http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/07/obama-essentially-turned-monetary-and-fiscal-policy-and-housing-policy-over-to-two-guys-who-are-calm-down-and-hope-for-the.html
-- via my feedly newsfeed
One of the most fascinating things, to me, about the current moment and the revival of socialism is how the whole question of democracy—not substantive or deep democracy, not participatory democracy, not economic democracy, but good old-fashioned liberal democratic proceduralism—plays out right now on the left.
Throughout most of my life and before, if you raised the banner of socialism in this country or elsewhere, you had to confront the question of Stalinism, Soviet-style sham elections, one-party rule, and serial violations of any notion of democratic proceduralism. No matter how earnest or fervent your avowals of democratic socialism, the word "democracy" put you on the defensive.
What strikes me about the current moment is how willing and able the new generation of democratic socialists are to go on the offensive about democracy, not to shy away from it but to confront it head on. And again, not simply by redefining democracy to mean "economic democracy," though that is definitely a major—the major—part of the democratic socialist argument which cannot be abandoned, but also by taking the liberal definition of democracy on its own terms.
The reason this generation of democratic socialists are willing and able to do that is not simply that, for some of them, the Soviet Union was gone before they were born. Nor is it simply that this generation of democratic socialists are themselves absolutely fastidious in their commitment to democratic proceduralism: I mean, seriously, these people debate and vote on everything! It's also because of the massive collapse of democratic, well, norms, here at home.
First, you have the full-on assault on voting rights from the Republican Party. Then there's the fact that both the current and the last Republican president were only able to win their elections with the help of the two most anti-democratic institutions of the American state: the Electoral College and the Supreme Court. In both cases, these men won their elections over candidates who received more popular votes than they did. There's a lot of words one might use to describe a system in which the person who gets fewer votes wins, but democracy isn't one of the ones that comes immediately to mind. Any notion that anyone from that side of the aisle is in any position to even speak on the question of democratic values—again, not robust democratic values but minimal democratic values—is a joke.
Second, you have the Democratic Party. Massively dependent in its nomination process on super-delegates. Massively dependent in its district-level wins on low voter turnout, in districts where the party structure resembles the Jim Crow South, as described by V.O. Key. You have incumbents like Joe Crowley who've not had to face a primary challenge in so long that, as we saw in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they don't even know how to wage much less win electoral campaigns. You now have, in the case of Julia Salazar's race for the New York State Senate (whose campaign I really encourage you to donate to), an incumbent, Martin Dilan, who's trying to forgo an election challenge from her simply by forcing Salazar off the ballot, with the help of, you guessed it, the least democratic branch of the government: the courts. I can imagine the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) folks saying to these Dems: you really want to have a debate with us about democracy? Bring it on.
And last you have this very sophisticated take by Seth Ackerman, who has become in a way the intellectual guru behind the whole DSA strategy, on how the party system in America works. Right around the 2016 election, Seth wrote a widely read (and cited) piece, which has become something of a Bible among the DSA set, on how to think about a left party that can avoid some of the pitfalls of third-party strategies in the US.
Here, in this interview with Daniel Denvir, the Terry Gross of the socialist left, Seth explains how much our two-party system looks like those one-party states that socialists of the 20th century spent their lives either defending or being forced to criticize in order to demonstrate their bona fides.
Again, what I think this shows is that, maybe for the first time in a very long time, socialists have the democracy side of the argument on their side.
Here's Seth:
In most places in the world, a political party is a private, voluntary organization that has a membership, and, in theory at least, the members are the sovereign body of the party who can decide what the party's program is, what its ideology is, what its platform is, and who its leaders and candidates are. They can do all of that on the grounds of basic freedom of association, in the same way that the members of the NAACP or the American Legion have the right to do what they want with their organization.In the United States, that's not the case at all with the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We've had an unusual development of our political system where, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the bosses of the two major parties undertook a wave of reforms to the electoral system that essentially turned the political parties into arms of the government, in a way that would be quite shocking — you could even say "norm-eroding" — in other countries.
