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Robert Greenstein has been appointed as a Visiting Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he will be affiliated with The Hamilton Project. 

“Wendy Edelberg of the Brookings Institution is watching for signs that people believe an economic overheating is permanent, like a housing and construction boom and high readings in the five-year, five-year forward inflation expectation rate.”

“Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, former chief economist of the Congressional Budget Office: ‘I think there is a fair amount of consensus that the economy will grow strongly beginning in the fourth quarter of 2021 and that inflation will rise. I also believe, although there is less consensus here, that the level of economic activity will temporarily rise above its sustainable level for a time and inflation will rise above the Fed’s target.’”

“The Pandemic-EBT program was created during the health crisis to provide food to families who lost access to free or reduced-price school meals. In an average month, it gives out an additional $114 per child, per month. That’s on top of regular SNAP benefits. ‘This is a huge benefit increase for them,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“‘Everything is pointing to a handful of quarters of pretty darn fast economic growth,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.”

“‘We just know it to be true that a lot of firms aren’t paying workers their marginal product — how much they bring into the firm each hour,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office. ‘A lot of firms have market power in a way that just gives them a lot of profit, and that profit has to get divided up. … And the less bargaining power the workers have, the less they share in that division.’”

“‘The impact is likely to be greater for Black and Latino workers and communities because Black and Latino workers are overrepresented in 11 and 13 respectively of the 30 jobs that employ the most workers in the U.S. that are at high risk of being significantly changed or eliminated due to automation,’ explains Kristen Broady, lead author of the report and policy director of The Hamilton Project at Brookings.”

“‘We had this grand success that policymakers acted so quickly in passing two significant pieces of legislation early in the pandemic, and then they flailed through the whole fall in just the most frustrating of ways,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic-policy arm of the Brookings Institution. ‘That was just such an unforced error and created confusion and needless panic.’”

“‘Many Black and Hispanic workers aren’t thinking about investing in the stock market,’ says Kristen Broady, a fellow in economics studies at the Brookings Institution and policy director of the think tank’s Hamilton Project. ‘They’re thinking about how to pay their bills.’”

“Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, talked about the potential for strengthening stabilizers in a March 12 podcast. ‘I think that investing some political capital in getting triggers into this next bill makes a lot of sense,’ Bauer said. ‘It’s going to be less expensive to do at the end of a recession as opposed to at the beginning.’”

“Economists at the Washington-based Brookings Institution said that while $700bn of direct payments would lift consumer spending, the one-year spree could result in a hangover. “While our estimates show a soft landing, with a temporary and shallow decline in GDP after the fourth quarter of 2021, the slowdown could be more abrupt and painful than our projections suggest,” said senior fellows Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner.”

“Lauren Bauer explains how unemployment insurance (UI) benefits - now extended to September via the American Rescue Plan - have affected household finances and worker behavior, and why Congress should add automatic triggers to UI before the next recession.”

"Kristen Broady, policy director of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, said the economic effects of the coronavirus recession disproportionately hit communities of color."

“’Through the American Rescue Plan, the Biden administration and Congress are making a substantial down payment in the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,’ Lauren Bauer, fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told Yahoo Money.”

“'We were probably already on pace for a pretty good economy, assuming everything with the pandemic broke our way,’ said Wendy Edelberg, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who didn’t participate in the Journal survey. 'This bill absolutely provides a lot of insurance around that.'”

"As the American Rescue Plan makes its final way through Congress, Wendy Edelberg examines how the key elements will provide much-needed economic relief to states and families, and make significant cuts in child poverty.”

“Kristen Broady, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and policy director of Hamilton’s Project, said Black women usually fared better in the labor market, but the nature of the pandemic, which caused a lot of childcare issues due to children being sent home from school, has impacted Black women’s ability to work.”

“Historically, Black women have fared better than Black men in the labor market, said Kristen Broady, a fellow in economics studies at the Brookings Institution and policy director of the think tank’s Hamilton Project.”

“Other economists, like Paul Krugman and Wendy Edelberg, counter that the degree of damage done by the pandemic is uncertain and $1.9 trillion ensures that the economy will hit its stride.”

“Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner of the Brookings Institution project that if Mr. Biden’s full $1.9 trillion plan is enacted, GDP will soar 7.8% this year. By early next year, they say, GDP would stand 2.6% above the CBO’s estimate of potential, and unemployment would temporarily dip to 3.2%.”

“Dillard University College of Business Dean and Hamilton Project Policy Director Dr. Kristen Broady joins to discuss the promise and challenges of federal worker training programs and how to ensure the US can equip its most vulnerable workers with in-demand skills for a post-COVID economy.”

“A study by The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution as reported by The Trial Lawyer magazine found that “in 2018, the direct cost of bail to the U.S. economy was $15.26 billion” including cost of incarceration, lost output per prisoner and cost of bail.”

“Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the CBO, noted that there is, of course, a chance that the coronavirus mutates, rendering the vaccine ineffective, and unemployment remains persistently high for a long time.”

"'The foreclosure crisis of more than a decade ago hit Black households harder than white ones in part because Black families had fewer assets to borrow against or sell. With more resources, white families “were less likely to lose their homes than Black families and it was easier for them to get back on track,' said Kristen Broady, policy director for the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution."

"Indeed, the number of workers in need of retraining could be in the millions, according to McKinsey and David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-wrote a [Hamilton Project] report warning that automation is accelerating in the pandemic. He predicts far fewer jobs in retail, rest, car dealerships and meatpacking facilities."

“Rebecca talks to Brookings Fellow Lauren Bauer about the steps the Biden administration is taking to increase too-low federal food assistance benefits, starting with updating an archaic policy called the “Thrifty Food Plan” — and the larger agenda to expand SNAP.”

“The Brookings Institution’s study [by The Hamilton Project] offered, with some qualifications, a very different take. With Biden’s plan, it said, the economy can dig out of its hole faster.”

"Black women and Latinas are disproportionately affected by the behavior of those who can work from home, said Kristen Broady, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution. When office workers don’t go to the office, she said, they don’t need the baristas, cooks, dry cleaners and custodial staff that used to help them through the workday."

“We’re not really sure both what we think the economy will do and what its sustainable level is. So the $1.9 trillion gives us a lot of insurance that we are not undershooting. But the other thing is that running the economy hot for a little while and getting the unemployment rate down and getting wages up — those are all positive things," said Hamilton Project Director Wendy Edelberg.

“Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued that the sweeping nature of the direct stimulus payments is its greatest benefit because it provides a baseline of financial stability for families who might not otherwise meet the criteria for, say, unemployment insurance or food stamps but are still financially struggling as a result of the pandemic.”

“While ‘millions will suffer’ without some further federal response, wrote economists Wendy Edelberg, director of Brookings’ Hamilton Project, and Louise Sheiner, the full package ‘may be so large that the increase in demand would be broad, increasing the chances of a somewhat more painful adjustment.’”

"The $1.9 trillion proposal, even without the planned second round, would push the jobless rate as low as 3.2% in late 2021 and early 2022, according to a report from Brookings Institution economists Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner.”

"Because of COVID-19 ... everybody is having a harder time, and that would be exacerbated for people who are being released from prison,'' says Kristen Broady, policy director for the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, which focuses on economic policy.

“A new analysis by Brookings’ Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner finds that the $618 billion Senate Republican proposal would boost the economy somewhat but still leave it below its pre-pandemic path through the end of next year.”

“Two economists at the Hamilton [Project] of the Brookings Institution believe the stimulus could get the U.S. economy growing far faster than its pre-COVID growth rate. Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner argue the Biden stimulus would raise growth by 4 percent more by the end of 2021 than its path before the pandemic and another 2 percent in 2022.”

“A Brookings Institution study [by The Hamilton Project] indicated the bill could boost GDP by 4 percent and return the economy to pre-Covid levels by 2021 while a separate Moody’s Analytics study found that it would create 7.5 million jobs this year.”

“GDP would exceed expectations by 1% for the fourth quarter of 2021, likely putting some upward pressure on inflation, which the Federal Reserve has said it would welcome, senior Brookings fellows Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner wrote.”

“Between mid-March and July, an estimated 400,000 small businesses nationwide closed their doors for good, according to the Hamilton Project, an economic policy wing of the Brookings Institution. That pain persisted. Across all of 2020, the American small business landscape shed 30% of its storefronts.”

“This is significant because very few children eligible for this program have gotten money for it since October, when the new federal fiscal year started, according to Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. Pandemic EBT was authorized for last school year, and the federal government asked states to reapply for the 2020-2021 school year. Most states have not yet been approved.”

“Two researchers at the Brookings Institution, Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner, wrote this week that Mr. Biden’s plans would increase economic activity by 4 percent this year and 2 percent in 2022. That increase would speed the economy’s return to the path it was on before the pandemic hit.”

“‘This package is sized not simply to fill the hole,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. ‘It’s trying to do somewhat different things. A lot of people and businesses are desperately hurting right now, so this money is relief aimed at those people, and in order to be really confident you’re reaching them all, you need to send a lot of money.’”

“‘The package enacted at the end of December was completely welcome, but we’re clearly seeing that it took some time to roll out and get that aid to folks,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office.”

“‘This is a repudiation of the prior administration’s slowing down of SNAP benefits to needy families,’ said Lauren Bauer, a Brookings Institution fellow who researches the social safety net and children. The moves are ‘not a panacea,’ but Dr. Bauer said they could still make a difference for the millions of families struggling to put food on the table.”

Kristen E. Broady, Ph.D., Policy Director for The Hamilton Project and Fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers to discuss how workers can prepare for the post-pandemic economy.

“‘The official unemployment rate may understate the economic devastation because it only counts would-be workers who are temporarily laid off or who have looked for work in the last four weeks. But in theory, if all those who are in need received the necessary funds, they could pay their bills and debts and increase consumption, thereby boosting the nation's economy,’ explains Kristen E. Broady, Ph.D., Policy Director for The Hamilton Project and Fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution.”

“‘This is a repudiation of the prior administration’s slowing down of SNAP benefits to needy families,’ said Dr. Lauren Bauer, a Brookings Institution fellow who researches the social safety net and children.”

“‘It’s recognition that the people suffering the most in the pandemic for a variety of reasons are children,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“‘They are focused on low-income children because the losses that those children are experiencing during the pandemic cannot be won back,’ Dr. Lauren Bauer, fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told Yahoo Money. ‘My big takeaway from this action is that the Biden administration’s priorities are sound.’”

Kristen E. Broady, Ph.D., Policy Director for The Hamilton Project and Fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers to discuss how workers can prepare for the post-pandemic economy.

"Kristen Broady, policy director of the Hamilton Project and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted that student debt cancellation would allow Black women to take the money they would have paid back for their college education and use it to buy a house or pass on an inheritance to their children — both of which could help remedy the country’s worsening racial wealth gap."

“SNAP is the most effective tool we have for combating food insecurity and too many families are struggling to put food on the table in America today,” said Lauren Bauer, fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

"The Pandemic-EBT program was created during the health crisis to provide food to families who lost access to free or reduced-price school meals. In an average month, it gives out an additional $114 per child, per month. That’s on top of regular SNAP benefits. 'This is a huge benefit increase for them,' said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution."

"‘Some 400,000 small businesses have permanently closed their doors.’ The source for this statistic is a report published in September by the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution. The number reflects businesses that had closed as of June, based on a Census Bureau survey."

"Lauren Bauer, a scholar for the Brookings Institution, estimated that all by itself, Pandemic EBT, as it was known, lifted between 2.7 million and 3.9 million children out of hunger. But that was last spring. Congress reauthorized the benefits for this current school year on Oct. 1. And the benefit was supposed to be extended to younger children as well. The potential value, estimates Bauer: $12 billion."

"By last October, more than one in five American households didn’t reliably have enough money for food — a higher figure than at the worst point of the financial crisis, says Lauren Bauer of the Hamilton Project policy institute. Many Americans who once assumed they’d outdo their parents are now living off their inheritance."

“‘It's clear households were beginning to run on fumes by the end of the fall,’ said Wendy Edelberg, the director of the Hamilton Project. ‘That's one of reasons why economists like me were screaming and yelling for Congress to do more.’”

“‘The decline was significant because for other age groups, labor force participation stayed flat month to month, said Wendy Edelberg, the director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. ‘Participation in the labor force is a very difficult ship to turn,’ she said.”

“Stephanie Aaronson, vice president and director of Economic Studies at Brookings, and Wendy Edelberg, senior fellow and director of the Hamilton Project, share their views on the state of the U.S. economy and the top economic issues facing the country in the upcoming year.”

“With one party in charge of the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, it’s less likely that disagreement becomes deadlock, as it did for so much of the past four years. Said Wendy Edelberg, director of the economic policy development group the Hamilton Project: ‘We can avoid those sorts of really inefficient, painful negotiations.’”

“Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal to talk about how Wednesday’s events will impact the economy.”

“As the pandemic hit, more than 17% of mothers said their children were not getting enough to eat and they didn’t have enough money to buy more food, according to a national survey by the Brookings Institution in April. Compared with a similar question asked in a Department of Agriculture survey, that figure has increased 460% since 2018, said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at Brookings.”

