 This and social policy here at the Ford School and I direct poverty solutions Presidential initiative to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty. I couldn't be more excited to be moderating this panel at the first Dean symposium here at the Gerald Ford School to celebrate our illustrious new Dean Celeste Watkins Hayes who's just doing an incredible job and And has brought yeah, let's give her a hand We'll just take every 15 minutes or so to celebrate how awesome Celeste is And that was really the point of having this symposium Now the point was to bring a bunch of really incredible scholars and thinkers together at the Ford School to talk about the cutting edge in public policy and it is there's never been a more critical time in a more exciting time a more important time to talk about Social policy and the thing that I spent my career talking about new policy and support of families and Children then right now Some things, you know remain the same over time. We have a set of safety net policies but we also have You know recent past where we've done things that we I think thought we were decades away if ever with the expanded child tax credit and An economic impact payments during COVID we brought child poverty to a historic low lifting millions and millions of children out of poverty Americans got that great, you know highest credit scores that they had ever gotten at the end of our cash transfers And then we went back in the other direction It's a really important time to be thinking about wealth in this time of rising economic stratification and Thinking not just about income and the money people have coming in the doors But the banks of assets that they have and there's a lot of really serious conversation in large part. Thanks to Derek About especially the racial wealth gap and exciting policy prescriptions that we can be thinking about To to address that Housing is just this incredibly important issue right now as we've seen huge increase increases in the price of housing And Mary Patila has been a leader in understanding gentrification and housing in public housing and all of these different policy forms and Natasha I would say is our nation's foremost expert on complicated families and what that means not just for housing but also The access of social welfare benefits So when they asked me to moderate this panel I thought I just wanted to be very selfish and use it as an opportunity to pepper some of my favorite scholars With questions, so I am gonna do that. So we're just gonna have a very Relaxed conversation in about 220. I'm gonna invite you all to also give them your toughest questions There is apparently where this is like the 21st century Ford school So back back when I was an associate professor We would scribble things on a on a little piece of paper and there were pencils going around but now we have a QR code So if you're in the room look for the QR code and And you can submit your question and I think there's some other way to do it online So we're gonna have an incredibly exciting conversation So Mary Patila is a Harold Washington professor of sociology and chair Department of Black Studies at Northwestern University Derek Hamilton is a Henry Cohen professor of economic policy and urban policy and a founding director of the Institute on race power and political economy at the new school and Natasha Pekowskis is my colleague and co-author here at the Ford school an associate professor of public policy Here at the Ford school. So please join me in welcoming this incredible panel of speakers Derek, I just wanted to start with you and I'm wondering if you could tell us I have been an income person for most of my career thinking about money in the door every month, but a lot of your work is focused on assets and and sort of figuring out how do we Address the especially racial wealth gap So tell us about why addressing assets is so important and and what some of our goals for Policies would be Well first, thank you Gratitude to the University of Michigan and everyone and I'll be quick because we got a lot of panelists a lot of things to get into But this is nostalgic for me. I did my postdoc here through Sheldon Danziger's poverty Research Center and then also with the program for research on black Americans Which was at the time headed by James Jackson. So walking through campus I made a bold statement at lunch that I Full heartedly believe in there's no place in the world that integrates social sciences in an applied way better than the University of Michigan and I say this to help answer the question that Luke just proposed to me About wealth he let off with a little bit of a juxtaposition of wealth and contrast to income Which is an area which he's certainly expert But the reality is that these things are integrated and not separable and we need to see them as such There are dimensions of income that people need in their lives It is a periodic flow that allows you to pretty much maintain consumption to maintain subsistence It often is associated with work and work in and of itself is one of the essence of our humanity Especially if it's not exploitive or extractive, but we want to produce we want to engage So income wealth these are attributes that are necessary for us to achieve the essence of our humanity Which is to be self-determining to have power and to be able to produce in constructive environments And without a doubt wealth as a concept, you know, we need only look to the pandemic and see Vividly how it was Associated with one's agency one's freedom if you were Deemed an essential worker, you know, this was a reversal from previous economic downturns Would that term essential worker meant that oftentimes you would have to go to work and put yourself at risk and We know that the face of essential work was not the same It was not monotonic. Is that the right word was was sent to actually defeat I'm sorry the face of essential work was largely Gendered and racialized we know it was over represented by certain groups. We know that These individuals put their itself somewhat at risk But if you had had wealth you would have had greater agency to make a decision that I'm not going to put myself at risk and I'm especially if I had a compromised immune system All right, so Essentially wealth is a different concept in income. They're both necessary And broadly speaking we need a society that has a conception of justice and freedom that I think Reinterpands the relationship between people and government So speaking to these policies Luke also mentioned the fact that This past pandemic and more recent times we've done things like a refundable child tax credit Beyond that during the pandemic we put a moratorium on eviction We did forbearance on student loan collection We did these big bold policies that oftentimes were ridiculed as pie in the sky And it turns out that we had the shortest recession on record It turns out that our level of what would might have been conceived of as a potential Downward spiral to a great depression that would have taken us decades to recover from Government providing these resources in a way that enhanced not only our livelihood But the ability to remain productive Turns out that it worked So I'm going to sum up right now and just say that What we need is not only policies and issues Like baby bonds like guaranteed income like refundable child tax credit, which is a form of guaranteed income But we need conceptions of justice as well You know, it's not novel to anybody in this room. I'm sure to insist that people have civil rights That people have political rights But what about economic rights? What about the ability to Not be vulnerable to exploitation not be vulnerable to extraction Simply because you don't have resources So baby bonds refundable child tax credits public banking federal job guarantee Medicare for all They all fit within a genre of policymaking that says that We're going to offer investments to people so that they can be self-determining have Have productive capabilities because without them you don't have productive capabilities. You're vulnerable to somebody else's Exploitation or the whim of their charity So in summation these policies and I can name them. We can