If you took a comparative politics class in college during the Cold War, it would have discussed the nature of the Communist system, which was distinguished from a democratic system by the merger of the Party and the state, becoming a party-state. Well, the United States is also a party-state, except instead of being a single-party state, it's a two-party state. That is just as much of a departure from the norm in the world as a one-party state.
In the United States, the law basically requires the Democrats and the Republicans to set up their internal structures the way that the government instructs them to. The government lays out the requirements of how they select their leaders and runs their internal nominee elections, and a host of other considerations. All this stuff is organized by state governments according to their own rules. And of course when we say state governments, who we're talking about the Democrats and the Republicans.
So it's a kind of a cartel arrangement in which the two parties have set up a situation that is intended to prevent the emergence of the kind of institution that in the rest of the world is considered a political party: a membership-run organization that has a presence outside of the political system, outside of the government, and can force its way into the government on the basis of some program that those citizens and members assemble around.
Dean Baker
NBC Think, July 26, 2018
Donald Trump made his opposition to much of America's international trade policy a central theme in his presidential campaign, and his position almost certainly played a major role in his victory in key industrial states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. But the public now seems largely opposed to his recent tariffs against our major trading partners.
It is possible to make sense of these seemingly contradictory facts.
First, most people are not policy wonks. They have day jobs and, when they get back from work, they often have family responsibilities, so getting the news means hearing a few tidbits on the television or radio, or possibly skimming an article in a newspaper or online.
This means that the vast majority of people only have the most general understanding of trade and trade policy. In the election of 2016, there was a widely held view that trade policy had hurt many people, which was why both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most important trade deal then on the table. (Trump pulled out of the deal shortly after his inauguration.)
People were not wrong to hold a negative view of trade policy: Over the prior four decades, it had put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with their low-paid counterparts in the developing world by reducing tariffs and other barriers that had caused foreign-made products to cost more. The predicted and actual effect of this policy was the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs.
Losing these jobs put downward pressure on the pay of less-educated workers more generally, as the workers who lost their jobs in manufacturing then sought out employment in retail, health care and other service sector industries. This was an important factor in the rise in inequality and the weakening of unions over the last four decades.
A tariff is a tax, and tax increases are usually not popular.
While people could see and feel the pain that resulted from U.S. trade policy overall, they are now not clear on what is to be gained from the tariffs Trump is imposing on imports from Canada, the European Union, China and other trading partners. A tariff is a tax, and tax increases are usually not popular.
The immediate impact of tariffs is to raise the price of the goods on which they are imposed, and that has already happened for a variety of products. On items like washing machines, it has already led to a 13.1 percent increase over the last year in prices paid by consumers.
In intermediate goods, like steel, it has led to price increases for downstream industries, like the auto and appliance industry. The higher price is good news for steel producers, who are adding some jobs, but it is likely to cause jobs losses in other industries.
In addition to the U.S. taxing its own consumers for purchasing foreign-made goods, other countries are retaliating by imposing their own tariffs on U.S.-made products. This is already hurting the prices of a number of agricultural crops and, as tariffs spread, many other industries might be hit as well.
While tariffs have real costs, they can be an effective tool in trade negotiations — if they are part of a well-worked out strategy to achieve specific goals. Unfortunately, Trump's tariffs do not appear to be part of a carefully considered plan.
Instead, Trump has publicly lashed out at our trading partners over largely-imagined wrongs. For example, he complained to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over his country's large tariffs on U.S .milk, but, imports to both the U.S. and Canada are regulated by quotas, which allow dairy products to enter tariff-free. Canada has hugely expanded its quota in recent years and now allows more dairy products from the U.S. to enter tariff-free than we accept from Canada.
He also has complained about the high tariffs the EU imposes on imports from the U.S. when, in fact, the average tariff is just 3.0 percent.
There are real issues that Trump could raise with our trading partners — most importantly the issue of China's under-valued currency, which makes its goods and services more competitive internationally. But after pressing the issue of "currency manipulation" for over a year in his campaign, it has disappeared from his trade agenda and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said only that the administration is "monitoring" China's actions and would issue its regular semiannual report on the issue in October.
