Cutting the Census, Impairing Our Democracy

At this moment, researchers of many persuasions – Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians as well – from research institutions as varied in their points of view as the Heritage Foundation, the Urban Institute, and the Cato Institute – all share an apprehension: Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure to reduce Census Bureau funding so drastically that the Bureau will need to eliminate the American Community Survey – an annual effort that enables researchers and the general public to accurately monitor what’s happening in communities around the nation.

As researchers, we understand that, without a reliable metric for describing community conditions and community change, we can’t dig into the issues. Proposed cuts to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey will greatly lessen our ability to understand social and economic trends which influence our future, such as the share of children in poverty, the share of the population with advanced degrees, or the characteristics of the foreign-born community. Without the data, we can’t interpret what’s happening. We can’t apply our values to the facts.

At Minnesota Compass, we remain as nonpartisan as we possibly can. We respect multiple political perspectives. We respond to requests from public officials of all parties, advocates on both sides of issues, and everyone else, for sound information to inform their decision-making, because we believe that no person or political party has a corner on morality or the truth. Elimination of the American Community Survey will weaken everyone’s vision; no matter what our points of view, we will all fail to see what lies around us and to forecast what lies down the road.

Some oppose the American Community Survey because they feel that we should not trust the federal government with so much information. I would direct those to the Census Bureau’s thorough documentation of the rationale for each question -- which often points to federal law or regulation.

If legislators, or even the entire voting public, want to blind themselves to the realities of the social and economic trends which influence our lives, if legislators want to inhibit businesses from understanding their markets, serving their customers optimally, and creating the jobs that our economy needs, if legislators want to lessen the opportunities for our public-serving nonprofit organizations to enrich the communities which they serve, they have the right to do that. However, they need to understand the full implications. Members of our community who will lose the capability to succeed in their pursuits include:

• The new entrepreneur, who aspires to create a small business that will add to the tax base and economy of a town
• The large employer, who seeks the best location for a plant that will bring jobs to a community
• The school superintendent, who wants to plan as effectively as possible to meet the needs of students and prudently and minimally assess the taxpayers
• The U.S.-based multinational corporate leader, who wants to create a long-term strategy that will strengthen the global competitiveness of the nation
• The leader of a religious congregation, who intends to work on issues of poverty and other social problems
• The police chief, who needs a data-driven plan to promote public safety through prevention, rather than dealing with crime after it occurs
• The county manager, who seeks to attune government services to the county population’s needs in the most effective manner and at the lowest cost
• The member of a volunteer organization, who wants to build the membership and increase the organization’s impacts

In short, we all lose something if the existence of reliable, meaningful census data becomes a partisan issue. We are hopeful that legislators will choose not to undermine our ability to understand. As President Abraham Lincoln advised: “If given the truth, [Americans] can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”  If we really wish to blind ourselves to the social and economic happenings around us by cutting off the American Community Survey, let’s make certain that we decide to do so with our eyes wide open to the consequences.

Track across the Heart of MSP

With pride, I participated in the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative Annual Meeting on Wednesday, the 9th of May. The Funders Collaborative, supported by a group of local and national philanthropic funders, is “investing beyond the rail” by funding and coordinating groups of stakeholders from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to collaborate around specific development issues on the Central Corridor. I took pride not only in the role that Wilder Research plays to enlighten some of the Central Corridor decision making with good information, but also as a resident of Saint Paul, living not far from the line, that our Minneapolis and Saint Paul communities have joined together to use transit innovatively to improve the region’s quality of life.

Mayor Coleman and Mayor Rybak noted:

• A new spirit of working together (As Major Coleman said, the stakeholders involved in the Central Corridor are “Putting the ‘win’ back in Twin Cities”)
• The mosaic of languages and cultures along this transit line and other lines in the region
• The ability of the Central Corridor line to create a new backbone for the Twin Cities
• The likely economic advantages of this line and the mutually reinforcing elements of access to jobs and education that accrue from the line

Sue Haigh, our Metropolitan Council Chair, emphasized the important interconnections among housing, jobs, retail and commercial development, and our overall quality of life.

