Reg Murphy Pubs Archive

Why is Teen Mental Health Declining?

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on May 3, 2023. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Teen mental health is poor and has been on the decline for decades. In my last column, I described U.S. teens’ declining mental health, increasing thoughts of suicide, and increasing attempts at suicide. In today’s column, I explain why teen mental health is so bad today.

Adolescent mental health and well-being deteriorated between 2011 to 2021, according to data from the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, 42% of high school students reported feeling so sad or hopeless that they could not engage in their regular activities for at least two weeks during the year. 22% of high school students seriously considered suicide and 10% reported attempting suicide during the last year. The statistics are even worse for teen girls.

No single theory can explain declining mental health among teens. However, the rapid decline in mental health among teens can likely be attributed to sociocultural changes in how young people are interacting with others and their environment.

Stressful life events are correlated with depression and many other mental health conditions. Physical or emotional abuse, dropping out of school, a parent losing their job, financial difficulties at home, parental divorce, exposure to suicide, illness, or loss of a loved one are all correlated with poor mental health outcomes. The stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these existing issues.

Parenting also plays a role in teens’ mental health. Low levels of parental warmth, perception of being rejected by parents, and weaker support from parents are all correlated with poor mental health among youth. Declining marriage rates and high rates of single parenting put kids at risk of childhood poverty, worsening their risk of poor mental health outcomes.

Relationships at school and with peers often impact children’s mental health, including dealing with unresolved grief, interpersonal disputes, and challenges transitioning into new social roles. Many of these are perennial challenges associated with coming of age.

Is teen mental health declining because of smartphone usage, social media, or the internet? There is always fear that new technologies will ruin our youth.

Mass and social media consumption are correlated with mental health outcomes. Social scientists have linked internet or social media use with depression and eating disorders. Similarly, research has documented that exposure to unrealistic beauty standards in media is correlated with a range of mental health challenges, especially for girls.

Smartphone or social media usage itself may not be the cause of teens’ poor mental health. The popularity of social media is symptomatic of a society in which face-to-face community has atrophied. Young people are spending less time with other young people than prior generations. To make matters worse, teens’ social support systems further eroded during the pandemic. Browsing social media or texting with friends does not yield the same mental health benefits as face-to-face interaction with one’s peers.

Alternatively, declining social stigma associated with mental illness and suicide may result in more teens self-reporting these challenges. Compared to prior generations, it may be that Gen Z is simply more comfortable self-reporting mental health challenges, thoughts of suicide, and suicide attempts.

There is no singular cause of declining mental health among teens. As a sociologist, I tend to prioritize institutional or cultural explanations of behavior. These seem apt to explain the rapid deterioration of teen mental health.

Fortunately, this means that institutional reforms can reverse declines in teen mental health. Increasing access to mental health services is essential. Other practical reforms include training teachers in trauma-responsive classroom strategies, expanding the focus on mental health in the K-12 curriculum, and expanding public health efforts to promote mental health and connect those in need with available resources.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is interim 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.

The Invisible Hand that Never Was

Written by Don Mathews on April 26, 2023. Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Studying the history of economics taught me a priceless lesson: there’s no substitute for the horse’s mouth.

Many thousands of people have been taught that economics was born in 1776 with the publication of “The Wealth of Nations,” the book in which Adam Smith expounded his theory that the free market always works, the theory he named the “invisible hand of the market.”

It’s a strange teaching. For nowhere in “The Wealth of Nations” does Smith refer to any theory as the “invisible hand of the market.” Nowhere in the book do the words “invisible hand of the market” even appear. Only once in Smith’s tome of more than a thousand pages do the words “invisible hand” appear. They appear as a metaphor, not for a market or any feature of markets, but for the desire to reduce risk in the specific case of a merchant deciding to employ his capital at home rather than abroad.

Smith was an exceptionally careful writer who lectured on rhetoric as a professor and wrote on the proper use of metaphor. If Smith had wanted to advance a theory that he identified by “the invisible hand” metaphor, he would have said so clearly and explicitly, and more than once. He didn’t. Not once.

Nowhere in “The Wealth of Nations” does Smith argue anything comparable to “the free market always works.” Smith argued that self-interested behavior in markets often, inadvertently, benefits society. Smith also argued that self-interested behavior in markets often benefits society more than behavior intended to benefit society.

