had strong preventative effects like becoming a man program in chicago. We need to see if that has Lasting Impact and improves education and reduce crimes. We are in the same bucket of policies and programs without second reduce intergenerational poverty. We only had one in the Doctoral Program and coupling it with customized Case Management so comes from a randomized controlled trial in seattle but found some reasons why people dont move to high Opportunity Areas is about the bears tooth mobility and lack of information and inability to work with boards so the Management Services could intervene. The voucher is one that goes underutilized, underfunded and underutilized report of the families who are eligible get access to the sponsor so the family stability and opportunity factors act first introduced in 2019 and again in 2021 hasnt yet passed but an example of bipartisan evidence based legislation aimed at this goal. Going to switch gears because part of our statement of task focused on racial and ethnic disparities and intergenerational poverty so you recall and beside that white families are children, 29 of white children for low income children are also as adults and rates are higher for black and native American Children so we were charged with race and ethnic disparities plans analyzing the drivers and policies and programs that would reduce the gap in intergenerational poverty so when we look at this, we wanted to start with history and various practices of what we would call impoverishment experienced by black and native American Families and these are examples illustrated and cultural resources. As we show in the report, theres a sizable appendix in racial and ethnic chapters contribute to that. We really work through contemporary ramifications of these historical expenses. Ill just talk about the dogs act of 1887 a lot of native American Lands for private ownership handheld in trust. Native americans who lived currently and develop cap income from their peers on reservations less fractionated. This 19th century policy of lantern appropriation correlated with economic wellbeing in the 21st century. Roughly 35 acres of the greenwood section of the city of tulsa were burned to the ground called black wall street because of the concentration of black Business Owners and other black institutions. They are met with violence. Bearing to the 1940s had repercussions on the grades them across the country and he 2000. Again, we need to think historically economic status today. Covered although the drivers mentioned in Racial Disparities and how it might contribute to the disparities in the intergenerational poverty we saw. I will just talk about three for time purposes. Her School Discipline from releasable ages. In preschool there suspended that two and a half times the representation in the top the preschool population and native american toddlers are suspended that one and a half times. Were talking about toddlers. Correlational experiment of studies showing negative effects on standard test scores and has gone College Graduation and increases the chance of involvement in the criminal legal system and received food assistance. In neighborhoods we call high poverty neighborhoods 30 of the neighborhoods are poor. The greater concentrations of properties encounters with segregation and mobility in those neighborhoods. In the criminal legal system, black and native American Children have greater rates of exposure to Community Violence and as harry mentioned, exposure to Community Violence increases the likelihood School Dropout increases the risk of young adulthood and reduces performance on standardized tests especially for lack students. That is the exposure to violent side but the criminal Legal Systems so we know about side Racial Disparities for adults and children are and banding. Native american use three times as likely so negative effects juvenile incarceration. We can imagine the programs that would be effective in reducing Racial Disparities targeting drivers so 12 programs and policies that would reduce these disparities and it goes through a whole list which im not going to talk about. Ill piggyback on something mentioned which is School Funding so initially we thought about segregation as a policy or program that would reduce intergenerational poverty but it shows it is for resources that is the mechanism that supports reduction disparities and intergenerational poverty. Roger say whats interesting is you look at numbers one and two we probably importance up teacher Workforce Diversity in our studies about the importance of black Student Success that might seem to go in the opposite direction probation policy or program. These are things we teach so yes, while it is important to increase teacher Workforce Diversity, it is important to teach the same kinds of strategies we find black teachers utilizing the classroom that will approve the outcomes especially of black children. We are very much supporting longterm studies that can connect data so the evidence to policy acts which will increase the data policy research and super important for this. We are using data for numbers on intergenerational poverty. It would give us more leverage without having the expensive panels required. A number of discussions and the policies across which these policies are made. The capability and the rest of the panelists, i think we are going to do q a. We are going to continue. From georgetown we are going to pivot to discussion which will have time for questions at the end of think about what you want to ask. A wide range of policy solutions so in general, committed or that. So i view the report as opportunity to begin important policy conversation. Datadriven conversation so there really emphasize this around Research Design claiming, as if i were in the