“‘The most marginalized groups always get hit the hardest,’ according to Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution. ‘But what is so unusual is, for a lot of other groups, it’s not that they’re being hit less — it’s that they’re seeing no pain at all,’ she said.”

“The Pandemic-EBT program was created during the health crisis to provide food to families who lost access to free or reduced-price school meals. In an average month, it gives out an additional $114 per child, per month. That’s on top of regular SNAP benefits. ‘This is a huge benefit increase for them,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“President-elect Joe Biden has said additional stimulus efforts will be necessary on his watch to address the long-term impact of the pandemic. Andrew Olmem, partner at Mayer Brown and former deputy director at the NEC, and Wendy Edelberg, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the CBO, joined ‘Squawk Box’ on Tuesday to discuss what sort of economic policies they expect out of the Biden administration.”

“Taking care of the unemployed, whose benefits were going to expire is ‘the most urgent thing that needs to be done right now,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Still, she worries more help will be needed soon. ‘My main concern is that the support – for unemployment insurance but also the eviction moratorium – doesn’t last nearly long enough,’ she said. ‘The economic weakness could come pretty fast in the first quarter.’“

“[Hamilton Project fellow Lauren Bauer] predicted that continued unemployment support in addition to direct subsidies to all people will be needed to lift the United States out of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. ‘Pulling the floor out from families hurt the hardest here makes it much less likely that we’re going to see consumption levels where we need for the engine of the economy,’ Bauer said.”

“The panel was in agreement that the United States should be spending heavily now to prop up the economy before a critical mass of the population had a chance to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office, laid out the case for spending on the order of $2 trillion, ‘if we really wanted to do it right.’”

“‘USDA slow-walked the [P-EBT] program and made it more complicated, and the consequence is a gap of months where these benefits have not been flowing,’ [said Lauren Bauer, fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution].”

“An average single white man under the age of 35 is 224 times as wealthy as the average single Black woman the same age, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. The report also found that going into the pandemic recession, Black households held 4% of household wealth in America even though they’re a little over 13% of the population. White households — 60% of the population — held 84% of household wealth…Kristen Broady at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project has been looking at household wealth by race and how disparities make families more resilient or precarious in this pandemic. She said white households inherit more, more often.”

“In fact, the existing Black-white wealth gap has left Black Americans more vulnerable in the pandemic-induced economic downturn, argued a new analysis published Tuesday by the center-left Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. Wealth ‘provides a critical safety net to households during economic downturns,’ the authors wrote.”

“The latest jobs report released by the Department of Labor Friday estimates the economy has not yet replaced about 10 million jobs lost last spring, with many Americans now close to losing their unemployment benefits. Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a former chief economist for the Congressional Budget Office, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss the country's economic outlook.”

“Since the spring, there has been a ‘disproportionately large effect on the leisure and hospitality sector,’ said Wendy Edelberg, the director of The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office.”

“‘If households are in financial catastrophe, then we have a moral obligation as a country to help households regardless of what their spending or not spending does to the aggregate economy,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution.”

“Wendy Edelberg of the Hamilton Project calculates that if nothing passes, the U.S. economy will be $1 trillion smaller in 2021 and $500 billion smaller in 2022. The means to prevent this suffering are also glaringly obvious. We did it less than a year ago with the CARES Act. All we have to do is pass a version of what we did before. How hard can this possibly be?”

“The number of workers who said their layoff was permanent, rather than temporary, rose to 3.7 million in October from 1.3 million in February. Such permanent job losers are more likely to drop out of the labor force than those on temporary layoff, wrote Stephanie Aaronson and Wendy Edelberg, economists at the Brookings Institution, in a recent analysis.”

“’While many schools and districts are expending a lot of resources to provide these meals, take-up rates are much lower than the eligible population, and, in fact, much lower than they would be if schools were open all the time,’ [Lauren Bauer, Hamilton Project Fellow] said.”

“According to recent research by [The Hamilton Project] at The Brookings Institution, […] low-income families with children have been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. ‘A typical feature of recessions is that those who had fewer means before the downturn suffer more during downturns and for longer,’ writes Lauren Bauer.”

“’She cared about labor markets and economic pain when she was at the Fed,’ said Wendy Edelberg, former chief economist at the 'Congressional Budget Office. ‘Those priorities are just what we need right now.’”

"New research from the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution finds that in the month of October, nearly one in ten parents with children ages 5 and younger said their families did not have enough to eat and that they did not have enough money to buy food. That figure is a slight improvement over the summer, reports Brookings economics studies fellow Lauren Bauer. But there isn’t much reason to celebrate.”

“Graduates with bachelor’s degrees still generally make more than people with lesser credentials — about $19,000 a year more than associate degree recipients when they’re at the peak of their respective careers, according to the Hamilton Project.”

“More than 400,000 small businesses have closed since the start of the pandemic and many thousands more are at risk, according to the Brookings Institution–affiliated Hamilton Project.”

“‘Small landlords are more likely to have that rental payment affect their own personal or household budget. Larger corporations that own multiple units can cover the costs of keeping units vacant. So small landlords are more likely to hold on to tenants that they have and work with them,’ says Kristen Broady, policy director for the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and an economist who studies housing.”

“According to the Hamilton Project, the pandemic is causing 1 in 3 families with kids to experience food insecurity. That’s double the rate since 2018 and at a higher proportion than at the peak of the Great Recession.”

“In a recent [Hamilton Project] policy proposal, we argue that there currently is little credible evidence to support strengthening or weakening patent protection, such as by modifying patent-eligibility standards.”

“Peter Orszag, CEO of financial advisory at Lazard says the lack of a new fiscal stimulus bill to boost the economy makes a difficult situation worse. He joins ‘Closing Bell’ to talk about the economic damage short- and long-term.”

“‘I was encouraged to hear President-elect Biden stress getting the transmission of the virus under control,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution […] Edelberg said it was notable that he used the phrase ‘like the HEROES Act,’ indicating that Biden acknowledged the need to negotiate — and, likely, to compromise — further. ‘I'm not sure that every provision in it is exactly what the economy needs, but it's an excellent starting point for a negotiation,’ she said.”

“The benefits cliff could ‘leave the economy as a whole, but particularly those who have lost their jobs and haven’t been able to land something new yet in a very vulnerable position,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow [at The Hamilton Project and] in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“According to the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative, youth tends to work against people in a recession. For example, during the Great Recession, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national unemployment rate among those 16 and older doubled from 5% to 10%, peaking in October 2009 despite the recession’s official end.”

“‘I had really not appreciated how much economic activity we would keep doing in the face of a pandemic,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution. ‘It could well be that the economy can continue to muddle along despite a surge in the virus this winter.’”

“We have more than 10 million people who are not employed now, who were employed before the pandemic. We have small business revenue down 25 percent. We have consumer spending down more than 6 percent. There is urgent need for policymakers to do something and I think most of them see it.”

“Lauren Bauer, a fellow of [The Hamilton Project and] economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said that may be in part because the metric that ‘turned off’ Extended Benefits in Wisconsin doesn't count the number of people on new pandemic unemployment programs, like PUA and PEUC — so that metric doesn't reflect the full scope of people receiving unemployment assistance currently.”

“In late October, ‘Marketplace’ host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, about how the election might affect the economy. Now that a winner has been declared, Ryssdal spoke with Edelberg again about what might come next for this economy.”

“‘The next administration would back up off the rulemaking that this administration has done,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in [The Hamilton Project and] economic studies at the Brookings Institution. ‘None of those are policy goals that the Biden administration would pursue. You would expect that a Biden administration would make it a priority to ease administrative hurdles.’”

“Congress shouldn’t wait for President Biden to be sworn in. It should act quickly to pass a relief package for families and states that includes funding for schools and money to combat the virus itself.”

“[In 2021] there are still going to be a lot of people who are unemployed and there is still going to be a meaningful decline in economic output that we produce relative to before the virus. So, it is still very, very important to have a stimulus bill.”

“‘We created these fragilities over decades, in terms of setting policies and organizing our economy in a way to create incredible income inequality,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, and former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office. ‘Much of this crisis is man-made.’”

“Wendy Edelberg at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project said that’s especially true of service businesses, a lot of which are small. ‘Hundreds of thousands of small businesses are failing, at about three times what would be a normal rate,’ Edelberg said. ‘That is no doubt one of the reasons we’re seeing so many people say that their previous jobs are permanently gone.’"

“Research by Stephanie Aaronson and Wendy Edelberg, fellows at the Brookings Institution, found that 65% of Americans who were temporarily laid off in the spring were back at work by September. But just 40% of workers whose jobs had been eliminated were able to find other jobs.”

“And there are reasons to worry that the pace [of economic recovery] might not hold steady but, instead, decelerate in the months ahead. First, a smaller share of laid-off workers say they expect to be recalled by their old jobs; the fraction of unemployed people saying they’re on ‘temporary’ rather than ‘permanent’ layoff has fallen from about 80 percent in April to about 40 percent in September, according to an analysis from Brookings Institution researchers Stephanie Aaronson and Wendy Edelberg. Workers on permanent layoff are less likely to find new employment quickly and more likely to drop out of the labor force altogether.”

“I think a President Biden would first of all be good at working with Congress–that’s something he’s always been good at–so I’m very positive on a stimulus happening. I hope it doesn’t have to wait to be signed by him. I’d rather it happen in the next month.”

“Do we need new measures of activity among private companies? As the employment share of public companies continues to fall, data from their activities tells us less and less about the broader economy.”

“Historically, we’ve seen a 20-year decline in teen labor force participation. We know it’s been changing for a very long time, but for a good reason. As teens’ labor force engagement has declined, teens’ school enrollment has increased, and we’ve also seen because of that a rise in graduation rates, a rise in postsecondary enrollment rates, all of which have tremendous long-term market returns for these former teens.”

“More people are leaving the labor force and the number of permanent layoffs is rising, according to Wendy Edelberg, the director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. ‘Without additional stimulus, it will take years for us to get back to the path I would have projected pre-pandemic,’ Edelberg, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office, told Business Insider.”

“The ongoing political battle over a further coronavirus response is ‘incredibly concerning,’ said Wendy Edelberg, a former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office. ‘Humans seem to be very slow to adapt to take on new information. And that is frustrating.’”

“‘We’re trying to shovel ourselves out of the hole, but at the same time the hole is getting bigger,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Projectand senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.”

“One of the reasons Congress has dragged its feet recently on passing another stimulus may be because the economic slowdown has been so concentrated among low-wage earners, said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, a Brookings Institution’s economic policy initiative. ‘Maybe if the pain were felt more broadly, maybe we’d take more responsible action,’ she said.”

“Approximately one-quarter of American households are facing food insecurity, according to a recent [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution report.”

“I certainly hope [Congress] gets something done in the lame duck session. I think we need about $2 trillion in stimulus. It should be targeted largely at unemployment.”

“Wendy Edelberg says the magnitude of the economic challenge for a new President is enormous, with modelling showing stimulus of $US2 trillion is required if the US is to get back to pre-pandemic conditions. If the money is not forthcoming, evidence suggests it will be many years before recovery. Dr Edelberg says the real measure of the challenge is not in the stock market, but in the fact that economic woes like unemployment are becoming more structural and harder to snap back from, as small businesses fail at three times their typical rate in the US.”

“The rate of food insecurity—especially among families with kids—has skyrocketed during COVID-19. The best estimates are that the numbers have tripled. It used to be around 10 percent. Now it’s around 30 percent. Three out of 10 people with kids are food insecure right now.”

“The Biden economic plan will not only help our country recover from the disastrous effects of the Trump coronavirus response — it will create millions of good paying jobs.”

“A roughly $2 trillion aid package would help lift gross domestic product to its pre-pandemic level by the middle to end of 2021, according to an analysis by Ms. Sheiner and economist Wendy Edelberg, also a senior Brookings fellow.”

“According to Louise Sheiner and Wendy Edelberg of the Brookings Institution, the economy will take about a decade to return to pre-pandemic levels in the absence of any additional support.”

“‘Marketplace’ host Kai Ryssdal talked with Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Hamilton Project, about what might happen.”

“The federal government's involvement will make it more likely that states will provide extended benefits to their jobless residents, said Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”

“If Mr. Trump has any chance of prevailing, it is because roughly half of Americans still believe in his ability to manage the economy. Is that belief justified? The short answer is no.”

“A couple of my colleagues at Brookings, Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner, estimate that, with a $2 trillion package, which is roughly where Mnuchin and Pelosi are talking, we could get back on the pre-pandemic growth path by the end of 2021 or early 2022.”

“A couple of colleagues of mine at Brookings, Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner, estimate that if we got $2 trillion more fiscal policy–that’s the magnitude that Pelosi and Mnuchin are discussing–we could get the economy back on the pre-pandemic growth path by late next year or early 2022, but without it, it could take us years, perhaps even a decade, to get back to the path we were on.”

