Reg Murphy Pubs Archive

The Moral Foundations of Political Division

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on April 23, 2025. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Many Americans don’t see eye to eye when it comes to what they believe is right and wrong. Americans hold polarized opinions on deportations of undocumented persons, tariffs, access to abortion, and a host of other social and political issues. Moral foundations theory can help us to understand why liberals and conservatives hold different views of what’s right and wrong.

Moral foundations theory comes out of social psychology. Jonathan Haidt and collaborators first published the theory back in 2004. The most recent version of the theory contends that humans evolved to possess six moral intuitions that shape moral judgments: care for the vulnerable, fairness in how people are treated, loyalty to in-groups, respect for authority, reverence for the sacred, and safeguarding individual liberty. A growing body of research shows that liberals prioritize care and fairness foundations, while conservatives value all six foundations.

Social scientists have applied moral foundations theory to a broad range of issues, including crime control, policing, abortion, prayer in schools, and other contentious culture war issues. For example, liberals’ focus on care for the vulnerable leads to hostility toward police use of force. Conservatives’ focus on respect for authority leads to supporting law and order, including police officers’ use of force. Different “moral foundations” lead conservatives and liberals to maintain incongruous views of what’s right and wrong.

Haidt and collaborators claim that the six moral foundations are innate psychological systems at the core of our intuitive ethics. As a sociologist, I am often suspect of evolutionary theories. The capacity to possess moral foundations is likely a product of our evolution, but a sociological critique is that our morality is largely a product of our socialization. The individuals and institutions in our lives shape our morality. Parents, teachers, and friends shape our views on what’s right and what’s wrong. Media, church, and schools do as well. Sociologists theorize that our idiosyncratic experiences shape our moral worldviews.

I have my doubts that Haidt’s moral foundations are universally applicable to all groups and all contexts. Across all the cultures and groups of the world, there are a plurality of views on what’s right and wrong. Social factors, including our class, race, and gender shape our moral worldviews. Context matters too. The social structures, power dynamics, and cultural norms of our society shape our morality. Those who are in poverty and those who are wealthy have different views on the morality of welfare programs. Similarly, there are patterned differences in attitudes toward affirmative action programs across different racial groups. As a sociologist, I would contend that these differences are not biological, but result from how we are socialized.

Some have argued that moral foundations theory could be used to justify and perpetuate existing social inequalities by framing these moral differences as innate or natural. Support for loyalty and authority can be used to support hierarchical social structures.

Even if Haidt and colleagues have not identified the timeless foundations of human morality, their work has value. Moral foundations theory gives us the tools to research and better understand moral differences. In our era of identity-driven politics, moral intolerance is on the rise. Bipartisan cooperation and civility have fallen out of favor. Being a liberal or a conservative is no longer about political values and approaches to governance, but these have become group identities that place one group in opposition to the other. I am optimistic that moral foundation theory provides us a way to understand “the other.” Our neighbors’ understandings of right and wrong might just emphasize different foundations of morality than our own. Instead of vilifying the other, we can find opportunities for compromise and collaboration.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

Aaron’s Story: How grown up failures lead to adolescent crime

Written by Melissa Trussell on April 9, 2025. Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Gang violence is not new to Brunswick. In recent months, though, local law enforcement report an increase in the rate of youth arrests, many of which are gang related.

I know families affected by gang violence, and I know a child who was arrested and charged in a gang-related incident here in the last year. His story highlights numerous egregious failures in state and local systems that research suggests are directly correlated with increased adolescent gang activity.

Before he became part of our “gang problem,” Aaron (a pseudonym) was no stranger to our local systems. He was not an under-the-radar kid. In fact, he was all over every radar we have for identifying at-risk children.

Early in his life, Aaron came onto the radar of the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), who eventually removed him from his mother’s care. His mother requested Aaron be placed with willing friends in their neighborhood. But, by state policy, DFCS prioritizes placement with biological family. Aaron was taken from his home community and placed with a relative who physically and psychologically abused Aaron. Isolation and abuse in childhood are known by social science researchers to be strongly correlated with adolescent gang activity. But DFCS had moved Aaron to the fringes of their radar.