go through them They fit within a genre of making sure that A government now is investing in its people Rather than managing poverty As surplus populations Derek one policy Point that you made was the sense that Many of the things that were done during the pandemic were considered Pine the sky before and it sort of reminded me of the sense that Things are impossible until they're not impossible anymore No doubt and and we had the overton moment and and by the way it didn't just happen. It was political movements that made it happen Right. It was having these ideas incubating for decades and then having you know young people with the wherewithal To demand upon government that they do these things and you know, it's important as Social scientists that we understand the context the young people grew up During the great recession and then now we're hit with a second double whammy of a pandemic One data point the home ownership rates for millennials This was I did this analysis like in 2019 Was the lowest home ownership rate of every similarly aged generation Going as far back as the greatest generation that entered their young adulthood during the After the great after the great depression So that context in part is invigorating them and also that failed Approach of trickle-down economics for which my generation went through where we were taught just study hard just work hard and You know the the remnants of Of discrimination of jim crow south are Somewhat of the past that all you needed to do was do those things and you would be fine Well, this generation is different. They're recognizing that One resources don't trickle down And two we demand justice simply because it's the right thing to do So mary you've written a lot on housing You've written about gentrification. You've written about public housing transformation and much of your work situated in chicago and a place that Has so many important lessons for us about housing which I might say is the you know, it's the issues that comes up Across the board and conversations on policy and in urban communities and rural communities and in chicago You've got deep racial segregation You've got some of the sort of start off with Uh And thinking about sort of moving to opportunity And then this massive change in public housing. So as you think about housing policy Of all these things, um, what are some of the factors that you think are Most important for policy students to be considering as they're they're shaping new ideas Yeah, first of all, I appreciate your introduction when you say housing is one of the things that comes up You know across rural and urban and so on and I agree that it comes up at the grassroots level But maybe i'm maybe everybody thinks this about their domain, but I feel like housing is the policy stepchild I feel like the you know health policy obviously economic policy immigration policy Nobody is winning and losing elections over housing policy As perhaps they are over immigration policy or obviously, you know issues more issue kind of things like abortion or that kind of thing So I like your introduction because you are right to point out That for many people on the ground housing is in the top three if not the top one But I feel like definitely at the federal level If not also at the state level Housing is like a policy stepchild and that's despite the fact that we have the most recent count almost 700,000 people without housing About 186,000 of them in families with children 50 percent of renter households live in unaffordable housing housing for which they're paying more than 30 of their income towards rent Um nine percent of poor households live in inadequate housing housing without running water or where the infrastructure is bad or that Is has vermin infestations So that's why when you talk to people on the ground so many people list housing as important Um despite I'm not sure it making it always into the the big big time policy conversations Um, so I'll just note that we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the nine the housing act of 1949 Which is important for Three major things one that we don't talk about as much but that we I think talk about in different language So the first is public housing. Uh, it was the program that drastically increased the number of public housing units that we were building at the time 1949 again The second is what we then called slum clearance Um, and then that later uh in a later housing act We started to also call urban renewal and we don't use I think those words have surely fell out of uh favor But that doesn't mean that community redevelopment doesn't exist anymore. And so we do talk about it in different language um, and then the third is support for, um mortgages and it you know, it's in this era That we built the suburbs that we subsidized the building of the suburbs And we subsidized it in very much of an unequal way in a very unequal way And I think that's kind of the policy lever that we might think about today That's relevant there is the mortgage interest deduction Which is something that we By forgoing tax revenue Spend a lot of money on indeed more money than we do on the affordable housing programs that might meet the needs of people Who might need public housing who are in an unaffordable housing? Um, so the mortgage interest deduction I would think kind of builds on these home ownership policies that we initiated in the Post depression period but surely in the housing act of 1949 Um, so I think I'll just put those things on the table. I'm not sure which direction we might go I'll just stop with some things on the table and see where where you'd like to take us I totally agree with your assessment of housing sort of being the stepchild or the forgotten and it's What do you make of that? Why would that be I mean it when you said that immediately made me think of this interaction I had with the head of a foundation that I happened to go back and look and I think they had about 17 billion in assets and They said something about housing being a critical thing, but we just don't do that And I was like well if you're not going to do housing who the heck is right and so why is it? Yeah but so Scatter shot or I wish I had the answer to that why it is so not on the Like I don't I am curious why the health care Why health care seems to be much a big a bigger issue obviously we all need to be healthy But also obviously we all need shelter out of that, right? We're not doing a great job either but at least we're debating it, but we also all need shelter And actually the one other reason why I'm surprised. It's not so much In discussion and maybe it gets guysed in different ways, but here I'll I'll say my point in In the previous panel with With miss minyos. She mentioned that Social policy is also economic policy And that's something we see so clearly with the housing act of 1949 And all of the post depression housing Policies which were labor market policies one way to get people back to work after the depression Was let's start doing big infrastructure is what we now call it infrastructure Plans, so let's build a lot of housing. It'll both regenerate our housing market and our housing quality and it'll also give people jobs And so in that regard the fact that housing policy is economic policy and labor policy You would think it would be more in the forefront And I do think that perhaps like when you look at biden's discussion of housing and and he has put Very recently there's if you go on the white house website. It's like february 2024 They have their housing policy fact sheet up It's not what's being discussed in the presidential debates, but it's up there And it is also very much a labor market policy because it is about housing production One of the ways that economists love to talk about the way to to get out of the housing affordability crisis We have is increasing production and I do think that's important But I think there are other important ways to think about it one is Thinking about what we might call naturally occurring affordable housing And that's housing that's already built That's in neighborhoods that have fallen in you know kind of out of the prime real estate Logic and thus are perfectly good