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Criminal justice expenditures have more than doubled since the 1980s, dramatically increasing costs to the public. With state and local revenue shortfalls resulting from the recent recession, the question of whether crime control can be accomplished either with fewer resources or by investing those resources in areas other than the criminal justice system is all the more relevant. This book considers alternative ways to reduce crime that do not sacrifice public safety. Among the topics considered here are criminal justice system reform, social policy, and government policies affecting alcohol abuse, drugs, and private crime prevention. Particular attention is paid to the respective roles of both the private sector and government agencies. Through a broad conceptual framework and a careful review of the relevant literature, the book provides insight into the important trends and patterns of some of the interventions that may be effective in reducing crime.

The number of Americans eligible to receive Social Security benefits will increase from forty-five million to nearly eighty million in the next twenty years. Retirement systems must therefore adapt to meet the demands of the largest aging population in America's history. In this book, a group of analysts examine the economic issues that will confront policy makers as they seek to design policies to protect the economic and physical health of these older Americans. The volume looks at such topics as factors influencing work and retirement decisions at older ages, changes in life satisfaction associated with retirement, and the shift in responsibility for managing retirement assets from professional money managers of traditional pension plans to individual account holders of 401(k)s. The book also addresses the complicated relationship between health and economic status, including why health behaviors vary across populations and how socioeconomic measures correlate with health outcomes.

The societal impact of aging baby boomers is compounded by longer life expectancies, which have risen continually over many decades. The implications of these demographic trends are extensive and significant, yet they are just one part of the rapidly changing landscape of aging in the United States and around the world. The impact of the financial crisis and its continuing ramifications have emerged as key concerns, adding to the fiscal challenges of government, and complicating people's financial planning for later life. This is the fifteenth in a series of NBER volumes synthesizing analyses of economics of aging research. The large majority of this research has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, which has made a longterm commitment to advancing the economics of aging field. A particular focus of the research reported in this volume deals with health, and its relationship to financial wellbeing. Health is perhaps the most essential aspect of what constitutes wellbeing as we age, affects one's ability to work at older ages, and is strongly associated with financial wellbeing. Additionally, health has societal implications, such as for labor markets, government finances and health care costs. Also emphasized in the volume is the potential for interventions and policy changes to improve health and wellbeing, using approaches that may be implemented throughout this system of health-related interactions.

Social security is the largest and perhaps the most popular program run by the federal government. Given the projected increase in both individual life expectancy and sheer number of retirees, however, the current system faces an eventual overload. Alternative proposals have emerged, ranging from reductions in future benefits to a rise in tax revenue to various forms of investment-based personal retirement accounts. As this volume suggests, the distributional consequences of these proposals are substantially different and may disproportionately affect those groups who depend on social security to avoid poverty in old age. Together, these studies show that appropriately designed investment-based social security reforms can effectively reduce the long-term burden of an aging society on future taxpayers, increase the expected future income of retirees, and mitigate poverty rates among the elderly.

During the Great Recession, there were calls for boosting infrastructure spending to support the economy and create jobs. The extent to which “shovel-ready projects” can be funded for short-term macroeconomic gain, and the long-term growth effects of spending on infrastructure projects, are subjects of debate. Research in macroeconomics and applied microeconomics approach analysis of infrastructure spending differently, the former focusing on aggregate economic impacts and the latter using cost-benefit analyses, which can yield different recommendations about whether to undertake a project. This volume draws together research on the economics of infrastructure investment, exploring links between spending and economic outcomes, and issues in funding and project management. Two themes are measurement and risk. Regarding measurement, one chapter describes processes for calculating the stock of infrastructure capital in the national income accounts, and explains the sensitivity of the estimates to a number of poorly estimated parameters. Another shows that despite public outcry over the state of U.S. infrastructure, on many metrics, the service flow from infrastructure has improved. Regarding risk, one chapter explores the treatment of risk in evaluating publicly funded infrastructure projects. It revisits the notion that unless the returns to a project are correlated with broad macroeconomic returns, it should be assessed using a riskless discount rate. Another examines the role of risk-sharing in public-private partnerships, explaining that while use of private rather than public capital could seem attractive, such arrangements could leave the public sector with most of the risk but little of the reward.

