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Este Griffith
Phone: 202-238-3088
egriffith@brookings.edu
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Washington, DC – Last week, The Hamilton Project at Brookings convened academic experts, business and labor leaders, policymakers, and practitioners for a two-day summit to discuss policies to address America’s poverty crisis.
The Hamilton Project released 14 new policy proposals, written by academic experts, offering pragmatic, evidence-based strategies for combating poverty. They include proposals to promote early childhood development, support disadvantaged youth, build skills for American workers, and improve safety net and work support. Former President Bill Clinton gave keynote remarks.
The event materials, including audio and video by panel, select quotes from the roundtable discussions and the full transcript are included below. The audio, video, and transcript of President Clinton’s keynote remarks have not yet been posted.
THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014
Welcome and Framing Remarks
Select Quotes:
“Poverty is a serious moral and social issue and imposes a terrible personal cost on the poor, and on that score alone, should be a policy imperative.” Robert E. Rubin
“We can build on the many programs that have proven effective and we can pursue creative approaches, which is the focus of this summit, to address both the ongoing causes of poverty and the more recent pressures from technological development and globalization, and opportunities for the poor. But in order to realize the potential that gives our country for dealing effectively with poverty, and this is the key, requires political will. And that has been woefully lacking. Our hope is that recognition of the economic imperative to overcome poverty and recognition that measures to overcome poverty are public investments in the future of our country, for all of us, can make a meaningful difference.” Robert E. Rubin
“Fighting poverty should be a national priority. We believe that there are policies that can make a real impact. We also recognize that there is no easy answer.” Melissa S. Kearney
“Tragically, nearly half of children who grow up poor will be poor as adults. We are threatened with the existence of a permanent segment of society cut off from mainstream economic prosperity.” Melissa S. Kearney
Panel 1: View from the Private Sector on High-Skill Training and Apprenticeship
Audio download: Listen to the roundtable discussion.
Video: Watch the roundtable discussion.
Select Quotes:
“When you graduate from the Apprentice School, you’re going to make more than $50,000 a year, you’re going to have a job, you’re going to understand the culture of your business, and you have no college loans.” Mike Petters
“I think that in today’s world, the best thing that I can give to my employees is that—I can’t guarantee they have a lifelong job—but what I can guarantee is that we are going to invest heavily into their employability.” Klaus Kleinfeld
“I encourage every business leader I talk to… if you’re not engaged in workforce development pipeline through your community colleges, you won’t be happy with the product you get out of it. But if you are engaged in it and think of it as an investment, then the return is really high.” Mike Petters
Panel 2: New Approaches to Building Skills
Audio download: Listen to the roundtable discussion.
Video: Watch the roundtable discussion.
Related Proposals: Read the proposals on Building Skills.
Select Quotes:
“Invest more and invest smarter in vocational training for low-income people. Many people in poverty are in poverty because they can’t find a job which pays enough for them to support their family, and they can’t find a job because they don’t have the skills… There has been decades of research that has shown that for low-income, disadvantaged, low-skilled people, participating in training programs can be effective at increasing their earnings.” Sheena McConnell
“Apprenticeship programs are high-quality and yield good wages. The problem is that there are too few. There are too few even in the construction industry, and there are too few in the country as a whole.” Robert I. Lerman
"The worker point is essential because they're investing in themselves. They're taking a portion of their wages and investing into the training which makes them more employable... and they're investing in each other and the connectivity between the generations of craft workforce.” Michael Monroe
“The idea is to give [low-income people] the skills that would enable them not to stay in low wage jobs, but to move up. There are two important caveats: first, not everybody is trainable for a high wage job… the other thing is, if the demand is not there… is this policy going to work?” Harry J. Holzer
Panel 3: Supporting Disadvantaged Youth
Audio download: Listen to the roundtable discussion.
Video: Watch the roundtable discussion.
Related Proposals: Read the proposals on Supporting Disadvantaged Youth.
Select Quotes:
“Remediation isn’t just about getting [disadvantaged youth] ready for Princeton, it’s about getting them ready for a career.” Cecilia Rouse
“I think the way to think about [summer employment] is that it is not an educational intervention, it’s an intervention in youth development, and as a result, the benefit isn’t going to be in just one domain.” Amy Ellen Schwartz
“It’s really important for disadvantaged youth to provide them with the ability to think that they actually can succeed…mentoring programs can accomplish that…but the other thing that is absolutely true is that they have to have the means to succeed once you’ve convinced them that they can.” Phillip B. Levine
“Only thirteen percent of African-American boys who will graduate from high school this year in New York City are college or career-ready. They have their high school diploma. So when they walk across the stage and grab that diploma, they think their life is in front of them. Only thirteen percent are equipped to go into school without remediation.” Linda Gibbs
Panel 4: Promoting Early Childhood Development
Audio download: Listen to the roundtable discussion.
