Christopher Wimer

The Effects of the Great Recession on Family Structure and Fertility

Recessions can alter family life by constraining the choices that individuals and couples make concerning their family lives and by activating the family’s role as an emergency support system. Both effects were visible during and after the Great Recession. Fertility declined by 9 to 11 percent, depending on the measure, and the decline was greater in states that experienced higher increases in unemployment. The decline was greater among younger women, which suggests postponement rather than forgoing of births. The fall in fertility was sharpest for Hispanics, a result the authors attribute to a drop in Mexican immigration, which reduced the number of recent immigrants, the group with the highest fertility. Substantial increases occurred in the percentage of young adults, single and married, who lived with their parents, augmenting a long-term trend toward intergenerational coresidence. There was a slight decline in divorce and separation in states with higher unemployment.

Do neighborhood and home contexts help explain why low-income children miss opportunities to participate in activities outside of school?

In this study, childrens participation (N = 1,420) in activities outside of elementary school was examined as a function of disparities in family income using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Child Development Supplement. Childrens neighborhood and home environments were investigated as mechanisms linking income disparities and participation rates. Family income was positively associated with childrens participation in activities, with the largest effect sizes evident for children at the lowest end of the income distribution. Affluence in the neighborhood and cognitive stimulation in the home were both important mediators of the association between income and participation, explaining from approximately one tenth to one half of the estimated associations between income and participation.

Predicting youth out-of-school time participation: Multiple risks and developmental differences.

Youth out-of-school time (OST) programs and activities can provide developmental benefits for participating youth. Yet little research has examined the contextual predictors of youth OST participation. To address this issue, we examined a collection of child-, family-, school-, and neighborhood-level characteristics as predictors of OST participation using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—Child Development Supplement. In summary, child and family characteristics were most useful in predicting participation such that children least likely to participate were those characterized by high levels of developmental (e.g., low achievement, behavior problems, poor health) and family (e.g., parent psychological distress and low emotional support) problems. These relations, however, emerged only during middle school and high school. For certain types of activities, namely athletics and lessons, problems measured across various contexts were more strongly associated with OST participation for higher-income families than for lower-income families. These findings point to the importance of considering multiple developmental domains and developmental periods in understanding predictors of youth OST participation.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen was the Prime Minister of Denmark from 1993 to 2001. He became a member of the European Parliament in 2004, where he sat on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee (until June 2009). Since 2004 he has been President of the Party of European Socialists (PES). He is also Co-Chair of the Global Progressive Forum. In December 2008, he oversaw the unanimous ratification of the PES European election manifesto, People First: A New Direction for Europe. Rasmussen has been active in calling for better regulation and supervision of financial markets, and in 2009 he placed fifth on Financial News’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in European capital markets.

Can Inequality Be Reduced by Building Better Markets

The growth in wage inequality within many late-industrial countries is one of the most spectacular and consequential developments of our time, spectacular because the turnaround was so sudden and undermined the conventional view that economic development would bring about widely diffused affluence, consequential because it is affecting the lives of so many people and in such profound ways. During the early stages of this takeoff in inequality, the dramatic changes in remuneration were happening largely under the radar, indeed the public was not just unconcerned by the changes but in fact largely unaware of them.1 But that’s no longer the case. We are now in the midst of a historic moment in which public debates about the legitimacy of extreme poverty and inequality have taken on a new prominence and urgency.

A View from the Top

The preceding chapter provides a comprehensive summary of the many issues addressed by our contributors. In this chapter, we provide yet another summary, but now one that is oriented to a more delimited set of themes. We present such themes in the form of answers to three questions: (a) Is rising inequality a problem?; (b) What are the causes of rising inequality?; and (c) How, if at all, should inequality be reduced? These questions, which are addressed in turn below, merit a special chapter because they are so central to public debates about inequality.

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart was Chairman of Anglo American, a global mining and natural resources company, from 2002 to 2009. He is currently a Director of HSBC, Accenture, Saudi Aramco, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development. From 1998 to 2001, he was Chairman of the Royal Dutch Shell Group of companies. Moody-Stuart is a member of the United Nations Global Compact Board and was Chairman of the Global Compact Foundation in 2006. He is also Co-Chairman of The Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and Chairman of the Innovative Vector Control Consortium.

Gabriele Galateri di Genola

Since December 2007, Gabriele Galateri di Genola has been Chairman of Telecom Italia, Italy’s largest telecommunications company whose operations span Europe, Brazil and several other South American countries. Galateri received his MBA from Columbia University and joined the Banco di Roma initially as Head of the Financial Analysis Office. Over the course of the next thirty years, Galateri helmed major divisions of prominent companies across Europe such as the Saint Gobain Group, FIAT and IFI. Appointed CEO of Fiat in 2002, he became Chairman of Mediobanca in 2003. He serves as non-executive board member at several financial and holding companies, as well as the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia – Foundation, European Institute of Oncology, and Accor.

Is There Too Much Inequality

Should we be troubled by the recent increase in income inequality? Throughout human history, even quite extreme levels of inequality have tended to be accepted as part of the natural order, indeed “just the way things are.” This is not to imply that such acquiescence has ever been so complete as to eliminate all opposition. With the Enlightenment, a critical rhetoric of equality emerged in opposition to the civil and legal advantages of the aristocracy, a rhetoric that ultimately provided the intellectual underpinnings of socialism. This egalitarian rhetoric was of course the implicit narrative behind some of the world’s most famous revolutions (e.g., the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution). However, such revolutions are rare events that stand out precisely because the larger and dominant tendency is to accept the current regime, even a highly unequal one, as legitimate. The contemporary world is no exception to this general pattern of acquiescence. Although public opinion polls have registered some dissatisfaction with the amount of inequality, this dissatisfaction is usually quite muted and, at most, registers as a worry or complaint in conversations with friends, family, or pollsters rather than spontaneous protests in the streets or more organized anti-inequality political movements.