But Smith was anything but dogmatic. The first three sections of “The Wealth of Nations” alone offer 70 examples of self-interested behavior that inadvertently harms society.

So, here we are. Academics routinely teach that the invisible hand metaphor carried special meaning for Smith, though it didn’t, and that the special meaning was the free market always works, a view Smith never held.

Who is responsible for this absurdity?

For starters, Paul Samuelson.

Paul Samuelson received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1970 for analyzing economic life with rigorous mathematical theorizing. According to Samuelson’s rigorous mathematical theorizing, markets are efficient only under conditions that are impossible in real life.

Samuelson was not the first to misrepresent Adam Smith. But compared to Samuelson’s, earlier misrepresentations were bush league.

Samuelson’s misrepresentation appeared first in 1948 in a textbook he wrote for a basic college economics course. On page 36, we read: “…he (Adam Smith) was so thrilled by the recognition of order in the economic system that he proclaimed the mystical principle of the “invisible hand”: that each individual in pursuing his own selfish good was led, as if by an invisible hand, to achieve the best good of all, so that any interference with free competition by government was almost certain to be injurious.”

Samuelson’s textbook, still in print in its 19^th edition, has sold four million copies. The bogus invisible hand story got more bogus with each edition.

Why Samuelson misrepresented Smith is unclear. His distorted Smith certainly served as a foil to advance Samuelson’s own position about markets, but speculating on motivation is best avoided.

Over the years, most economists accepted Samuelson’s misrepresentation, and most still do today. This is for two reasons. One is Samuelson’s exalted standing in economics. The other is, few economists have any interest in the history of their discipline. For every economist who has read the Wealth of Nations, there are thousands who haven’t. Historians of economics have been calling out bogus invisible hand stories for decades. The audiences have been very small.

College Teacher Candidates Becoming Trauma-Responsive

Written by Melissa Trussell on April 11, 2023. Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

The American Psychological Association’s website defines trauma as “an emotional response to a terrible event.” Terrible events can be abuse or neglect but also can include societal-level events such as pandemics, natural disasters, and systemic discrimination. Nearly every school-aged child today has experienced trauma in one form or another.

Last month, my colleague Dr. Roscoe Scarborough used this column to highlight the mental health crisis currently facing youth in America. Much of this crisis is due to trauma and to our generally being ill-prepared to help children process and heal from trauma. Even those who are trauma-informed (know about trauma) often are not trained to be trauma-responsive (know what to do about it).

It is a big deal, then, that College of Coastal Georgia’s Department of Education and Teacher Preparation recently entered into a partnership with local non-profit Hope 1312 Collective that will equip teachers to begin addressing this crisis.

On March 17, Coastal’s senior cohorts of elementary and middle-grades teacher candidates participated in 8 hours of Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI)® trauma-responsive classrooms training. This first annual training was provided by Hope 1312 Collective and sponsored by College of Coastal Georgia and Communities in Schools.

Traditional disciplinary models use punitive measures with the aim of getting immediate compliance. These models are short-sighted, do not respect the biological needs of children, leave us emotionally and often physically disconnected from our students, and do not lead to lasting change. TBRI offers strategies that are biologically respectful, see and meet needs behind behaviors, encourage connection, and promote healing rather than re-traumatization.

TBRI was developed by the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development (KPICD) at Texas Christian University and is described by KPICD as “An attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children.” TBRI addresses the five B’s of relational trauma: brain, biology, body, beliefs, and behavior. The trauma-responsive classrooms curriculum begins with a deep dive into the ways that trauma affects a child’s brain development and their biological response to stress or fear. Teachers are best able to respond to their students’ trauma-related behaviors if they understand what is going on inside the brain and biology contributing to the behavior.

Teacher candidates then learned about the importance of making sure the body’s nutritional and sensory needs are met so that their students are physically capable of learning, growing, and making good choices. Children who have experienced trauma are especially likely to have sensory needs unlike those of their other classmates – need for movement or touch, sensitivity to light or sounds, etc. Understanding how to recognize and respond to a child experiencing sensory deficit or overload helps a teacher see the need behind behavior that may seem willfully noncompliant but is instead the body’s or brain’s way of communicating the need.