“‘We have much better tools for tamping down growth that is too fast than we have the tools to boost an economy that’s too weak,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and a former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office…Ms. Edelberg published a paper with Louise Sheiner this month estimating that $2 trillion in fiscal stimulus would bring the economy back to its pre-pandemic growth path by the third quarter of 2021. In the absence of any action, they estimate, it could take as long as a decade.”

“Hydrogen thus holds great promise in the transition to renewable energy. Policy makers, utilities and other energy market participants would be wise to expand its use as time passes. As the costs of all forms of renewable energy continue to fall, hydrogen is emerging as a potent new force for averting climate change.”

“With COVID-19 infection rates rising and fiscal stimulus measures ending, nowhere are the pain and downside risks of a faltering recovery more apparent than in the already hard-hit small-business sector.”

“A report out earlier this month from [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution found that 7.1% of kids age 16-19 were neither in school nor working between January and May 2020. That’s compared to 5.5% during the Great Recession, explained Lauren Bauer, a fellow at Brookings who worked on the report.”

“Sectors like leisure and hospitality that took the biggest beating during the downturn disproportionately hire women and people of color and tend to pay lower wages, according to Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution, a think tank.”

“The economy is very weak, especially for the vulnerable populations, disproportionately communities of color. The consequence of that is we really, really need significant stimulus. My view is to the order of $2 trillion dollars, and some of the economic studies have come out [such as one on] the Brookings website by Louise Sheiner and Wendy Edelberg that demonstrates that unemployment insurance is the most powerful tool we have now. So I would have a very large bill with a very substantial piece focused on unemployment insurance, and get that going very, very quickly.”

“‘We are making the recovery harder,’ Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, the Brookings economic policy arm, told Yahoo Finance. ‘Every week that goes by, the problems mount. We're going to make the recovery slower, and more painful.’”

“A new policy paper published by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project proposes two new federal government programs designed to bridge the divide between higher education and the workforce system.”

“In 2016, [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution estimated that Black Americans own about one-tenth the wealth of white Americans — $17,150 for Black families compared to $171,000 for white families.”

“The total cost [of the pandemic] is estimated at more than $16 trillion, or approximately 90% of the annual gross domestic product of the US. For a family of 4, the estimated loss would be nearly $200,000.”

“According to Wendy Edelberg and Louise Sheiner of the Brookings Institution, a $2tn spending boost would increase real output in the US by 0.2 per cent this year, and 4 per cent in 2021 and 2022, allowing the economy to return to its pre-pandemic path by the third quarter of next year.”

“Those who feed, transport, clothe and entertain people who are out-and-about account for about a quarter of American employment, note David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds of MIT [in a Hamilton Project paper].”

“As of 2016, the $171,000 average net worth of a typical White family was 10 times greater than the average $17,150 net worth of a typical Black family, according to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution."

“Conventional wisdom and financial markets agree: The era of near-zero interest rates will last as far as the eye can see. Yet the prolonged era of low rates may in fact be ending, according to a provocative new book by Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics and Manoj Pradhan of Talking Heads Macro.”

“‘We’re in for a sizable reduction in economic activity coming from state governments if we don’t do anything,’ said Wendy Edelberg, who runs the Hamilton Project, an economic-policy arm of the Brookings Institution. ‘It’s just a terrible thought that we didn’t learn that lesson post-2008, that state budgets are incredibly important to the aggregate economy.’”

“A full one-third of these folks fall into the low- to moderate-income category, according to a Hamilton Project study.”

“Americans, once known for their propensity to move from state to state, have largely grown averse to such change. It may be true that the pandemic has brought a temporary reversal.”

“‘We look set to lose at least as many small businesses in this year alone as over the four-year period from peak to trough during the Great Recession,’ the report [from The Hamilton Project] warns.”

“So how might the Biden tax plan affect economic growth, when considered in isolation? According to two leading models, the answer is very little.”

“‘Food security means families don't have sufficient food to provide an active and healthy lifestyle, but most importantly it means they don't have sufficient resources to go out and purchase more,’ Lauren Bauer, a fellow at The Hamilton Project, told CNN.”

“‘So much work done in person creates cities and densely populated areas,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“‘The people who have been hit hardest are low-income families with kids,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow at the Hamilton Project who studies safety net policies. ‘These families have just been whacked in every possible way. No one is coming to rescue them.’”

“As the harm from climate change becomes increasingly manifest, there is some good news: The estimated cost of reducing carbon emissions is falling rapidly.”

“Roughly a third of individual landlords who own residential property are from low- to moderate-income households (those with incomes of less than $90,000 a year), according to researchers at the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank.”
 

“But the extra food-stamp benefit helped lift as many as 3.9 million children out of hunger by providing about $250 to $400 per child, depending on the state, according to a July study from the Hamilton Project.”

“Black people have historically been less likely to own homes than whites in part due to lower incomes, and in part due to ‘the history of redlining, various discriminatory practices that kept Black people from owning homes,’ said Kristen Broady, policy director at the Hamilton Project, a liberal think tank.”

“Sectors like leisure and hospitality that took the biggest beating during the downturn disproportionately hire women and people of color and tend to pay lower wages, according to Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution, a think tank.”

“‘We need an 'all of the above' strategy,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. In July, Bauer and a team of researchers found that P-EBT benefits significantly reduced the number of children struggling to get access to enough food.”

“During the week after the benefits were paid, the share of children not getting enough to eat declined by more than 30%, according to an estimate done by The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative of the Brookings Institution.”

“In a Hamilton Project policy proposal released Thursday by the Brookings Institution, I advocate a significant boost to small businesses in the form of refundable tax credits — that is, tax credits that can be greater than a business’s total tax bill.”

“The funds could go toward both payroll and non-payroll expenses, according to the report from the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative at the Brookings think tank.”

“State and local governments are facing extreme budget distress; food insecurity is at its highest level in decades. We’ve regained only about half the jobs lost in the spring. More money from Congress is both fiscally affordable and deeply needed.”

“‘The new information in the survey could help educate employers’ said Kristen Broady, policy director of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project…‘And that,’ Broady said, ‘can help inform training around diversity and inclusion.’”

“Data from U.S. Census Household Pulse surveys charted by The Hamilton Project shows Black families with children are dealing with food insecurity at almost triple the rate of white families — nearly 30% compared to under 10%.”

“‘That could allow more Black men to become firefighters,’ said economist Kristen Broady at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project…‘They could actually become an EMT or a firefighter upon release, allowing them to earn significantly more money than they would have otherwise,’ Broady said.”

“Nationally, according to a report from [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, the P-EBT program significantly reduced hunger, led to a 30 percent reduction in the rate of children not getting enough to eat, and lifted 3.9 million children out of hunger.”

“We went into the present situation with trends that were less troubling than many believe. The pandemic may reverse that progress, so as students go back to school, educators need to focus on mitigating the harm from virtual instruction for low-income children.”

“More than half of the 700,000 U.S. jobs lost in March and 7 million of the 20 million jobs lost in April were in the leisure and hospitality sector, according to a report by Stevenson published in July as part of the Brookings Institution's The Hamilton Project.”

“During the Great Recession, individuals received more than $420 billion in stimulus payments, which helped keep households afloat and prevent further job loss, the Hamilton Project reported.”

“If the preconditions of new resources and mobilization are not credibly in place, a U.S. net zero 2050 initiative will not succeed and a net zero initiative should not be attempted.”

“Without swift and substantial action, the hardship tens of millions of Americans face is likely to continue — and grow more acute. Serious negotiations are long overdue.”

“Failing to do another round of stimulus is going to lead to a lot of pain in November, December, and January, because the underlying economic impact from the pandemic is still there.”

“Among low-income households with children who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, only about 15% have been getting those meals, said Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Brookings Institution.”

“Former CBO chief economist Wendy Edelberg said she doubted the latest increase in the size of the debt was significant in and of itself. ‘There’s no economic difference between a ratio of 99% and a ratio of 101%,’ she told The Wall Street Journal.”

“‘More children are skipping meals, and not having sufficient food, than we’ve ever recorded on record, right now - about one in five parents in the U.S say that their kids don’t have enough to eat and their families don’t have the resources to purchase more food,’ said Lauren Bauer, who is a Fellow in Economic Studies with the Brookings Institution.”

“‘There’s a lot of value in preserving the relationship between employers and their employees,’ Abraham said in a recent [Hamilton Project] webcast. Research from Brookings shows that 40% of all workers who are laid off get called back to work anyway.”

“According to the Hamilton Project, the percentage of households with children under 18 who said they didn’t have enough to eat increased from 15 percent in 2018 to 35 percent this past April.”

“Among households with children, one in three reported insufficient food, the highest level in the nearly two decades the government has tracked hunger in America, said Lauren Bauer, who studies food insecurity at the Brookings Institution. ‘What’s happening with children right now is unprecedented in modern times,’ Ms. Bauer said.”

“The Congressional Budget Office in Washington is warning that US government debt will likely surpass the size of the entire American economy next year; we hear from Wendy Edelberg, Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”

“‘It was a massive rise in borrowing and quite shocking, but incredibly effective,’ said former CBO chief economist Wendy Edelberg, who in June became director of the Hamilton Project, a think tank affiliated with the Brookings Institution. ‘On the flip side, this is exactly why we, as a country, want to have room to increase borrowing during times of emergency.’”

“‘It was a massive rise in borrowing and quite shocking, but incredibly effective,’ former CBO chief economist Wendy Edelberg, told the Wall Street Journal. ‘On the flip side, this is exactly why we, as a country, want to have room to increase borrowing during times of emergency.’”

“Former CBO chief economist Wendy Edelberg said she doubted the latest increase in the size of the debt was significant in and of itself. ‘There’s no economic difference between a ratio of 99% and a ratio of 101%,’ she told The Wall Street Journal.”

“The coronavirus is now the third leading cause of death among Black Americans, topped only by heart disease and cancer, according to a report from [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution published earlier this month.”

“So many families have lost jobs, they’ve lost income, but also schools are closed, and tens of millions of children eat two meals a day at schools. All of those factors are leading to an increase in food insecurity among families with children and among children themselves.”

“[Trevon] Logan co-authored the report titled, “The Hamilton Project, Racial Economic Inequality Amid the COVID-19 Crisis,” with Bradley L. Hardy of the American University in Northwest. ‘In 2020, more Black Americans will die of COVID-19 than will succumb to diabetes, strokes, accidents, or pneumonia. In fact, COVID-19 is currently the third leading cause of death for African Americans,’ Logan and Hardy concluded.”

“Black Americans are the U.S. demographic with the lowest median income, according to Brookings Institution’s The Hamilton Project, and they display the highest Covid-19 mortality rate in the country, over twice that of Whites and Asian Americans.”

“About 22 percent of the population has been food-insecure since the pandemic began, according to an April report by the Hamilton Project, an economic policy project of the Brookings Institution. For mothers with children 12 and younger, the figure is more than 40 percent, according to Lauren Bauer, who wrote the report.”

“‘When it comes to getting food to children, nothing should be off the table,’ said [Lauren] Bauer. ‘If we don’t extend the benefits and schools are closed, even more children will go hungry next year.’”

“Bringing more women, African Americans, and other underrepresented groups into the innovation process could increase GDP by more than 4%, according to a new policy proposal from The Hamilton Project.”

“Becoming healthier is a great goal, but government programs to encourage healthy eating will likely be a relatively small element in reducing Covid risks during the time that’s most needed.”

“According to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution: ‘By the end of April, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five households with mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure. In almost one in five households of mothers with children age 12 and under, the children were experiencing food insecurity.’”

“COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death among Black Americans, a new report from [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution says, according to CBS Radio Washington, D.C. affiliate WTOP.”

“Research from the Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution reveal that Covid-19 is the third-leading cause of death for Black Americans and the disproportionate health impact comes with economic consequences.”

“The health disparities are compounded by the economic ones as COVID-19 slams families already facing insecurity in food, housing and employment, said the report by researchers at the Hamilton Project.”

“‘In 2020 more Black Americans will die of COVID-19 than will succumb to diabetes, strokes, accidents, or pneumonia,’ the [Hamilton Project] study states.”

“Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, estimates that almost 12% of adults with kids at home who maintained their income still couldn’t afford to buy enough food for those children in the week ended July 21.”

“‘Black families and workers face not just pre-existing health conditions but also pre-existing economic disparities that made these families more vulnerable to this shock,’ said Bradley Hardy, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University and co-author of a new paper for Brooking’s Hamilton Project, in an online briefing Thursday.”

“It’s going to be about two years before just total GDP returns to the pre-virus levels, it’s going to be longer than that before the unemployment rate returns to the 3.5% we had before the virus struck, and 13 million Americans right at this moment had a job in February that they don’t have today.”

“The Hamilton Project’s study, ‘The Effect of Pandemic EBT on Measures of Food Hardship,’ tracked P-EBT’s effect on food hardship as measured by food insecurity, the share of households sometimes or often reporting not having enough to eat, and the share of households with very low food insecurity among children.”

“‘If we’re going to spend trillions of dollars, how can we try to invest in the future economy rather than prop up the past?’ This new health-care proposal is a good answer: Spend federal dollars to invest in the future, not to prop up the past.”