So, though Americans don't suddenly have a positive view of "free trade," they are seeing a president imposing punitive tariffs on a wide variety of products, with the threat to add more, in the pursuit of ill-defined and constantly shifting goals. This does not seem like a trade war the United States is likely to win and it is not surprising that most Americans are not anxious to join his battle.
I was just on MSNBC with Ali Velshi talking about today's GDP report (here's my take). I came on right after Ali interviewed Kevin Hassett, the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers. Since Ali and I were so engrossed in GDP talk, I didn't get a chance to note some of the things Kevin said that were on point, and since you don't get a lot of that from this crew, and because I've been highly critical of this CEA's work in other areas, let me agree with some of Kevin's points but also point out where I think he goes wrong on a very important matter: the lack of real wage growth in the current economy.
Kevin said:
–Real GDP growth is likely to hit the CEA's 3 percent forecast for the year 2018: In an administration that's constantly throwing around random 4s, 5s, and 6s re GDP growth, Kevin's is a defensible forecast for this year, and it's consistent with other forecasts. Goldman Sachs is at 3, and the Fed's nearby at 2.8. He steps onto to shakier ground when he predicts 3% as the new long-term trend, but for 2018, he's probably on-or-near target.
–Jawboning the Fed: He can't say his boss screwed up by complaining about the Fed's rate hikes, and he solidly underscored the critical importance of Fed independence. But he also said, in so many words, that the DC establishment need not clutch their pearls with one hand and reach for the vapors with the other every time an elected official mentions the Fed.
–His claim that there's no natural rate. Hassett told of being attacked for criticizing the Fed when he publicly questioned the existence of an identifiable, natural rate of unemployment that could reliably guide policy. He's surely right about that, and there's absolutely nothing wrong for an official in his position to say so. Obama's CEA published the figure below, which essentially says the same thing (the confidence interval around the estimate of the natural rate goes from 0-6 percent).
Of course, he couldn't stop there and had to say some stuff that was wrong.
In so many words, he claimed the tax cut is having its predicted supply-side effects by boosting investment. Business investment has been solid, for sure, but nothing more than what you'd expect at this point in the expansion, especially given high corporate profitability. The figure below shows that while investment has bounced around in this recovery, it is now commensurate with earlier cyclical peaks as a share of GDP. It may well climb higher before the expansion is over, but we know firms are using much of their excess pre- and especially post-tax earnings right now to buyback stock shares and pay dividends, as opposed to invest, so we'll have to wait and see where this goes.
Sticking with the tax cuts, Kevin's CEA bought themselves a tough problem by claiming the cuts would quickly and bigly trickle down into workers' paychecks. That ain't happening, and Kevin telegraphed the CEA's forthcoming pushback to the stagnant real wage story, which sounds inconsistent with recent analysis. He said they're working on a piece that will show that the stagnation is a compositional effect, driven by above-average shares of low-wage workers joining the labor market.
I'll certainly check out their analysis, but EPI's Heidi Shierholz and Elise Gould already looked at this, finding:
Composition was certainly a factor during the early part of the recovery from the Great Recession. In the first few years of the recovery, the jobs being added were very disproportionately low-wage jobs, which had the effect of pulling wage growth down over that period. But since 2013, as the recovery has strengthened, the opposite has been true—low-wage jobs are actually declining on net while middle and high wage jobs are being added, which has the effect of raising average wages. In other words, the composition effect is currently putting upward pressure on wages. [See their intuitive figures]
The CEA could also look at the Atlanta Fed's wage tracker which controls for compositional changes by tracking the same wage earners across 12-month periods. Wage growth for these workers in each age group has slowed or stagnated for about tw0 years now, and note that these are nominal changes, so as consumer inflation has sped up considerably over this period, real wage growth in these series has significantly decelerated.
So, credit to Kevin where it's due, but nothing's trickling down because it pretty much never does.