Aaron’s mother, to her great credit, worked her DFCS case plan and regained custody of Aaron. But, her plan had focused on compliance over healing, and Aaron returned home to a parent whose best intentions were not enough. When a parent regains custody of their child, our systems essentially leave them helpless. DFCS aftercare is extremely limited both in time and scope. There is little consideration for the long-term impact of what both parent and child have endured, and there is no systematic support for rehabilitation beyond reunification. Aaron’s childhood continued to be marked by chronic trauma. But DFCS had cleared Aaron from their radar.

Soon, Aaron appeared on the radar of the juvenile justice system (DJJ). With very little interaction between DJJ and DFCS, the family dynamics that led to Aaron’s delinquent behavior were not addressed. Aaron would eventually serve time in a youth detention center (YDC). At the end of that time, DJJ returned Aaron to live with his mother. Georgia’s DJJ Office of Reentry Services emphasizes the importance of reentry supports, including healthy family and living arrangements. The literature on juvenile recidivism emphasizes the word “healthy.” Returning Aaron to his unhealthy home environment meant returning him to the streets where he had already begun to flirt with gangs. Ignoring his statistically sky-high risk of recidivism, DJJ had cleared Aaron from their radar.

Within months of returning home, Aaron re-appeared on a radar he had frequented throughout his childhood– that of the Glynn County School System (GCSS). This time, it was for non-attendance. When confronted, Aaron’s mother signed a letter of intent to homeschool. Many families homeschool well. But they would tell you that in Georgia, it is very easy to homeschool very badly. By state law, that letter of intent, filed with the state Department of Education, is the only documentation required to be submitted to any regulating body. There are rules about teaching and testing, but record-keeping is up to the parent. Georgia has virtually no accountability for homeschooling families. Nevertheless, homeschool was presented as an acceptable solution to the problem of truancy from GCSS, for a child who had also been on the radars of DFCS and DJJ. They all simply cleared Aaron from their radars.

Mere months later, Aaron became one of the juvenile offenders on all of our radars through local media reports of increased gang violence. We are asking local law enforcement to crack down on our children when we should be demanding accountability from the adults in the systems that are failing them. We must get serious about understanding childhood trauma, and we must commit to doing the hard work of healing wounds that are our responsibility even if they are not our fault. We must stop passing the buck, shifting children from one radar to the next.

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Published with permission from Aaron’s family.

Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.

Teen Mental Health Remains Poor

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on March 12, 2025. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Teen mental health in the United States is dismal. Recent data show that four in ten teens experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, two in ten seriously considered attempting suicide, and almost one in ten attempted suicide.

These statistics are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2013-2023. Every two years, data are collected from a nationally representative sample of U.S. high school students. The survey includes questions on sexual behavior, substance use, experiences of violence, and mental health.

Most indicators of adolescent health and well-being deteriorated between 2013 and 2023. Declining rates of substance abuse and high-risk sexual activity are some of the positive trends in the report. Condom usage, HIV testing, experiences of violence, mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors worsened significantly. I’ll focus on the data on teen mental health in this column.

40% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2023, down from 42% in 2021. 29% reported experiencing poor mental health with no change over the past two years. 20% seriously considered attempting suicide, down from 22% in 2021. 16% made a suicide plan and 9% attempted suicide in 2023, down from 18% and 10% respectively in 2021. 2% were injured in a suicide attempt that had to be treated by a doctor or a nurse in 2023, down from 3% in 2021. It is encouraging that two-year changes show modest improvements in teen well-being.

Unfortunately, longitudinal data show that teen mental health is far worse than it was a decade ago. Nearly all indicators of poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors worsened among teens between 2013 to 2023, including increases in the percentage of teens who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, seriously considered attempting suicide, made a suicide plan, or attempted suicide.