“We’re at a point of significant danger, in my opinion, for the economy because to the extent that any of the reports have been positive–the jobs numbers, etc.–a lot of that has come from very substantial economic support from the government. As that support is withdrawn and the economy is not yet back on its feet, that’s a point of maximal risk, if you will.”

“‘Households and businesses are really fragile right now. This is not a recovery that we should be confident in,’ said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and former head of the commission that investigated what went wrong in the 2008 financial crisis. ‘Government policy is not making it better right now. Policy is exacerbating uncertainty.’”



“‘I just don’t think it’s enough,’ Wendy Edelberg of the Brookings Institute’s Hamilton Project said of the Republican proposal. ‘Even as the labor market was improving, the one sector that has repeatedly had negative employment numbers is the state and local sector.’”

“Anyone who wants a stronger economy and more people back at work is right to want that. The way to get that is to have people spending more money, to have state and local governments not cutting back and laying people off, which on a non-seasonally adjusted basis they did again in the month of July, and to make sure that there’s enough demand in the economy.”

“An April survey co-sponsored by the Hamilton Project found that more than 40% of mothers with children age 12 and younger are food insecure, a 260% increase from 2018.”

“This is a bad situation, and it’s because we haven’t pursued a unified response across our states. The pandemic has gotten worse. A lot of the projections for the economic activity were expecting the pandemic to get better.”

“The Brookings Institution is adding Kristen Broady as policy director of the Hamilton Project.”

“Autonomous vehicles aren’t available to help people stay safe during the Covid-19 crisis, but they may be a key tool in future pandemics.”

“What we’ve found is that as Pandemic EBT rolled out through states across the country, it reduced very low food security among children – so this is kids who are skipping meals or not getting enough food – by 30%.”



“The Pandemic EBT program, created by Congress to help low-income families buy food for their children during school closures, ‘is hitting its target,’ said researchers at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution. ‘We find that Pandemic EBT reduces food hardship faced by children by 30 percent in the week following its disbursement.’”

“[The Hamilton Project’s] Recession Ready left a deep impression among some Democrats in Washington, and in many ways, it helped shape the party’s response to the coronavirus crisis. Two of its contributors, Washington Center for Equitable Growth economist Claudia Sahm and former Obama chief economist Jason Furman, were among the most vocal proponents of mailing checks to families (or, more often, wiring direct deposits).” 

“An emergency federal program created in March to offset the loss of school meals led to substantial short-term reductions in child hunger, according to a new analysis of census data by [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution...‘That’s a large reduction, from a rate that was disturbingly high,’ said Lauren Bauer, a Brookings researcher who was one of four co-authors on the study.”

“‘The GDP figures show how severely the economy suffered and could ‘jolt Congress into action’ heading into August, said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. ‘One thing that policymakers, and all of us readers of this report, can take from it is that this is the outcome we want to avoid,’ Edelberg said.”

“The Hamilton Project's Wendy Edelberg and Jay Shambaugh warn ‘widespread bankruptcies could fundamentally change the business landscape,’ leading to a substantial imbalance between companies and workers. ‘The COVID-19 recession is going to have scarring effects both on the business landscape and labor markets, and policy makers need to be preparing for those effects now,’ Edelberg told Axios earlier this month.”

“In a recent [Hamilton Project] essay David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds of Massachusetts Institute of Technology warn that such a dynamic could play out more widely.”

“Nearly 1 in 3 low-income families report having experienced food insecurity in the past 30 days, according to the Hamilton Project.”

“Low-income families have been hit hardest by the pandemic, with nearly a third facing food insecurity in the last month, according to an analysis by the Hamilton Project.”

“‘All of the above actually works,’ said Lauren Bauer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and moderator of the panel. ‘And there is so much need right now that we need an all-of-the-above strategy.’”

“This is all happening as the U.S. labor market undergoes a long-term transition and likely consolidation, with a smaller number of bigger companies moving to automation and more decentralized technology, Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells Axios...‘Those trends were already happening but they are being significantly accelerated,’ she says.”

“Lauren Bauer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution looking at severe problems among households with children, found the levels [of food insecurity] had risen nearly sixfold.”

“‘What happens when you can't pay your mortgage and you lost your job and have an economic hardship, you sell your home. So we could see a glut of homes for sale, and that will have its own devastating effect on housing prices and wealth, but that's a slow-moving crisis relatively speaking,’ Wendy Edelberg, director of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, told Newsweek. ‘The abrupt crisis staring us in the face is an eviction crisis among renters,’ she said.”

“Some 4.3 million essential workers in the U.S. earn under $10 an hour. ‘All told, more than 57.1 percent of essential front-line workers earn less than $20 per hour,’ [The Hamilton Project at] Brookings found.”

“That’s also about two and half times the number in 2008, the peak of food insecurity during the Great Recession, according to Lauren Bauer, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the newest data....‘The numbers we’re observing in June are higher than we’ve ever observed,’ Ms. Bauer said.”

“More than one in four households with children don’t have enough to eat, according to the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution.”

“‘It's not just that you don't have enough food,’ Lauren Bauer, Fellow with the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institute told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview. ‘It's that you don't have the money to go out to the grocery store and buy more, and you can imagine why that's spiked during the coronavirus,’ she added.”

“The net worth of a white family is now about 10 times that of a Black family, according to [The Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution.”

“Not only are we experiencing a recession right now and seeing unprecedented job losses, but it’s hard for families to get to the grocery store and food prices are spiking. Children have lost access to school meals. So all of these problems are combining to see an unprecedented set of difficulties, particularly for families with children.”

“A Hamilton Project analysis of previous incarnations of entrepreneurial assistance programs, dating back to the 1980s, points out that well-designed programs pay for themselves and that program benefits exceed the costs.”

“Nearly 14 million children lived in a household characterized by child food insecurity -- the lack of consistent access to enough food to live a healthy life -- in the third week in June, according to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“Two-thirds of industry leaders expect the pandemic to continue into the second half of 2021 or beyond — a notably longer time frame than that envisioned by many people in government. The danger is that federal fiscal support will be withdrawn before the pandemic is actually over, and then the underlying economic damage will become more visible.”

“Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said about one in four households are food insecure, meaning they don’t have enough food or enough resources to purchase food. Bauer said the response from policymakers in Washington has been inadequate. ‘I think the evidence is that regardless of what new programs have been in place, they haven’t done enough to support families and children,’ Bauer said.”

“A report by The Hamilton Project (a Brookings Institution initiative) conservatively estimated a 9 to 1 ratio of benefits to costs for delaying school start times.”

“‘We don’t know how the pandemic is going to unfurl, and we don’t know where the hot spots are going to be,’ said Wendy Edelberg, a former chief economist for the Congressional Budget Office and now the director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution.”

“13.9 million children are suffering from food insecurity, up from 2.5 million in 2018 and 5.1 million at the height of the Great Recession in 2008, according to Lauren Bauer of the Hamilton Project, who used data from the U.S. Census Bureau.”

“According to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, the average net worth of a white family in 2016 was $171,000. The average net worth of a Black family was $17,150.”

“'This is a horrendous time to have a lapse in benefits,’ said Wendy Edelberg, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘I expect households are living week to week, financially speaking.’”

“The coronavirus pandemic may leave the U.S. economy with a “missing generation” of start-ups and smaller firms that collapsed or were bought out, even as the biggest U.S. firms get bigger, according to a new essay by a former Obama-administration economist. Nancy Rose, the top economist at the Justice Department’s antitrust division from 2016 to 2018, will talk about her essayon how Covid may impact competition at an event hosted today by Brookings’ Hamilton Project.”

“Claudia Sahm, then a Federal Reserve economist, wrote in a [Hamilton Project] paper published last year that the movement of the unemployment rate could be used as a reliable indicator.”

“Across the country, states were initially slow in paying unemployment claims, but the pace of claim payments has accelerated, according to Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”

“The Hamilton Project has found that food insecurity in households with children has more than doubled over pre-pandemic levels nationwide, with one in three reporting insufficient food in April."

“With no such change for the better in sight, the next three months stand to reveal the underlying economic pain more vividly than the past three months have — because the massive fiscal assistance that governments offered when the pandemic first hit is soon going to fade.”

“‘What we’re seeing in the numbers so far is more an outcome of the cumulative negative effect of March, April and May than anything worsening with the pandemic in the last few weeks,’ Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells Axios.”

“Last month, nearly 14 million U.S. children lived in food-insecure households, according to a new report from [The Hamilton Project at] Brookings; at the peak of the Great Recession, that figure was 5.1 million.”

“‘If you’re not able to feed your children, it’s a pretty severe signal about your household’s capability to deal with financial shocks,’ said [Lauren] Bauer. Most of these families have run out of cushion to deal with the economic pain wrought by this pandemic.”

“During the last economic downturn, Black families experienced a 44.3% decline in median net worth, almost double that of White households, which only experienced a 26.1% drop, according to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“‘New data show that an unprecedented number of children in the United States are experiencing food insecurity and did not have sufficient food as of late June,’ wrote Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project.”

“Since mid-March, childhood hunger has risen to a rate three times higher than reported during the financial crisis of 2008, with nearly one in five households of mothers with children ages 12 and younger not getting enough to eat, according to a survey by [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution published in May.”

“The need for this kind of service is acute: An estimated 22 percent of the population is food-insecure since the pandemic hit, according to an April report by the Hamilton Project, an economic policy project of the Brookings Institution.”

“As of June 2020, more than 20 percent of American households are experiencing food insecurity, according to Dr. Lauren Bauer, a Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“Unfortunately, the Paycheck Protection Program to provide forgivable loans to small business, despite its enormous size and recently increased flexibility, failed to help micro businesses in the way it should have — as underscored by the new, infuriating disclosure that major lobbying and law firms, and other questionable recipients, received so much of this money.”

“Right now, it’s clear to all of us that the economy is a hostage to the virus…the depth of the economic problems are going to be determined by the duration of the pandemic. The economic problem is at its core a health problem and the two are inextricably linked.”

“The [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution found that, by the end of April, roughly 40 percent of families with children younger than 13 were food insecure, and the widespread school closures brought about by the pandemic have put an added strain on families’ grocery budgets.”

“Now, as Covid-19 ravages the economy, things have gotten even worse, especially for our most vulnerable. By mid-June there were more than 31 million people receiving unemployment insurance benefits and struggling to rely on unemployment systems that were never designed to handle a problem this vast.”

On July 1, 2020, Hamilton Project Director Wendy Edelberg joined the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on a press conference call to discuss the forthcoming jobs report and the need for strong federal action to address the ongoing jobs crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Proposals to reform the US corporate tax code by a 2005 commission appointed by President George W. Bush and recently from the Hamilton Project and the Centre for American Progress think-tanks try to correct the tax penalty of equity.”

“Wendy Edelberg, also a director of the Hamilton Project, noted in an email that reform will require changing the thinking of some key players. ‘Economists have seemed to take as inevitable the gap between wages for low and high-skill jobs,’ she wrote. But ‘that gap has, at least in part, been driven by policy decisions.’ Adverse policies, she wrote, ‘range from those making it more difficult for private-sector workers to unionize; to weakness in our education system and technical training; to massive incarceration rates; to a failure to raise the minimum wage.’ All are subject to change by elected officials and, she argued, ‘fixing some of those policies would help right away.’”

“Combining the effects of estate, income and payroll taxes, the average federal tax rate on income in the form of inheritances is a minuscule one-seventh of the average tax rate on income from saving and good old-fashioned hard work [according to a Hamilton Project paper].”

“‘We put a great deal of support into propping up the economy in the short run,’ says Jay Shambaugh, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘That prevented the immediate economic impacts from being much worse. But the economic impacts of the pandemic will last more than a handful of months. It is really important to tie the fiscal support to economic conditions…rather than have policies end with a cliff based on arbitrary timelines.’”

“That's why a new paper [from The Hamilton Project] titled ‘Reforming the patent system’ from Stanford academics Lisa Larrimore Ouellette and Heidi Williams stands out. The pair propose a series of reforms which they claim could be fairly easily implemented to improve the patent system – but not one is focused on tweaking 101.”

“After all, this country was built with free labor on the backs of African Americans and a large majority of whites still benefit greatly from that generational wealth. The Brookings Institution and the Hamilton Project show that the median white family has a net worth of $171,000, a dramatic difference compared to the median Black family's net worth of just $17,600.”

“As a matter of equity, efficiency and revenue collection, the case for a significant investment in tax compliance is clear. The result would be a much-needed increase in tax revenue — and more importantly, a fairer society.”

“Unemployment — including $600 a week in federal pandemic benefits — will be crucial to keeping families afloat, said Jay Shambaugh, director at the Hamilton Project. And unless Congress extends them, those federal benefits will run out on July 31.”

“But the racial wealth gap is not a new problem. As of 2016, the net worth of a typical white family was nearly 10 times greater than that of a Black family ($171,000 vs. $17,150), according to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institute.”

“‘You have this very targeted pain to certain people, but a broader group of people who are feeling nothing,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank.”

