Tag: Brookings

N.J. teachers need to be told the truth: Their pensions are in jeopardy | Opinion

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nj.com/opinion/2021/05/nj-teachers-need-to-be-told-the-truth-their-pensions-are-in-jeopardy-opinion.html

Excerpt:

The very notable exception is New Jersey’s Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund (TPAF), which is by far the single-worst public pension in the Brookings study. TPAF is New Jersey’s largest public pension fund and covers all active and retired teachers. New Jersey’s Public Employees Retirement System (PERS), the pension plan for state and municipal workers, is second-worst but not nearly in the dire predicament of TPAF.

This is what Brookings had to say about TPAF: Under any of their investment return scenarios, TPAF is in “near-term trouble” — meaning near-term insolvency. Brookings projects that TPAF will run out of assets in 12-to-15 years, at which point the $4.5 billion-plus in benefits payments will have to be made from the New Jersey’s perpetually strained state budget. This would be a fiscal disaster for New Jersey and a retirement crisis for TPAF’s 262,000 beneficiaries.

Author(s): Mike Lilley

Publication Date: 5 May 2021

Publication Site: NJ.com

The coming COVID-19 baby bust: Update

Mary Pat Campbell
The coming COVID-19 baby bust: Update

Excerpt:

From today’s vantage point, it looks more likely that unemployment will have risen by around 5.5 percentage points in the year following the start of the pandemic (April 2020 through March 2021) from 3.5 percent to roughly nine percent. This estimate is based on observed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for April through November and assumes little change in the next few months. Using this revised expected change in unemployment, we would predict a 5.5 percent reduction in births from the unemployment effect alone. Applying that to the number of births in 2019 (3.75 million) suggests 206,000 fewer births in 2021.

Our original forecast also incorporated an additional reduction in births coming from the anxiety and social conditions associated with the public health crisis. We incorporated this into our forecast by examining the experience of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Back then, every spike in the death rate attributable to the flu was associated with a dramatic reduction in births nine months later. We relied on that evidence to increase our forecast based solely on labor market conditions by one to three additional percent, or another 38,000 to 114,000 fewer births.

Author(s): Melissa S. Kearney, Phillip B. Levine

Publication Date: 17 December 2020

Publication Site: Brookings

Diversity within the Federal Reserve System

Mary Pat Campbell
Diversity within the Federal Reserve System

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Excerpt:

Given that Class A directors are explicitly bankers elected by bankers, it is perhaps unsurprising to see their predominance. But a trend since roughly 1980 includes a substantial and growing number of non-banking finance representatives as the third-most represented single group, after banking and manufacturing. The influence of finance on the Reserve Banks’ governance remains very strong, even among the classes of directors meant to represent other interests.

Author(s): Peter Conti-Brown, Kaleb Nygaard

Publication Date: 13 April 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

The sustainability of state and local government pensions: A public finance approach

Mary Pat Campbell
The sustainability of state and local government pensions: A public finance approach

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Excerpt:

Their findings, however, imply that many state and local governments may be able to spend more than assumed on improving their educational systems and economically important infrastructure.

“Given other demands, fully funding their pension plans might not be the right thing for state and local governments,” Sheiner said in an interview with The Brookings Institution. “They should compare the benefits of upping their pension investments with the benefits of investing in their people.”

Author(s): Jamie Lenney, Byron Lutz, Finn Schüle, Louise Sheiner

Publication Date: 24 March 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

One year in, COVID-19’s uneven spread across the US continues

Mary Pat Campbell
One year in, COVID-19’s uneven spread across the US continues

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Excerpt:

Figure 2 provides a 12-month overview of COVID-19 rates for each of the four census regions. The winding path started with highest case rates in the Northeast, then moved to the South and West regions, which recorded especially high new case rates in July. In August and September, Midwest rates began to rise and dwarfed those of other regions in October and November. By December, the other three regions, especially the West, showed sharp gains and remained high in January, while Midwest rates fell from those of the previous two months.

In February 2021, new case rates in all four regions took a substantial downward fall from the holiday surge. Nonetheless, February new COVID-19 case rates for the Northeast, South, and West regions were still higher than rates in most months prior to November. The Midwest’s February rates were lower than in any month prior to September.

Author(s): William H. Frey

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

Virus Did Not Bring Financial Rout That Many States Feared

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/business/covid-state-tax-revenue.html

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Excerpt:

Throughout the debate over stimulus measures, one question has repeatedly brought gridlock in Washington: Should the states get no-strings federal aid?

Republicans have mostly said no, casting it as a bailout for spendthrift blue states. Democrats have argued the opposite, saying that states face dire fiscal consequences without aid, and included $350 billion in relief for state and local governments in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion federal stimulus bill, which narrowly passed the House this past weekend. It faces a much tougher fight in the Senate.

As it turns out, new data shows that a year after the pandemic wrought economic devastation around the country, forcing states to revise their revenue forecasts and prepare for the worst, for many the worst didn’t come. One big reason: $600-a-week federal supplements that allowed people to keep spending — and states to keep collecting sales tax revenue — even when they were jobless, along with the usual state unemployment benefits.

Author(s): Mary Williams Walsh, Karl Russell

Publication Date: 1 March 2021

Publication Site: New York Times

What does the unemployment rate measure?