This volume collects a series of essays by prominent economists on each of the major means-tested, or welfare, programs in the United States. Each essay covers the institutional history of a program, the policy issues surrounding it, its rules and regulations, its history of expenditure and caseloads, and, most importantly, a summary of the research that economists have conducted on the program and the findings from that research. The volume is an update of a popular first volume in 2003 which became a reference Handbook on the shelf of all economists and policy-makers who work on, or who are interested in, transfer programs in the United States. The new volume focuses primarily on the changes in programs which have occurred since 2003 and the results of new research since that date. The volume will be a timely contribution to on-going policy discussions in Washington and elsewhere, bringing the available evidence to bear on the many issues surrounding those programs. The specific transfer programs covered in the volume are the Medicaid program, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Security Income Program, subsidized housing programs, and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (Food Stamps). In addition, two chapters in the volume cover not traditional transfer programs but rather programs which are intended to increase the human capital of adults and children.

This volume collects a series of essays by prominent economists on each of the major means-tested, or welfare, programs in the United States. Each essay covers the institutional history of a program, the policy issues surrounding it, its rules and regulations, its history of expenditure and caseloads, and, most importantly, a summary of the research that economists have conducted on the program and the findings from that research. The volume is an update of a popular first volume in 2003 which became a reference Handbook on the shelf of all economists and policy-makers who work on, or who are interested in, transfer programs in the United States. The new volume focuses primarily on the changes in programs which have occurred since 2003 and the results of new research since that date. The volume will be a timely contribution to on-going policy discussions in Washington and elsewhere, bringing the available evidence to bear on the many issues surrounding those programs. The specific transfer programs covered in the volume are the Medicaid program, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Security Income Program, subsidized housing programs, and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (Food Stamps). In addition, two chapters in the volume cover not traditional transfer programs but rather programs which are intended to increase the human capital of adults and children.

Private sector unionism is in decline in the United States. As a result, labor advocates, community groups, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals concerned with the well-being of workers have sought to develop alternative ways to represent workers' interests. This book provides an in-depth assessment of how effectively labor market institutions are responding to this drastically altered landscape. It provides case studies of new labor market institutions and new directions for existing institutions. The chapters examine the behavior and impact of new organizations that have formed to solve workplace problems and to bolster the position of workers. They also document how labor unions employ new strategies to maintain their role in the economic system. While non-union institutions are unlikely to fill the gap left by the decline of unions, the findings suggest that emerging groups and unions might together improve some dimensions of worker well-being. The book is the story of workers and institutions in flux, searching for ways to represent labor in the new century.

The next two decades will mark a new phase in the demographic transition of the United States as baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare. Drawing on evidence from the United States and other nations, this book yields important new findings on how economic decisions by households and policy choices by governments will influence the effects of this demographic shift. It explores topics such as the implications of differential mortality rates by income on Social Security, the link between cognition and economic outcomes, and scale variations in self-reported work disability.

As populations age and revenues diminish, government and private pension funds around the world are facing insolvency. The looming social security crisis is especially dire for women, who live longer than men but have worked less in the formal labor force. This study examines alternative social security systems and their disparate impacts on men and women. Emphasis is placed on the new multi-pillar systems that combine a publicly managed benefit and a mandatory private retirement saving. The book compares the gendered outcomes of social security systems in Chile, Argentina, and Mexico, and presents empirical findings from Eastern and Central European transition economies as well as several OECD countries. Women's positions have improved relative to men in countries where joint pensions have been required, widows who have worked can keep the joint pension in addition to their own benefit, the public benefit has been targeted toward low earners, and women's retirement age has been raised to equality with that of men. The book will force economists and policy makers to reexamine the design features that enable social security systems to achieve desirable gender outcomes.