The transition to light rail in the Central Corridor produces turmoil, as all major transitions do. I experience that turmoil first hand each time I approach or leave my office along the line. Also, I’ve witnessed impatient honking, expressions of drivers’ anger, and other flare-ups. One morning last week, my computer screen shook so much from the construction vibrations that I had to stop using it for a while. Business owners have many frustrations as they learn that some customers give up trying to figure out how to reach their establishments. (Come on over to “Discover Central Corridor!” and give them your business!) Neighborhood residents have legitimate concerns and sometimes discontent with noise issues and with communication which they receive about the construction, even though most crews seem to attempt to minimize inconveniences and facilitate traffic flow as much as they can.

Notwithstanding the expectable turmoil, we will all hopefully enjoy the fruits of the line upon its completion.

Wilder Research tracks the social and economic impacts of this project, and we will report those impacts after we have had sufficient time for measurement. In the meanwhile, Jane Tigan of our staff, noted some of the context and churning which she has observed on the corridor, including:

• People of many income-levels call the Central Corridor home, with 20 percent who are very low income (earning less than $10,000/yr) and 14 percent who are high income (earning more than $100,000/yr).
• Since construction began (February 2011) to the end of the year, changes in business establishments along the Corridor have included 53 openings, 49 closings, 8 relocations off the Corridor, and 15 relocations within the Corridor.
• Contracting for the completion of Central Corridor light rail transit appears on par to meet goals for inclusion of disadvantaged businesses, women, and minorities.

If interested in more findings and deeper details, you can go to the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative site.

In addition, we have an evaluation up and running to understand the effectiveness of the business support programs intended to help the businesses along the line. More on that when study findings emerge.

Hilda Morley, in the poem, “New York Subway”, writes of “the beauty of people in the subway” on a Saturday evening,

…“holding the door for more than 3 minutes for
the feeble, crippled, hunched little man who
could not raise his head,

whose hand I held, to
help him into the subway-car…

& someone,
seeing us, gives up his seat,

learning

from us what we had learned from each other.”

We will have a Central Corridor light rail, not a subway. I hope to see you and learn from you on the train; and I hope that we all learn from whatever results this grand project produces!

It Takes More than a Village

“It takes a village to raise a child.” The expression derives from a theme found in a variety of African proverbs, and became popular in the United States in the mid-1990s as a result of a book by Hillary Clinton.

I’ve visited villages of the most primitive type, where no formal organizations exist (not to mention the absence of electricity and running water), but which nonetheless function as finely tuned social machines to care for all – nurturing the young, inculcating into young adults the values and skills necessary to help sustain the community, implementing the work required for community survival, and caring for the elderly who can no longer care for themselves.

Despite what we can learn from successful village life, our large, heterogeneous, complex communities in modern, developed nations don’t possess such finely tuned social machinery, and they probably cannot. So, we have government; we have school systems; we have health and human service organizations. We attempt to achieve social goals through programs and policies.

With multiple formal entities working independently to promote the development of the community’s children, it takes more than a village. It requires connections among people who might not really know one another, formal and informal relationships, and collaboration.

To promote early childhood development, we need collaboration at both the policy and service delivery levels, according to Dr. Richard Chase of Wilder Research. To provide enough resources for access to comprehensive services and supports, starting prenatally for healthy development of all low-income children, we need both public-private collaboration and cross-department (Minnesota Departments of Health, Human Services, Education) collaboration. The collaboration must occur to supply necessary resources, to enable adequate access, and to make sure that support starts early and is comprehensive, not just narrowly focused on preschool for 3 and 4 year olds. For true reform and stronger impact, we need to engage partners and departments outside the health, education, and child care spheres – involving community economic development, corrections, and other sectors – to address early childhood holistically and coherently, so that big savings that accrue from preventive work can be reinvested in early childhood development.. Urban areas may have easier opportunities; in greater Minnesota, limited resources and lack of program capacity make access more challenging and collaboration both more challenging and vital.

What facilitates collaboration, generally speaking? In a pioneering book on the topic, in the1990s, and bolstered by later research, Barb Monsey and I at Wilder Research point to such factors as good communication, the development of mutual trust and understanding among people and organizations who must work together, and the creation of well-understood, clear, concrete goals and objectives. The shared vision, which includes those concrete goals and objectives, must arise from a participative process that involves all who have a stake in the outcome – meaning parents, community members, community leaders, and institutional leaders.

Despite the need for systems and agencies to work together, we need to recall that “more than a village” does not imply that we supplant the village; it means that we enhance it to adapt to the demands of modern life. No matter how modern, formal and complex we become in thinking about large scale issues of education, early childhood, promotion of healthy development, and the like, we can never forget that everything we need to know about raising a young person successfully we can learn by observing a grandchild sitting on the knee of a loving grandparent (if we truly open our eyes to understand and appreciate all that happens in that setting).