places to put some money for Renovation in and to have more affordable housing that way So I think I'm not sure about why it's not so Sexy in the policy world, but I know it's essential and I know there's a lot of important ways to Pair it with other things that we do think are important In fact in the health world, there's a whole healthy housing policy set of policy initiatives To to bring the housing discussion into the health discussion Yeah, I think you added like a lot of answers in there and uh, you know One of the things that strikes me is you do have to have the supply We've been we've been producing I think like a million fewer housing units a year since the great recession But as you say, that's not kind of quite get you there And so you have to think very creatively about taking advantage of the stock we have And one of the things that occurs to me is that our very strange Sort of governmental Structure of having some authorities at the municipal and some at the county and some at the state and the federal And housing is sort of mixed across all of those and that's true for healthcare too, though And that was the whole point that we heard about Medicaid that if If the federal government hadn't perhaps framed it like, you know, you have an incentive But I don't know if block grants is a better way to do it directly to states Like you don't have a chance the Medicaid where they could say well We just don't want your federal match and thus people go uninsured But the point there is is that there's a decision point at the state level There are decision points at the local level in the healthcare world as well. Yeah, okay Perhaps the role of race as it relates to politics and economics And the housing domain is different than some other policies. I wonder if that could be a So when you're thinking about perhaps like one of the I think in the in so far is affordable housing policy and Medicaid healthcare policy for lower income folks and all of the various programs that are for lower income folks all I think have the same Racial optics challenge that that housing does and by the racial optics challenge is what i'm talking about is that Disproportionately black and latino families are low income and thus disproportionately benefit from these programs Although they are not the primary beneficiary. So In many of these programs white families still are the What's the word? What's the statistical word for when you are the You're not the majority, but you're the No, there's another modal. Yes, but there's another word. I'm looking for I'll come back to it The plurality that's the word i'm looking for. Thank you So white families are the plurality for many of these programs, but that that's not the face that they get So I think that's operative for housing policy for food For food policy, which is another, you know, kind of mind-blowing thing. Why don't we want people to have food? Yeah, but the derek you're also I think maybe bringing up and I don't mean to put words in your mouth But is it, you know partially like it's hard to think of some form of housing policy that hasn't been shaped by Discrimination and racism. I see what you're saying the weaponization of housing as a mechanism to enforce Racial hierarchy. I was hearing differently gotcha gotcha. Yes. Yes And that is I mean you can certainly think about that in health care, but it's it's particularly salient. Yeah Well here here, okay now that I understand your question the fact that housing Decides where people live and who people live next to and who people don't want to live next to now I understand. Yes. So we have a Both a provision issue Like who are we going to give housing services to but also where are we going to put that housing? So that's when we got the use of public housing to create segregated cities and we have the The Prohibition of building affordable housing in affluent and predominantly white spaces the ways that localities can Make sure and through exclusionary zoning through not, you know Just not accepting developers who want to build affordable housing to keep out such housing from their localities And the quick other element is it's been the primary mechanism of wealth building for the middle class. Yeah Yeah Way to tie it all together. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so One question when we're building housing is housing for whom and so Natasha, you know, it makes me think that often when we design policies, we're thinking of certain family forms. So for families with children Many times we might be thinking of like Two parent families in some cases with social welfare policy. We might be thinking of a single parent family but we're often not thinking about Multi-generational and in different kind of family forms, but it turns out it's that's not just like a small piece of the puzzle That's a pretty big chunk of how kids grow up and and it's been growing. Am I right? Right Yeah, so This is a you know, when I think when we think about policies kind of in general We're usually thinking about I think a kind of heteronormative married couple. You'll leave it to beaver Um, that's how we've sort of structured most of our policy for those of you who are too young to know Who the neighbor is I've learned from teaching that that some of you didn't grow up with those reruns That is, you know, there's like the the mom the dad the white picket fence the two kids and a dog and a cat basically And so but that's how our policies are structured But that's not the reality of most people, you know on the ground and you mentioned single parent households But also, you know single parent households aren't that common either But lots of people are partnered They might not be married or as you what I study in particular are the living arrangements of kids So who are other kids living with what are the other adults in these households? And and I think from the policy perspective we kind of forget about them We don't we don't really include them in trying to think about how how how they are resources for these households and for families And yes, I'm particular multi-generational households have increased a lot So in 1980 about five percent of kids lived in a multi-generational household So that's a grandparent a parent and a kid living together and today it's 10 percent of kids Which is about seven and a half million kids So a lot of kids are in these living arrangements and it's and it's disproportionately low-income kids who Not all but disproportionately not all no certainly not married married married households also Live in you know, how are multi-generational? So it's it's it's a complicated batch of folks, but Certainly if you are low-income you are more likely to live in a multi-generational household and Another thing as I understand is that we might think of these as like static categories, but they're not right There's a lot of dynamic. Yes, right. So there's a lot of churning that happens You know and part of this is kind of touching a little bit and thinking about homelessness, right? So there's a piece of this where you know, we can think of this as a resource If you have someone's home to move into if you lose your home and it is certainly a resource That's better than the alternative of being homeless But also people don't really want other people in their homes. Maybe people feel like they're you know And it's an imposition And so a lot of times you find that there's a lot of movement and if you're a kid That's not great, right? We know stability is really important for children and especially if you're thinking about schools I mean it ties into a lot of different issues as well How does this, uh, family complexity impact Access to the safety net if we have design policies with sort of a specific family type in mind Yeah, so I'm going to talk about some work with my colleague right there. Kathy Mitchell more So we have been doing we've done some work specifically thinking about tax credits So like the earned income tax credit. So the way our tax credit system is set up, right? You have a you have It's complicated I'm sure you all just did your taxes they're due on monday, right? But it's a complicated system to think about how Who gets to claim you