same position i probably would wind up trying to combine evidence to these studies. I can also say there and being large body of descriptive rigorous studies. I think there is Even Stronger evidence that supports underlying factors that drives poverty. Already jump into something even just the structural labor market intergenerational poverty implications, we have trysting recent evidence in the journal of literal economy. They looked at moms and daughters who both received cash welfare so independent children and predecessor program. Far fewer dollars in this traditional cash welfare. When you expand the definition in the same rates across generations and they are really stringent incentives and temporary cash supports in the program. You are not necessarily breaking up intergenerational government support. How to get us system and with the report finds, economic factors underlying challenges of persistent poverty. A lot about neighbor markets and lower wages so we have that of the mens but some of it makes it into the report, i think it winds up being cautious but they accept the evidence so it is worthwhile and discussion that we do have this body of rigorous evidence the evidence is there such methods, but there is a question of how forceful to be on the evidence we have. I would say we have quite a bit of evidence economic instability, the same households with low resource and lowball, resources will be more unstable and we believe that this is going to have a whole host of consequences for Mental Health and so on and so forth. Order to identify intergenerational consequences there and in part because instability is low and stable incomes. I do think more datadriven set of practices and businesses after stock torres you might worry theres more work scheduling instability for personal faith security to put more strain. Moving at a decent pace because i want to allow for time, i like that the report touched on housing. Obviously the role after decades of research is shaping the outcomes where they are standing on the shoulders of salons. The role of neighbors so with that said, i think the report grappled with what is assistant on the housing economists refer to a monopoly so in the u. S. Context, be a long run where black families and income and wealth tend to be alongside one another but it is built up over decades and what it means for opportunity evidence, i do you situate that . What we want to expand, they might run up against references with respect to the you connect to it is a statement of data reserve system connecting this work. It is historical drivers with respect to grace. I think again the burden of direct evidence in the opportunity to admit quite a bit of innovative work economic history so thinking about my coauthor more National Research and this is incredible Research Design. So many of these politicians were pushing more public goods in the reconstruction era and higher taxes. A lowering of goods investment and pacific balance here. Murder rate against black politicians is about 200 times the murder rate for black men today. Think about long run impacts yet we have growing body of economic history leveraging data. The voting participation in terms of participation today. Read the report. There is a nice time where this chapter argues that dont have strong causal evidence from the role of a second pair or role of mayors but the persistence of impacts across the studies strongly suggest a causal relationship. Situate evidence as a and income topics and contacts. The Committee Members explain clearly why they didnt want to include too much on a one year intervention. Historically low levels and potential impacts might be. Thank you. Hi, like you, really love the report. There quickly presented and it covers so many. It is hard to imagine and someone whos been in government like the rest of you and had to come up with recommendations for president , president clinton the budget and spend billions on it and hundreds of billions of dollars not talking about small amounts of money having had a report to rely on what is absolutely joint. I want to mention three dogs that didnt bark and by that i mean programs many elected officials and advocates and researchers to be effective or not endorsed in this report. I dont think to be critical, i have some empathy with the decisions made to leave them out. I just think what a report doesnt recommend is just as much as what it does. There were barely parts of education and Early Childhood education, great program. Huge effects. And they remain as well as the impacts so whats going on here . There very well respected and so we just got solely and good studies show. The rollout over here though whats going on here . I think whats going on here trying on the intergenerational . Into custody about 20 or 30 years old because of the risk they would not have gone to adulthood. If you have the problem and they were different 20 or 30 years ago. Mothers were much less educated. Mothers much less educated. Nothing like the infrastructure of childcare centers, nothing like this social safety net we have now. Reduce Child Poverty by about half so that didnt exist programs evaluated. They were often smallscale run by people who not only were very sophisticated but serving 123 children and should generalize. And they are very questionable. I wont go into that but it is a structural problem people on the committee pace. The Child Tax Credit mentioned. As someone who helped make the child credit refundable in 2001 under my leadership and sitting up front we got it into legislation and recently did an estimate of how much money has gone to lower income families as a result of that simple change. The answer is about 4,150,000,000. I like the idea of lower income families but if you asked whether right now limited