Americans are living longer—and staying healthier longer—than ever before. Despite the rapid disappearance of pensions and health care benefits for retirees, older people are healthier and better off than they were twenty years ago. In this book, a team of economists analyzes the foundations of disability decline, quantifies this phenomenon in economic terms, and proposes what might be done to accelerate future improvements in the health of our most elderly populations. The volume argues that educational attainment, high socioeconomic status, an older retirement age, and accessible medical care have improved the health and quality of life of seniors. Along the way, it outlines the economic benefits of disability decline, such as an increased rate of seniors in the workplace, relief for the healthcare system and care-giving families, and reduced medical expenses for the elderly themselves.

Recent data show wide disparity between Japan and the United States in the effectiveness of their health care systems. Japan spends close to the lowest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care among OECD countries, the United States spends the highest, yet life expectancies in Japan are among the world's longest. Clearly, a great deal can be learned from a comprehensive comparative analysis of health care issues in these two countries. In this book, chapters explore the structural characteristics of the health care systems in both nations, the economic incentives underlying the systems, and how they operate in practice. Japan's system, they show, is characterized by generous insurance schemes, a lack of gatekeepers, and fee-for-service mechanisms. The United States' structure, on the other hand, is distinguished by for-profit hospitals, privatized health insurance, and managed care. But despite its relative success, an aging population and a general shift from infectious diseases to more chronic maladies are forcing the Japanese to consider a model more closely resembling that of the United States.

This volume marks thirty years since the inception of the NBER program on aging, and is the sixteenth in a series of NBER volumes that highlight economics of aging research. When the program began, the baby boom generation was in their 20s and 30s, and life expectancy at older ages was nearly three years shorter than it is today. Today, the leading edge of the baby boom generation is entering their 70s. Many are retiring from paid work, yet they are living longer than ever. Their health and financial wellbeing are shaped by individual decisions people made through the life course; as well as by unanticipated events, economic conditions, medical innovations, and a rapidly evolving landscape of policy incentives and supports. What is most apparent from the mass of research conducted through the program over the years is how integrally related are the multiple dimensions of people’s wellbeing. The current volume is organized in three sections, corresponding to three aspects of wellbeing: financial, physical and emotional. The first four chapters look at factors relating to people’s financial circumstances in later life, such as saving, homeownership, and the use of accumulated assets in retirement. The next five chapters in the volume focus on health and disability. The last two chapters explore issues in mental health, emotional wellbeing, life satisfaction, or happiness.

One of the most well-established relationships in the economics of aging is that between health and wealth. Yet this relationship is also changing in conjunction with a rapidly aging population as well as a broad evolution in how people live later in life. Building on findings from earlier editions in the National Bureau of Economic Research series, this book focuses on the changing financial circumstances of the elderly, and the relationship of these circumstances to health and health care. Among the topics addressed are the significance of out-of-pocket health care costs, the effects of inflation on social security, and the impact of the recent financial crisis on Americans' well-being. Encompassing new data and advances in research methodology, the developments presented in the book will have implications for economies worldwide.

Few United States government programs are as controversial as those designed to aid the poor. From tax credits to medical assistance, aid to needy families is surrounded by debate—on what benefits should be offered, what forms they should take, and how they should be administered. The past few decades, in fact, have seen this debate lead to broad transformations of aid programs themselves, with Aid to Families with Dependent Children replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit growing from a minor program to one of the most important for low-income families, and Medicaid greatly expanding its eligibility. This volume provides an overview of how such programs actually work, offering information on the nation's nine largest “means-tested” programs—that is, those in which some test of income forms the basis for participation. For each program, contributors describe origins and goals, summarize policy histories and current rules, and discuss the recipient's characteristics as well as the different types of benefits they receive. Each chapter then provides an overview of scholarly research on each program, bringing together the results of the field's most rigorous statistical examinations. The result is a portrayal of the evolution and current state of means-tested programs, one that charts a number of shifts in emphasis—the decline of cash assistance, for instance, and the increasing emphasis on work.