Wealth inequality measures have been grossly understating concentration because of tax evasion and tax avoidance in tax havens: Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and GabrielZucman: Who owns the wealth in tax havens? Macro evidence and implications for global inequality: "This paper estimates the amount of household wealth owned by each country in offshore tax havens...
...The equivalent of 10% of world GDP is held in tax havens globally, but this average masks a great deal of heterogeneity—from a few percent of GDP in Scandinavia, to about 15% in Continental Europe, and 60% in Gulf countries and some Latin American economies. We use these estimates to construct revised series of top wealth shares in ten countries, which account for close to half of world GDP. Because offshore wealth is very concentrated at the top, accounting for it increases the top 0.01% wealth share substantially in Europe, even in countries that do not use tax havens extensively. It has considerable effects in Russia, where the vast majority of wealth at the top is held offshore. These results highlight the importance of looking beyond tax and survey data to study wealth accumulation among the very rich in a globalized world...
Individual occupations vary in their median earnings. Only two (drivers and sales supervisors) of the top ten occupations common among SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries had median wages above $25,000 per year; these are the two occupations that also appear on the top ten list among middle-class occupations. Cashiers, waiters, and housekeepers — encompassing 10 percent of people who received SNAP or Medicaid and reported an occupation — had median wages below $15,000 per year.
Figure 9 calculates inflation-adjusted median annual income from wages and salary (in 2017 dollars) in 2002 and 2017, for all people in the two sets of top ten occupation groups: those common among SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries and those common among middle-class wage income earners. Wages are substantially lower among top occupations of SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries — $23,800 in 2017, compared with $50,000 for the top ten middle-class occupations.
Median incomes among top occupations of SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries fell slightly from 2002 to 2017 in inflation-adjusted dollars, similar to the patterns shown in Figure 3 for workers with low levels of education. The lack of income growth among these occupations suggests that stagnation reflects characteristics of the jobs available to workers with low levels of education. Over the same time period, middle-class occupations' incomes rose. The median income from wages and salary for the jobs commonly occupied by SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries are lower, in part, because these jobs afford less work, and less stable work, as shown below.
Only two of the top ten occupations held by SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries experienced statistically meaningful real median income growth from 2002 to 2017: cooks and waiters/waitresses. Despite having experienced some earnings growth over time, these occupations are nonetheless low paying. For many of the occupations that are common among beneficiaries, the number of hours worked per year fell between 2002 and 2017. The exceptions are that cooks, waiters/waitresses, and housekeepers reported more hours worked in 2017, and the former two groups saw income gains that coincided with these increases in hours.
Even if one takes the beneficiaries themselves out of these calculations, the picture remains virtually the same. In other words, these patterns do not simply reflect that SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries must be earning low wages in order to qualify for benefits. Median income from wages among all people in the types of occupations that are common among beneficiaries are substantially lower than those in the middle-class jobs.
Figure 10 shows the unemployment rate for the two groups of occupations in 2017, as well as the top ten occupations individually for SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries. The definition of "unemployed" is not having a job (during the reference week) and both looking for and able to work. As described above, reported occupation among those who are unemployed is their most recent occupation. People in occupations common among SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries face high unemployment rates. In 2017, their unemployment rate was 5.3 percent — over twice as high as the unemployment rate for typical middle-class occupations.
Many individual occupations common among SNAP or Medicaid participants have even higher unemployment rates. Three of the top occupations had unemployment rates of 7.0 percent or higher in 2017.
Figure 11 shows two measures of the stability of employment in the different occupation groups. The right bar in each set shows the share of people in these occupations who were employed two years in a row during the reference week in both 2016 and 2017. (Work activity in the reference week is used to calculate official unemployment statistics.) Only 8.9 percent of people in middle-class jobs were not consistently employed in the reference week across two years; for people in jobs commonly held by SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries, that figure was nearly twice as large, at 16.9 percent. Individual occupations have a range of employment stability; for example, only 63.3 percent of cashiers were employed two years in a row.