Early childhood is so important that it will remain a focus for Wilder Research. Take a look at our website, where you can access more information, view the recording of our recent conference on the topic, and connect with Dr. Richard Chase whose work we featured at that conference.

Minnesota Vikings 53. Minnesota Residents 5.3 Million

The Minnesota Vikings have an active roster limit of 53 players. Meanwhile, the state of Minnesota has a 100,000 times larger “active roster” of residents: 5.3 million.

I like the Vikings; I hope they stay in Minnesota. However, does retaining one sports franchise and saving the jobs of approximately 53 athletes seem as important as preserving thousands of jobs and businesses in Minnesota for employers and workers of all types? No matter what the outcome of the stadium controversy, how can we shift our attention toward a topic that even former Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton contends is far more important: the education of our population and the implications it has for our future workforce.

Do sports facilities help regions and their businesses to compete economically? Absolutely no evidence suggests that they do; in fact, some studies suggest the opposite. Does an educated population increase economic competitiveness? Most certainly yes.

Legislators who have read the materials assembled by their own Minnesota Legislative Reference Library have seen the evidence that new sports facilities will not help their constituents economically.

A Brookings Institution publication concludes, “A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment.” Economists at the University of Maryland assert that “economists have found no evidence of positive economic impact of professional sports teams and facilities on urban economies.” The Cato Institute, which views research through the lens of “limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace,” states a similar conclusion after its analysis of the effects of sports facilities: “Claims of large tangible economic benefits do not withstand scrutiny.”

If we the taxpayers want to subsidize teams and pay for new buildings – because we want sports here in our state – that’s great. We should promote that amenity. However, we cannot delude ourselves regarding economic impact.

In contrast, evidence does demonstrate the significant economic returns of strong educational performance among our students and of a well-prepared workforce. A 2010 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) explains how increases in cognitive skills, resulting from increasing the effectiveness of educational systems, enhance economic growth. This falls into line with what economists have come to accept over the past two decades: that better educational attainment for a nation’s population results in greater economic growth for that nation.

How does an educated labor force produce better economic results? A Brookings analysis, which also documented the positive impacts of preschool education, suggests: “A more educated labor force is more mobile and adaptable, can learn new tasks and new skills more easily, and can use a wider range of technologies and sophisticated equipment (including newly emerging ones). It is also more autonomous and thus needs less supervision, and is more creative in thinking about how to improve the management of work.”

Better education has other benefits as well. It is associated with better health and with greater lifetime earnings for individuals. Both of these translate into positive societal outcomes for all of us.

So, what about Minnesota? We face a demographic challenge. About 25 percent of the children in our state are children of color; this percentage will grow substantially. That means, in the not-too-distant future, at least 25 percent of our work force, parents, and community leaders will be people of color. As you know, the educational achievement gap between white students and students of color jeopardizes that future. For example, about 85 percent of white third-graders meet state reading standards, while only 60 percent of third-graders of color perform at that level. About 83% of white students graduate from high school on time; only about 53% of students of color do so. (See Minnesota Compass.)

The achievement gap leaves our future work force short on the cognitive skills critical for economic well-being. McKinsey and Company contend that the existence of the achievement gap imposes the equivalent of a “permanent national recession” on our economy. McKinsey estimates that closing this gap could have a positive impact on the nation’s economy of $1.3 to 2.3 trillion dollars.

Let’s do more long-term thinking about what will maintain the quality of life for Minnesotans and retain our competitiveness. Long range thinking that will lead to meaningful improvements in the skills of our young people in Minnesota requires boldness and risk-taking. Public officials often avoid it, because they feel that long term promises do not win elections. As the OECD notes, “Because the benefits of educational investments are seen only in the future, it is possible to underestimate the value and the importance of improvements.”

No comment from me on whether and where to build a football facility. However, for the future of our state, we must change the front page conversation from “stadium yes or no” to “education and workforce yes or no.”

Liberal research? Conservative research? Or reasonable and credible research for all?

People love to label. Yet, as one of my professors and mentors used to say, “Every label is a libel.” That is, we tend to classify individuals into categories because we think it creates an easier way to perceive and interpret the world, but in so doing, we make many assumptions about those people which probably have no validity.

