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The Magazine of the Opportunity & Inclusive INTERVIEW: Sandra Black on Unequal Opportunities and the Cost of Bad Policy AFTER GEORGE FLOYD: Will Economics Change? A Call to Action from William Spriggs DATA DIVE: Looking at COVID-19's Disparities FALL 2020 THE MAGAZINE OF THE OPPORTUNITY & INCLUSIVE GROWTH INSTITUTE Sophie Ọṣọtimẹhin, Associate Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal and Institute FALL 2020 / FOR SeniorALL ScholarC1 2 UPDATE For All With funding and student well-being on the decline, latest Institute The Magazine of the Opportunity & Inclusive conference takes a look at the economics of higher education. Growth Institute 3 SCHOLAR SPOTLIGHT Federal Reserve Bank Four Institute visiting scholars discuss their research on labor of Minneapolis CONTENTS markets and criminal justice, racially biased taxation, benefits Abigail Wozniak Director, Opportunity & of higher wages, and the process of urban change. Inclusive Growth Institute Amy Phenix 6 CRISIS RESPONSE Senior Vice President Diving into real-time data in the midst of a global pandemic, Jay Weiner researchers bring the Institute’s mission to life. Manager, Communications Paul Wallace 14 SEEING THE MARGINS Manager, Digital & Design Services “We need to think about how everyone is doing.” An interview Douglas Clement with Columbia University economist Sandra Black. Managing Editor Alyssa Augustine 19 A TEACHABLE MOMENT? Senior Public Relations Program Manager An open letter from William Spriggs, Institute advisor and Howard University Tu-Uyen Tran economist, calling for systemic change in the economics profession. Senior Writer Jenni Schoppers 22 RESEARCH DIGESTS Senior Publications Coordinating Editor Summaries of two Institute papers on networks, prosperity, and pandemics. Alexis Akervik Manager, Web & Creative 28 DATA DIVE Nina Leo From food scarcity and emergency expenses to child Creative Director care, COVID-19’s inequitable economic effects. Allison Bertelson Digital Designer FINAL THOUGHT Kara Witzmann 30 Project Manager On the virus and inequity. Kristi Anderson Art Director & Designer Neel Kashkari President & CEO Mark L.J. Wright Our first issue Senior Vice President & We know that For All’s premier issue never Director of Research got to many of you. Most of you were set to receive our new magazine via U.S. mail at your places of work. Of course, like us at the Connect with us Minneapolis Fed and the INTERVIEW: The Challenge of Inclusion: Views from Director Abigail Wozniak www.minneapolisfed.org/for-all RESEARCH DIGEST: The Good Old Days? For Some, Yes Opportunity & Inclusive DATA DIVE: Expensive Cities vs. Expansive Cities PREMIERE ISSUE SPRING 2020 Mpls.ForAllEditor@ Growth Institute, you were Email: About the cover mpls.frb.org THE MAGAZINE OF THE OPPORTUNITY & INCLUSIVE GROWTH INSTITUTE sheltering in place, working In a rare moment outdoors at home, and, we hope, Phone: 612.204.5000 during Quebec’s strict stay- staying healthy. at-home order last spring, Mail: In our March issue, we For All Institute senior scholar profiled four of the Insti- Opportunity & Inclusive Sophie Ọṣọtimẹhin took this tute’s visiting scholars. In an Growth Institute selfie, with her husband, data interview, Director Abigail Federal Reserve Bank scientist Julien Duranton, Wozniak offered her vision of Minneapolis behind her. We talk with for the Institute and what 90 Hennepin Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55401-1804 Ọṣọtimẹhin about her excites and concerns her working life under Montreal’s about the field of economics. We presented Twitter: quarantine on page 13. four digests of Institute-related research and @MinneapolisFed You can find her Research an infographic about housing trends from @abigailwozniak Digest about health and economist Issi Romem. Minneapolis Fed economic risk during the President Neel Kashkari explained why we’ve pandemic on page 22. created this magazine. You can find all of those articles and a full pdf of the magazine at minneapolisfed.org/for-all. Enjoy that issue and this one, and tell your colleagues about For All. FROM THE DIRECTOR BY ABIGAIL WOZNIAK hen Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari announced the cre- ation of the Institute in 2017, he emphasized the need to better under- stand, through research and data, our economy’s racial and economic disparities. Little did he know that Minneapolis would become home to the grim spark that ignited a national conversation about opportunity, an inclusive economy and, fundamentally, racism and criminal justice. And none of us in the economics community could have known we’d be faced with a global pandemic at the same time we struggled with George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police. His killing and the demonstrations it sparked literally hit close to home, in neighborhoods where many of our staff live. We highlight COVID-19 and the Institute’s work related to it in this issue of For All. But we also present excerpts from a