Finally, participants learned several practical tools for correcting behavior in ways that encourage connection with students and that reflect a child’s preciousness rather than reinforcing negative belief systems caused by trauma (e.g. feeling unworthy or like their voice does not matter).

When surveyed, fewer than half of participating teacher candidates (7 of 16) said they feel behaviors are managed effectively at the schools where they are currently student-teaching. And after the training, students felt better equipped personally to respond to a traumatized child. Moreover, all agreed TBRI would make a lasting impact within the school system.

Data shows they are right. TBRI does make a lasting impact within the school system. A recent study of TBRI implementation in a school in Tulsa found an 18% decrease in behavioral incident reports after 2 years of TBRI and a 23% decrease in office referrals for students who had been referred 3 or more times prior to TBRI implementation.

Given the right positive influences, the brain has the ability to heal from the effects of trauma. TBRI gives Coastal’s teacher candidates the tools to be part of that healing.

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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.

How Economics Was Born

Written by Don Mathews on April 5, 2023. Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Economists are quick to inform that modern economics was born in 1776 with the publication of Adam Smith’s tome, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Unfortunately, they neglect to tell the story of the long stream of ideas that prompted Smith to write his tome. Let’s fix that.

Ideas about one aspect of economic life or another go back a few thousand years. By far the most common has been the notion that anything done for profit is greed. The notion has been asserted by all religions and legions of philosophers.

The story that leads to the Scotsman Adam Smith begins in 1651, with the publication of Leviathan by the Englishman Thomas Hobbes.

Hobbes wrote Leviathan troubled. Since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, Europe had been awash in wars – between powers, religions, or blends of both. Hobbes knew the terror first hand. In 1641, with anti-royalist sentiment surging, the royalist Hobbes fled to Paris in fear for his life. The following year found England engulfed in civil war.

It seemed clear to Hobbes that we humans are a messed-up lot, dominated by passions we can’t control, quick to anger and prone to violence, especially when politics or religion are involved. How, Hobbes asked, can a decent society be built from such material?

His answer: a decent society is only possible if our fear of violent death is stronger than our propensity for violence. Otherwise, our lives are destined to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” From that, Hobbes constructed his idea of a social contract.

Ideas can shake the world. Leviathan shook the Western world. Its message was so grim, so pessimistic that Western political philosophers spent the next 150 years trying to refute it.

Another idea catching hold in 17^th century Europe was the idea of interest – interest as in “to one’s advantage.” Commerce, too, was on the rise in areas not plagued by political and religious violence.

In commerce, acting in one’s interest was still widely condemned as greed. But some thinkers noticed that success in commerce requires planning and prudence. It requires behavior that is not impulsive, erratic or violent.

These thinkers turned back to Hobbes and his idea of countervailing passions. Could it be that the most effective way to restrain our violent passions is by unleashing our passion for money?

By the 1700s, many thought so. In England, Samuel Johnson wrote: “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.” In France, Montesquieu wrote: “Wherever the ways of man are gentle, there is commerce; wherever there is commerce, the ways of man are gentle.” In Scotland, Adam Smith’s best friend, David Hume, amplified further.

Which brings us to Smith.

Smith changed the subject. Adam Smith was the first person to call attention to the reality that the vast mass of people in Europe and the world lived their lives in crushing poverty.

Smith doubted that our violent passions could be tamed, by commerce or anything else, and he was far from certain that commerce fostered civility. But Smith’s travels left him no doubt that the only way to raise the living standards of the mass of people who toil each day for a living was through commerce and productive enterprise.

“It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people,” wrote Smith.

With Adam Smith providing the moral argument for what we now call economic growth, modern economics was born.

Teen Mental Health Continues to Decline

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on March 29, 2023. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

The kids aren’t alright. Our nation’s young people are suffering. America’s teens are experiencing profound sadness and hopelessness, seriously considering suicide, and attempting suicide at unprecedented rates. Teen girls’ and LGBQ+ students’ mental health is especially poor. Teens’ mental health declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was going downhill long before social distancing and virtual learning.

Most indicators of adolescent health and well-being deteriorated between 2011 to 2021, according to data from the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Condom usage, HIV testing, experiences of violence, mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors worsened significantly. In today’s column, I’ll just focus on poor mental health among teens.