Political Energy and availability i would say if i had to expand something, it would definitely be the eip state for all reasons not only does it bring more money and but also increases for women and they lead to selfsufficiency and better role modeling, it might be a better way to prevent institutions so forth and so on. We Start Talking about itc. And then theres a chapter on marriage and i believe that twoparent families in this trial i do have impacts on children. We have the Writer Center and characterizes this. Heres where i think a little bit different place where you are, i dont think we know how to get more. We can agree or maybe we cant but for those of us who do agree, it is one thing. They tried to increase marriage, most of them havent been found to be effective. This might surprise some of you. Reproductive services could have an impact and they will discuss good evidence and maybe that should happen after this report they are very good with this evidence in their followups in this decision on abortion and a turn away study but does show women have access to abortion and makes a difference not only for their lives but also there childrens lives. I will put in one final part for new paper that i think was already published about hamilton project, is that right . Is based on rtc in michigan, at least i didnt see it and shows title x is about one third period thats a lot. Much cheaper than what the public cant help but believe would have a lot of impact on childrens future lives and their moms or their parents were able to make decisions if they have a child, when and with whom so ill stop there. Thank you both for those friendly critiques. Im curious, you got some nice kudos. Specifically housing a specific or how racial factors are affecting currently we also have so what do you think of what is heard . I received those struggle with the evidence standard, the only moving ahead in the reverse evidence the programs and policies in a good chance of intergenerational poverty. That was a hard task. In go forward and agree on something which is what we did but completely acknowledge theres more work to be done. The ideas were there bringing this evidence would provide evidence that would would need in our Committee Report and that is where the recommendation about administrative data comes in. The administrator data are available and administrative data. The ten year and a winwin situation i do need to guard against the cap concern but we have been able to handle the the studies weve done. A good job presenting that side a more contemporary program me evidence of other programs and part of my work and science. It makes the case with the programs but some programs are well evaluated event a good program and they seem to be negative. And making recommendations where we are now and we put into Early Childhood and probably programs shouldnt invest in, we dont know they are. One on marriage week strong saying that there is a strong likelihood theres a causal link. Just because you understand the problem does mean you understand what programs that address those problems. Indeed, if you look at this series the tenth in the george w. Bush administration to promote communitybased programs that tried to build relationship skills among couples, they were randomly assigned evaluations with there are good programs. Get some impact on increasing the quality of couple relations but no impact whatsoever on marriage rates. Right . So we know whats probably important but we dont now know how to address that problem. Thats why it didnt end up in our list of recommended, not really recommendation because the committee was of diversity could agree on any recommendation, but we agreed on ideas that seem to be productive policymakers to consider based on on the evidence, and that evidence for intervention marriage wasnt there for us. We stopped there. I think i would have to have a little rebuttal. Im not sure to rebuttal, just a clarification of things i didnt get around to sing before and should have. First of all, i think head start which does not have according to the rct of the national program, positive results that last. That doesnt mean it isnt a good program because its highquality childcare. Since i favor more childcare because i think most women especially low income women and by almost definition single parents, have to work, that we do need more highquality childcare, and head start is great highquality childcare. Second point i should have clarified. Aside that there was no evidence that the dogs didnt bark doesnt necessarily mean that something might network. It just means we dont yet know whether it works or not. We dont have the research because of the standards that great just talked about and report emphasizes. I want to say that when you are in government or even when youre just an advocate for a practitioner you can say my gosh, this generation of children is only with us once and then theyre going up and gone. By the time we have the research, theres not much we can do. So you have to make decisions if youre a policymaker on grounds other than rigorous evidence. I think we all know that but i just want to really stress that. And and i also think it does o the kind of pointing to Research Gaps and data gaps that of our event alluded to. So thank you for letting me supplement. So first of all, kudos to bradley for great insightful comments. I do think that it disagreed from either of them. Let me talk about the Child Tax Credit, one of the dogs that didnt bark. Because remember when the choice of this. We had focus only on longterm intergenerational effects. That was our charge. The evidence clearly isnt there because it hasnt been long enough to detect that but the evidence on poverty and especially shortterm Food Insecurity is quite strong. If