Modern societies rely on written tests. Achievement tests have come to play a prominent role. They are used to sift and sort people, to evaluate schools, and to assess the performance of entire nations. This book evaluates the predictive power of achievement tests for life outcomes by examining one widely used achievement test --- the General Educational Development test --- the GED for short. The GED enables high school dropouts to certify high school equivalency. Currently the GED program produces roughly 12% of all high school credentials issued in the U.S. GED recipients are as smart as high school graduates who do not attend college. On outcomes that matter, as a group GED recipients are not equivalent to high school graduates. High school graduates outperform GED recipients in terms of their earnings, employment, wages, labor market participation, alcohol use, self-reported health, crime, college completion, welfare receipt, and other meaningful outcomes. This study of the GED program gives strong evidence on achievement tests. They do not adequately capture character--personality skills like conscientiousness, perseverance, sociability, and curiosity, that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. Differences in character skills emerge early between GEDs and high school graduates and are related to conditions in early family life. Both cognition and character can be shaped, and change over the life cycle. These skills can be enhanced by intervention.

The great majority of working Americans are unprepared to face the difficult task of planning for retirement. In fact, the personal savings rate has been holding steady at zero for several years, down from 8 percent in the mid-1980s. This book explores the many challenges facing workers in the transition from a traditional defined benefit pension system one that requires more individual responsibility, analyzing the considerable impediments to saving and evaluating financial literacy programs devised by employers and the government. Mapping the changing landscape of pensions and the rise of defined contribution plans, the author and others investigate new methods for stimulating saving and promoting financial education, drawing on the experience of the United States as well as countries that have privatized their welfare systems, including Sweden and Chile. This volume pinpoints where human resources departments, the financial industry, and government officials have succeeded—or failed—in bridging the way to a new retirement system.

One of the most important public policy issues in the United States is how to improve the life prospects of disadvantaged youth who, in their formative years, face low-quality school systems, poor access to health care, and high-crime environments. This book includes a broad range of research examining various aspects of disadvantage, and ways of increasing the ability of low-income youth to improve their circumstances later in life. Taking an empirical economics perspective, its nine chapters assess the causal impacts of disadvantage on youth outcomes, and how policy interventions can alleviate those impacts. Each chapter develops a framework to describe the relationship between youth and later life outcomes, addressing such factors as educational opportunity, health, neighborhood crime rates, and employment. The book documents the serious short- and long-term negative consequences of childhood disadvantage and provides nuanced evidence of the impact of public policy designed to help needy children.

This book advances the frontier of knowledge about productivity in U.S. higher education. This sector directly accounts for 3% of the economy and indirectly affects it in nearly every aspect of society because higher education produces the advanced skills crucial to a highly developed nation. Higher education is perhaps our most important “upstream industry.” Thus, understanding its productivity is essential. It is also urgent because support for it has never been more in doubt. Policymakers, families, philanthropists, and the press are skeptical about whether the benefits of higher education outweigh the costs. The chapters herein combine rich and novel administrative data, economic reasoning, modern econometric methods, and deep institutional understanding to produce a groundbreaking and comprehensive treatment of the topic. We demonstrate how to assess productivity in higher education and present productivity estimates across institutions, fields of study, and instructors. We explore how productivity varies across outcomes (earnings versus innovative, say) and how institutions’ productivity responds to market forces. Our starting point is the recognition that productivity is fundamental to all resource allocation decisions. Understanding productivity is important when judging whether the market for higher education generates positive incentives, assessing government policies that subsidize students, allocating a budget efficiently among an institution’s activities, and deciding whether and where to attend college. Thus, at every level of decision-making (social, institutional, individual), the productivity of higher education investments is crucial. While also true of other sectors of the economy, productivity measurement has received little attention in higher education

Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. Bringing together leading economists, this book examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.