Climate change and the green energy transition

Click to view the Media Briefing in full (July 9, 2024)

The essentials

• Carbon dioxide (CO₂) accounts for about 80% of overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Methane (CH₄), which includes natural gas and emissions from animal agricultural, accounts for about 11%. The remaining fraction is from nitrous oxides and other gases.
• In 2022, the transportation sector overtook power plants as the primary source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (28% vs 25%), primarily because of the decline in coal-fired power plants and their replacement with cleaner-burning natural gas combustion turbines and increased installment of solar and wind-powered plants.
• Overall, the U.S, has experienced a 3% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels, and a 17% reduction since 2005. But that is far short of what will be necessary to meet national and international greenhouse gas emission goals.
• The health and economic impacts of ongoing climate change are increasing, especially for people who work outdoors, or work indoors but do not have access to air conditioning,

In their words

“Electric vehicles could dramatically reduce petroleum consumption, which is the major fossil fuel driver of climate change. And that in itself will help with addressing these issues.”—Dr. Noah Kittner, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health

“We need to continue to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And we’ve been able to do that by closing down coal plants but also increase our electricity generation capacity. So, this is a great opportunity to really clean up the electric grid.”—Dr. Noah Kittner, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health

“Quickly is the key point here, because when we look at the impacts of climate change on our health and the environment, which all relates to the health of our economies … rapid movement is actually a much cheaper option than slow movement.”—Dr. Melissa Lott, professor at Columbia University’s Climate School and former director of research at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy

“Climate change is affecting us even more than we thought it would be. It’s already affecting us today, and it’s affecting us more than we thought it would be, creating an urgency to get emissions down.”—Dr. Melissa Lott, professor at Columbia University’s Climate School and former director of research at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy

Reproductive health and abortion     

Click to view the Media Briefing in full (July 11, 2024)

The essentials:

• Abortion is safe. The U.S. death rate for a medical abortion is less than one in one million, and for a medication abortion is less than five in one million. The U.S. death rate for carrying a pregnancy to term is more than 100 in one million.
• Abortion has no impact on future fertility, regardless of how that abortion is performed or the pregnancy’s gestational duration.
• Children born as a result of a denied abortion re more likely to get raised in poverty and with poor educational opportunities compared to children born to women who previously had an abortion but later became pregnant with a wanted child.
• Most U.S. abortions today happen very early in pregnancy, with almost half of U.S. abortions in recent years occurring within six weeks after last menstruation. By contrast, at the time of Roe v. Wade (1973) only one-third of abortions occurred at or before eight weeks.
• Abortion for teenagers has been declining, especially in recent years. Well over half of those in the U.S. getting abortions today are in their 20s and most already are parents.

 In their words:

“Abortion is safe, and continuing a pregnancy oftentimes is not.”—Dr. Sarah Ward Prager, a physician and professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of family planning, University of Washington School of Medicine

“Mifepristone and misoprostol are incredibly safe medications. They’re safer than ibuprofen. They’re safer than Tylenol.”—Dr. Sarah Ward Prager, a physician and professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of family planning, University of Washington School of Medicine

“Laws that require women to be warned about negative psychological consequences of abortion are not based in evidence.”—Dr. Sarah Ward Prager, a physician and professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of family planning, University of Washington School of Medicine

“The fact that abortions are occurring so early in pregnancy in the contemporary era is a pretty big contrast with the past. Medication abortion enables the provision of this care at earlier gestational durations than were previously possible.”—Dr. Amanda Jean Stevenson, assistant professor in sociology, University of Colorado Boulder

Immigrants in U.S. communities

Click to view the Media Briefing in full (July 16, 2024)

The essentials

• Close to 50 million immigrants now live in the U.S.—the highest number since Census records have been kept—including 11 million undocumented immigrants. Put differently, foreign-born people account for about 14% of U.S. residents—matching the U.S. record set in 1910. They comprise about 19% of the workforce and account for about half of all U.S. job growth since 2010.
• In 1960, 75% of U.S. immigrants were from Europe. Today it’s about 10%—changing the demographic makeup of the U.S. Comparing 1960 levels to today: non-Hispanic whites decreased from to 60% of the population from 85%, Hispanics increased to 19% from 3.5%, and Asians increased to 6% from less than 1%. (1960 is a common reference point because it precedes the 1965 federal immigration act, which abolished the national origins quotas in place since the 1920s and opened the door to large-scale immigration.)
• In 2022, 35% of immigrants over 25 had a bachelor’s degree or more—almost exactly the same percentage as U.S.-born adults (36%). Among adult Indian immigrants, 80% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Among Nigerian immigrants that figure is 65%, and among Chinese and Korean immigrants it is 50%—all considerably higher rates than for native-born Americans.
• It is false that immigrants are integrating into American society less than in the past. In terms of educational attainment, income and occupational distribution, where they choose to live and whether they are living above the poverty line, immigrants and their children today are becoming more like native-born Americans at a similar generational pace as in the past.
• On a national scale and over time, immigration is a clear economic “plus”. Without immigrants, U.S. job growth would be just a fraction of what it has been in recent years. At the state and local level, however, large influxes of immigrants—especially if they have large families—can stress available resources, including public school systems.