Video: Watch the roundtable discussion.
Related Proposals: Read the proposals on Promoting Early Childhood Development.
Select Quotes:
“There is some evidence that earlier is more important than later simply because success through the life cycle is cumulative. We have pretty good evidence now that if you’re successful…if you’re school ready for example at age five, and the model that we developed shows this…your chances of being successful at age ten—being able to read, do math, and have socially appropriate behavior at age ten—are doubled if you’re school ready at age five…the more you can do earlier, the easier the job becomes later.” Isabel V. Sawhill
“There is a big information gap…forget about the behavior gap and the challenges of changing behavior, but in sort of basic understanding of child development and of the importance and rapidity of early brain development, of the importance of cognitive stimulation, as I said before children can even talk, the importance of communicating with them verbally…one of the things many different actors can do is promote good, solid information to families who don’t have it.” Ariel Kalil
“We’re underinvested in this country on early care and development broadly, and particularly when we know what works, this means that you both have to be willing to take the longer view and make the political decision to make the investments if you’re serious. The President really said that this is a serious conversation and this is the time to do it; we have to come up with bold agenda items if we mean to make a difference and there are not too many areas where we have great evidence that things really work and early child care and development is one of them.” Linda Gibbs
FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2014
Welcoming Remarks
Panel 1: Improving Social Program Design and Delivery
Audio download: Listen to the roundtable discussion.
Video: Watch the roundtable discussion.
Related Proposals: Read the proposals on Improving Safety Net and Worker Support
Select Quotes:
“In focusing on children and families, [the EITC] is the most important antipoverty program in the United States. In its current form, it raises more than six million people out of poverty, including more than three million children… It increases employment, especially of single mothers, and reduces poverty and increases income.” Hilary Hoynes
“Childcare has become an exceptionally large burden for these low-income families; the idea is to relieve some of that burden through the tax code… My belief is that, working in tandem with the EITC, this proposal is very pro-child and pro-work.” James P. Ziliak
“Monstrously false…the claim that [the War on Poverty] failed is largely based on a misuse of poverty data where people take the official poverty rate and they say it’s the same today as it was when the War on Poverty started… It counts cash welfare, which has been sharply reduced since that period… and it fails to count almost all the major things that have expanded.” Robert Greenstein
“What’s new is that the quality of data on public programs is improving, and the more data we have the more we can use these tools… Let’s test many things. We’ve got administrative data that’s low cost; let’s see what works.” Scott Cody
“What’s important to understand is that we need to create a new set of institutions that fit the problem in the twenty-first century. It doesn’t mean recreating or trying to reestablish what worked in the twentieth century.” Gordon Berlin
Panel 2: The role of Work-Sharing and Minimum Wage Policy in Supporting Workers
Audio download: Listen to the roundtable discussion
Video: Watch the roundtable discussion.
Related Proposals: Read the proposals on Work Sharing and Minimum Wage.
Select Quotes:
“I find that the best evidence suggests that the proposed increase, which is about on average 26 percent, and the minimum wage would tend to reduce the number of people in poverty by something between one and three million nationally, which is a non-trivial number.” Arindrajit Dube
“I actually think work-sharing is a good idea. I really like that a lot. It makes you think about employers and employees that come up with optimal arrangements in the midst of an economic downturn, it may well be that work-sharing is an optimal arrangement between employers and employees.” Gregory Mankiw
“…the sweet spot for poverty policy right now meets two criteria… One is that the solutions are non federal. They can be accomplished at the sub federal, at the state of sub state level, and two, they are either costless from a budgetary or fiscal perspective, or kind of close to it.” Jared Bernstein
“I think this last day and a half has demonstrated quite powerfully and elegantly why the Hamilton Project has to be. And if anything, it needs to grow and expand and stretch its wings and all of those kinds of things, because bringing this kind of attention and this caliber of engagement to face the most difficult and pressing challenges the nation faces is exactly what we need more of.” Christopher Edley, Jr.
OTHER MATERIALS:
NEW PROPOSALS
FULL VOLUME: POLICIES TO ADDRESS POVERTY IN AMERICA
INTRODUCTION, by Melissa S. Kearney, Benjamin H. Harris, and Karen L. Anderson
SECTION 1: PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT
SECTION 2: SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH
Este Griffith
Phone: 202-238-3088
egriffith@brookings.edu
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