Teen girls are at greater risk of poor mental health and suicidal behaviors than boys. For example, 13% of girls reported attempting suicide in 2023, compared to only 6% of boys. Rates for all measures of mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors were at least 75% higher among girls than boys in 2023.

LGBTQ+ teens experience extremely high rates of poor mental health and suicidal behaviors, compared to cisgender teens. In 2023, 65% of LGBTQ+ teens experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. 53% of LGBTQ+ teens reported experiencing poor mental health. 41% of LGBTQ+ teens seriously considered attempting suicide. 32% of LGBTQ+ teens made a suicide plan, 20% attempted suicide, and 5% were injured in a suicide attempt that had to be treated by a doctor or a nurse in 2023. On all measures, rates for LGBTQ+ teens were at least 100% higher than those found among cisgender teens in 2023.

Looking at the modest improvements in teen mental health between 2021 and 2023, it’s clear that pandemic-era stressors were not the primary causes of our teen mental health crisis. The pandemic just exacerbated existing mental health challenges among teens. Data show that things were heading in the wrong direction long before COVID-19.

Social media and smartphone usage get a bulk of the blame for teens’ poor mental health. Yes, many teens are doomscrolling their way to depression. It’s what they’re not doing that might be more significant. Teens are spending less time with each other than previous generations. Social isolation and the atrophy of teen social life are key drivers of the U.S. teen mental health crisis. Other contributing factors include poor access to mental healthcare, problems associated with poverty, and challenges at school.

It’s not all doom and gloom for our teens. As I mentioned earlier, two-year trends show modest improvements across most mental health measures. Additionally, several high-risk sexual behaviors and many substance use indicators are heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, there’s much work to be done to address the teen mental health crisis.

Serving students with disabilities in American public schools

Written by Melissa Trussell on February 12, 2025. Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 17% of children 3 to 17 years old have one or more developmental disabilities. These include intellectual disabilities, hearing loss, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, and a host of other conditions classified as developmental disabilities by the CDC.

In the 2023-24 school year, 7.9 million public school students ages 3 to 21 received special education or related services. This was an increase of greater than 3 percent from before the coronavirus pandemic and represents the highest number of special education students ever served in our schools.

Nationally, in 2023-24, 15 percent of all public school students ages 3 to 21 received special education services for disabilities. In Georgia in the same year, 13.3 percent of public school students in grades K-12 were served in special education. And in the Glynn County School System, 16.3 percent of K-12 students were enrolled in special education. The most common category of disability served in public special education is specific learning disabilities (e.g. dyslexia, auditory or language processing disorders, etc.), which characterizes over 30% of all special education students in the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is currently responsible for enforcing the three major federal laws protecting students with disabilities in schools:

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, authorizes federal grants to local school systems to fund programs supporting disadvantaged students.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities by any program or activity receiving federal funding. Applied to schools, Section 504 both prohibits discrimination and requires accommodation (e.g. accessible facilities, extra time on assignments, preferential seating) for students with disabilities. Around three percent of public K-12 students in the U.S. receive accommodations only under Section 504. The majority of public school students with disabilities are served also under a third major statute, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

IDEA requires that all students with disabilities are afforded free and appropriate education (FAPE). Under IDEA schools provide specialized instruction through Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to students whose disabilities limit their ability to access the general education curriculum. Under IDEA, students are kept with their non-disabled peers as much as possible and given additional supports as needed.

Special education staff are the boots on the ground implementing these protections to ensure that every student’s individual needs are met and that each one receives FAPE. Their methods are guided by student data and delivered with care. And, what they do works. A study of over 575,000 students in New York City showed that for students with specific learning disabilities, educational gains are significantly greater when they receive special education services, and achievement is greatest when they begin to receive services earlier in their education.