know, you want to claim a dependent because you get to lower your taxes essentially So when we think about you know for the eitc in particular we look at lower income Children what we can see is that a lot of them live in rather complicated family forms So it could be that they don't have a parent that's present And so who's going to get to claim that kid on the on the on the taxes you have to navigate that Yeah, and who gets to claim who gets to claim the person who For who if the child has been living with the parent for at least 50 of the time then they can claim them But you know kids are move around too. It's really who claims them first It's really who claims them first and if you live in a multi-generational household You can also now there's even more complications there because maybe the grandparent gets to claim the kid And also if you're thinking about the grandparents in these households don't think of like mrs. Claus think of Maybe us on this panel, right? They're more close closely in age. Sorry Luke looks really upset at me, but it's true off the panel People in their 40s, right a lot of times Who are our grandparents also in these households? So they're working still, right? And so they can also it gets more complicated How to think about that I ask a question. Yeah The income is it the income of the person who claims the child or the full total household income That affects how much of a Credit you get so that's another interesting point, right? So the grandparents how in that case they're not included in the in the income unless they claim the child So it's technically supposed to be the person with the higher adjusted gross income It's always the parent first that gets so let's think of parents that are unmarried They're living together which one gets to actually claim the kid Well, it's the one technically who has a higher income. Why do we do that? It's the tax unit, but we do that so that they don't You know, we're trying to give away less government money in this in this context, right? But parents know this and they often, you know, we'll make different decisions in terms of who gets to claim I think now Natasha that could be considered fraud, right? It could be not considered fraud if they're unmarried That's okay there, but it can get it can be if their child isn't living, right? So the child tax credit for instance We we did some work on that and we asked people low and talk too much about it because I'm gonna ask you about it later But you can talk about it. It's not the results. I won't talk about it. Give them a teaser. Here's the teaser We asked folks Why they didn't get the credit and and this didn't come up a ton But it came up enough that I recall looking through these, you know the answers and people said Oh, my ex-partner claimed the kid first and so that is is perhaps You know, did the kid actually live with that person? We don't know for sure So sometimes families think about who makes the most sense to claim the kid and sometimes Whoever files their taxes first Claims the kid and it would be very hard for somebody else to contest that. Yeah, exactly Yeah, it's a tax filing unit So the EITC is actually pretty it's easier on this like the the grandparent could Could take the kid right could yeah Other programs that could be a little more Well, I guess uh, like snap let's think about snap could Would it be reasonably easy for a grand uh, grandparent to claim a child on Well, so it becomes snap is about the household. So who's living together? So if grandma's in the household, right? She is included in the income in this We don't do it consistently because why would we um and so then grandma's If if grandma wants to have her own snap benefits. Yeah separate from mom She has to say that they don't share food and they actually have to store their food in separate cabinets There's other things that they're supposed to do to make sure in case they were actually, you know I don't know if anyone actually comes to your house and checks of the cabinets But in theory that could that could happen But otherwise she is included because they assume that they're all related But if you're not related then you're not include it gets it just gets a little bit more complicated So I think the policy lesson is Uh, we have this complicated set of programs that interact with the family Like the family structure, which is often not well understood And actually varies across all of our different programs. So there's no consistent Unit and and so as we have dynamic families that becomes even more of a challenge to get right. Yeah, exactly So, uh, Derek tell tell us about baby bonds. Uh, just what is the policy proposal and uh, in one thing that you and your Collaborators layout is a sense of a targeted universalism. I think as a as sort of a means for addressing Intergroup disparities, but also Perhaps building more Public buy-in if I if I've got that right or or correct me if I don't have that right, right I think we should uh, I would say there was a lot of great work done by John Powell William Julius Wilson With regards to targeted universalism I would propose an evolution of political language affirmative inclusion race conscious The one of the points of targeted universalism was to be able to Politically have a policy have more appetite Despite some of the grounding where we think it's going to socially undeserving people namely black people I think The evolution of seeing that trying to contort oneself to avoid the language of race Only does that makes you can torch yourself to avoid the language of race Uh, I don't think politically you ever fool anybody So, uh, you know part of the how we name things is important So, uh, I would say we'd be more explicit in our naming of things and then uh, take take those Battles on head on because we only kick the can down the road And we eventually have to have those those battles anyway, but really quick baby bonds is simply a trust established at birth To ensure that everybody has access to the capital they need in order to get into an appreciating asset Like a home Like a college education without debt or some capital to start a business So that they can accumulate wealth in other words trust and wealth should not be reserved only for the wealthy This is a program about democratizing access to wealth. It links to social security I mean we have something we have a pension reserved for Uh, essentially all americans as they age into the twilight of their life But we have nothing for young adults that begin A lifetime of trying to build economic security beyond subsistence programs so, uh Natasha talked a lot about family Maybe we should think about family not only as the input but the outcome So a young person trying to establish love trying to establish family formation However, one wants to define that family unit one critical ingredient would be capital Would be access to some resource so that they can thrive, you know, it's kind of a rethinking of what the purpose of our economy is It's kind of a rethinking of Why why we even have an economy in the first place? So so that that's the idea and then really quick. I just wanted to say something about the conversation tax policy We talked a lot about taxes taxes are the biggest fiscal tool we have and I'll say Mary made this point when talking about the mortgage interest deduction We don't conceive of it as such but that's a tax expenditure And if we if we think of it as such Then we could juxtapose it with a refundable child tax credit We can juxtapose it with the IRS could could seed baby bonds if we wanted to Uh, why is it that every tax policy is not fully refundable? That's kind of arbitrary and normative We're making the case that this This demographic of people because they don't have a tax liability will not benefit from The strategic stewardship of public resources for the purpose of stimulating our economy Well, that's political. That's not technical so, um You know last thing I'll just say is that also when thinking about the ways in which We have to think about and contort ourselves with public policies around is it the grandmother, you know, is it the in a In our typical convention leave it the beaver type also Is it the man who