Mental health among teens is poor and getting worse. In 2021, 42% of high school students reported feeling so sad or hopeless that they could not engage in their regular activities for at least two weeks during the year. 22% of high school students seriously considered suicide and 10% reported attempting suicide during the last year.

Mental health is worse among teen girls than boys. 57% of high school girls experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 30% seriously considered suicide, and 13% attempted suicide during the past year.

Similarly, mental health is even worse among LGBQ+ students. 69% experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 45% seriously considered suicide, and 22% attempted suicide during the past year.

Several compounding factors shape young people’s behaviors and experiences. Adolescents who feel that people at their school care about them, their well-being, and their success have better mental health outcomes. As you might guess from the data that I’ve shared, girls and LGBQ+ students were less likely to report feeling close to people at school.

Similarly, housing stability is correlated with mental health outcomes. Teens who face housing instability have worse mental health outcomes. LGBQ+ youth experienced higher than average rates of housing instability.

Things are getting worse for young people, not better. Rates of persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, seriously considering suicide, and attempting suicide are all up from a decade ago. You might be wondering whether these trends are a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, 2019 data show that teen mental health was already declining before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated existing mental health challenges among teens.

There is some good news about our young people’s health. CDC data indicate that several areas of adolescent health are improving. The proportion of youth who are bullied at school is declining. Compared to a decade ago, young people are less likely to be sexually active and are less likely to report having four or more lifetime sexual partners. Rates of substance abuse among teens are also declining, including use of certain illicit drugs, misuse of prescription drugs, current marijuana use, and current alcohol use.

As someone who works with young people and cares about their well-being, I am concerned about their worsening mental health. Unaddressed mental health challenges undermine young people’s ability to show up and learn in school. In addition, poor mental health impacts their relationships and physical health.

Young people face numerous obstacles to mental health: limited access to quality and affordable healthcare, the challenges associated with coming of age while immersed in social media, and the high cost of higher education. More abstract threats loom, including climate change, political extremism, and war with Russia or China.

Access to mental health services can improve the lives of teens, but those most in need often fall through the cracks. We must do better.

Welcome to the Post-Boomer Labor Market

Written by Don Mathews on February 22, 2023. Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Wondering why Glynn employers are having trouble finding workers? These figures should help.

Glynn County’s labor force is currently 39,210. It was 39,156 in 2005. Though Glynn’s population has grown by 16.7 percent in the 17 years since 2005, its labor force has grown by a speck.

The disparity between population growth and labor force growth, though severe in Glynn, is not unique to Glynn. While Georgia’s population has increased by 21 percent since 2005, its labor force has increased by 13.1 percent. The nation’s population has grown by 12.3 percent since 2005; its labor force, by 8 percent.

What explains the disparity between population growth and labor force growth?

Boomers retiring.

Consider the life cycle of baby boomers, that wave of people born in the years 1946 through 1964. The first boomers, those born in 1946, began entering the labor force in discernible numbers around 1964. They turned 25 years old in 1971, and 55 years old in 2001.

The last boomers, those born in 1964, began entering the labor force in discernible numbers in 1982. They turned 25 in 1989, and 55 in 2019.

Why does it matter when they turned 25 and when they turned 55? Economists refer to workers aged 25 years to 54 years as “prime age” workers. Of all the people in the labor force, prime age workers have the highest rates of labor force participation.

Thus, boomers began entering the class of prime age workers in 1971, they finished entering the class in 1989, they began leaving the class in 2001, and were completely gone from the class by 2019.

Augmenting the effect of the boomer life cycle on the labor force was the women’s movement. The women’s movement dates back long before 1946, of course, but it was only after 1950 that women’s labor force participation began to rise and then surge. Boomer women provided the surge.

Here are the numbers. The labor force participation rate of prime age women workers rose from 36.8 percent in 1950 to 44.5 percent in 1964, to 64.6 percent in 1978, and to 74.6 percent in 1992. The rate then leveled off; it’s currently 76.4 percent.

The big picture, in waves, is this. The wave of women into the labor force began in 1950. That wave was amplified by the wave of boomers into the labor force, which began in 1964. The wave into the class of prime age workers began in 1971 and continued through 1989. It was a huge wave.

The wave of boomers into the class of prime age workers became a wave of boomers out of the class in 2001. By 2019, the wave out of the class was complete. Between 2001 and 2019, the wave of boomers into retirement began.