“According to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, the average net worth of a white family, about $171,000, is almost 10 times greater than that of a black family’s $17,150.”

“Wendy Edelberg is now director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. She previously was chief economist for the Congressional Budget Office. She is succeeding Jay Shambaugh, who is returning to his full-time position at George Washington University.”

“Our country is engaged in an important national conversation about race. And a critical piece of that conversation must be how to overcome poverty. Far too little has been done for far too long — including in the coronavirus relief bills passed by Congress.”

“Williams expanded on the proposal Wednesday afternoon during a panel talk hosted by The Hamilton Project, a research arm of the Brookings Institution focusing on economic growth that published the proposal.”

“In a 2018 paper for the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, American University's Bradley Hardy, Ohio State University's Trevon Logan, and the College of William & Mary's John Parman explored the topic of economic mobility among Black citizens.”

“Assuming we meet this challenge and cushion the blow with more fiscal support, the question must shift to the end game. Will we continue to socialize the costs of the dislocation without end until the pandemic ceases? And if we’re going to spend trillions of dollars, how can we try to invest in the future economy rather than prop up the past?”

“In addition to crime, impoverished children are harmed significantly by lack of parental support. The Hamilton Project reports that 70% of families below the federal poverty level are headed by just one parent.”

“Long-standing wealth disparities leave black entrepreneurs with fewer funds to fall back on during the downturn. The typical black family had a net worth of $17,150 in 2016, a tenth of the $171,000 held by white families, according to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“‘What we are staring at is extraordinarily high rates of childhood food insecurity now, even with an ongoing policy response,’ says Lauren Bauer, an economics fellow at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution who conducted the Brookings analysis. ‘And looking toward the summer ... I anticipate that childhood food insecurity is going to get worse.’”

“Drone footage of seemingly endless lines of cars waiting to pick up food from pantries in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas convey the scope of our new reality, in which food insecurity is meaningfully higher than at any point for which there is comparable data, as a study by [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution found.”

“It was good news that the economy added 2.5 million jobs last month. But we are still only one-tenth of the way to repairing the massive labor market damage caused by the novel coronavirus.”

“According to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., the median net worth for white households has been much greater than that of black households over the past 30 years.”

“‘A wealth gap reflects current gaps in income, but is also linked to historical inequality as some wealth is inherited or accumulated via family advantages,’ says Brookings senior fellow Jay Shambaugh.”

“Economic research [by The Hamilton Project] of the Great Recession found that increasing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — colloquially known as food stamps — was one of the largest stimulants to economic activity. SNAP generated $1.74 of economic activity for every $1 of government spending invested in the program.”

“More than 50 years later, while black Americans’ educational attainment has improved, home ownership, unemployment and incarceration rates have changed little. The wealth gap is stunning, with [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution finding median net worth of black households just 10% that of whites.”

“‘Overall, food insecurity hasn’t decreased,’ said Lauren Bauer of [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution on social media.”

“For instance, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly 10 times that of black households, at $171,000 to $17,150, respectively, according to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“There is also a persistent racial wealth gap. In 2016, the net worth of a typical white family was $171,000 in 2016, compared with $17,150 for a black family, [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution found.”

“Most households spend most of their income on necessities, such as food, shelter, transportation, health care and clothing. Low-income households typically spend 82% of their income on those five categories, while middle-class families spend 78% of theirs, according to researchers at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“A [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution report from February showed a widening racial wealth gap. While a typical white family’s net worth is $171,000, a typical Black family’s is almost ten times less at $17,150.”

“The lack of access to land is a big part of the racial wealth gap in the U.S. According to [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, that gap has actually increased in the last 70 years.”

“My bet: By the end of the summer, we will see that without enormous additional fiscal stimulus (whether or not it’s focused on building the future) or getting lucky on the virus (either because it mutates into a less potent form or because effective drugs become available sooner than anticipated), we still face a very long ordeal ahead.”

“‘We’re already way past [prior] recessions,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank. ‘Do we push this to 20% and stay there for a few quarters? If the unemployment rate is 20% in December, I think it’s very fair to say we’re in a depression.’”

“The wealth gap persists even for African Americans in the top 10% of U.S. incomes: Their wealth comes to $343,160, less than one-fifth of the $1.79 million for whites in the top 10%, according to government numbers compiled by [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“A study by the Brooking Institution’s Hamilton Project estimated that more than one-third of the workers deemed essential during the lockdowns were black (16%) and Hispanic (21%).”

“$17,150. That was the median net worth of black households in 2016, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution notes. The median net worth of a white family at the same time was $171,000—nearly ten times as much.”

“But the data shows a ‘huge hole,’ Jay Shambaugh, an economist at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, told the outlet. ‘There's a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.’”

“State-level data on assets by race are limited, but nationwide the cumulative effect of inequality and discrimination ‘can be traced back to this nation’s inception,’ according to a February study by [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, which detailed how inherited wealth has buoyed white families over generations.”

“The same Fed survey, as analyzed by the Brookings Institution and The Hamilton Project, shows that the median white family has a net worth of $171,000, a dramatic difference compared to the median black family’s net worth of just $17,600.”

“‘The idea you would see job gains and the unemployment rate falling was not something really that people were expecting,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at the [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution. ‘But a 13.3 percent unemployment rate is higher than any point in the Great Recession. It represents massive joblessness and economic pain.’”

“The survey’s results appear to reflect those of similar studies conducted amid the pandemic, including one conducted by The Hamilton Project. In it, mothers with young children (under 12) were asked to evaluate their food security during that month.”

“Another study, the Survey of Mothers with Young Children [from The Hamilton Project], said 40.9 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under reported household food insecurity since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.”

“‘Whatever optimism there is from seeing some people return to work, we’re not seeing a drastic move off unemployment,’ said Jay Shambaugh, a senior fellow at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution. ‘If anything we’re seeing a stable number of people on unemployment.’”

“We will see the first part of the recovery will be fast, maybe the unemployment rate falling one percentage point per month, maybe more than that, but then the second part of the recovery is going to be harder, when the unemployment rate starts falling one percentage point per year. So, I expect us to see some very good numbers over the next couple of months.”

“For people of color in America, a similar dynamic has played out over centuries. The typical white family had 10 times as much money as a typical black family did in 2016, according to a recent [The Hamilton Project at] Brookings survey, which delves into the historical roots of that disparity dating back to slavery.”

“The argument that I’ve tried to make over the years to businesspeople is having a stable social foundation in the United States upon which we can build our businesses is in their vital self-interest. Even if they don’t agree with me philosophically on the political and social elements of the problem, they have a vital personal self-interest in having social stability in our country.”

“There’s ‘a huge hole,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at [The Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution who has been tracking the unemployment payments. ‘There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.’”

“According to a report published in February by [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank, the net worth of a typical black family in 2016 was $17,150, while the equivalent figure for a white family was 10 times greater at $171,000 — leading its authors to conclude that American society ‘does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.’”

“In normal times, school meals are critical in helping low-income kids get enough to eat, according to Lauren Bauer, a fellow at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution. Since the pandemic forced schools shut, ‘what’s stood up in place of the program hasn’t reached all eligible families, creating a huge burden to provide three meals a day when kids are at home.’”

“A typical graduate with a bachelor’s degree will earn $1.19 million over his or her lifetime, compared with $855,000 for someone with an associate degree and $580,000 for a high school graduate, the economic think tank The Hamilton Project calculates.”

“‘There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at the [The Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution who has been studying the issue.”

“Millions of people across the nation and Illinois are feeling real and significant pain due to the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic. More than 5,000 Illinois residents have died and more than 117,000 have been infected. What’s more, over 1 million people across our state are now unemployed and thousands of our businesses are on the brink.”

“More than 40% of mothers with children age 12 and under said in April that the food they bought didn't last and they didn't have enough money to get more, up from about 15% in 2018, according to a recent survey from [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution.”

“In May, according to an analysis from the Hamilton Project, states accounting for 88 percent of the labor force have been able to implement the expanded benefits, compared with only 24 percent a few weeks earlier.”

“‘The idea that — at an unemployment rate drastically higher than at the worst part of the great recession — we’re going to pull back support is just unbelievable,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy arm of the Brookings Institution.”

“One criticism of expanded UI is that state agencies that administer the program lack sufficient administrative capacity. This was a very significant problem initially, but it does appear that agencies are working through backlogs and distributing an increasing level of benefits. An analysis by Ryan Nunn, Jana Parsons, and Jay Shambaugh estimates that a little over half of wages and salaries lost in April were replaced with UI payments.”

“An analysis by the [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution found one in five households in the US were deemed food insecure by the end of April. Food banks have seen shortages in light of increased demand as millions of families struggle to pay for groceries. The analysis found the situation is worse for families with children: two in five households with mothers and children under the age of 12 are food insecure.”

“According to a [Hamilton Project at] Brookings analysis, almost 35 percent of households with children said they did not have sufficient food, that's 14 percent higher than during the recession.”

“Since the pandemic began, rates of hunger have increased dramatically across the nation. A study released this month by the [the Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution found that 2 in 5 households with children under age 12 were ‘food insecure,’ meaning they regularly did not have enough to eat.”

“Wisconsin was the last state to begin issuing the $600-a-week in supplemental unemployment benefits from the federal government, according to The Hamilton Project, an initiative by the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institute. Wisconsin first began sending payments on April 29 and has paid over $870 million inbenefits.”

“During economic downturns, people who suffer job losses tend to be out of work for longer periods of time, and they tend to experience lifetime earnings losses of about 19 percent over the following twenty-five years, according to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”

“All signs show child hunger is soaring. In a survey of mothers with young children by the [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution, nearly a fifth said their children were not getting enough to eat — a rate three times higher than the worst of the Great Recession.”

“Workers' demands and external pressure are inextricable from workers' gains during the pandemic. Throughout history, visceral safety concerns have served as workers' breaking point, forcing them to take collective action against employers, said Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project.”

“A new study from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution found that nearly one in five mothers report that kids in their homes are not eating enough because they can’t afford food — the highest number on record.”

“Since the pandemic began, according to the [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution, 17 percent of moms with children 12 and under say their kids are not eating enough because they can’t afford food. That’s a 460% increase from 2018.”

“In a series of tweets Wednesday evening, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) pointed to a Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution analysis showing that boosted unemployment benefits offset around half of all lost wages and salaries in April.”

“It’s not that we necessarily need one, or two, or three trillion dollars passed today or tomorrow, […] there just are some things that were missed [in the previous bills] -- and I would say the biggest one is a lack of support to state and local governments.”

“But despite a surge in individual workers’ productivity since the 1970s, real annual wage growth has been sluggish, rising just under 0.2 percent between 1973 and 2017, a Hamilton Project analysis found.” 

“It takes a lot for a mother to admit on a survey that she's not able to feed her children. So we do think children are skipping meals and that the meals that they are getting are not sufficiently nutritious and not sufficiently filling.”

“According to a study by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, Florida didn’t start processing PUA applications until April 25. By that time, the Hamilton Project reports 21 other states were already processing PUA applications.”

“The combined $48 billion paid out in April is the equivalent of more than triple the amount distributed at the monthly peak of the Great Recession, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new report from The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution.”

“The combined $48 billion paid out in April is the equivalent of more than triple the amount distributed at the monthly peak of the Great Recession, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new report from The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution.”

“’Normally, if you're eligible for unemployment insurance, it's because your employer has been paying into the insurance system, and as part of paying in, they're reporting your earnings,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project. Because the apps do not do this, gig workers have to show proof of their earnings, so the state knows how much to give them in unemployment benefits.”

“’We’re already way past [prior] recessions,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank. ‘Do we push this to 20% and stay there for a few quarters?’”

“The state Department of Economic Opportunity announced that applications were open for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program on April 25. By then, 21 other states were already processing applications, according to the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.”

“Even so, a [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution study suggests that in April unemployment benefits offset about half the wages lost because of the lockdown — an estimate that matches my own back-of-the-envelope calculations.”

“Until we implement covid-19 testing that produces representative results, it is impossible to know the current prevalence of the disease or of past infection in the population. Policymakers need this information to navigate between the goals of protecting health and reopening the economy; without it, we all pay the cost in lives and livelihoods.”

“‘The unemployment insurance probably covered about half of the drop in personal wage and salary income,’ said Hamilton Project director Jay Shambaugh. ‘It’s not that everybody’s getting half as much unemployment insurance as they should. It’s really more — half of people are getting covered, and half are getting nothing right now.’”

“Nearly a third told us they have stopped operating entirely. For the smallest businesses — those run by the self-employed or for personal income — the situation is worse. More than half are no longer operating. That is especially bad for women, who run the majority of these businesses.”

“‘I think [the pandemic] is going to mark a fairly profound structural change,’ [Larry] Summers said. ‘We’re going to have very substantial increases in inequality, and a very substantial reduction in any sense of solidarity in our society, unless the government steps up and meets this challenge.’”

“On the other side of the aisle a former member of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, Jay Shambaugh also talks to ‘States of Mind’ about how Joe Biden needs to push past the political scars from the past when outlining his plans to tackle the coronavirus economic downturn.”