When I hear politicians talk about defunding or dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, these are the students I worry for most. My concerns are increased by the hurried and chaotic way in which the current administration has made other recent changes to federal agencies. The U.S. DoE does not tell states or districts what to teach or not to teach, but it does mandate and fund education for students with disabilities. Dismantling the Department without carefully considering, planning, and codifying what other entities would be responsible for enforcing and funding IDEA, will leave school systems powerless to provide the specialized instruction required for children with disabilities to flourish in schools and beyond. Our children will suffer the consequences. And, in a future column, we will look at how our labor force and greater economy may also suffer.

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How to Identify and Prevent Elder Abuse

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on January 15, 2025. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Many seniors fear falling victim to elder abuse. Financial scams targeting the elderly, neglect in assisted living facilities, and emotional or physical abuse from one’s adult children are real threats to seniors in the US and around the world.

Elder abuse is “an intentional act or failure to act that causes or creates a risk of harm to an older adult,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most definitions of elder abuse have three elements: (1) a single or repeated act of commission or omission, (2) occurs within a relationship of trust, and (3) causes harm or distress to an older person.

Physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, neglect, and emotional or psychological abuse are all forms of elder abuse. Research shows that emotional or psychological abuse is the most common form of elder abuse. Much elder abuse occurs at the hands of family and caretakers. Financial abuse is the exception, as many perpetrators are unknown to the victims. Elder abuse can result in psychological damage, financial devastation, physical harm, or death.

Elder abuse tends to go unreported, so it’s hard to know exactly how common it is. Research shows that between 10-20% of seniors experience elder abuse. Low rates of reporting make elder abuse a challenge to study or prevent. In their research, Drs. Mark Lachs and Jacqueline Berman found that the elder abuse incident rate was 23.5 times greater than the number of cases referred to social services, law enforcement, or legal authorities.

Recent social science research helps us to better understand causes of elder abuse. Dr. Jennifer Storey’s 2020 literature review examined 198 studies on elder abuse to better understand risk factors for elder abuse. There are eight broad overarching perpetrator and victim risk factors for elder abuse: (1) problems with physical health, (2) problems with mental health, (3) problems with substance use, (4) dependency, (5) problems with stress and coping, (6) problems with attitudes, including attitudes toward caregiving by perpetrators or victims minimizing abuse, (7) previous instances of experiencing or witnessing abuse, and (8) problems with relationships.

Much elder abuse is preventable. Additionally, prevention is more cost-effective than dealing with the consequences of abuse. Psychologists, physicians, nurses, social workers, and police should receive research-informed training on elder abuse. Educating and establishing a culture of advocacy empowers professionals to identify conditions that are conducive to elder abuse and take action to mitigate this abuse.

It is also necessary to strengthen health and long-term care systems to prevent abuse. Training, adequate staffing, and competitive wages are key steps to ensure that the care needs of the elderly are met. Initiatives like these require intentional leadership and significant funding, but promise to mitigate abuse in institutional settings.

Outside of nursing homes and long-term care facilities, reducing elder abuse faces many hurdles, including dependency among perpetrators and victims. Policymakers and practitioners can implement research-informed risk management efforts to prevent elder abuse and educate the public. Public health campaigns can inform the public of risk factors associated with elder abuse and empower people to protect themselves or seniors in their lives.

Want to know more? I’ll be giving a lecture titled “Crime and the Elderly” at the Saint Simons Island Public Library tonight (Wednesday, 1/15/2025) at 6:00 p.m. I am the first talk in the 2025 Coastal Georgia Reads lecture series, which is sponsored by the Marshes of Glynn Libraries. The event is free and open to the public. I hope to see you there.

The U.S. Needs Lots More Reynolds Cottages

Written by Don Mathews on December 18, 2024. Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Two of my favorite lists are: (1) wonderful things happening in the City of Brunswick these days (list is long), and (2) things in the works that will soon move from this list to the first list. Keep an eye on Forward Brunswick’s Reynolds Cottages project. It’s scheduled to jump from list 2 to list 1 in January 2026, when construction of the 46th cottage adorning a two-acre parcel in the New Town district of Brunswick is completed.