Here’s the big picture – the effect on U.S. labor force growth of the boomer life cycle, augmented by the rise in women’s labor force participation – in numbers. From 1950 to 1960, the U.S. labor force grew by 11.9 percent. From 1960 to 1970, it grew by 18.9 percent. From 1970 to 1980, 29.2 percent. From 1980 to 1990, 17.7 percent. From 1990 to 2000, 13.3 percent. From 2000 to 2010, 7.9 percent. And from 2010 to 2022 (2022 to avoid the 2020 pandemic anomaly), the U.S. labor force grew by 6.8 percent.

The demographics of Americans younger than 16 years suggest that U.S. labor force growth will continue to shrink in the years ahead. Welcome to the post-boomer labor market, where scarce labor is the new normal.

Wish we saw more young people and children in Glynn.

Eliminating Hunger Means Eliminating Poverty

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on February 8, 2023. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

One in ten households in the United States faces food insecurity in a given year, but households with children are at an especially high risk of not having enough to eat. In a recent From the Murphy Center column, I examined broad patterns of food insecurity in the U.S. Today, I will focus on food insecurity among children.

12.5% of U.S. households with children were food insecure at times during 2021, according to data from the United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. In half of these households, children experienced food insecurity directly. 5.0 million kids in the U.S. experienced food insecurity in 2021, meaning that the family didn’t have the resources to acquire food for all members of their household at some point in the year. Even more concerning, 521,000 children were hungry, skipped a meal, or didn’t eat for a whole day because there wasn’t enough money for food in 2021.

The USDA has not released data on food security for 2022 yet. Higher prices for food and almost everything else will likely worsen childhood food insecurity in 2022 and 2023.

The social and economic circumstances of a household determine the food security of children to a large extent. Children are more likely to deal with food insecurity if they live in households where no one is employed full-time. Similarly, children who live with a disabled adult are almost three times more likely to experience food insecurity than children who don’t live with a disabled adult.

Children in households with married parents are more likely to be food secure. Households with only one adult have higher rates of food insecurity. For example, 24.3% of households headed by a single mother experienced food insecurity in 2021, though children only experienced food insecurity directly in half of these homes.

Food insecurity has health consequences for children. Research shows that food insecurity is associated with increased risk of birth defects, lower nutrient intake, anemia, asthma, worse oral health, poorer general health, and a greater risk of being hospitalized. Similarly, food insecurity is correlated with mental health and behavioral problems among children, including cognitive problems, aggression, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Free and reduced cost meals through the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program provide meaningful protection from food insecurity for children who lack economic security at home. Childhood food insecurity tends to spike in summer when these programs are unavailable. Similarly, there was a significant uptick in food insecurity among households with children in the early COVID-19 pandemic. In large part, this was due to disruptions in access to meals provided by schools.

WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) reduces rates of childhood food insecurity, but research is mixed on whether SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) protects children against food insecurity.

WIC, the National School Lunch Program, and the School Breakfast Program should be expanded to protect children from hunger.

Many local nonprofits work to feed those who fall through the cracks or who don’t qualify for aid. For example, Eat’N Together is working to end hunger in Glynn County. The organization’s ultimate goal is to open a “pay what you can” community café in downtown Brunswick. One of their current initiatives is to end “alternative lunch” in our schools—the practice of serving a paltry “alternative lunch” to kids whose meal account balances fall into the negative.

Federal programs and local nonprofits play a role in ending childhood hunger, but these programs don’t address the primary structural cause of food insecurity—poverty. Comprehensive anti-poverty programs and economic development programs are essential to eradicate poverty, which is the root cause of childhood food insecurity in the U.S.

Updates on Black Representation in Economics

Written by Melissa Trussell on February 1, 2023. Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Today marks the beginning of Black History Month. In February 2021, I wrote about the lack of Black representation in the field of economics, especially among economists working for the Federal Reserve (the Fed). As I wrote then, increased representation in Economics will improve our chances of producing accurate and useful results across studies of any focus, and especially those focused on issues of importance to minority populations.

The most recent diversity data from the American Economics Association (AEA) and from the Fed come only from their 2021 reports, but they do show some improvement from the 2020 report data in my previous article.