The bars on the left show the share of workers who participated in substantial work two years in a row, measured by reporting that they usually worked at least 30 hours per week and for at least 20 weeks per year across both years. While 84.9 percent of those in middle-class occupations had substantial work across both years, only 64.3 percent of those in occupations common among SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries had substantial work in both years. Again, there are marked differences across occupations, with fewer than half of individuals being substantially employed in two years among waiters/waitresses, housekeepers, and cashiers. Employment instability in occupations common among benefit recipients was even more severe in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
High levels of unemployment, job turnover and instability, and hours volatility in occupations commonly held by SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries will make it challenging for participants to meet proposed work requirements and will make monitoring whether they meet them difficult.
Every other year the Displaced Worker Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS) asks those age 20 and older if they have lost or left a job in the last three years because their plant or company closed or moved, their position was abolished, they had insufficient work, or for another similar reason.[2]Figure 12 shows the share of people, aged 20-64, who say they lost or left a job in the prior three years for these reasons. This does not include workers who voluntarily left a job, for example to take another job. Nearly 10 percent of those with common occupations among those who would be subject to proposed work requirements reported being displaced from a job in the three years before 2016, compared to 6.3 percent with common middle-class occupations.
The share of those who were displaced from a job in the last three years was higher for both groups in 2010, following the Great Recession, than during 2016, but still substantially higher for those in occupations common among SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries than for those in middle-class occupations.
Cashiers, cooks, janitors, waiters/waitresses, and laborers have high levels of job displacement both in strong economic times and during recessions. Drivers, janitors, laborers, and wait staff had higher-than-average job displacement in the aftermath of the Great Recession. These patterns highlight not only the instability of employment among the types of occupations common among SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries, but also the need to recognize that these workers experience additional instability during economic downturns.
Another measure of the volatility of work in these occupations is a worker's job tenure length — that is, how long the individual has been with a particular employer. Every other year, the Job Tenure and Occupational Mobility Supplement of the CPS asks about length of time with current employer. Our measure of tenure can be lower either because an individual leaves an existing firm for a different one (voluntarily or not), or because the firm ceases to exist, or because the individual is not currently working. Whatever the cause, those who report occupations disproportionately held by SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries have lower tenure than those in middle-class occupations.
As Figure 13 shows, 87.5 percent of people with middle-class occupations had at least one year of tenure with their current employer in 2016, compared to 76.9 percent of those in occupations commonly held by SNAP or Medicaid beneficiaries. For these people, only 40.1 percent had five or more years of tenure with their employer — a rate that is 19.5 percentage points lower than the share of people with middle-class occupations. The patterns are broadly similar when we account for a person's age, though the differences in the share of people with five or more years of tenure are smaller when age is factored in.
Tenure varies across individual occupations. Some occupations that have high levels of one- and two-year tenure, such as nursing assistants and cooks, drop off substantially in the share with five years of tenure. Other occupations such as waiters/waitresses and cashiers have fewer than half of people in the same job for two years of tenure. Again, the instability of these occupations suggests that meeting and monitoring proposed work requirements will be difficult for SNAP and Medicaid participants and administrators.
The data used for this report come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples.[3] Most of the analyses are using the Annual Social and Economic Supplements (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey from 2002 to 2017. Some analyses link individuals from one year to the next. We were able to successfully link 45 percent of possible matches from the 2016 ASEC to the 2017 ASEC. Our analysis sample includes U.S. citizens who are 18-64 years old, not active-duty military, who do not receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for reasons of disability, and who do not have a child under age 6 in the household. Additional analyses use the Displaced Worker Supplements and the Job Tenure and Occupational Mobility Supplements, available every other year. In order to exclude those who receive Social Security or SSI for reasons of disability from the sample, we match respondents in these supplements to their responses in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement, as the latter contains information on benefit receipt. We linked 91 percent of possible January supplement respondents to the ASEC.
