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The Consequences of Social Isolation

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Welcome to day 668 of “15 days to slow the spread.” Lockdowns and other prohibitions on social life related to COVID-19 have been implemented to reduce virus transmission and alleviate strain on our healthcare system. These restrictions and social distancing measures may improve outcomes in physical health, but these precautionary measures have consequences for our mental health and social well-being. My column today examines some of the consequences of social isolation.

Social life was atrophying long before the pandemic. Two decades ago, Robert Putnam characterized Americans as “bowling alone,” highlighting a reduction in all forms of in-person social intercourse. Things have not improved. We have an architecture of isolation. Our McMansions are surrounded by security fences. Many people don’t know their neighbors. Many Americans live alone. People telecommute rather than going into the office. Almost no one works for the same company for a full career. Many opt for contactless food delivery and grocery pickup. We are addicted to our smart phones. We text or email instead of having face-to-face conversations. Social media has replaced social interaction.

So far, so bad. Then, COVID happened.

Americans have dealt with loss, often separated from their support networks. Over 831,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, which means that millions have lost friends, family, and neighbors to the pandemic. There were other kinds of losses. Many lost jobs, holidays, school years, and relationships. Many Americans moved their entire lives to Zoom: work, school, family, friends. We lost our social lives. Some lost them temporarily. Others lost them permanently. These losses have consequences.

There have been major increases in the number of U.S. adults who report symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia compared to before the pandemic, according to the CDC. Younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported worse mental health outcomes, including elevated rates of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

According to the CDC, the first year of the pandemic saw a 28.5% increase in overdose deaths compared to the previous year. Over 100,000 Americans died of overdose during the 12-month period ending in April 2021. About three-quarters of these overdose deaths were from opioids. Georgia saw a 36.3% increase in overdose deaths during this period.

There are many societal costs associated with social isolation. Many small businesses closed forever. The nation was plunged into recession. Education was interrupted and shifted to less effective modalities.

Other consequences of social isolation are less obvious. There have been spikes in hate crimes, homicides, and shootings. Extremism is on the rise. Trust in elections and elected officials is atrophying. People are less civil in interactions with others. Smart phones and social media give us the illusion of intimacy, yet we remain insulated from the problems of others. It is hard to disentangle the impact of the pandemic from other changes in our society, but social isolation plays a role in all of these social problems.

Now, Omicron has arrived. New confirmed cases of COVID-19 are once again climbing in a new wave of infections. Public officials make tough choices in the name of public health. Individuals make decisions that impact their personal health. Formal and informal prohibitions on social life and the unintended social dysfunctions associated with social isolation may return once again, especially for the elderly, the immunocompromised, and their caretakers.

According to the World Health Organization, health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” As our knowledge and range of tools to combat COVID-19 grow, it is essential that we attend to social well-being as an indispensable dimension of health.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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Is Economic Development “Good?” – Perspectives on the Rivian Announcement

Written by Heather Farley on . Posted in Heather Farley, Reg Murphy.

Public policy decisions are not neutral. Rather, they are loaded with bias, assumptions, and tradeoffs. This statement seems obvious; yet, in my public and environmental policy courses, I am often confronted with students who are eager to find the “right” answer when it comes to regulation, law, and economic development decisions. 

The announcement of the new Rivian electric vehicle assembly plant in Rutledge, GA is no exception. As with any public policy decision, Governor Brian Kemp’s announcement that the new plant would be located in the small, rural, farming community of Rutledge has been met with mixed reactions.

Let’s look at the landscape of this decision. Rivian is a publicly-traded, start-up electric vehicle maker with a. stock market capitalization of approximately $100 billion, rivaling the likes of Ford and GM. This is no small operation. They have one plant at present, located in Illinois, and a contract with Amazon to produce electric vans for the company’s delivery service. By all accounts, this is a burgeoning player in the EV market. So, why would they be attracted to Georgia?

While the Atlanta Journal & Constitution reported that the details of the deal struck with Rivian are still unknown, they uncovered some clues as to what might have been at play. For instance, the City of Fort Worth, TX was a contender for the Rivian project and they approved a $440 million tax incentive package. Meanwhile, in 2018 when the state of GA acquired the SK Battery America plant, “state and local officials offered the South Korean company about $300 million in tax breaks, grants, free land and worker training” according to the AJC. The state investment via incentives in this project is likely to be staggering. In addition to tax incentives, Governor Kemp noted that the state offers an advanced manufacturing workforce, advanced transportation networks, and a state-provided workforce training center as enticements.

That’s a lot of investment on the state’s part. What are the gains and who gets what? First and foremost are jobs. The plant is expected to employ around 7500 to 10,000 workers making it the largest single economic development project in the state’s history. Along with these jobs will be a major influx of people and tax revenue to the Morgan county area.

Politically, this is a major feather in Governor Kemp’s hat as he heads into a contested primary season against former Senator David Purdue as well. Democrats like that this is green industry, and Republicans like the jobs creation.