According to the AEA’s most recent data, among degrees awarded in Economics in 2019-2020, 5.18% of Bachelors, 5.93% of Masters, and 4.31% of PhDs went to Black or African American candidates. These are somewhat mixed results when compared with data from 2018-2019, when Black or African American economics graduates made up 5.16% of Bachelors, 7.43% of Masters, and 2.8% of PhDs. Economics still lags behind STEM fields in percent of minority graduates at all degree levels.

In December 2021, the Fed employed 945 economists. Twenty-eight percent (269) of them identified as a race other than White. Only 14 economists (1.5%) identified as Black or African American single-race, and 7 (0.7%) identified as two or more races, races not specified. This is a slight improvement from 1.3% Black single-race and 0.7% two or more races reported in early 2021.

I started writing this with hopes of finding more recent data and greater improvements. I am encouraged to see even these small improvements in just one year, though. Except for in economics Masters programs, Black/African American representation in each of the categories I reported on in early 2021 had improved by the end of 2021. I am especially excited to see the relatively large jump in the percent of Black/African American Ph.D. graduates. Clearly, though, with about 14% of the U.S. population identifying as Black, the economics profession – and especially the Fed – have a lot of work yet to do to recruit, graduate, and employ Black economists at a rate that compares with national demographics.

I am proud that the AEA is doubling down on its efforts to recruit Black students into the field. In 2022, they awarded the honor of Distinguished Fellow – for the first time posthumously – to Dr. Sadie Alexander, a scholar who would have championed this work of improved diversity, equity, and inclusion in economics.

Dr. Alexander graduated from University of Pennsylvania in 1921, becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in economics. She was the second Black woman to earn a doctorate in any discipline in the U.S. Because of her race and gender, Alexander was denied employment in economics, so she went back to school and became the first woman to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She worked in law for the remainder of her career, was the first female secretary of the National Bar Association, and served as the first national president of the Black women’s sorority Delta Theta Sigma.

Through all her accomplishments in law and service, Alexander was always an economist at heart. Until her death in 1989, Alexander advocated publicly for inclusion of women and minorities, especially in the workplace, as a necessary component of a successful capitalist democracy.

I end with her words, an appropriate reminder to us all:

“We must provide the hope and the certainty of productive employment to everyone, and especially to Negro young people. The basic purpose of this comprehensive design, this total process, is the development of the deprived, the neglected — the discriminated against — the minority — to its full potential. This is necessary not only to meet the ends of social justice and morality, to fulfill the guarantees of our constitution and laws, but because in this era of automation, when tens of thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are being eliminated, it becomes an economic imperative which is basic to our very existence as a free society.” — Sadie Alexander, 1963

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Thanks from the Murphy Center

Written by Don Mathews on January 11, 2023. Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Contemplating one’s blessings is a good way to bring in a new year – or better, a new day, if you can swing it.

Our From the Murphy Center column in The Brunswick News is into its sixth year. My Murphy Center colleagues – Drs. Heather Farley, Melissa Trussell, Roscoe Scarborough and Skip Mounts – and I are enormously grateful to Mr. Buff Leavy for granting us the column, Mr. Buddy Hughes for his patience with us, and the folks in Glynn and beyond who read us.

Being part of the community through this wonderful space every Wednesday is a privilege, and a ton of fun. We do not take it for granted.

Our columns tend to be serious, but the history of the Murphy Center has some humorous twists.

Dr. Skip Mounts became Dean of the College of Coastal Georgia’s School of Business and Public Administration in 2011. Dr. Mounts is an exceptionally entrepreneurial Dean.

A short time into his Deanship, Dr. Mounts came by my office and said, “The research you do on the local economy should have a home. I am going to propose to the president that we create a center. We’ll give it a name, and you’ll be the director.”

It sounded super to me, except for the director part.

I have no personality, no leadership skills and no aptitude whatsoever for directing anything. Should something arise that needs directing, I understand instinctively that I can best help the cause by hiding deep in some remote, forsaken area until the need for directing has passed.

“Who will I be directing?” I asked.

“Yourself,” he said.

Recognizing that such an arrangement would push my directing capacity to the breaking point, I hesitated, but then yielded to a rare spasm of daring-do.

“Ok, deal,” I said. “But if the center’s personnel roster gets any deeper, we’ll probably need to modify the managerial hierarchy.” The Dean smiled.