The project plan shows a variety of cottages: studio, one-, two- and three bedrooms; a mix of one and two stories. Twenty-one will be sold and 25 rented. As American housing goes, the cottages are on the small side, appropriate for many budgets and right for a walkable neighborhood. The style is a perfect fit: an older, simpler design, each equipped with both charm and front porch, each exactly what you’d expect a cottage in Brunswick to look like.

Designers know some optics tricks. A neat one is placing buildings of particular sizes and shapes in particular ways to make a neighborhood appear much less densely populated than it actually is. To see the trick executed masterfully, visit old neighborhoods in an old city. Or wait a year and visit Reynolds Cottages, where 46 front porch-equipped cottages, two lots of green space and an alley with parking will appear cozy yet comfortable on two acres.

Lance Sabbe, Executive Director of Forward Brunswick, hopes Reynolds is the first of several cottage projects in Brunswick. City workers, first responders and folks who enjoy genuine neighborhood living are target Reynolds residents.

Reynolds Cottages is a type of residential housing that city planners and housing industry people call “missing middle housing.” Urban designer Daniel Parolek came up with the term in 2010. Fourteen years later, ‘missing middle housing’ also functions as the most accurate three-word description of the country’s current housing problem that one can imagine. That’s no coincidence. What inspired the term also caused the current housing problem: local zoning laws.

Local use- and density-based zoning laws were unknown in the U.S. until 1904, widespread by 1940, ubiquitous by 1970. The result is that we have restricted ourselves from building little housing other than detached single-family homes and large apartment buildings – the two extremes of housing density. The housing we built plenty of before 1940 are the types between the two extremes: stacked duplexes, stacked triplexes, stacked fourplexes, courtyard apartments, cottage courts, rowhouses and townhouses. Because we build very little middle-density housing, it’s missing from the housing stock. Hence the name, missing middle housing. And hence the crux of the current housing problem.

The country’s current housing problem goes beyond home prices and rents, which are through the roof. No less a problem is the mismatch between the housing that’s available and the budgets, living space preferences and lifestyle preferences of a large and increasing number of American households. The characteristics and circumstances of American households vary a great deal more than their housing options, which are limited to the variety in budget-feasible detached single-family homes and the variety, to the extent there is any, in apartments in large complexes.

Middle density housing, such as Reynolds Cottages, economizes on land and building materials. It comes in great variety. It specializes in getting the most out of smaller spaces, a blessing for smaller budgets. It provides the density necessary to draw local entrepreneurs to open their one-of-a-kind shops that make for a walkable neighborhood. It’s the housing our country lacks.

It takes a good organization and a good community for a development such as Reynolds Cottages to happen. We are fortunate to have both.

The American Family is Changing

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on November 27, 2024. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Growing up, my grandparents, parents, aunts, cousins, and I gathered for a shared meal each Thanksgiving. Cousins who had moved away would often travel home. We had as many as five generations gather each Thanksgiving. Everyone prepared a dish or two. Eating was the main event, but there was always football, looking through Black Friday ads in our local paper, a marathon of dessert eating, and spending time together.

This year, I’ll travel to Charleston, South Carolina to visit my in-laws with my wife and our dog. My mother-in-law is excited for her “granddog” to visit. My sister-in-law isn’t coming home from Omaha this Thanksgiving, but she’ll travel for Christmas. We will be joined by a neighbor, a divorced woman whose adult sons are visiting their own in-laws.

Thanksgiving traditions haven’t changed too much over the years. Most Americans still gather with loved ones. Turkey is still a staple, though its price has skyrocketed in recent years. The Lions and Cowboys still host football games, but the Lions are now Super Bowl contenders.

On the other hand, the American family has changed a lot over the past few decades. There have been major shifts in the living arrangements and family structure of Americans, according to data from the US Census Bureau’s decennial census and the American Community Survey. There is no longer one dominant family form. Family is now experienced in increasingly diverse ways, including a “chosen family” with commitments that are independent of biology or marriage.