gets the benefit from the tax credit as opposed to the woman in the family? well, uh, if we were to shift to a concept of guarantees a concept of rights I think we could steward these policies In ways that would avoid some of those demographic Associations of who's deserving undeserving and politically Ways in which we have to contort ourselves to do good policy in other words. Why is the eitc? Not fully refundable There's no reason beyond right. There's One could structure an earned income tax credit policy That even includes non workers That could literally guarantee a base level of income for all Americans and still have that same structure That does not disincentivize work but also yields more people out of poverty and towards the middle class so that sounds like a A guaranteed basic income of sorts and in our our early conversation Uh about the panel you had said that you're not in favor of a universal basic income But you are in favor of a guaranteed basic income. So Tell us what what's the difference between the two and why are you four one and not the other right? You know, I think ubi is bad policy. It's almost the definition of inflation It's literally giving everybody the same amount in the economy So that that will have less Less effect on somebody's income if everybody else gets it If the targeted group doesn't get it I also think Politically is problematic a lot of people ground Ubi and that the machines are going to replace us So in order to keep consumption up we need this public policy Going to the vast majority of americans. I'm not ready to concede work And I don't think it's evident that work will go away work will evolve And technology has the The potential of becoming extractive and exploitive But if done well if if done well Uh technology brings about new jobs. So briefly Ubi from a political standpoint, but even more so from A economic implementation standpoint Is problematic however well intended it may be it's inflationary And it also enhances wealth inequality if you give a wealthy person A hundred dollars. Well, they'll they can save it. You give a poor person A hundred dollars by definition their subsistence population They're going to need to spend that money. So a guaranteed income program Best administered through the tax code You know, we can do away with welfare offices all together. We can destigmatize resources to go to poor people by using our tax code And again building on mary. We already do it for the wealthy We already subsidize and provide resources In the form of reducing their tax liability because of a condition Or some attribute that they have. Well, there's no reason Structurally that we can't think of the tax code and irs as a mechanism to Destigmatize the Stuart the steward of resources to poor people for industrial purpose And one other thing real quick luke. I promise and that is You know what when we think about enforcement Which group is more likely to get audited by the irs? eitc filers and what's more Black eitc filers are more likely to be audited than white eitc And if we even go outside of the eitc, it's also true Or evident that black people are more likely to be audited in general So, you know Our tax code We when we think about poverty when we think about inequality, we often don't have a bull's eye on treasury We need a bull's eye on treasury and in particular that tax code Mary you just finished as part of a committee on a new national academy's report on programs and policies to reduce intergenerational poverty and Given that I am currently serving on an NAS committee. I know how much work that could be So congratulations on getting through and tell us like what are some of the programs and policies that Uh that you all came to as as the places where we might put some of our eggs Yeah So thanks for the question and actually it's a great segue because eitc is definitely first and foremost And we actually have some simulations in there about various ways to do eitc including folks who aren't working or including Lowering the wage the income at which it starts to phase out and various kinds of policies and kind of Cost estimates for how much that might cost and the reason why we include eitc is it's one of the policies that shows Long-term benefits across generations. So this particular National academies committee build It was building off of a previous national academies committee on child poverty And so this is on intergenerational poverty And here I I'll go back to the title of this or at least how you presented this particular panel because The panel is kind of imagined as cutting edge policies to reduce You know to improve family circumstances or improve outcomes for kids And being on this national academies panel meant that cutting edge was a difficult thing to do because Cutting edge and evidence based are sometimes At odds with one another because to have a lot of evidence on something means that we've tried it over and over and over again And we have lots of data on it. We had for intergenerational poverty that we have 20 plus years of data on it, which means it's even less cutting edge because it has to be old Which means that many of the policies that we were evaluating were things that were super familiar to us now So it was eitc. It was housing choice vouchers for example, and it was not baby bonds Or reparations or anything that we're talking about right now As possibly cutting edge, but that we just don't know if it's going to work or not So I think in some regards there's attention and especially there's attention for us scholars who want to be evidence based But the evidence requires us looking backwards rather than forwards So to answer your specific question about some of the evidence evidence based policies eitc is one of them Medicaid is another one of them importance in the ways that Medicaid Supports maternal health and early childhood health and even health in vitro Environmental policies the clean air act has shown it's very clear that pollution Kids exposure to pollution At young ages has long term negative outcomes for their income for their employment for their educational outcomes And so the clear near air act of 1970 has been shown to have long term impacts on positive impacts on poor kids outcomes And then I'll just say two that are perhaps more cutting edge or actually perhaps quite controversial in this national climate against dei and all things race Um two programs i'll mention one is uh the research there is evidence that Black children being taught by black teachers has long term positive Is has a long term benefit for black children and given that we know educational benefits given that we know Racial disparities and educational outcomes Then increasing the pipeline of black teachers and there's some evidence about latino teachers as well Is really important. Well, how do you increase the pipeline of latino and black teachers? If we're supposed to be living in a world where we can't have dei programs So any kind of pipeline program that might be You know preparing black teachers or something will fall into disfavor in the states that have barred these kinds of programs So that's one thing i'll say and then the other thing is we have some very new evidence from san francisco About the positive impacts of ethnic studies course taking So high school students in san francisco who are exposed to ethnic studies courses Were more likely to graduate from high school more likely to enroll in college and these of course are positive signs for their long-term outcomes Just at the time when ethnic studies departments and and courses and anything You know supposedly remotely critical race theory for all of the misapplication of that term Is under assault in states across the country? And so in many regards we have some evidence for things that are falling into disfavor Despite them having very strong evidence of positive effects Yeah, i'm so glad you brought up that this sort of this Tension between wanting to be cutting edge and wanting to have an evidence base and the fact that So much of our evidence base is path dependent right the policies that get implemented and tried You know with lots of variation our policies that fit with Dominant social values and