you are a member of congress and with limited resources, and if you think i really think all this money should go exclusively to the factors affecting longterm poverty because thats the most important thing, you wouldnt spend those limited resources on Child Tax Credit. On the other hand, if your view is no, i really care about shortterm as well as longterm and im terribly bothered by Food Insecurity for children and there is an indirect evidence of toxic stress and you could easily conclude that is, in fact, somewhere to spend some of this money. Just because our hands were tied in terms of what we had to consider, does mean it would be a dumb thing to spend public funds of a toy to be really clear that we were limited by our charge is fine with that way. The other thing i will say on Family Structure and a lot of good comments and like bell and bradley and craig said im inclined to believe that a structure and having to make parents around matters. And again we wish with strong evidence to make the case and, of course, i had to promote marriage policies very challenging. I want to point at one additional factor that none of us got to before that is quite important, and its a little related to the marriage issue. If you look only at black girls growing up in poverty when they become black women, their personal rates in terms of the earnings of escaping poverty are just as good as those as whites and latinas. Its black boys going up in poverty come black man with a real gap is. And, therefore, that affects also that possibly affects Family Structure and the causeway. Certainly facts Household Income. So given that fact one way to focus on the Family Structure issue is really to focus on what Richard Reeves is always telling us, really focus on the difficulties, the problems of black boys and black man in the society is something that is shameful and that we can figure out how too seriously address. Thats another way to get at his Household Income issue from a slightly different angle. Now i have to respond quickly to that and just mention yes, all that is true. We have a pretty detailed discussion of the gender differences there and kind of hypothesize about some of things that might be going on. Yes, of course, some of the child just black boys face but also the work that black women have to do to compensate for the knowledge of the lower earnings of black children who become black men, the white women dont have to do because really a gap that close eye between black women of black women but the captivate is between all women and all men. If you look at low income women, low income children, girl children who become, who might go on to come low income women receive that the gender gap remains and so its really black women kind of knowing that you need to compensate for what would be the outcome of black men come i shouldnt say it really is, thats one possibility for explaining why black women look more like white women when they become adults and black girls look more like white women and they become all become adults. A lot of variables to talk with children and adults and race and gender, a lot of things to talk about. I just want to piggyback also on harrys point, yes, the toys for December Talk of something suspected we need effective for intergenerational come intergenerational poverty, not effective for many, many other outcomes. The area i study, housing, housing choice vouchers are very effective for grading Housing Affordability for the families who get them but thats not outcome variable of interest in this particular report. Housing choice vouchers there some new research by sandy newman and tammy leventhal reducing parental stress. In a shortterm so maybe longerterm outcomes might show parental stress come child outcome to children who become adults and we just dont have that yet but there are clearly a lot of positive shortterm benefits. The final thing i will say it is bradley could been enrolled m with us when youre talking about the kinds of evidence standards we mightve considered that we didnt. Year i will point out for all of us who are researchers of some sort, the kind of challenges a doing interdisciplinary research. As a sociologist on the committee where evidence is that what you need to get published in our top journals, we might think the art of the kinds of evidence that could be strong evidence and Interdisciplinary Panel we come to a consensus and we move through that consensus. Of course also always important to question what rct work can and cannot do. The weaknesses of the, the limitations of it, those kinds of things. If you have such a strong ongoing body of correlational evidence using longitudinal data and certain Research Designs and so on, how come kind of move on that while think about the limitations of rct research . Okay. Before opening to a couple questions for the three of you. The first one is, having done this exhaustive piece of work, what do we know now that we didnt know before . And in particular i was thinking what does this say about the contemporary value or persistent or having gone away of the mythology of the American Dream . As i try to point out at the very beginning, the extent of mobility is surprisingly favorable, but that said, it s by no means complete and that are important problems associated with what intergenerational immobility remains that should concern us. That was really the purpose of the report, right . Its hard to remember what i thought, in to the forward process but one of the things i ended up i think being, i have never thought about whether this would be important or not, but the task of think that all the different driver areas really depressed this all at the beginning once we enumerate them all put that we worked through all of them speedy depressed to because the