Figure 1. Most SNAP or Medicaid Participants Without Substantial Work Have Lower Education Levels
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2017). In our sample in 2017, 14.6 percent of individuals reported receiving SNAP or Medicaid in the previous year. Of these SNAP or Medicaid participants, 62 percent reported working at least one week in the previous year and 44 percent reported substantial work, which we define as usually working at least 30 hours per week for 20 or more weeks. Figure 1 shows the gender and education breakdown of the SNAP or Medicaid participants who did not report substantial work.
Figure 2. Most Workers Were Highly Attached to the Labor Market
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2017). The share working at least one week in the previous year is defined as a dummy variable where 1 indicates that the respondent said they worked one or more weeks in the last year. It is missing for those who did not give a valid answer to how many weeks they worked.
Figure 3. Real Wages Have Been Stagnant for Workers With Low Levels of Education
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2002 and 2017). Income from wages and salary is reported in 2017 dollars and adjusted for inflation using the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index (PCEPI) deflator, obtained from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCEPI. Nominal income from wages and salary was multiplied by the PCEPI value from January of each year divided by the PCEPI value for January 2017 to get real income from wages and salary in 2017 dollars.
Figure 4. Workers With Substantial Work and Lower Education Levels Are at Risk of Poverty
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2017). Household income from wages and salary were calculated by adding the income from wages of all household members in the ASEC, including those out of sample (non-citizens, all ages, those who received SSI or Social Security for disability, active military, and those with children under age 6). Household income from wages and salary was then compared to the Census's official poverty line (for the appropriate household size) to determine poverty status. This means that all income from wages and salary, whether from out-of-sample or in-sample people in a household, was counted towards determining the household poverty status of those in the sample.
Figure 5. Labor Market Earnings in One Year Not Guaranteed in Subsequent Year
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2016-2017), where individuals' responses were matched with to their responses in the subsequent year. Sample was limited to those who could be matched across years in the ASEC. Income from wages and salary is reported in 2017 dollars and adjusted for inflation using the PCEPI deflator (as described under Figure 3).
Each year of the ASEC was matched to the subsequent year using the method suggested by Madrian and Lefgren.[4] Matches were checked and omitted for incorrect matches of race, age, and sex. In 2016-2017, we successfully matched 45.1 percent of possible matches, for a total of 17,133 people successfully matched across these years.
Figure 6. Most Common Jobs Among Working SNAP or Medicaid Participants Include Health Care Workers, Cashiers, and Cooks
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2002-2017). For employed people, the occupation reported is the occupation that they work in for the largest number of hours per week. For people who are unemployed or not in the labor force, the occupation is reported as the most recent occupation held within the last five years. Occupation is not reported for those who have not worked in the last five years.
Figure 7. Most Common Occupations Among Workers with Above-Median Wages are Managers, Teachers, and Salespersons
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2002-2017). See description of occupation under Figure 6. We calculate the real median income from wages and salary for 2002 to 2017 (including zeros). If an individual reports a real income from wages and salary above that threshold, then that individual is used to calculate the top ten occupations reported by people who earn above-median incomes from wages and salary (among those who report an occupation). We then examine labor market outcomes among all those who report one of these ten occupations.
Figure 8. Many Jobs Commonly Held by Working SNAP or Medicaid Beneficiaries Have Low Wages
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2002-2017). Income from wages is reported in 2017 dollars and adjusted for inflation using the PCEPI deflator (as described under Figure 3). Median real incomes from wages are calculated across all people in the sample who report each given occupation, whether they indicated working in the previous year or not.
Figure 9. Income from Occupations Common Among SNAP or Medicaid Participants Has Stagnated Over Past 15 Years
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2002, 2017). Income from wages is reported in 2017 dollars and adjusted for inflation using the PCEPI deflator (as described under Figure 3). Median real incomes from wages are calculated across all people in the sample who report each given occupation, whether they indicated working in the previous year or not.
Figure 10. Unemployment Rates Higher in SNAP or Medicaid Beneficiaries' Typical Jobs
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2017). Unemployment rates are calculated across all people in the sample who report each given occupation. Occupations were reported for all people who had worked in the last five years, and people who were currently unemployed would be reporting their most recent occupation, not the occupations they are searching for. The reference week is the week prior to the week in which the person participated in the CPS interview.