call to action for economists from Advisory Board mem- ber William Spriggs. His letter is an accelerator for us at the Institute, encouraging us to invest more deeply and move faster on efforts to model and foster inclusion in our day-to-day operations and research. In coming issues, we’ll report on our commitments to inclusion in practice and research. The coronavirus’ test of the Institute concept cuts A test of our concept, across disciplinary lines, touching public health, work- er safety and security, community resilience, and finan- cial stability. It requires a response that crosses between and an accelerator research fields and between scholars and the com- munities they study. For me, examining in real time the impacts of COVID-19 on the well-being of Amer- icans was a priority. Because of the fast-moving virus and policymakers’ need to know how it affected people, I felt we couldn’t wait. On March 26, we posted on our website a proposal I developed. With the help of our interdisciplinary academic Advisory Board, I created a survey tool and was able to partner with the Data Foundation to make the COVID Impact Survey, or CIS, a reality. A key element of the survey was its focus on specific geographic areas. This was not only a national survey, but also one that policymakers in 10 states and eight cit- ies could use to understand COVID-19’s effects on their communities. In selecting a range of locations, we could also understand the impact across different demographic groups. This same approach was later adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau for its rapid response Household Pulse Survey. By April 30, we were in the field, comparing COVID-19-era responses with pre- COVID-19 benchmarks, including measures of employment, hours, social connected- ness, food security, and mental health. A second key feature of the CIS was its focus on surveying a broad set of outcomes and behaviors that could be expected to be hit by the outbreak. We drilled down to analyze measures locally. By June 11, we collected a series of critical results: first, massive reductions across the board on multiple measures of well-being; second, substantial differences across states and metro areas in the size of those reductions, with some places faring worse than others. These differences were not linked to pre-COVID-19 place features. Rather, larger shares of the hardest hit workers appear more responsible for these differences, including work- ers of color, particularly Latinos, younger workers, and those with school-aged children. To read more about the CIS, go to covid-impact.org/results. And see our Data Dive on page 28. Institute scholars will continue to help policymakers and the public better under- stand COVID-19’s impacts. But, as Bill Spriggs tells us, our work on many other mat- ters is just beginning. Abigail Wozniak is the director of the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute and a senior research economist at the Minneapolis Fed. FALL 2020 / FOR ALL 1 UPDATE “We are in a dangerous time” Higher ed funding sure to be cut as student well-being declines BY JAY WEINER The devastating effects of COVID-19 have created But the pandemic’s impact could be deeper many uncertainties for the nation’s colleges and and different. “We are, indeed, in a very dangerous universities. But several issues were undisputed time,” Dynarski added. She and other panelists during the Institute’s 2020 Spring Conference, feared the demise of some colleges and a growing “Higher Ed: Who Pays?” inability of low-income students to afford tuition. The pandemic will almost surely worsen the Many jobs usually held by college students have already deep declines in government funding for disappeared because of COVID-19, she noted. public higher education. Many students, reeling During the Great Recession’s declining job mar- from burdensome debt before the pandemic, are ket, students flocked to higher education hoping now facing even tougher health and economic chal- to gain skills. That’s not likely to happen now. lenges. And students of color are being hit hardest. The keynote address from Temple University’s The “new economics” of higher ed were the Sara Goldrick-Rab focused on the health and timely and troubling focus of the conference, well-being of college students. Both are in rapid decline because of the coronavi- rus, she said, sharing results from a survey she conducted in spring 2020 of nearly 39,000 students attending 54 higher ed institutions. “There is no college opportuni- ty if one is not well enough to go to school,” said Goldrick-Rab, citing her finding that 58 percent of stu- dents responded that they were experiencing housing challenges, food insecurity, or homelessness. A telling point: In fall 2019, 72 per- cent of African American students Uncertainty U Whether on campus experienced these insecurities, or remotely, students 16 percentage points higher than face challenges for White students. By spring beyond the classroom.
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