report, so many, so many to review. The amount of work. Just as there are many diverse areas that drive an occasional poverty come to look at the collection of policy ideas we had intergenerational poverty they are divided up across almost all the areas, right . Its not as though theres one particular policy that stood out as being the most important ticket to reducing intergenerational poverty. We have available right of options across a variety of program and policy areas, right . We dont know whether theyre completely or not but you can think of addressing the problem in either comprehensive approach if we want to invest a lot of money, or more piecemeal, rig, attacking what area, one time in the cycle versus another. But you always have these ideas that have been proven with Strong Research on the shelf available to pull off the shelf and consider. And you would hope that there would be various congressional committees and various kinds of discussions taking place that would proceed simultaneously with each of them making some dent in the problem. I came away from the report pleasantly surprised at the number of things that work. Ill highlight two realms especially. Number one, in the American Labor market education is extremely important work of the countries that have high rates of unionism things like that, the role of education maybe its not quite as pronounced here we found all different stages that Early Childhood but k12, postsecondary, Occupational Training, we found a lot of things that worked. Again refuting that earlier conventional wisdom that throwing money at these things doesnt work, nothing matters in these areas, its just not what we found. And america a lot of people go to college, dont finish and theres often questioned what if you dont go to college what else can you do to enhance your skills . Weed answer. We found all kind of programs that raise completion rates to your for your schools but also that provide highquality Occupational Training district for your schools. Crime and is very cost in american society, both the crime itself and the consequences in terms of confinement incarceration. We found a lot of things surprising the work reasonably well like crime prevention. Around which we can imagine bipartisan agreements. Like on the one hand, putting for cops on the streets come back later works. Also investing some of these different prevention programs that have a lot of promise. I think one hesitation then that i have is that in some ways the report says if you want to really make progress on the stuff you have to be willing to spend the money. And a fair amount of money. And with some other hats that some of us where we some physical issues in america, for political reasons were not willing to raise taxes to pay for the programs that americans truly want and need. So we left and that difficult conundrum of do we then spend money even though were not going to finance things or not, and how to get the two sides to come to get around that . In some sense of the politics for a implement the suggestions, underwent one can imagine bipartisan agreement but then have to wrestle with some sticky fiscal issues as well. Marry . I think for me the interesting thing with how many of our program and policy ideas were in education realm, not that this was surprising but rather how much it conforms to our understanding like school, go to school. Whats interesting is that the policies and programs are really about ways to make School Engines of upward mobility rather than, you know, and highlight some of the ways our schools are not now as good engine engines of mobility as they could be and ways to improve their working rather than engines of [inaudible] did by mic just go off . No . Okay. I thought my mic just went off. Reducing the kind reproduction. At the same time i think its interesting that its not quite clear if our mantra this is a education is a ride to mobility is borne out by the fact has were all of our studies are, or thats what they can do rct most efficiently. Schools like the laboratories. They like create controlled groups and you can easily create controlled groups in treatment groups are its much harder again in the world that i work in housing to treat peoples homes like the laboratories and to manipulate people in the same way that we can do in school. Not sure if its just driven by Research Possibilities in school or if it really that schools can really be affected interest of mobility. I think bill and bradley get some thoughts on what that tells us. I was thinking about all of the different domains and a fact that you really dont just do one thing. Theres no magic bullet here. And we should be intervening in different of your domains. Although i agree with you, mary, that education and mary is absolutely critical. I want to point out that we have a model that helped to build and that some of you know about called social genome model, uses longitudinal data to trace children from birth to adulthood. It matches the nls y97 for those of you who are data hawks, and its not an rct obviously although the controls for just very, very rich and extensis set of variables. And it leaves out anything that doesnt have made significant test on explanatory. Variant. It shows that if you intervened early and often in a childs life, using a set of about six programs that has been shown to be effective by an rct or other rigorous evidence, and you intervened in every different life stage with one of the affected programs, you can close, i think its about 60 , i would have to look at the exact number, of the gaps between low income, which we defined as less than 200 of poverty, and all other children i adulthood. And you can also greatly narrow the racial gap come apart because race and poverty are highly correlated but for other