In their words

“There are many myths about immigration…. One is that immigrants are not learning English the way earlier Europeans did, and that is false. Immigrants who arrive without English—and of course many today do come with English already, which is unlike the past—but those who come without English are acquiring English as rapidly, and actually some studies show even faster, than European immigrants did in the early 20th century. And by the third generation—that’s the grandchildren of immigrants—the third generation is, to a large extent, monolingual in English, leading some social sciences to actually say that the U.S. is the ‘graveyard of languages.’”—Dr. Nancy Foner, professor of sociology, CUNY Hunter College

“Another myth is that immigrants commit more crimes than the native-born. And that, again, is false. The foreign-born, in fact, are much less likely than the native-born to commit violent crimes. And, in fact, cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have much lower crime and violence than comparable non-immigrant neighborhoods, again leading a well-known sociologist to say, “If you want to be safe, move to an immigrant neighborhood.’”—Dr. Nancy Foner, professor of sociology, CUNY Hunter College

“The effects of immigration on the economy are pretty straightforward: migration boosts economic growth, because it’s population growth and it’s labor force growth, with little impact on inflation.”—Dr. Pia Orrenius, labor economist serving as vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

“Remember that the spending on education [for immigrants] is an investment that’s going to pay back over time. So if you look at the lifetime fiscal impact, those investments in education are going to pay back many times what’s invested.”—Dr. Pia Orrenius, labor economist serving as vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

“If people want to come to your country, that is a good problem to have. So, you can start there. They want to come, then we can craft our immigration policies. We can make it work. We can figure it out. But just think of what it’s like to live in a country where nobody wants to come to your country. I mean, that’s a terrible problem.”—Dr. Pia Orrenius, labor economist serving as vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Crime, safety, and policing

Click to view the Media Briefing in full (July 18, 2024)

The essentials

• About three-quarters of Americans believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago, and a new high of 63% say crime is a “very” or “extremely” serious problem, according to a recent Gallup poll. By contrast, according to FBI data, violent crime decreased about 15% and homicide decreased 26% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period a year ago.
• That said, time frames are crucial for contextualizing crime statistics; month-to-month and even year-to-year statistics can be deceptive.Location is also crucial; crime and violence tend to be concentrated in certain—often small, “hyperlocal”—neighborhoods within a city.
• Studies show that when police focus on making pedestrian stops, they can have about a 13% reduction in crime on average compared to similar areas without such a focused effort. If police focus on things that aren’t necessarily criminal, like panhandling, loitering, disruptive behaviors on the subway, they can achieve as much as a 26% reduction in crime compared to places with conventional policing.
• However, increases in police presence or in police contact with citizens also increases the risk of altercations and bad outcomes. Inappropriate use of force can undo all of the progress that might otherwise be made.
• Per the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois’s SPOTLITE dataset, 6 to 8 people are subjected to lethal force by police officers on an average U.S. day, with 3 or 4 of them dying as a result—a figure that has gradually increased over the past decade.

In their words

“A very large portion of violence is often found at a relatively small number of streets in any given neighborhood. And this social fact reveals something important we often lose sight of, and that is that a neighborhood might be extremely disadvantaged, it might have very high crime rates, but the majority of the streets in that neighborhood have little or no crime.”—Dr. Charis Kubrin, professor of criminology, law & society, University of California, Irvine

“In trying to understand violence, we often look for something in the individual—something inside that person, whether it’s mental illness, or their inability to control their emotions, or some other individual deficiency. And while individual risk factors are indeed important, focusing solely on individual-level factors cannot explain the temporal, geographic, and demographic patterns of crime” and overshadow social inequities and other determinants of crime.—Dr. Charis Kubrin, professor of criminology, law & society, University of California, Irvine

“Policing can reduce crime. But I think it’s also true that police in many places can do a lot better. The key question becomes are the police in this place or in that place operating at maximum efficiency … where they’re reducing crime and they’re minimizing harm.”—Dr. Justin Nix, associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska Omaha

“There are things police can do to police disorder, [but] I should mention that there are other things we can do—easier things that don’t necessarily involve the police, such as fixing street lighting, clearing out abandoned lots, picking up litter, scrubbing graffiti. Things to make people feel more comfortable walking around in their communities can reduce fear and mental distress.”—Dr. Justin Nix, associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska Omaha