reinforce A lot of the things we've already talked about And that um, it sort of ties our hands a little bit when we want to think out of the box. Yep. Yep Um, and it also uh, you're uh, the last part of that conversation made me think of rucker johnson's work and you know Showing that uh integration had this positive impact for black students Largely because it increased the resources That the students are going to that's also one of our one of the points that we talk about as school resources as key to Reducing intergenerational poverty Natasha you've written i imagine We're probably cited you and kathy in the report on the eitc along with lots of other people have written a lot on The eitc had written a lot about um the recent expanded child tax credit Maybe you can talk about the two policies and maybe as you all think about new directions for a family policy Uh, what are some of the the things we should be thinking about with those refundable tax credits? I mean everything the dirt so, um, I mean I think You know the the the key difference between the eitc and the ctc Or the temporary expansion to the child tax credit is the folks at the very bottom, right? so we don't we still we have a safety net that it Doesn't entirely exclude people who don't have earnings but largely excludes the people that need the most help And that's what was so revolutionary, right about the temporary expansion of the child tax credit Which was we it was we made it fully refundable like you already said And we let people who didn't have earnings get it And so as as you also said right it had such a huge profound impact at least on poverty rates And certainly our work is showing and studies are showing kind of across the board But it has positive it's had positive effects in a variety of different domains um Now you asked me what to think about this more like in terms of cutting edge Yeah, uh, so do you have thoughts on how we how can we deal with the issues of family complexity with the eitc? Uh, other How should we be thinking about expanding the eitc? Yeah, so one I mean one of the fundamental problems with with so it doesn't have to be a problem But it is currently a problem is that you have to file taxes To get this so um right so about 80 of people who are eligible for the eitc receive it We know that so that's still there's still 20 who aren't getting it and with the child tax credit We actually still don't really know how many people didn't I mean the irs says they did a pretty good job And I believe them um in terms of the people that are in their population But we don't know who's not in the denominator because if you're not filing taxes, right? If you're at the very low end, how do we think about that? And so but I do think that maybe we don't you know We know that we have systems social security for instance does a pretty good job of going to everybody And I'm sure that our our government agencies. I would imagine should be able to Work with each other To get the to get everybody so that we don't leave people out right so that it is actually Adopting so you're suggesting perhaps like a some sort of data sharing agreement Uh-huh social security records that we know covers what 99 percent of workers And uh in the irs to make sure people are getting their fundable tax credits that they deserve I mean sure that's wonderfully wonky What is that so you have done research on the effects of the child tax credit on like kids outcomes say you know on educational outcomes or socio-emotional outcomes I wish I wish no, but on families so housing instability as a matter of fact We have some we find that they're having more stable housing Find that they are less likely to experience food insecurity at the household level Right they're less likely to have medical hardships So these are things that we think are good for kids But we don't really know yet because as you said intergenerationally we're going to have to wait a little while One and two I think the data is you know, it was a very short-lived credit So I don't you know one of the things that we have to think about is for six months We gave everybody money that was great, but it was only for six months And so you know how much I don't know what kind of impact so I wouldn't want us to throw away our evidence base And you know or throw away kind of the evidence and say we didn't work But it wasn't it wasn't much of a policy I mean it was a pot was a great policy, but very short Also improvements in Mental health reduced it also it also improved parental mental health. Yes So I think we're going to go to our questions from the audience But as they prepare to ask the very first question and they'll introduce themselves once they stop chatting with each other You know it we talked about so many different layers of policy. We've talked about rights Versus like how do we how do we define and conceptualize the benefits we have? rights versus Black grants or you know limited programs so much of our our programs Aren't rights actually and so if we if we reconceive of them, we can imagine different policy Constructions that are maybe less complicated and and fall into fewer of these challenges we've talked about this tension between evidence base and In wanting to be cutting edge and you know if you're always using your evidence base You're never breaking out of the molds which are by default sort of shaped by society we've talked about how Are the we need to know who we're actually trying to impact with our policies and our our Governments of family are often driven by Stereotypes that aren't always true So lots of different Guides and then we've talked about specific policies a lot of time on the tax code. So Derek you did this interesting thing Which was to say we should do more through the tax code and then you sort of Critique to the irs. So how do you think about like you want to put more of the policy through and also be critical of it Which is totally reasonable. I just said it was it was an interesting thing to Say give it to them and then say why they were doing a bad job Of course, I'm going to answer the question in a lofty way to begin which is Maybe we should begin every economic class every panel with the question of what is the purpose of an economy We we learned what we learned how and we learned to whom but we don't define the purpose of an economy Then that leads to how do we use our fiscal tools to achieve that purpose So if you ask me what the purpose of an economy would be It is to facilitate human flourishing. Y'all heard some of this stuff before Self-determination and righteous ways Agency right now we think about our social safety net only in terms of economic security We think of our industrial policy as centering the firm I think mary said this too, uh, that the point was made that Social policy and public policy should be indistinct or were made indistinct in some ways Well, perhaps industrial policy and labor policy should not be distinct Uh, perhaps when thinking about the ways in which we achieve Or what we what we're charged with doing We need to think about people as being productive agents not to be exploited not to be extracted from But these are investments going towards people so that they can be In genius productive creative not only for themselves, but for our economy And then the question of evidence base. I think we do have a lot of evidence One we've been doing these demonstrations And lo and behold some of the stuff we were taught in economics classes Didn't necessarily hold up They're offering people additional income Lead them to work less. Well, the evidence suggests they work more And if you think about it, it might have been obvious Well, if you could afford transportation to get to a job if you can afford Health child care so that you can go to work. Well, that enables people Right. So if we had began with the conception that At the end of the day again one of the essence of what we all want to do is be able to do things do things in Social environments that are not exploitive That is one of the essence of the many dimensions of our humanity But that is one of the critical dimensions So if we structure these things, you know, why do we think about going back to the tax