Figure 11. Individuals Are Less Stably Employed in SNAP or Medicaid Participants' Typical Occupations
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2016-2017). See notes on ASEC-to-ASEC merge under Figure 5. Employed in the reference week in both years indicates that the person was employed, whether at work or not, during the week prior to their completion of the CPS ASEC survey in both years. Employed substantially in both years indicates that the respondent reported working both 30 or more usual hours per week and 20 or more weeks per year in both years. Both of these measures of employment are defined as dummy variables where 1 indicates that the person was employed or substantially employed in both 2016 and 2017. This is only calculated across people who could be matched from the 2016 ASEC to the 2017 ASEC. Individuals are assigned to the occupation they reported in 2016.
Figure 12. Job Displacement Is Higher in Typical Occupations of SNAP or Medicaid Participants
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2010, 2016) and the CPS Displaced Worker Supplement (2010, 2016). Data from the CPS Displaced Worker Supplement is available for every other year and is taken in January. We used data from 2010 and 2016 in order to evaluate the most recent year, and to look at a year following the Great Recession.
In order to match the Displaced Worker Supplement with the ASEC, we first merged the January data with the March data using IPUMS CPS identifiers (cpsidp), and then merged that data set to the ASEC using IPUMS CPS identifiers (marbasecidp). Incorrect matches were dropped based on race, sex, and birthplace. 46.3 percent of Displaced Worker Supplement respondents were successfully matched to the ASEC (92.7 percent of possible matches). Only those who matched are included in the calculations.
The variable for "displaced" is a dummy variable equal to 1 if the person answers "yes" to the following question (years for 2016): "During the last 3 calendar years, that is, January 2013 through December 2015, did (name/you) lose a job, or leave one because: (your/his/her) plant or company closed or moved, (your/his/her) position or shift was abolished, insufficient work or another similar reason?"
This was only asked of people 20 years or older, and so the calculations in the figure only include people 20-64 years old, as well as only including people who were eligible and interviewed for the Displaced Worker Supplement.
Figure 13. Job Tenure Lower in Typical Occupations of SNAP or Medicaid Participants
Data come from the CPS ASEC (2016) and the CPS Job Tenure and Occupational Mobility Supplement (2016). Data from the Job Tenure and Occupational Mobility Supplement are available every other year and are taken in January.
In order to match the Job Tenure and Occupational Mobility Supplement with the ASEC, we first merged the January data with the March data using IPUMS CPS identifiers (cpsidp), and then merged that data set with the ASEC using IPUMS CPS identifiers (marbasecidp). Incorrect matches were dropped base on race, sex, and birthplace. 46.6 percent of Job Tenure and Occupational Mobility Supplement respondents were successfully matched to the ASEC (93.2 percent of possible matches). Only those who matched are included in the calculations.
Job tenure for each category is coded as a dummy variable where 1 indicates that the person reported working for their current employer one or more years, two or more years, or five or more years, and 0 indicates that they have worked for less than one year, two years, or five years. The job tenure variable is only asked of those who are working, so we have additionally coded those who are not working as a 0.
[1] Kristin F. Butcher is the Marshall I. Goldman Professor of Economics at Wellesley College. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Education and Social Policy and Director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. The opinions and conclusions expressed in this report are solely those of the authors. Views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. We thank Abigail Pitts for excellent research assistance.
[2] We code individuals as displaced if they report losing or leaving a job because the plant or company closed or moved, their position or shift was abolished, or for other similar reasons. "Other similar reason" includes those who lost or left their job due to seasonality, self-operated business failure, for example.
[3] Sarah Flood et al., Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 5.0. [dataset]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2017, https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V5.0.
[4] Brigitte C. Madrian and Lars John Lefgren, "An Approach To Longitudinally Matching Population Survey (CPS) Respondents," Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 2000, Vol. 26 (1), 31-62.