reasons as well. I just want people to know about this modeling. It is now a partnership between brookings, the urban institute and child trends and urban institute is as i speak doing your research with it and has come up with some interesting papers based on it in the last couple of years. I dont think very many people know about them. They have done anything like we do it brookings, really work hard on dissemination but i think this could, by the way is a public interfacing piece of the model so that if you researcher you have to be at one of those three organizations to use the model. If you have a good question for the model, you can go and test it against the available data and available modeling. I just want by the way, its disagreeably race, ethnicity and gender. A separate model for each of those groups. I used to teach this back in the social policy good. Good conversation. So quick point. When i was taught by Family Structure actually trying to make the point that the committee showed a willingness to say that descriptive evidence could become compiled together to be interpreted as plausibly causal. Can a making a more subtle point that there was a willingness of the social scientist to interpret evidence in that particular chapter. Now, my own view on this is with good news thats contained within the report which is that economic stress, economic insecurity is one of the tangled factors that interacting with Family Structure. I dont think theres much of an argument about whether or not it matters. I dont think thats the argument. It might be an argument around the magnitude that that is the driving factor. Does it matter to believe for different groups. Right . All of people who dont believe it. So nevertheless, weve got this interesting work from newer scholars like christina cross. She engaging with economic stress at a notion thats an important mediator of this descriptive marriage relationship with things Like High School graduation and college enrollment. And so particularly so for black children, that the Family Structure peace is not to say its completely unimportant but this does differ across groups that a fact are some key is there that is some evidence that look some of these economic factors are tangled with Family Structure. That might be one pathway to solving some of these challenges. So directly speaking to get folks together, thats a challenging, right . I would say in my own work, look at some of the economic factors that drive High School Graduation and College Attendance one of the things we found was once we encounter for family wealth, the strong link to marriage basically tended to drop out. Ive worked with Dave Marcotte at american university. Some of the house you in economic studies. That doesnt mean marriage doesnt matter. Its just not the point but its a complex, its a complex factor, right . I want to close out by saying mechanisms matter. I probably lost some eyesight reading greg duncans work on income and the role to longrange outcomes in my phd. But i think you could potentially think about income processes and how it shapes health outcomes, other outcomes that they may not necessarily always be causal but certainly theres a a strong companion f evidence of there. Finally i just really love the point that mary made about teacher diversity. We have some interesting evidence and promising evidence. Look, you know, its great to have a diversity workforce. Its great to get more black men in the classroom but i dont know the push to push those numbers initially but we do have some evidence that nonblack teachers including white teachers who are trained in historically black College Education schools, vaxxers, some evidence they are roughly as effective as maybe some of the black counterparts. May be more effective than some of the black counterparts. It just gets to this notion that the something in the instruction consulting and training that might matter. That something we can do in terms of thinking about curriculum and how people are admitting their coursework. Good. We have about two minutes left, so that no shortage of questions. Questions. Somebody will be running around with a microphone you want to start . Thank you. Im wondering if the committee had thought of adding another appendix that would show possible costs of combinations of programs and link to that im wondering if you came across any studies that would estimate the cost of a dramatically expanded earned income tax credit . May be in the eitc that will match one for one for 50,000 of earnings and then tapers off over the next 30,000 30,. Anything like that . Thank you. We did try to quantify cost whatever we could come which wasnt easy for some of the programs. But in the appendix with some of that detail. Our aspiration aspirf complete cost of data. We give a section about combination of programs. We didnt even try to come up with costs for those because it would be so difficult. Thats clearly a task that we need. The eitc ideas, there are three different ideas. One is for a 40 increase along the whole scale. The other is to have a steeper runup, 70 instead of 40 . A plateau that is higher but then its a shorter flat. Back to you the same phaseout. And then theres this idea of combining really of the eitc with ctc type payment for families that have zero or very, very low taxable income. You dont have to start at zero. You can start at 1000. That is what we provide as an example. And then you can still have it run up at 40 , say, for a family of three. So the work incentives are preserved and then a higher top and in the same kind of fadeout. Some of those are rather expensive. Weve got estimates and dont member them offhand but that was the extent of our coming up with ideas. We were somewhat disciplined i think selfdiscipline in trying to