“The [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution has reported that more than one in five households nationally were food insecure by the end of April. The Connecticut Food Bank, which services 270,000 people in its region, projects that the pandemic will result in as many as 187,000 additional state residents becoming food insecure.”

“The Hamilton Project/Future of the Middle Class Initiative Survey of Mothers with Young Children found that 17 percent of moms with children 12 and under reported that the kids in their households haven’t eaten enough since the lockdowns began, ‘because we just couldn’t ­afford enough food.’ In 2018, that figure was 3.1 percent.”

“The pandemic has laid bare contradictions in the country’s food system. As farmers report rotting crops and dumping milk, hunger is growing. A [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution analysis found nationwide nearly one in five families with children under 12 are experiencing food insecurity. California parents are also struggling to feed their families, and food banks are seeing demand dramatically increase.”

“Research from the [Hamilton Project at] Brookings Institution indicates that the $48 billion in unemployment spending only offset roughly half of wage loss among workers in April, not because the recent unemployment legislation did not call for more support, but because of delays in distributing unemployment and because many unemployed workers have not been able to successfully file for unemployment.”

“The payments have accelerated in May. But according to Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings, the tens of billions of dollars in back benefits that are still owed to people speaks to what remains a huge need in an economy roiled by the health crisis and lockdowns. The effectiveness of the fiscal response rolled out in the past six weeks remains hard to judge, he said.”

“‘Many of these workers are likely to be disproportionately harmed in the recession that started in March 2020,’ a team of researchers at the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a report published earlier this month. ‘Whereas traditional workers are often buffered to some extent from changing macroeconomic conditions by their long-term relationship with an employer, nontraditional workers often have no such protection.’”

“For every meal that is provided through a food bank, SNAP provides nine meals, which is why it’s very important, particularly as we are seeing rising food prices, that we see benefit increases there to start solving this issue.”

“The U.S. Treasury sent out more than $48 billion in unemployment payments in April, greater than three times the amount paid at the monthly peak of the 2007-09 recession, according to a [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution analysis. The April unemployment payments helped offset more than half of the wages and salaries that were lost during the month, Brookings researchers estimated.”

“The combined $48 billion paid out in April is the equivalent of more than triple the amount distributed at the monthly peak of the Great Recession, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new report from The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution.”

“States paid a record $48 billion in unemployment benefits last month as the coronavirus pandemic caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs. But the payout could have been much larger — about double — were it not for administrative delays among states, according to an analysis from researchers [from the Hamilton Project] at the Brookings Institution.”

“Via The Hamilton Project at Brookings: ‘In March 2020, UI payments only offset less than 15 percent of the drop in wage and salary income; In April 2020, UI payments offset over 50 percent of the private sector income wages and salary lost.’”

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, rates of household food insecurity have doubled and the rates of childhood food insecurity have quadrupled, according to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”

“Let’s begin with hunger. According to Lauren Bauer, writing for The Brookings Institution last week, food insecurity has exploded among families with kids. ‘By the end of April, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five households with mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure.’”

“Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, said that low unemployment often makes organizing more difficult. But, he said, visceral safety concerns have convinced workers to organize throughout history.”

“Unfortunately, our automatic stabilizers [citing The Hamilton Project] were never robust enough. Worse, the Trump administration and state governments have made automatic stabilizers much less automatic and stabilizing by adding red tape and reducing programs’ generosity in recent years.”

“The Hamilton Project's data shows 17.4% of mothers with children 12 and under say since the beginning of the pandemic, ‘the children in my household were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food.’”

“As a [Hamilton Project at] Brookings report last week detailed: “By the end of April, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five households with mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure. In almost one in five households of mothers with children age 12 and under, the children were experiencing food insecurity.”

“‘Looking at the historical data, temporary layoffs tend to be quite short in duration,’ said Ryan Nunn, policy director for the Hamilton Project and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘A little more than half of them last four weeks or less.’”

“A new study out of Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project shows households with young children are among the most vulnerable to food insecurity. In all, 1 in 5 children in the United States are not getting enough to eat.”

“Nearly one in five children 12 and younger are not getting enough to eat — three times the rate reported during the Great Recession in 2008 — according to a survey released Wednesday by the [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution. The survey of mothers found that in homes with children, food insecurity reached almost 35 percent.”

“’Overall rates of household food insecurity have effectively doubled,’ [The Hamilton Project at] Brookings wrote in its report, released Wednesday. Brookings looked at two online surveys — one conducted on behalf of the Data Foundation, and the others for affiliates of the Brookings Institution, which asked questions taken from the USDA’s 2018 food security questionnaire.”

“Children have been particularly affected by the dramatic rise in U.S. food insecurity, rising food prices and sharp unemployment in the U.S. According to a new study from the Brookings Hamilton Project, a shocking number of U.S. families are hurting for basic funds and supplies.”

“Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow in economic studies who led the study, called the findings ‘alarming.’ ‘These are households cutting back on portion sizes, having kids skip meals. The numbers are much higher than I expected,’ she added.”

“Before the coronavirus crisis hit in the U.S., many women already worked a “double shift,” doing their jobs, then returning to a home where they were responsible for the majority of childcare and domestic work. Now, homeschooling kids and caring for sick or elderly relatives during the pandemic is creating a "double double shift." It’s pushing women to the breaking point.”

“In weighing this request, Congress and the White House must determine whether there is a valid macroeconomic rationale for a significant additional tranche of flexible state funding and whether the federal government can afford it. The answer to both questions is a resounding yes.”

“Nearly a fifth of young children in the United States are not getting enough to eat since the coronavirus pandemic erupted, according to research [from The Hamilton Project] out Wednesday highlighting the broader health impact of the crisis.”

“The new research by the Brookings Institution underscores the rising need. Analyzing data from the COVID Impact Survey, a nationally representative sample, Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow in economic studies, found that nearly 23 percent of households said they lacked money to get enough food, compared with about 16 percent during the worst of the Great Recession.”

“In households with children aged 12 and under, nearly one in five children weren’t getting enough to eat, according to a survey by two affiliates of the Brookings Institution… ‘Young children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times,’ wrote Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the results of the survey.”

“Analyzing further results from the Survey of Mothers with Young Children, [Lauren] Bauer also found that ‘that 40.9 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under reported household food insecurity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.’ Since 2018, Bauer continued, the share of mothers with children under 12 who report ‘that the food that they bought did not last’ has jumped by 170 percent.”

“’This is alarming,’ Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow in economic studies, told the New York Times. ‘These are households cutting back on portion sizes, having kids skip meals. The numbers are much higher than I expected.’”

“Children in the U.S. are currently experiencing food insecurity that is ‘unprecedented in modern times,’ Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project wrote on Wednesday.”

“More than 40% of mothers with children under the age of 12 in the United States said that they have experienced food insecurity since the COVID-19 crisis began, according to a survey co-conducted by the Hamilton Project, a dramatic rise that demonstrates how far-reaching the effects of the outbreak are.”

“’Food insecurity in households with children under 18 has increased by about 130 percent from 2018 to today,’ Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow in economic studies, wrote. ‘Looking over time, particularly to the relatively small increase in child food insecurity during the Great Recession, it is clear that young children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times,’ she continued.”

“Moreover, this economic slowdown is a price we do not have to pay. We could substantially reduce transmission, save lives and permit the safe acceleration of reopening — if we are willing to commit the necessary resources.”

“A key reason the pandemic will shift us forcefully toward stakeholder capitalism is that the government will remain more directly involved in the economy for an extended period. With a larger role for government comes more focus on stakeholders beyond shareholders.”

“The average federal tax on estates big enough to face taxation is just 2.1%, and loopholes provide many ways to lower that. The Brookings Institution’sHamilton Project proposes taxing inherited wealth at the same rate as labor income, with an exemption threshold of $1 million or more that would exclude most families.”

“The Hutchins Family Foundation is proud to bring together international humanitarian relief organization CARE with the National Action Network to launch CARE’s first-ever domestic relief program in response to COVID-19 with “CARE Packages” of 135,000 nutritious meals… This initiative, which launches the inaugural domestic CARE Package®, is being made possible by a gift from the Hutchins Family Foundation, founded by Debbie and Glenn Hutchins.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic will likely leave us with an economy in which larger companies play an expanded role, representing a higher share of both employment and revenue. The stock market illustrates the phenomenon: The biggest firms have seen smaller stock market declines, on average, than smaller ones have. It’s the corporate version of the Matthew effect: The strong get stronger.”

“I think the prospects for the economy are very complicated. It's hard to see how we're going to come out of this very fast because, in order to reopen, we've got to be able to test.”

“A report by Jay Shambaugh, Director, The Hamilton Project in Brookings, this week, says that using economic data-based triggers can ensure appropriate fiscal support that is aligned with economic conditions, to counter the financial turbulence created by the pandemic.”

“Number one, we need to stay prudent in terms of the pace [of social distancing]. Number two, we need to be making massive investments, with effectiveness, in testing, contact tracing, masks, and infrastructure to support distancing.”

“Given these political differences, it’s not hard to imagine that the summer of 2020 will be characterized by vast differences across states in the stringency of testing requirements and social distancing measures, including how forcefully they are re-applied when the virus inevitably surges.”

“Research has shown that chronic absenteeism can have devastating consequences, such as weaker social skills, difficulties mastering how to read, lower GPA in middle school and higher high school dropout rates, according to research conducted by The Hamilton Project and Attendance Works.”

“In late March, Dean sent a letter to House leadership calling for ongoing direct cash payments along the same lines as a Senate proposal from Senators Cory Booker, Michael Bennett, and Sherrod Brown based on a November proposal from economist Claudia Sahm for The Hamilton Project.”

“Today, as our nation grapples with the worst pandemic in living memory, policymakers’ immediate focus is on containing the virus, caring for the sick and providing near-term economic aid and stimulus. But, while remaining focused on those imperatives, officials must begin planning when and how to regenerate economic life for the shorter and longer term.”

“‘The pandemic unemployment assistance is available to folks who are not eligible under pre-crisis state rules. That includes the self-employed and independent contractors who don’t have hours and earnings history and who don’t have sufficient history,’ Ryan Nunn, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.”

Deteriorating economic conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have made it even more difficult for many low-income households, including those with children, to afford groceries. Lauren Bauer and Diane Schanzenbach outline policy options to preserve the public safety and food security of children during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Moving to electronic grocery vouchers will help protect the public health, because school meal sites themselves are hot spots for COVID-19 community spread. In at least 45 states, school districts have had to suspend or alter their meal distribution programs for breaks or because someone working at the program has tested positive for COVID-19.”

“The pandemic and subsequent recovery will accelerate the ongoing digitalization and automation of work—trends that have eroded middle-skill jobs while increasing high-skill jobs during the last two decades and contributed to the stagnation of median wages and rising income inequality.”

“Howard Monroe of the Watch Dog Morning Show spoke with The Hamilton Project Fellow Lauren Bauer about SNAP benefits.”

“’You do need a range of opinions and a range of experiences,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at George Washington University and director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. ‘This is one of those cases where the minority report is really important — you need people who aren’t all thinking the same thing.’”

“In contrast, when the world's finance and central bank governors convene virtually this week for the semiannual International Monetary Fund-World bank meetings, there will be steps taken to fortify the international system, but nothing comparable to what countries are doing domestically.”

“In May 2019, long before the novel coronavirus emerged, The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution put out a book proposing a range of automatic stabilizers that could be built into the economy to protect against recessions. The New Democrat Coalition has used the project and its director, Jay Shambaugh, as a resource in developing its ideas.”

“Former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman discusses how the U.S. should go about reopening the economy.”

“To mitigate this risk, countries need a ‘too connected to fail’ policy — to provide liquidity to companies whose bankruptcies stand to have the largest ripple effects. This is the real economy equivalent of the too-big-to-fail strategy during the last financial crisis.”

“It is clear we must continue to make these types of investments in our cities and state if we want to see a strong, stable economic recovery from COVID-19... Economists of all stripes, from the Cato Institute to the Hamilton Project, agree that timing is critical.”

“Even temporary layoffs can lead to permanent separation over a few months, said Ryan Nunn, a policy director with [The Hamilton Project at] Brookings. ‘I think we can mitigate the economic disruptions caused by this crisis if we manage to largely preserve that network of employment relationships that existed before the pandemic,’ Mr. Nunn said.”

“Our nation is facing a once-in-a-generation challenge in the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis. These events will define us for decades to come, and we can only hope that we will be defined by the wisdom and courage of our response rather than by the failures that led us to this tragic place. It lies with us now to make policy choices that shape our recovery so that we emerge a better and more resilient nation. We should build, deliberately, on the temporary measures of the recently passed CARES Act to strengthen our safety net and make necessary human capital investments.”

“The food stamps program stimulates the economy when it needs it most, by expanding when people need help the most, said Lauren Bauer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributor to a new report that looks at the Trump administration’s food stamp rule.”

“’I think the more oversight the better, in part because we really do need to get money out the door fast,’ Peter Orszag said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” ‘If you don’t have any oversight at all, you’re just asking for trouble. There will be more fraud than is necessary.’”

