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By Ben A. Rissing and Emilio J. Castilla

Immigration reform has returned to the forefront of U.S. political debate as a result of President Barack Obama’s November 2014 executive order. Yet, proposed immigration reform measures have not attended to the process by which immigrant applicants are assessed – And many aspects of U.S. immigrant evaluation systems are opaque and discretionary.

In a study recently published in the American Sociological Review, we examine the first stage of one such work authorization process, the labor certification program, which is required for the granting of most employment-based green cards in the United States. We find that there is substantial variation in approval outcomes associated with foreign workers’ country of citizenship. Specifically, while 90.5 percent of workers from Asia are approved by government agents, only 66.8 percent of foreign workers from Latin America are approved. These disparities exist even after controlling for salary, job title, job skill level requirement, location, industry, and prior visa. However, when applications are evaluated with detailed employment-relevant information obtained through government application audits, we find that approvals are equally likely for immigrant workers from the vast majority of citizenship groups. Read More

The influence of economists on public policy

By Guest Contributor

February 16, 2015

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Source: Money, by 401(K). CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

by Elizabeth Popp Berman and Daniel Hirschman

There’s a puzzle around economics. On the one hand, economists have the most policy influence of any group of social scientists. In the United States, for example, economics is the only social science that controls a major branch of government policy (through the Federal Reserve), or has an office in the White House (the Council of Economic Advisers). And though they don’t rank up there with lawyers, economists make a fairly strong showing among prime ministers and presidents, as well.

But as any economist will tell you, that doesn’t mean that policymakers commonly take their advice. There are lots of areas where economists broadly agree, but policymakers don’t seem to care. Economists have wide consensus on the need for carbon taxes, but that doesn’t make them an easier political sell. And on topics where there’s a wider range of economic opinions, like over minimum wages, it seems that every politician can find an economist to tell her exactly what she wants to hear.

So if policymakers don’t take economists’ advice, do they actually matter in public policy? Here, it’s useful to distinguish between two different types of influence: direct and indirect.

The Folly of Fee-For-Service Nursing Home Care

By Jason Rodriquez

February 9, 2015

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Source: wikipedia.org (CC BY 2.0)

The Institute of Medicine recently published Dying in America, a sweeping report arguing that the health care system does not match the needs of people as they near the end of life. The dying process, the report explained, is too medicalized and too costly. Such outcomes are predictable consequences of the “perverse financial incentives” embedded in Medicare and Medicaid’s fee-for-service reimbursement formulas.

As much as fee-for-service shapes hospital care, it shapes nursing home care even more profoundly. Nursing home care is expensive and insurance coverage is terribly inadequate. The average daily charge for a night in a nursing home is about $225 per day, or $7,000 monthly and $84,000 annually. Although Medicare is the insurance program for people over the age of 65, it does not cover long-term nursing home care. Medicaid covers those costs, but only after residents’ life savings have been depleted. People in nursing homes who outlive their savings default to Medicaid, which provides insurance coverage until the end of life.

Research shows that minor sex trafficking narratives do not reflect the experience of many domestic sex workers

By Guest Contributor

February 3, 2015

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by Anthony Marcus, Chris Thomas, and Amber Horning

Many recent public policy discussions about prostitution, especially underage prostitution, invoke disturbing narratives of hyper-violent, predatory pimps luring and coercing young girls into sex slavery. However, three recent studies of underage sex workers and pimps/market facilitators in New York and New Jersey call into question these assumptions. First, these public narratives overestimate the role of pimps in street sex markets; second, they overemphasize the impact of the initial recruitment stage on subsequent practices; and third, they mask or simplify the difficult and complex choices and contingencies faced by minors who sell sex. The studies find that there is in fact no prototypical pimp and relationships are more flexible, dynamic, and particular to the individuals involved than has been previously imagined.

The explosion in U.S. wealth inequality has been fuelled by stagnant wages, increasing debt, and a collapse in asset values for the middle classes

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by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman

There is no dispute that income inequality has been on the rise in the United States for the past four decades. The share of total income earned by the top 1 percent of families was less than 10 percent in the late 1970s but now exceeds 20 percent as of the end of 2012. A large portion of this increase is due to an upsurge in the labor incomes earned by senior company executives and successful entrepreneurs. But is the rise in U.S. economic inequality purely a matter of rising labor compensation at the top, or did wealth inequality rise as well?

The corporate embrace of “diversity” rarely translates into more opportunities for women

By Kristine Kilanski

January 12, 2015

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Credit: Lindsey G (Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)

Corporations today proclaim a strong commitment to gender diversity. They publicize this commitment in their mission statements, job advertisements, recruitment materials, public relations, and personnel policies. Since the 1990s, a cottage industry of diversity consultants has developed to help companies become more diverse, advertising their services as a means to improve the corporate bottom-line and reduce potential legal liabilities. In response, most major corporations have instituted a variety of diversity management initiatives; some of the most popular of these include affinity groups, formal mentoring programs, diversity training, and targeted recruitment and promotion programs.

On the surface, corporate efforts to promote gender diversity seem promising. However, despite two decades of the corporate “diversity craze,” executive suites are still overwhelmingly male-dominated. For example, even though women now account for more than 50 percent of college graduates and roughly half the paid labor force, they comprise fewer than 17 percent of board directors and 15 percent of executive officers. In addition, most contemporary workplaces remain characterized by high levels of horizontal gender segregation, with women overrepresented in “feminized occupations” characterized by lower pay, prestige, and little room for advancement.

Profit from Crisis: Why capitalists do not want recovery, and what that means for America

By Guest Contributor

January 8, 2015

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Source: Wikimedia Commons

by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler

Can it be true that capitalists prefer crisis over growth? On the face of it, the idea sounds silly. According to Economics 101, everyone loves growth, especially capitalists. Profit and growth go hand in hand. When capitalists profit, real investment rises and the economy thrives, and when the economy booms the profits of capitalists soar. Growth is the very lifeline of capitalists.

Or is it?