keep costs somewhat modest, although 30 million, 40 million isnt such a modest amount. We didnt really speculate this is the same thats june 2019 report, the roadmap report that i was part of. One thing is you really want to stay anchored to the evidence to the extent you can and once you get very, very big changes, and punch example, the evidence just isnt there to say that no, there are not going to be big disincentive. You are kind of naturally cautious in this Committee Process on a think for good reason because you dont want to go beyond the evidence that you have. I have two comments on your question. What is that in the model i described, we estimate Lifetime Income increases from the programs that we implemented. Then discounted that to the present time and compare that to the cost of the programs that we implemented. And it did pass as best we could do with some caveats, benefit cost ratio. Next. Here and then yes. I want to thank belle for all the work youve done, greg duncan come first introduced by jim pechman years ago. Thank for all youve done, the whole committee. This is a great bit of research. I am anticipating this fiscal conflict, revenues versus spending. And asking in the work that was done, was there an effort to convert the gains from whether its prenatal counseling or prekindergarten or whatever come converted into a fiscal advantage . Im very helpful i want to talk with you, though, whether they can be done with the daily futures making. Im familiar with the program and an admirer of it. I feel that all of us who are focused on the Human Capital side of americas problems have to have a stronger argument bereft have a fiscal argument for why spending on these kinds of investments make more sense than yet another tax cut for which there has been no randomized control trials and no one ever asked for any. I mean, i think, i think we agree with you at least in principle that its an important dimension. We didnt do it in the study. For all the recent great outlined, uncertainty about costs and inferences about much bigger experiment that we found. So before we can even get to the important question, very important to focus on it but were not able to do that. Bob wyman. I think its noncontroversial to say theres a lot of longterm evidence that wealth and income and increasing concentrated at the top, essentially wealth and income are bubbling up a lot faster than they trickle down. Because thats happening, essentially the pool of wealth and issue of wealth and income available to the people who are now in poverty is shrinking. At least in relative terms. It seems to me one thing we might consider is the flipside of producing intergenerational poverty may be programs to reduce intergenerational at least extreme wealth, to reduce the accumulation at the top so that the level of inequity in the system is reduced. You all talk about eitc, minimum wage, unionization, baby bonds, couple other things, all things directly sort of focus on those in poverty. At least in what you said, i see nothing about what we should do about essentially reducing this sucking force where the wealthiest property goes up faster than it is trickling down. Should we expand that you, just look at the flipside of this issue . I think again within the parameters of our charge, i mean you might be correct that purely redistributive policies taking wealth income from the very top and some of transferring it to the bottom, certainly in the short term would likely reduce poverty. Exactly how to do that we are not clear on it. For instance, theres a lot of literature and bradley referenced it on income transfer programs and impacts on labor supply. So is the question how you take all that well at the top and translate in a way. Well have the evidence when we or the other. So again we not dismissing youra question, just saying the available evidence. For instance, with virtually no causal impact on wealth at all in our study, insofar as it affects intergenerational poverty but also think about what might the mechanism become one of the interesting things in report is our studies looking at lottery winners which is a random thing when it happens. You can study, you are allowed to study it empirically. Winning the lottery does not improve the outcomes of children in those families. I wouldnt dismiss your suggestion but i would hesitate to embrace without a much stronger evidence on how to do it and what effects would result. Just one more small addition. One of the things we did do was to provide kind of updated Income Distribution overtime information. It took into account inkind transfers that it cant tremendously over the last 50 years. So if you add in the value of the eitc and the Child Tax Credit and food stamps and other kinds of transfers, you end up, certainly in the with the top ten or 20 of the distribution growing very rapidly but the growth rate over the last 30 years between a bottom 20 in the the middle 20 , those growth rates are very similar. I was surprised to see that. Its really from the growth in these inkind programs typically dont get counted in distribution. Its not a final critique of your point but its something in the report people look to because its a different way of displaying data that is child based that we should have that in our minds about the child based trends in Income Distribution. I think we just a footnote on that, one second. If you compare the bottom fifth to the middle 6 , the income in the bottom fifth once you put these transfers and across faster than incomes the middle class. I think unfortunately were out of time. We have the lecture more questions than time so perhaps you can find some of these people to chat with afterwards. And thank you all, and thank you all for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]