Marriage is less common than a generation ago. Married-couple households made up only 47% of all households in 2022, down from 71% in 1970. Changes to family become even more stark if you look at younger adults. In 1970, 67% of Americans ages 25 to 49 were living with a spouse and one or more kids. In 2021, it’s only 37%. Americans ages 25 to 49 have a range of family living arrangements, including cohabitating with kids (5%), unpartnered with kids (6%), married with no kids (21%), cohabitating with no kids (7%), or living with other family members (11%).

Marriage is changing in the US. Americans are getting married later in life. A rising share of American have never been married. Same-sex marriages now make up over 1% of all marriages. Interracial or interethnic marriages are more common. Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher are more likely to be married and less likely to have children.

Americans are having fewer children than ever before. Fertility rates in the US have declined drastically in recent decades. Fertility has declined by about 2% annually in recent years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics. The total fertility rate for the US was 1616.5 births per 1000 women in 2023. This is far beneath the 2100 births per 1000 women that are necessary to replace a population. The US has typically been below replacement level since the early 1970s and has been below replacement level every year since 2007. Those who do have kids are having them later in life and having fewer kids overall.

More Americans are living alone, while a rising percentage of young adults are living with their parents. Women living alone are 16% of all US households in 2022, compared to 12% in 1970. Men living alone are 13% of all US households in 2022, compared to 6% in 1970. Conversely, adult children are more likely to live with their parents than in the past. 55% of women and 57% of men ages 18-24 lived with their parents in 2022, compared to 35% of women and 55% of men in 1960.

As you sit around the table with family this Thanksgiving, you’re likely to see that your company reflects changes to the American family. The demographics of family have changed, but the functions of family have not. I wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving!

Reg Murphy: A Conversation and the Wings of a Butterfly

Written by Skip Mounts on November 20, 2024. Posted in Reg Murphy, Skip Mounts.

Yesterday, people of many communities came to St. Simons Presbyterian Church to celebrate the life of Reg Murphy. His personal story is filled with many places including the Atlanta Constitution, the San Francisco Examiner, the Baltimore Sun, the National Geographic Society, the United States Golf Association just to name a few. While humble and quiet, yet thoughtful, Reg’s impact on the world was that of a giant.

Reg and I met in 2012 when he was named the inaugural Brown Family Executive-in-Residence in the School of Business and Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. As Executive-in-Residence, Reg held office hours, met with students, participated in classes, joined faculty meetings, and met with anyone who dropped by. He gave of his time generously, always without question.

Truth be told, I was more than a frequent visitor to Reg’s office. Little did I understand and appreciate at the time Reg’s influence as Executive-in-Residence. Quite simply, he transformed us. One my visits with him was significant in the development of the School of Business and Public Management into a unit of the College that is of Brunswick compared to one that is simply located here – from being inward-focused to being community-focused. I want to tell you about this visit and our conversation.

In the fall of 2017, Don Mathews completed a study of the local economy focused on its experience in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2014. According to the data, our part of the world entered the recession first compared to the rest of the country. In addition, we were the last to exit it. If you do the math, the Golden Isles was that part of the country in recession the longest.

During this visit, Reg and I discussed these findings. He asked two questions. The first was what media outlet was available to us to get these findings out? Reg felt this research was so important that it needed to be circulated among the public. Several days later, I talked to Don about a media outlet. He suggested an article for the Brunswick News as he had been thinking about doing a weekly column. I said that such a column was a lot of work for one person and suggested that the College’s three economists – Don, Melissa Trussell, and I, – share the writing by having each of us take a week. This is how the Wednesday column in the Brunswick News – ‘From the Murphy Center’ – came about. It is the primary product of the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the College. To date, 370 articles have been written for our community, all from an interdisciplinary group of seven academics. Nowhere in the United States will you find such a thing in a local paper running for over 7 years.