Hamilton Project Director Jay Shambaugh outlines fiscal policy options to reduce the human and economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It is now clear that the U.S. economy is in a recession that began in March. Policymakers have stepped up, but they will need to do more to prevent this recession from causing even more damage.”

“’It’s not clear to me that just paying everyone’s payroll would be that much easier’ and thus could have been done quickly enough to keep small businesses from laying off workers, [Jay] Shambaugh says. He also notes the SBA loans are funding 100% of wages for small businesses for two months, as well as other operating costs.”

“If we put the public-health problems behind us, I think then there is the prospect for quite rapid recovery, but we are a long way from putting the public-health problems behind us.”

“Moreover, gender gaps in employment and wages narrowed but remained large, and women continued to confront unique challenges as workers, consumers, and savers.”

“As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to overwhelm health systems and economies across the world, four aspects of what lies ahead are becoming clear.”

“The Fed’s ability to identify and implement appropriate tools will be critical to its success in this new role. It is vital that the central bank succeeds in mitigating the pandemic’s damage to the economy.”

“The uncertainty is a major problem for businesses trying to hold on, said Ryan Nunn, policy director for the Hamilton Project. Beyond eight weeks, Nunn said, employees might start giving up on returning to their former employer and take whatever work might be available.”

“During the novel coronavirus outbreak, the burden on public health systems in states experiencing severe outbreaks could make these financial pressures even worse.”

“’Whether we call this hazard pay or not, certainly workers who are incurring some amount of unavoidable risk from COVID deserve additional pay,’ Ryan Nunn, policy director at Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project told ABC News, adding, ‘It's great to see employers doing this.’”

“Professor and economist Laura Tyson served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration. She joins Judy Woodruff to discuss whether delivery of federal aid to the unemployed will come soon enough and why the duration of this recession is so difficult to predict.”

“The youngest workers suffered most during the 2008 financial crisis, according to research by The Hamilton Project.”

“Right now, with low interest rates, we don't need that much economic growth to start getting the debt on a downward path after all of this is over. I would worry about that after all of this is over.”

“There are a number of jobs that can't be done and home and aren't essential in the time of coronavirus...My guess is that we're less than halfway through the increase in unemployment insurance claims.”

“’Non-compete agreements have been used for many years by employers who claimed that agreements were necessary to prevent departing employees from sharing their trade secrets,’ says Ryan Nunn, the report’s principal author, in a recent phone interview.”

“’It’s not clear that businesses would stay open if the shutdowns were lifted. No one is going to go out because they will worry about the disease,’ says Jay Shambaugh, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration.”

“Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about why health care prices are so high and how we can improve future outcomes. He’s an author of a new report published by The Hamilton called “A Dozen Facts about the Economics of the U.S. Healthcare System.”

“’You have to keep your payroll intact,’ said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. ‘The amount of loan forgiveness gets reduced if you reduce your payroll substantially.’”

“A new paper from Michael Greenstone and Vishan Nigam, both of the University of Chicago, estimates that moderate social distancing would save 1.7 million lives in the next six months, an astronomical number largely due to not overwhelming hospital systems.”

“’We don’t want states to say they can’t hire teachers or anybody else because they spent all their money on the coronavirus,’ says Jay Shambaugh, director of the left-leaning Hamilton Project think tank and who was an economic adviser to President Obama.”

“The US economy has almost certainly entered a contraction due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“I think we need to be investing, in a way far beyond what we are, in developing an infrastructure for widespread testing, widespread contact tracing, and widespread separation of those who are sick and those who are most vulnerable. We need to be at a wartime mobilization level.”

“I think the highest priority right now would be to add enough money for state and local governments, for mayors to take care of their people. That's the first priority. Second priority is, we have got to be on a wartime footing with respect to getting tests, with respect to getting protective equipment, with respect to getting ventilators to take care of people.”

“We are now learning that a statement made in a paper by The Hamilton Project was prophetic: ‘The health care sector is in many ways the most consequential part of the United States economy.’”

“One thing I will say broadly when you look at it, is, it often is getting described as a stimulus package, including by the people writing it, but I think we shouldn’t think of it purely as stimulus as much as economic support. You’re trying to cushion a downturn and set conditions for a recovery. We’re not trying to make the economy go super-fast today.”

“With job cuts hitting U.S. states as governors and companies order offices and workplaces closed, African Americans and Latinos are particularly vulnerable because they more often have jobs that cannot be done at home. 'That will make them more severely impacted by an extended coronavirus shutdown of the economy,' said Jay Shambaugh a White House economist during Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration.”

“It's an open question but a better than a 50/50 bet that we'll need another more conventional fiscal stimulus later.”

“Economist Jay Shambaugh suggested a better way to stimulate the economy amid the coronavirus scare would be to simply send a check to Americans, similar to the tax rebates given to taxpayers as part of a stimulus bill approved in 2008 under Bush.”

“Furman also supports massive investments in fighting the virus, unemployment insurance and other parts of a comprehensive approach to help Americans during the crisis. But he believes sending checks is an efficient and quick way to help people pay their bills and stimulate the economy.”

“But loosening restrictions too early and resuming public life could lead to tighter crackdown in the future, according to Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution.”

“Prematurely abandoning or relaxing social distancing will be disastrous on both economic and health grounds. If restrictions are lifted prematurely, the result will be a follow-on pandemic surge.”

As we find ourselves preparing for the increased likelihood that millions of Americans are about to lose their jobs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, what can be done to mitigate the suffering this crisis is beginning to inflict? Ryan Nunn outlines policy options to bolster the unemployment insurance system during the economic crisis. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, but it is rapidly becoming an economic one as well. Jay Shambaugh explores fiscal policy options to preserve health and stimulate the economy. 

“By all indications, if unabated, the economic damage Americans experience resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic could be severe, with a far sharper downturn than a typical recession.”

“One of the first lines of defense in any recession is the unemployment insurance (UI) system. The UI system has stabilized the lives of many workers and their families in previous recessions, but it has serious weaknesses that we must remedy now.”

“One thing is clear about stimulus measures in this crisis: Bigger is better. To my mind, the least-worst option is a large and comprehensive program of loans to businesses, as Sorkin has proposed, which could be extended quarterly and limited in the first instance to a share of 2019 revenue.”

“’This is unusual in that it may prove faster acting than past downturns,’ Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, told The New York Times. ‘The drop in oil prices and drop in financial markets alone, and when you add those to the impact of the virus and the hit to global demand, at some point that has spillovers to the U.S. economy.’”

“’It’s going to be a big problem,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior economics fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘Unemployment is going to be where we see the economic damage, and is rising, frankly, faster than we expected just a week or two ago.’”

“Unemployment was 3.5% in February, and Ryan Nunn at the Brookings Institution said it’s likely to start rising sharply. ‘If we do get to rates of unemployment like those we saw in the Great Recession, the consequences will be quite, quite bad,’ Nunn said.”

“The Hamilton Project is a group that makes policy proposals for growing economies. It studied this issue. The group says on any given day almost a half million people occupy county and city jails despite not having been convicted of a crime.”

“’It’s not going to trigger off with the economic indicators, it triggers off with the public health indicators,’ said Brookings Institution fellow Lauren Bauer. ‘It’s going to be really hard for states to keep people on the SNAP rolls if they turn off that public health emergency before the economy recovers.’”

“But who gets benefits and how much they receive does vary dramatically by state, Evermore says. Florida, for example, approves just one in 10 of those filing for unemployment, while in North Dakota about 65% of the unemployed receive benefits, according to recent research from the Tax Policy Center [Ryan Nunn].”

“Jay Shambaugh, an economist who directs The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, said that some observers have likened the current situation to the economic disruption caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But in those days, he noted, ‘People were saying, “The patriotic thing is to go out and live your life.” Here, the patriotic thing is to stay at home... [That’s] very unusual for the economy.’”

“But one thing’s for sure: ‘States are going to face pretty rapidly increasing claims,’ said Ryan Nunn, policy director for the Hamilton Project, a center affiliated with the Brookings Institution.”

"Similar to increased lending in general, the Hamilton Project has proposed 'targeted lending/cushions based on supply chain bottlenecks.'"

"Jay Shambaugh, director of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, says a payroll tax cut wouldn’t help the unemployed and would give more money to high-income households who need it less since it’s based on a percentage of income. It also would dribble out over time as workers get their paychecks."

"Jay Shambaugh, an economist with the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, said lawmakers should also quickly increase food-stamp payments to low income recipients and enact a payroll tax cut for businesses to minimize layoffs."

'“If it’s two weeks it will be a lot of pain for some businesses, but with the appropriate response they can get out of it. But two months is a very different story, with a much wider impact,"' Jay Shambaugh told the Houston Chronicle.

"Although government estimates put the number of Americans affected by the SNAP rule changes at 700,000, Lauren Bauer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the total may be double that – and that is before factoring in the business effects of the coronavirus outbreak."

“Lauren Bauer, a fellow at [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution who specializes in the social safety net, estimated the number of people losing assistance would be between 1.3 million and 1.5 million, based on her own analysis of the data.”

‘“If we all do social distancing, that’s going to hurt everybody,” says Jay Shambaugh, director of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, which seeks to promote prosperity for Americans. “At a certain point, things spill into the economy.” Eventually, he says, "I think they’re going to need to do a broad stimulus” that provides spending money to millions of Americans.”’

“Brookings Institution fellow Jay Shambaugh said a payroll-tax cut would help higher-wage earners more than lower-income workers and that it would mete out assistance slowly rather than deliver a shorter-term economic jolt that could bolster investor confidence.”

“The White House projects 700,000 people would lose SNAP eligibility. Lauren Bauer, a fellow with [The Hamilton Project of] the Brookings Institution, filed access to information requests for figures from all 50 states and projected the number of people losing assistance would be much higher, at 1.3 million to 1.5 million.”  

“Jay Shambaugh of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project said some aspects of the Democrats’ plan, such as helping states cover the cost of the Medicaid program for the poor, have enjoyed bipartisan support in the past and should again. And lawmakers should make sick leave a priority, he said, despite their differences.”

“We actually know how to do something better. We've done it twice before, which is just actually sending checks to people. This was done in a bipartisan way in 2008. President Bush, a Republican, and a Democratic Congress, joined together and they sent checks out. And the research suggests it was actually quite helpful, helpful to households to give them a buffer but also helpful to the economy.” 

“Some economists worried that the funding provisions for the plan would prove too complicated to enact quickly. ‘It might take a while to get set up,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project. He suggested giving companies a tax break to offset the cost.” 

“Similarly, the federal government could loosen rules on work requirements for individuals to qualify for SNAP, also known as food stamps, which would help workers who suddenly find themselves quarantined or idled. A growing number of companies are telling employees to not come to work if they have symptoms. ‘You don’t want people to have to make a choice: Do I go to work to meet the threshold [to qualify for SNAP] or do I stay home?’ said [Jay] Shambaugh.” 

“At the Brookings Institution, Lauren Bauer and Diane Schanzenbach offer comprehensive suggestions for stimulus to increase food security in response to the virus.” 

“Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, tells me the fiscal package should carry a price tag of between $200 billion and $300 billion. He would direct that money to cover immediate public health needs; expanded federal assistance for state health care programs; more generous food stamp and unemployment insurance policies; and sending checks to Americans directly to help meet surprise expenses and goose spending.”

“As Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, told me: ‘If we don't do enough… there's going to be unnecessary pain in the economy that we know ways to prevent.’"

“The proposal, issued Tuesday, calls on regulators to limit annual price increases for medical services—both in and out of patients’ insurance networks—to no more than 1%-2% above general inflation, measured by a benchmark such as the Consumer Price Index. The Harvard paper, being presented at a [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution forum on lowering health-care costs, goes beyond limiting surprise bills to patients for out-of-network charges.” 

“Checks ‘go to everyone, including people that can't work; come in a lump sum, so they are big enough to matter; and support is [the] same for all, not tilted to high income,’ [Jay] Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project, said on Twitter.”

“Jay Shambaugh, director of the liberal Hamilton Project think tank, said the federal government should immediately increase its share of Medicaid spending by 10 percentage points, relieving states that face rising costs and falling revenue from the virus. ‘That would be around $60 billion going out to the states. That would be a meaningful way to make sure that the states are not cutting their budgets at the wrong time.’”

"[Jay] Shambaugh said the money is good in the short term, but the conversation is different now. 'But now there’s a much broader conversation in Congress about an appropriate kind of fiscal response that stretches beyond the immediate funding the public health agencies as well,' he said. Such 'responses' include tax cuts or paid sick leave that may address other consequences of the outbreak."

“The front lines in all of this is going to be at the state level, and so anything we can do to free up their budgets a little bit will help,” Mr. [Jay] Shambaugh said. “You want to make sure the states aren’t making choices that are fiscally constrained.”

“’This is unusual in that it may prove faster acting than past downturns,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. ‘The drop in oil prices and drop in financial markets alone, and when you add those to the impact of the virus and the hit to global demand, at some point that has spillovers to the U.S. economy.’” 