“Liberal” and “conservative” constitute such labels. What do those terms really mean? What does it matter, for a research organization like Wilder Research, which tries to do high quality, credible work that will benefit everyone in the community?

Over the years, some observers have characterized Wilder Research as liberal; others have characterized us as conservative. However, in all honesty, we have shaped our strategy to appeal to the “reasonable middle,”  who comprise perhaps 80% of the members of our communities. This excludes the 10% on the two extreme ends of the continuum, who won’t listen to any objectively gathered facts and whom we can most likely never please.

Recently, someone made the comment that Wilder Research tends to focus on “liberal topics.” Sounds simple, but what does that really mean?

For more than 20 years, we have done research related to the achievement gap – the difference in academic performance between white children and children of color. We want to understand all its dimensions and how to prevent it. Who cares about that? I think the reasonable middle cares a great deal.

Some people care because the gap represents an unfair situation. Children come into this world deserving equal opportunity. Some people care because the gap represents a failure of our formal institutions, our families, and everyone else with a stake in this issue to prepare children academically. Some people care because the achievement gap threatens the future livelihood, and potentially the security, of all of us – because children of color comprise the fastest growing segment of our population; they will become the future business leaders, workforce, parents, and leaders of our communities. If they lack skills, our communities will not succeed.

That reasonable middle, those “people who care,” includes both liberals and conservatives.

For more than 20 years as well, we have studied the needs of caregivers – family members, professionals, others who care for dependent children or for adults who require assistance with their daily living needs. We have devoted more attention to the informal, unpaid caregivers than to those employed by organizations; although we have studied both. We have pursued that tack because most of us do caregiving for some portion of our lives, and the demands it places on us can affect our physical and mental health. Moreover, the need for non-institutional caregiving will increase dramatically in the coming decades, as a result of our aging population.

Who cares about caregivers? Again, the reasonable middle cares. That reasonable middle includes conservatives and liberals.

In recent years, we have initiated a number of studies of the “return on investment” (ROI) of various services, usually services delivered to low-income, vulnerable populations. Liberal research because it can demonstrate the many benefits of these programs for our communities? Conservative research because it can lead to economizing, and perhaps even to elimination of ineffective programs? I like to think it’s a blend of both.

We’ve witnessed a lot of political posturing recently – public officials lining up along party lines, seemingly more intent on destroying those on the other side than on working together for the good of the populace. That can fuel our cynicism and tempt us to conclude that efforts to bring together people of differing political persuasions to address our communities’ most pressing issues cannot succeed. I don’t want Wilder Research to fall victim to that cynicism.

A friend of mine once told a joke to illustrate a key difference between conservative and liberal problem-solving. . “If someone is drowning and yelling for help, a conservative walking along the beach will throw a life preserver half way out and agree to pull in the drowning person if that person can independently go the first half of the distance. A liberal in the same situation will throw the life preserver all the way out to the drowning person, but then let go of the rope to walk on looking for the next problem to solve.”

Unfortunately, the stereotypes suggested in that joke contain small grains of truth. Some of our friends and colleagues who say they are liberal can naively assume that developing a new program or linking people to a service is sufficient, that somehow all will work out for the good. On the other hand, some of our friends and colleagues who say they are conservative can too easily overlook the support systems that enabled them to achieve a desirable quality of life, falsely concluding that they “made it completely on their own”.

A recent New York Times article, reprinted in the Pioneer Press, describes a Lindstrom, Minnesota man who seems much too aloof to rational thought for us to hope that he might pay attention to a research study. He claims that he needs no help from the government, and he states that too many Americans live beyond their means and lean on taxpayers to pull them up. Yet, despite his proclamations of “independence”, he benefits from at least two government subsidies: first, the earned income tax credit; and second, the government-funded free/reduced priced lunches which his children receive at school. (So, a citizen who speaks conservatively, but consumes liberally, it appears!)

The current Presidential race has perhaps infected the terms, liberal and conservative, to such an extent that we should not use them anymore, lest we find ourselves attaching very inappropriate labels to people in ways that we don’t intend. Perhaps we should discard the terms.

In the end, I want to devote the energy of Wilder Research to opening our arms to the reasonable middle. Despite all the extremist rhetoric, amplified by the news media, this audience really does exist. We can consider our approach nonpartisan, or multi-partisan, however you want to frame it. With this audience, we can build solutions, always imperfectly, but always making progress.