code? Resources going to people as cost, but resources going to the firm sector as investments That's normative Why can't we think of resources going to people as investments? Why don't we have trust based? Direction of government resources expecting that if if Properly resource people will do the right things and achieve big bold things So I don't know if that answered the question, but That I think is Something that that we we need to again begin with the question. What is the purpose we get to define it We get to define purpose And then we get to the structure of that society in a way to achieve that achieve that purpose And tax policy circumvents the filibuster Yep, so again now we can get to the politics of it if right the tax policy becomes hard to change We're all faced with the expiration of donald trump's tax policies And guess what it's going to be hard to change course From a political standpoint because some entity is going to believe that to be a tax cut on them So starting with sort of the tax increase A big picture objective of what we want to achieve with our systems to empower People to live healthy and productive lives and innovate Please introduce yourself and give us a question Hello there i'm gail tea in here with board school And the first question that we have is How can we tackle inequitable impacts of child welfare policy? Do you see federal state local policy is having primacy? Well, uh, maybe i'll take this one. I was supposed to think you're best for that So this is like with housing not one of those answers that has a single policy solution I really love my first book because uh, there was a very simple answer at the end But the biggest thing and I think somewhere that we're going in child welfare is Uh is through more prevention And so I think what a lot of people don't know is that the the vast majority of child welfare cases So we're talking about um foster care and out of home placements The vast majority are neglect and neglect is often driven by poverty So if i'm in a home where the lights have been shut off or I have a neighbor who deems that My child isn't covered up enough and might be cold They could call it in and that would trigger an investigation And a huge number of children actually have an investigation at some point in their childhood Our colleagues here at the school social work are experts on us And and it is incredibly racially stratified and you can imagine all sorts of reasons why Black children might be likely to be more likely to have an investigation Including racial present racism and who People Are sort of primed to think they should call on all the way to you know Dispaired economic outcomes where if you are lower income and if so much of this is driven by poverty Which people of color disproportionately are they may be more situated in those places So I think a lot of the effort on this is actually around prevention And then you have to audit every part of the system, right? And you have to understand and there are ways to do this right where we could understand The calls coming in because a lot of Cases are often triggered by calls from a neighbor or a family member And trying to understand patterns there and how we could protect against discriminatory disparate outcomes But the front end is The prevention and making sure more families have the resources that they need So this gives me a chance to talk about The thing in my work life that I'm most excited about a program called rx kids In the city of flint Who I'm working with dr. Mona Hannah attisha who in conversations with flint parents Wanted to build on the incredible success of the expanded child tax credit and and do some sort of child cash transfer in flint And so as we worked on that and the numbers of doing a child tax credit for every family in flint got Really really big really quickly We zeroed in on the first year of life and that is The first year of life is incredibly important for shaping the life course I've been hanging out with Mona who Explained to me that baby's brains double in size and so much of our our evidence on The life trajectories is is is shaped during that first year It also is the year when we have the most child welfare investigations and out-of-home placements. So kids are most vulnerable again Before generally reasons of neglect And so in rx kids every family in the city of flint will get 1500 dollars in Pregnancy a re-expected mom after 20 weeks of gestation and then 500 dollars a month until their baby turns one So this isn't a pilot This is for every family in the city made possible by philanthropy But also by the state of michigan that invested 10 block grant dollars Which was supposed to support low-income families with children with cash assistance But because of its block grant flexibility has been used for all sorts of things Bring some of that money back and a a key outcome is that we hope to really bring down Child welfare investigations and out-of-home placements in that first year using prevention and We're going to eliminate the poverty in the city of flint among families I'm Amanda nothap from poverty solutions for the second question Um kind of I want to take a step backwards when we're talking about different tax mechanisms to address things And so this question is if the mortgage interest deduction were repealed what kind of program would you utilize the funds for? Oh, that's a great question um So I am so this in the housing world the largest housing program now is the low-income housing tax credit program, which is another kind of financing not operated through HUD, but operated through the treasury and and um is a way to bring in investors that none of us ever thinks about the big private sector the banks and big money folks to support the construction of affordable housing and the low-income housing tax tax credit program This is tax credits to big investors not to individual families is an important program for production But it only really meets the needs of families in about the 50 to 80 percent of area median income range Maybe even above but not the families below 50 percent of area median income. What is area median income? Oh, it's roughly about eight depending on what area you're in, but let's call it 80 thousand dollars for a family of four So 50 percent or a family of three usually 50 percent is 40 thousand dollars There's a lot of families below 50 percent of area median income who still need housing So the low-income housing tax credit program is important But doesn't reach families in the greatest need The only program that section eight the housing choice voucher program Reaches families uh below 50 percent of area median income but Only 25 percent of families who are eligible for the section eight voucher or the housing choice voucher Receive it and this is a funding issue. So that's my first place. I would go Moving monies that we forego from the mortgage interest deduction, which disproportionately benefits high income people who have bought big houses and thus have a lot of mortgage interest to pay Moving that money into the housing choice voucher program Which allows people to rent in the private market and then the second place I would go is The backlog of public housing Maintenance needs is humongous in new york city. It's 50 billion dollars alone New york city is one of the few cities that hasn't torn down a lot of its larger public housing developments And public housing hard unit public housing Is the other important way to meet the needs of the lowest income families who are not met by the low-income housing tax credit Program or many other affordable housing programs. So that's the second place. I would go Thank you Since Since housing policy is largely decided at the local level What role should the federal government have in improving access to how the housing? Both as shelter and as a tool for wealth accumulation So I'll go again and I'm glad the next question is housing because Right when I finished those two things I just thought all the how is it how is there's in the world are thinking of all the things that I missed, you know anti eviction policy and policy for folks who are unhoused and so I think the point is that there is so much Need in the housing