“’In addition to measures that directly provide for health-related needs, we should pass policies with automatic triggers that will provide fiscal stimulus if economic conditions deteriorate,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, in a blog post this week.”

“’I’ve been making the argument as much as I can,’ said Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. Direct payments wouldn’t just keep people from going broke, Shambaugh pointed out. They would have public health benefits…”

Are we at the early stages of a public health emergency in the United States that will spill over into the economy and cause a downturn, or are we seeing a contained medical emergency for a segment of the population that will have a limited impact on the broader population and economy? Jay Shambaugh explores five fiscal policy options to reduce economic impact of the coronavirus. 

“Given the mounting economic risks posed by the spread of the novel coronavirus, Congress should act swiftly but thoughtfully to pass fiscal stimulus. This would be in addition to continuing to provide ample funding for medical research, testing, prevention and treatment. The stimulus’s total cost would be about $350 billion, but could be larger or smaller depending on how the economic situation unfolds. Congress should design it to be accelerated, big, comprehensive and dynamic.”

“Some observers, including the authors of a 2017 report from Brookings' The Hamilton Project, conclude that public investments in childcare and other strategies for removing barriers to education and job opportunities for single mothers could help many improve their financial situation while boosting women's overall participation in the labor market.”

“This hour, we’ll look at how the coronavirus is affecting the national and international economy and what tools the government has to respond. Our guests are Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, and Alan Blinder, a Princeton professor and former vice-chair of the Federal Reserve.”

“The Federal Reserve has just cut interest rates to help boost the economy, but fiscal policy should play a role as well. In addition to measures that directly provide for health-related needs, we should pass policies with automatic triggers that will provide fiscal stimulus if economic conditions deteriorate.”

“Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project, a left-leaning think tank, said lawmakers could also consider waiving requirements for unemployed workers to search for work, and to maintain benefits in areas with localized outbreaks. And they may need to boost monthly food benefits for families whose children lose access to free- and reduced-price meals when schools are closed.”

The Hamilton Project Director Jay Shambaugh comments on the fiscal policy response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Shambaugh said, “I think it is really important that the safety net does not have holes in it. In particular making sure unemployment insurance of food stamps, what is now called SNAP, do not have work requirements in place that would keep people from getting access to them if they are actually unable to go to work due to a crisis.”

“But the benefits of monetary pyrotechnics like Tuesday’s in the form of extraordinary timing and size of monetary moves have to be balanced against the alarm they may cause and the way they leave central banks exposed as lacking effective tools. Much more attention should be devoted to economic policies better targeted at pandemic risk.”

“Economists have put forward revenue-raising proposals that reduce inequality, such as raising corporate, capital gains and personal income tax rates; broadening the tax base; converting deductions to more limited credits; strengthening the estate tax (including by eliminating stepped-up basis, a tax code provision that allows heirs to minimize estate taxes); and imposing a financial transactions tax...”

Hamilton Project Director Jay Shambaugh interviews former treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, now a professor at Harvard University, about reforming the tax code to raise more revenue in a progressive manner.

“One [Hamilton Project] study estimated the IRS could reap an extra $535 billion in taxes over the next decade if it brought audit rates back to their 2010 to 2011 levels and focused on millionaires and billionaires. That study’s authors, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary and Obama administration adviser Lawrence Summers and University of Pennsylvania law professor Natasha Sarin, said under-reporting is five times more likely for individuals who make at least $10 million.”

“What if employees suffered a greater happiness gap, in a world of total transparency, and yet earned higher wages? A recent paper for [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution argued that policymakers should incentivize wage transparency as a remedy for the longstanding problem of wage stagnation.

“On the corporate side, I recently came out with a proposal for The Hamilton Project, which proposed permanent expensing, disallowance of interest deductions, raise the corporate rate to 28 percent, expanded the RNE credit, and did macro-economic analysis that showed that would increase economic growth at the same time that it would raise additional revenue.”

“In a study last October, [Ryan] Nunn looked at labor force gaps by sex, gender, race and education. He noted that labor participation rates for women were 13.7 percentage points lower than for men. For black men it was 7.4 percentage points lower than white men. And for adults 25 and older without a high school diploma the rate was a gaping 27.6 percentage points.”

“The United States can learn from these examples. As set forth in a [Hamilton Project] proposal I recently co-authored with Laura Kawano of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, we recommend a tax of 10 basis points on the trading of equities and most bonds and derivatives.”

“Between 1979 and 2018 the real wages of workers in the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose by 34%, according to a recent analysis by Jay Shambaugh and Ryan Nunn of [The Hamilton Project at] the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. Pay for those at the tenth percentile, in contrast, rose by less than 5%, and wages for those at the fifth percentile declined.”

“’Over the last 40 years, wage growth for typical American workers has been extraordinarily weak,’ researchers from the [Hamilton Project at the] Brookings Institution noted in a recent paper. Their data shows many Americans have not seen a significant raise in that time, with hourly wages at the middle of the income distribution having grown only 12% between 1979 and 2018 when adjusted for inflation.”

“Harvard professor Larry Summers, a former official in Democratic administrations, and University of Pennsylvania professor Natasha Sarin estimated in a recent [Hamilton Project] paper that a $100 billion increase in investments in the IRS over 10 years would generate about $1.1 trillion in revenue. The pair advocate for enhanced resources for enforcement, improved information reporting and increased investments in IRS information technology. Sarin said an interview that an obvious starting point for raising revenue, particularly from high-income taxpayers, "is to start by making sure that people are paying the taxes that they already owe."

On January 9, Ryan Nunn, The Hamilton Project's Policy Director, spoke at the Federal Trade Commission about his research concerning non-compete contracts. 

Kriston McIntosh, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh explore tax policy options outlined in a new Hamilton Project book, "Tackling the Tax Code."

"Ambitious proposals for sweeping reforms to existing taxes – and for introduction of new wealth taxes – dominate the discourse in presidential primary debates. Fortunately, there are innovative, evidence-based tax reforms that would strengthen our tax code and make it more efficient and equitable. We present many such ideas in a newly released Hamilton Project book of tax policy proposals, 'Tackling the Tax Code: Efficient and Equitable Ways to Raise Revenue.'"

“To measure dynamism in the U.S. economy, we spoke with Ryan Nunn. He's an economist and the policy director at The Hamilton Project, which is a part of the Brookings Institution, a think tank.”

“But tax hikes will be part of the prescription too, and the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project recently published a comprehensive list of the soundest options.”

“Americans will inherit $765 billion in gifts and bequests in 2020, but the effective tax rate on those inheritances is only 2.1%, according to new [Hamilton Project] research from New York University law professor Lily Batchelder.”

“Batchelder’s proposed inheritance tax is part of a book released Tuesday by Brookings’ Hamilton Project. The volume includes other proposals to boost corporate taxes, impose a new financial-transaction tax and more efficiently administer the wealth tax proposed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.”

“Former Obama adviser and New York University professor Lily Batchelder wrote a [Hamilton Project] paper proposing a so-called inheritance tax as an alternative to the estate tax. The latter, she said, taxes inherited income at less than one-seventh the average tax rate on earnings and income…With a lifetime exemption of $2.5 million, according to an estimate from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the proposal would raise $340 billion over the course of a decade.”

“Randomized trials can be expensive and time-consuming, so they aren’t always practical. And in some cases, they are simply inappropriate (the most famous example being that a randomized trial on whether parachutes work is clearly a bad idea). But when policymakers and social scientists really want to know whether a program works the way they hope it does, the randomized trial remains the best tool — as the Camden experience underscores.”

“The combination of the economies available from having the government provide insurance services, plus the return premium made available by such pay-as-you-go finance, makes public programs the right way to strengthen the middle class. This becomes even more true once it is recognized that, as long as initiatives are financed at least in substantial part from highly progressive taxes, the result will be to reduce inequality.”

“A central bank needs to explain itself to three main constituencies: the financial markets, the legislature to which it reports and the broad public. The Fed does pretty well with the first constituency; market participants get the message more often than not. But members of Congress often don’t, and the public is largely in the dark. Happily, there is a disarmingly simple solution: Use more words, written in plain English.”

“The recent push by big business in favor of a more socially and environmentally conscious corporate-governance model is not just empty rhetoric. With the public losing trust in business and markets, it is now in everyone's interest to reform the system so that it delivers prosperity for the many, rather than the few.”

“Crunching the data in the report, I found the Top 10 most — and least — prosperous counties in Pennsylvania. Chart positions were based on a “prosperity score” put together by The Hamilton Project that combined such factors as a “county’s median household income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, prime-age employment rate, life expectancy, and housing vacancy rate,” according to the report.”

““The main [Climate Impact Lab (CIL)] finding to date is that the increase in the global mortality rate due to climate change-induced temperature changes in 2100 is larger than the current mortality rate due to all infectious diseases,” [Michael] Greenstone said Dec. 19 to members of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Environment.”

“Average hourly earnings actually reached an all-time U.S. high in terms of purchasing power 45 years ago, when $4.03 an hour was worth what $23.68 is today, according to the Hamilton Project.”

“Researchers Lauren Bauer, Jana Parsons and Jay Shambaugh updated a previous study and found that fewer than half the U.S. counties that had work requirement waivers in the Great Recession would have qualified if the new Trump administration rule had been in effect then. The rules in place in 2007-2009 allowed states to quickly ramp up food aid eligibility as their communities lost jobs and the recession started.”

“According to a 2018 report published by The Hamilton Project, a program at the Brookings Institution that studies education and human capital development, “Americans with higher levels of education not only have higher wages but, for the most part, also have higher wage growth.” The graduate education experience can also build new skill sets and accelerate both professional networks and personal growth.”

“A new Trump administration rule will end Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (food stamps) for nearly 700,000 of the nation's poorest people. That is the opposite of what the administration should do if, as it says, it wants to help them find jobs and get them back into the workforce.”

“Why have housing costs skyrocketed in the past few decades? To what extent do these costs keep people from moving to prospering cities in search of opportunity? And how can we combat this issue through both local and state policy? Daniel Shoag explores these questions in his recent policy analysis for the Hamilton Project, “Removing Barriers to Accessing High-Productivity Places.””

“Research from the Brookings Institution suggests that SNAP is designed to expand during economic downturns, and in doing so, it offers nutrition assistance to low-income families and also provides economic stimulus to communities. Accordingly, researchers say, the new SNAP rule has greatly weakened a crucial part of the safety net for vulnerable populations. “I know that a lot of people think that we should be limiting access to the safety net, or are disappointed when enrollment levels are high,” says Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow who focuses on the economy. “But during a recession, to help stop the fall, we want to make sure that as many people as possible who are eligible are on the programs.””

"The bottom line is that we’ve had another year of slow growth in overall health-care costs. That’s great news. But we should be paying careful attention to what is happening in Medicare, where costs have accelerated recently."

“Safety net programs are designed to "provide a carrot and a stick for getting in the labor market," noted the Hamilton Project's Lauren Bauer. But, she added, three-quarters of food-stamp recipients impacted by a work requirement are already employed. "They're working in this low-wage labor market that makes it hard, particularly during economic downturns, to meet the requirements of the work requirement," Bauer said.”

“WHO IS POOR IN AMERICA? – Via The Hamilton Project at Brookings’ 5th Annual Analysis of “Who is Poor in the U.S.?” “More than half of those living in poverty in 2018 were working-age adults between the ages of 18 and 64. More than one quarter of working-age adults living in poverty and working part-time were doing so involuntarily.””

““Despite a deeply worsening economic situation, even states with high unemployment rates may not qualify for a waiver under the final rule if their unemployment rate is not 20 percent higher than the national rate. Further, at the beginning of a recession, the economic situation will not have been bad for long enough to trigger eligibility based on an annual average,” researchers at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project said in an analysis Wednesday.”

“Climate specialists have warned for years about a “carbon bubble” in which markets ignore or massively undervalue the risks to companies from climate change. Two new studies suggest, however, that financial markets have started seriously pricing carbon risk, especially since the Paris Agreement of 2015.”

“A productivity-based explanation for rising industry concentration would suggest dramatically different policies than the antitrust one does. The evidence uncovered by Autor and his collaborators buttresses the view that superstar firms are thriving because they are simply more productive than other firms, not because they have been given a special break by regulators.”

“It is much more common for it to be teen girls than teen boys [doing] what we call ‘home production,'” said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at George Washington University and director of the Hamilton Project.”

“Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said men have seen a downward trend in working over the last half-century, largely due to falling rates among men with less education. Research, he said, has shown a decline in demand for their labor, and men with less than a high school education actually make $3.40 less per hour than they did in 1980.”

On November 20, 2019,  Hamilton Project Director Jay Shambaugh testified before the U.S. Joint Economic Committee during the hearing, "Connecting More People to Work". 

“It used to be that poorer places grew faster, but that’s gone,” said Jay Shambaugh, an economics professor at George Washington University. “This is a really different economy than it used to be. It’s one where places that struggle continue to struggle.”

“We are learning that place matters a great deal for the economic opportunities that people and that families have,” said Ryan Nunn, who has been studying the disparity with the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”