Jobs, the economy, and wealth inequality

Click to view the Media Briefing in full (July 23, 2024)

The essentials

• The United States is currently in a period of extreme economic inequality—extreme by U.S. historical standards and extreme in comparison of other countries. The top 10 percent of wealth holders in the U.S. now own over two-thirds of all the wealth in the country.
• For a sense of scale as unemployment rates go up and down: Since 1948 the average has been about 5.7 percent. It shot up during COVID to about 14 percent.
• The U.S. economy is a service economy. About 80 percent of the labor force (86 percent excluding military and agriculture) is in services, and less than 10 percent of the U.S. labor force is in manufacturing.
• The U.S. economy is also a knowledge economy, in which the ability to work with data and with people are valued more than the ability to work with machines, and where education is the key divider between winners and losers.
• The high- and low-wage sectors of the economy are growing, but the middle is shrinking.

In their words

“It’s very tempting to see inequality as natural or inevitable, and some amount may be. But we’re really seeing levels right now that are unusual. And the interesting thing is most of the rise in income and wealth inequality has happened in just the past 40 years since 1980.”—Dr. Heather Hill, professor of public policy and management, University of Washington

“We have a tax code that encourages wealth concentration at the top, and it has become more that way in the last 10 to 15 years. We do have a progressive national income tax—that is, we tax higher-income families at higher rates than lower-income families. But ultimately we tax wages at higher rates than capital income, income from things like investments and wealth.”—Dr. Heather Hill, professor of public policy and management, University of Washington

“The one key factor that determines whether or not you’re going to be a winner or a loser in the labor market in the contemporary United States is your level of education…. The idea of ‘not having much education but you have a strong back and are willing to work’ is really not going to cut it in the current economy.”—Dr. Arne Kalleberg, professor of sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“There is a large vulnerable population out there willing to take low-wage jobs because of lack of alternatives. Many of these people are immigrants. Many of them are undocumented immigrants. And because of the low wages and the availability of people to take those jobs, employers are not incentivized to try to replace them with machines. It’s just too expensive.”—Dr. Arne Kalleberg, professor of sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Voter Demographics, Access, and Turnout

Click to view the Media Briefing in full (September 25, 2024)

The essentials

• Turnout for U.S. elections tends be about 10 percentage points higher in presidential election years and in general is highest among people who are older and more highly educated.
• Education has a striking impact on voter turnout. About 90% of eligible voters with postgraduate degrees vote, compared to about 35% of those with less than a high school degree.
• In recent decades, among eligible voters, women have been slightly but persistently more likely to vote than men. That’s been true for all racial/ethnic groups except Asian American women. One question in 2024 is whether having a candidate who is a woman with Asian heritage will generate higher turnout of Asian American women.
• The urban-rural divide is also generally a partisan divide, with urban areas tending to vote Democratic and rural areas voting Republican.
• Policies that make it more convenient to vote do increase voter participation, especially among demographic groups that are eligible but are typically underrepresented. For example, allowing people to register to vote as late as election day itself increases participation by young people by 3 to 7 percentage points.
• Allowing voting by mail increases voter participation by 2 to 3 percentage points. But contrary to concerns expressed by some, research indicates it does not favor one party over the other.
• Some laws widely considered to hinder turnout have been shown to have little or no such effect. Studies indicate, for example, that voter ID laws do not measurably reduce participation.

In their words

“There is a big gap between people who have some college and a college degree and then those who only have a high school degree. And then that gap is pretty large—also  consistently across election years between those who have high school and less than high school. So, the lower level of education, the less likely one is to participate.” — Dr. Lisa Bryant, professor and chair of the department of political science at California State University, Fresno

“Going back to 1986, across all elections, we see that older voters, those 45 and older, are much more likely to turn out upwards of 60 or 70 percent compared to younger voters, those in their teens, 20s, and 30s, and especially those 18- to 29-year-old voters. They’re the least likely to turn out.” — Dr. Lisa Bryant, professor and chair of the department of political science at California State University, Fresno

“Voter ID laws tend to have no effect on registration or turnout overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation. In essence, what this means is that a lot of the discussion over voter ID laws has been much ado about nothing.” — Dr. John Holbein, associate professor of public policy, politics, and education at the University of Virginia

“One of the interesting things that my research has shown is that higher voter participation doesn’t always equate to, or doesn’t always necessarily mean, that Democrats are advantaged by it. It is the case that there are a lot of Republican non-voters in the United States and that many reforms that increase voter participation or raise voter participation have these sort of parity effects on voter participation among Republicans and Democrats. So, I think it’s an opportunity for us to be careful consumers and also to push back on narratives that come out from various sources that suggest that voter participation is a Democrat’s game. It’s not.” — Dr. John Holbein, associate professor of public policy, politics, and education at the University of Virginia