sector that I have given you two ones that are important to me But I think you get a lot of houses in the room and we could put together a much better package than what I just said And so to this question I don't think most of housing policy is local most of the implementation Of housing policy is local, but the big bucks do come from the federal government actually Cities are trying to do things Chicago tried to do something recently and failed we had a Bring chicago home initiative ballot initiative to tax real estate transfers above a million dollars as a way to try to Make a dent in our In the unhous situation of unhoused in chicago and that ballot initiative failed So in that regard there is there are local efforts to try to intervene But the big bucks really come at the federal government level Biden actually does have proposals to increase funding So I think his proposal on housing choice voucher is an increase of about 20 some percent in the funding for the housing choice voucher Which still doesn't get us all the way to full funding But he has very clear populations that he thinks so The the the language is kind of a guaranteed housing choice voucher for unhoused veterans As and that's an important population to to of course address So I guess my answer there is I don't think most I think Most housing policy perhaps gets implemented locally But the big bucks come from the federal government and so there is huge role for the federal government to play in this regard Mary one wonky thing that I think I would be in favor of knowing a little bit about housing Is the standardization of housing codes so local municipalities get to say all sorts of things like The pitch of roofs and you know lots of different requirements that really Makes it difficult to do any housing production to large scales So prefab housing in the united states could be a much more Efficient way to build housing like quality housing That a lot of the costs are lost because when it gets Placed it has to abide by these local codes. So there is sort of this interesting thought that Politics aside if we could standardize a bit, we could make housing a lot cheaper. Yeah, I think that's a great idea I just you know, I'm on this 75th anniversary of the housing act of 1949 because I just wrote a piece for a Policy journal on this and one thing I note to Derek's point about rights and to your point about rights I mean none of the things that we're talking about are rights in the u.s. We lack a social rights contract Full stop and the point I make at the end of this essay is if we thought about housing as a right Which did not happen in the housing act of 1949 But it is the only piece of legislation where we say we have a goal that every American family Has shelter That's quality shelter that they can afford and at least a goal is closer to a right than we had ever gotten But if you think about if housing was a right or food was a right or health care was a right In the way that guns are a right or free speech is a right Then we would have a whole infrastructure to get us there as we do for those other things We would have A legal bar that Defends those rights in the way that we have a legal bar that defends the right of free speech, for example We would have technological innovation that would get us there if you think of Twitter and facebook and these things as attempts at technological innovation around free speech We would have technological innovation around housing. We would have prefab housing and and tiny houses and There's a great book called manufactured insecurity, which is a book about mobile homes basically or Mobile home parks, which is one of the largest providers of affordable housing in the u.s And is very much imperiled because of the ways that they don't own the land under them But we would have that as an intervention So I I think that the technological part Would flourish even more if we thought about this as a right So mary you obviously speaking my love language Uh and and you know just slight addendum and say that we kind of do have a Legal obligation although it's not enforced through the This is also the 75th anniversary of the un declaration of human rights Which included economic rights and in there governments have a fiduciary And I believe housing was one of them. I got a double check Yep, so governments and the us signed on to it led by ellen old roosevelt Have a fiduciary to ensure it so In this rights framework At the end of the day repeating what you said paraphrase and slightly if we had The grounding of the federal government, which has which is the backstop backstop with the financial capacity To actually deliver Was in charge to ensure Access quantity and quality To all people period that would lead these issues to be as you pointed out a lot more forthcoming That that we can't just focus on issues. We do need this north star conception And and that's an enabling aspect in order for us to achieve all these things that we want to achieve and We do have a north star and the north star has been a a co-optation of freedom and justice Again, it's not novel for us to think about political rights and civil rights. We don't always implement them Especially always implement them for all of us But economic rights has been co-opted and taken from that declaration of human rights Right, we've we've defined freedom as freedom from tyranny of government And of course, we don't want a tyrannical government Of course, we want to some people may enjoy the ability to transact in markets And what we're calling for is not the elimination of that But the concept of economic rights is the essential goods and services without which you don't have agency And it's not so lofty. We can name them housing You know income a job That there's a fiduciary to make sure that there's a base level for everybody And then if markets are going to form they start with a floor where they have to at least provide that I think we have time for one more question I'm going to take a little bit of liberty and Frankenstein a few questions together So and and kind of turn one slightly Because I Derek's point that you know implementing policy through the tax system is you know A fantastic efficient way to implement policy Luke knows that this is like You're preaching to the choir here And so are there any current policy changes that you think could be made or introduced? To address, you know, which I guess what would the priorities be in changes? to implement social policy through the tax code and What and what do you think are the most feasible to get cross Basically cross aisle support well starting with income the tax code can guarantee income So I think we can more effectively do TANF through the tax code Uh, it also has the effect of destigmatizing it Right. Well, I make somebody go to an office and right so that to me that's the biggest one um And uh baby bonds right so the the question posed about the mortgage interest deduction We spend well over about six hundred billion dollars a year taxing americans differently on wages versus other forms of income And included in that Actually mortgage income is even separate but but uh, but the mortgage income is a bulk is a big chunk of that $600 billion tax bill And uh as mary pointed out the problem is not that we want to incentivize assets, but it's to whom or for whom The vast majority of those recipients are wealthy Whereas the bottom 60 of earners receive about Less than five percent of that total benefit. So I could envision doing baby bonds through the tax code Right, I could I can envision So many things, you know some creative thought but fulfilling a right to capital Uh fulfilling a right to income those are two big places one might start with So I could talk to these three scholars For hours and hours, but I believe that we have reached our allotted time And so we're gonna leave you wanting more. So let's have a round for first our amazing dean who brought us together and And then for our incredible panel that's uh, just offered us so many things to think about and I know I've learned things and everyone else has so thank you I have reached the end of what I know is going on. So I'm gonna uh, uh, should I give people a break or uh