Mary Pat Campbell
What does the unemployment rate measure?

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Excerpt:

The BLS releases six measures of labor market slack in the monthly jobs report. These include the official unemployment rate (U-3), discussed above, as well as more narrow definitions, called U-1 and U-2, which respectively include only those unemployed at least 15 weeks (the long-term unemployed) or for less than a month (the short-term unemployed). The BLS also publishes broader definitions of slack. The U-6 rate, for instance, counts all those who are technically unemployed plus those are who are working part-time but would prefer full time work, and those “marginally attached to the labor force,” that is, people who say they want either a full-time or part-time job, have not looked for work in the most recent four weeks, but have looked for a job sometime in the past 12 months. When adults classified as “marginally attached” report that they did not recently seek work because they do not believe jobs are available for them, they are classified as “discouraged workers.” The U-4 counts the unemployed and discouraged workers, while U-5 adds in other marginally attached workers. In January, the broadest of these measures, U-6, stood at 11.1 percent, 4.8 percentage points higher than the official unemployment rate.

Author(s): Stephanie Aaronson

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

America’s crisis of despair: A federal task force for economic recovery and societal well-being

Mary Pat Campbell
America’s crisis of despair: A federal task force for economic recovery and societal well-being

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The results that we have to date are stark. New first responder data from the National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) shows significant increases in mental distress, overdose rates, and suicides. Mental health and overdose calls to first responders have doubled in 2020 compared to both 2018 and 2019 (Figures 1-2). Suicides have seen an uptick also, but at a lower rate (Figure 3)

Author(s): Carol Graham

Publication Date: 10 February 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

American Indians and Alaska Natives are dying of COVID-19 at shocking rates

Mary Pat Campbell
American Indians and Alaska Natives are dying of COVID-19 at shocking rates

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Excerpt:

According to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data, the age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality rate is now higher for AIAN people than for any other group (Figure 1); it is almost two and a half times the death rate for whites and Asians.[2] Figure 1 also shows that the disparities for Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos relative to whites, that we identified in June, remain substantial.[3] (That post also explains why it is important to adjust for age when comparing across groups.)

Author(s): Randall Akee and Sarah Reber

Publication Date: 18 February 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

MetLife Sees a Baby Bust

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/02/08/metlife-sees-a-baby-bust/?kw=MetLife%20Sees%20a%20Baby%20Bust

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Excerpt:

Analysts at the Brookings Institution have predicted, based on consumer surveys and demographic data for the period following the 1918 influenza pandemic, that the number of U.S. births could fall by about 300,000 to 500,000 this year, because of health concerns and the effects of the pandemic on the economy.

MetLife has an indication that the Brookings analysts are correct: Enrollees in the group short-term disability plans MetLife runs for employers are filing fewer pregnancy-related STD claims.

MetLife sells employers group STD coverage, and it also administers group STD plans for employers that choose to self-insure.

STD claims for pregnancy-related leave fell 20% between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Phil Bruen, a senior vice president for group life and disability product management at MetLife.

Author(s): Allison Bell

Publication Date: 8 February 2021

Publication Site: Think Advisor

Building robust and ethical vaccination verification systems

Mary Pat Campbell
Building robust and ethical vaccination verification systems

Excerpt:

The rapid development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine provides hope that the pandemic might be brought to an end, but as societies roll out vaccines and begin to open up, policymakers face difficult questions about how to best verify individuals’ vaccine records. Building vaccine record verification (VRV) systems that are robust and ethical will be vital to reopening businesses, educational institutions, and travel. Historically, such systems have been the domain of governments and have relied on paper records, but, now, a variety of non-profit groups, corporations, and academic researchers are developing digital verification systems. These digital vaccine passports include the CommonPass app developed by the World Economic Forum to verify COVID-19 test results and vaccine status, as well as similar systems several major tech companies are actively exploring.

VRV systems present both opportunities and risks in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. They offer hope of more accurate verification of vaccine status, but they also run the risk of both exacerbating existing health and economic inequalities and introducing significant security and privacy vulnerabilities. To mitigate those risks, we propose a series of principles that ought to guide the deployment of VRV systems by public health authorities, policymakers, health care providers, and software developers. In particular, we argue that VRV systems ought to align with vaccine prioritization decisions; uphold fairness and equity; and be built on trustworthy technology.

Author(s): Baobao Zhang, Laurin Weissinger, Johannes Himmelreich, Nina McMurry, Tiffany Li, Naomi Schinerman, and Sarah Kreps

Publication Date: 26 January 2021

Publication Site: Brookings

COVID-19 vaccinations: Why are some states and localities so much more successful?

Mary Pat Campbell
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/01/25/covid-19-vaccinations-why-are-some-states-and-localities-so-much-more-successful/

Excerpt:

The Maryland/West Virginia gap is one of many such anomalies across the country. Why has North Dakota managed to use 85% of the doses it has received for inoculations compared to 49% for Massachusetts? Why does New Mexico have an inoculations/doses received ratio of 77%, versus just 43% for Virginia? What differences of institutions, strategies, and leadership explain these gaps?

Author: William A. Galston

Publication Date: 25 January 2021

Publication Site: Brookings