Reg’s second question was why was our local recessionary experience so long? What made recovery so difficult? Together, we felt that the local economy was relatively stagnate, lacking something driving change and creativity, the hallmarks of a healthy and vibrant economy. We discussed a possible lack of a culture of entrepreneurship in our community and among our students. In time, this question has led to the building of an entrepreneurial ecosystem for the Golden Isles. Now seen in the Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship, programs focused on the development of area entrepreneurs have touched over 700 residents and students in the past three years. No other center supporting entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship can claim such an impact.

Edward Norton Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist, developed the notion of the Butterfly Effect. This is the idea that in complex and interrelated systems like the climate, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one corner of the world could cause a tornado elsewhere in the world weeks later. This captures the impact of this one conversation with Reg. This conversation was the impetus ultimately leading to the creation of two unique ventures found in the School of Business and Public Management and the College: the Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies and the Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship. Due to one simple conversation, our School, College and community will never be the same. Thank you, Reg.

Dr. Skip Mounts is a Professor of Economics and the Dean of the School of Business and Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. He is also an associate of the Reg Murphy Center for Policies Studies and the Art and Lindee Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship.

Polling and Winning on the Margins

Written by Heather Farley on November 13, 2024. Posted in Heather Farley, Reg Murphy.

We are closing the door on the 2024 Presidential election and, once again, polls and the media fell short in predicting the outcome. Since Donald Trump entered politics in 2016, polls have often underestimated his support, and 2024 was no exception.

There is a popular narrative that this is because both the polls and the media are biased toward Democrats. While media bias can be a valid issue, I propose an alternative explanation grounded in polling limitations and the dynamics of this year’s race.

As a social scientist, I have spent a fair amount of time analyzing methods and biases in research and when it comes to researching humans, there is definitely room for error.

You likely noticed in the many Presidential candidate polls that came out over the last sixth months or so, that there is a margin of error listed. This margin of error tells us how much the poll results might vary if the survey were conducted multiple times. It’s shown as a percentage and gives an idea of the uncertainty in the poll’s results. So, if the margin of error were ±3%, we could assume that either candidate could go up to three percentage points higher or lower than the reported number. A “good margin of error” is at or below ±3%. When polls approach ±5%, it is considered too high to draw useful conclusions. In 2024, however, the race was considered so close, particularly in the swing states, that the polling was effectively useless. In other words, with both parties polling a percentage point or so higher or lower than their opponent, margins of 3% didn’t give us much indication of what to expect.

Likewise, the outcome of the election was on the margins. Indeed, Trump swept the swing states because he picked up the one or two percentage points, and sometimes even less, needed to win the electoral college votes in key states. The surprise, I think, was that he earned the margins in almost every case leading to a sweep.

Was this a failure of poll legitimacy? Not necessarily. Leading polls did not exhibit faulty methods or embedded biases. Instead, human factors limited data reliability.

Good data requires good sampling. Sampling in this case can be tricky. Republicans are less likely to engage with media or polling due to distrust, leading to underrepresentation. Conversely, Democrats, particularly college-educated ones, often engage more, skewing data representation.

So where can we turn in future elections to help us predict what might be coming? One new tool released by the Washington Post this year caught my eye and I hoped it might be useful – not in predicting outcomes but levels of support. The tool showed candidates’ online donor counts by zip code, offering insights into grassroots support. In Glynn County, for example, Trump had only 7% more donors than Harris but secured a 26-point lead, demonstrating that donor counts, while indicative of enthusiasm, aren’t great predictors. Not in Glynn County at least.

An interesting, if not controversial, place one might turn for consistently accurate prediction is betting markets. In this election cycle, several prediction betting companies turned out to be successful in accurately predicting the eventual outcome. Companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket put the odds of winning the election in Trump’s favor earlier and more consistently due to the numbers of bets they were receiving. Free market purists may not be surprised by this.