Dr. Valerie Hepburn, another exceptionally entrepreneurial person I’m quite grateful for, was the college president at the time. Dr. Hepburn liked the idea. The three of us came up with a name for the center that was so long and awkward that I’ve forgotten it.

In the fall of 2012, Mr. Reg Murphy became the first Executive in Residence of our Business School. He was still our Executive in Residence on October 8, 2015, when we changed the name of the center from whatever it was to the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies at a gathering in the College of Coastal Georgia’s Stembler Theater.

Mr. Murphy had an extraordinary career in journalism and business. He had been a huge supporter of the College years before and after 2012. But the Murphy Center bears his name for a different reason.

Reg Murphy is a person of great intellectual honesty, integrity and humility. His name sets the standard for the research we do and the columns we write.

That means we do our homework. We don’t twist or cherry-pick data. We don’t misrepresent or caricature people or ideas. We understand the danger of ivory tower hubris, so we stay off high horses. We do careful, thoughtful, honest work.

Our personnel roster is now five deep. Fortunately for me, the best way to direct thinkers of the caliber of Drs. Farley, Trussell, Scarborough and Mounts is not to direct them – to get out of their way, let each do their thing, then cheer each on to do more of their thing.

So, that’s how we operate. “Explore what interests you, explore it full throttle and with Reg Murphy honesty, integrity and humility, then tell us about your exploration” is the crux of it.

Thanks again for reading our column.

U.S. Life Expectancy Falls to 1996 Levels

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on January 4, 2023. Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Life is short, but it’s getting shorter for people in the United States. Life expectancy has fallen precipitously in recent years to levels not seen since 1996. This drop was largely due to deaths from COVID-19 and increased drug overdose deaths.

U.S. life expectancy fell for a second year in a row in 2021, according to a December 22,2022 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average life expectancy in the U.S. declined for a second year in a row to 76.4 in 2021, down from 77 in 2020, and 78.8 in 2019.

Both women and men saw comparable declines in life expectancy in 2021. As of 2021, the average life expectancy of women in the U.S. dropped to 79.3 years, while the average life expectancy for men in the U.S. dropped to 73.5 years.

The CDC’s list of top killers was largely unchanged from 2020 to 2021 with two exceptions. Influenza fell off the list. Meanwhile, liver disease and cirrhosis became the ninth leading cause of death.

COVID-19 has received a lot of media attention, but it was not the top killer in 2021. Heart disease, not COVID-19, was the leading cause of death in the U.S. The second leading cause of death was cancer. COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in 2021, killing about 460,000 people in the U.S.

Multiple surges of COVID-19 cases guarantee that COVID-19 will be a leading cause of death for 2022 as well. Natural immunity from past infections, improved treatments, and vaccinations are reducing the death rate from COVID-19. That’s good news for 2023.

The recent CDC report shows another significant change. Overdose deaths in the U.S. continued to increase in 2021. In 2021, there were 106,699 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. By comparison, there were 91,799 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2020.

Synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, accounted for a lot of the increase in overdose deaths. Drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids increased 22% from 2020 to 2021.

There is some good news related to overdose deaths. According to CDC data, U.S. overdose deaths peaked in March 2022. Every month since has shown a decline. Additionally, the rate of drug overdose deaths from heroin decreased 32% from 2020 to 2021. These are good signs, but there’s a long way to go.

What’s in store for 2022 and 2023? COVID-19 and overdose deaths are guaranteed to be featured on the 2022 CDC report. Recent trends suggest that deaths from COVID-19 and overdose deaths are on track to decline in 2023. After falling off the top ten killers list in 2021, influenza is likely to return to the mortality report due to a severe flu season this winter.

Several institutional solutions can help the U.S. to raise life expectancy, including funding public health, expanding access to addiction treatment programs, and encouraging vaccination against viruses like the flu and COVID-19. Effective health and physical education in schools can prepare children for a lifetime of healthy decision-making. It is possible to increase access to medical care by expanding Medicare eligibility and promoting enrollment in the government-sponsored Marketplace health insurance plans created by the Affordable Care Act.

It is likely that U.S. will see life expectancy begin to increase once again. A declining death rate from COVID-19 and decreasing overdose deaths place the U.S. on a trajectory to see increases in life expectancy in 2022 or 2023.

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