These markets are not scientific in any way and come with potential problems (eg. foreign participation, financial incentive to work against certain election outcomes, low governance and regulation of these platforms). But, when people put money into something, there’s no lying or virtue-signaling to mislead the messaging. In a historical look at Presidential betting markets, Economics researcher, Koleman Strumpf highlights that cutting out the human pitfalls and looking just at the numbers has proven to be remarkably accurate and efficient.

I still believe in the legitimacy and validity of polling. In many cases polling is an excellent tool. When it comes to Donald Trump, or any candidate who can divide the nation so narrowly, I’m not so sure. This season has convinced me to look to the markets for clues as well.

Dr. Heather Farley is Chair of the Department of Business and Public Administration and Associate Professor of Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies and an environmental policy scholar. The opinions found in this article do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.

The Economics of Mass Deportation

Written by Don Mathews on October 23, 2024. Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

[Note: I prefer not to bicker over the terms, illegal immigrant and undocumented immigrant. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) refers to a person in violation of U.S. immigration law as a noncitizen. I will, too.]

Best estimates put the population of U.S. noncitizens at roughly 11 million. 8.3 million noncitizens constitute 5% of the U.S. labor force. A proposal to deport all 11 million in one or a few fell swoops is on the table. Let’s consider the economics of mass deportation.

First, the direct costs of deporting 11 million noncitizens. Each one must be caught, arrested, detained, legally processed and removed. The branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tasked with catching, arresting, detaining and removing is Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). ERO consists of 7,600 law enforcement and non-law enforcement support personnel. It deployed 1,300 of its workers to the Southwest border for much of FY 2023. Even so, ERO made 170,590 arrests of noncitizens in FY 2023. It has the capacity to detain up to 30,000 people at any given time. On average, a noncitizen is detained for 37.5 days while their case is legally processed. Legal processing is handled by the Office of Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). OPLA consists of 1,750 attorneys and support staff, which leaves it understaffed by 667. Nevertheless, ERO removed 142,580 noncitizens to more than 180 countries in FY2023.

One wonders what it would cost to build and operate the hundreds of additional detention facilities, and hire, train and pay the tens of thousands of additional ERO and OPLA personnel necessary to make mass deportation viable.

Next, the indirect costs. The working, spending, tax paying, investing and entrepreneurship of noncitizens generates $1 trillion a year in real GDP and $100 billion a year in federal, state and local taxes paid. Deporting the 11 million would mean deporting $1 trillion a year in production and $100 billion a year in tax revenues each and every year they’re gone.

Deporting the 11 million would also destroy jobs for U.S. born workers, perhaps as many as 730,400. The figure comes from a 2023 study on the labor market effects of U.S. deportations in 2005-2014. The study finds that for every 500,000 noncitizen workers deported in 2005-2014, 44,000 U.S. born workers lost their jobs. The reason is clear. Many noncitizens will do jobs U.S. born workers won’t. The jobs are vital to production: if they can be filled, a business is launched. The business fills other jobs with U.S. born workers. Remove the vital workers, the business shuts down.

The 8.3 million noncitizens in the U.S. labor force are heavily concentrated in agriculture, food processing, hospitality and especially construction. Noncitizens do vital jobs in each, especially construction. Noncitizens also own and manage businesses in each, especially construction.

Jack Herrera describes the ramifications for Texas in the November issue of Texas Monthly. The Texas economy has been soaring since 2000, a classic business boom, population boom, construction boom combo, with one dreaded vulnerability. In Texas, says Herrera, “Cutting off the supply of undocumented workers would be like cutting off the supply of concrete and lumber.”

Texas business folk instruct Texas politicians, frequently and with urgency: if the border closes, the boom crashes. The politicians get it. They satisfy the base with plenty of “the border’s a disaster” rhetoric. Meanwhile, builders build, uninterrupted. With open gates, mass deportation is futile. The U.S. has a serious housing problem. Hurricanes happen, too. The effort to deport one-fifth of the country’s construction workers may commence in three months. Who builds the new deportation detention facilities is the rub.

Archives: Reg Murphy Pubs