Environmentally, a number of stakeholders have noted that Rivian is not only a green industry, but their business practices are underscored by a commitment to sustainability. Regardless, trading off farmland for an assembly plant simply has a disproportionate environmental impact. Watershed runoff, soil, light, noise, and traffic pollution will have an impact locally, never mind the additional strain on local infrastructure.

Socially, this is going to fundamentally change the Rutledge community. Presently, they have two-lane streets, plenty of golf carts and tractors on the road, and no traffic lights. With 10,000 more people in the area, this will be a big shift. And while Rivian will benefit from tax breaks, the farmers in the area may face increased land prices and taxes which could ultimately price them out of the area. Displacement is major concern for families who have lived and farmed in the area for generations.

Will this new mega-site create jobs, put the state of Georgia on the green industrialization map, possibly displace generations-old farms, and fundamentally change the small town of Rutledge forever? Yes and yes. So, is this a good economic development choice, or possibly a detrimental one? Yes. This is the way economic development operates. It is not neutral. It is not inherently all bad or all good. The only thing we can confidently say, is that it will spur huge change.

Dr. Heather Farley is Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, Public Policy & Management and a professor of Public Management in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.

The Burnout Blues

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

I need a break. I try not to wish my life away, but for a few months now, I have been looking forward to these December holidays. I am tired. I am tired in a way I have never experienced before.

Not much has changed about the things I do every day. I have an amazing job, and I truly love coming to work. I have an amazing family, and I truly love going home to them.

But, the world has changed. The environment in which we all operate now is unsettled and uncertain, and most of us have found ourselves hurt, fearful, sad, and/or angry at some point over the last year.

I think the intense tired that I feel is a result of the intensity of emotion I have been stuck in for too long.

I am burned out.

Data suggest you probably are, too.

Results of a Gallup poll published in March 2020, just before the pandemic really started to hit the U.S., showed 76% of employees experience burnout on the job at least sometimes. 28% reported feeling burned out very often or always.

Not surprisingly, in a survey by Indeed a year later, 52% of respondents reported currently feeling burned out, and 67% felt that burnout had worsened during the pandemic as a result of several factors including anxiety about finances or healthcare, increases in work hours, or a struggle to establish healthy boundaries between work and home life while working from home.

Last month, Gallup found that burnout is decreasing again among most categories of worker but that it is still increasing among managers – both people managers and project managers.

The literature is pretty clear about the fact that burnout has a significant negative effect on the workforce and, by extension, on the economy as a whole. Harvard Business Review reported in 2019 that about 8% of Americans’ spending on healthcare and 120,000 deaths annually were attributable to workplace stress. Additionally, the Review cited an APA study estimating that workplace stress costs the US economy over $500 billion per year through increased turnover and decreased productivity.

I spent a night in the hospital last month with a stress-related illness. Thankfully, it was a Friday night, and I was fine by Monday, so my employer did not miss me.

The tough thing about burnout is that it has never been easy to cure, and the pandemic has made it harder. I did a quick Internet search, and I found countless articles published before the pandemic pointing to causes of burnout—unhealthy work environments, lack of self-care, etc. And, for the most part, these causes are things employers and employees could work on improving.

Now, though, for many of us, the causes of burnout are nobody’s fault. There may be some things here and there that we could do better, but as I stated in the beginning of this essay, the primary catalysts for my stress are shifting world dynamics, not anything my employer or I have done.

And our burnout is worse than workplace burnout. It’s life burnout. Going home is not less stressful than going to work.

Last week for this column, Dr. Don Mathews wrote about the large number of workers who are not returning to work post-pandemic. I think there are a handful of reasons why, and burnout likely is among them. When you left work burned out and when life outside work is as topsy-turvy as it is right now, going back to work seems like a really big ask.

I don’t know the answer to the problem of pandemic burnout, but I am praying these holidays bring light and joy to a weary workforce. Y’all take care.

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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.

The Workers Are Still Missing

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

The U.S. labor force is having a rough time recovering from the pandemic.

So we’re square with terms, the labor force is defined as the number of people employed plus the number of people unemployed – the unemployed being people who are not working but are looking for work. People who are neither working nor looking for work are classified as not in the labor force.

Another good term is the labor force participation rate, defined as the percentage of the population age 16 years and older that is in the labor force.

In February 2020, the U.S. labor force totaled 164.4 million and the labor force participation rate was 63.3 percent. The pandemic hit in March. By April, the labor force had fallen to 156.5 million and the labor force participation rate had slipped to 60.2 percent.

Both then began to increase. By August 2020, the labor force had risen to 160.8 million, the participation rate to 61.7 percent.

Neither has changed much since. Only last month did the labor force claw its way to 162 million. The participation rate is all but the same at 61.8 percent.

Labor force changes since February 2020 have been more severe for women than for men, but not dramatically so.

From February 2020 to April 2020, the male labor force fell by 4.4 percent, from 86.9 million to 83.1 million, while the male labor force participation rate fell from 69.2 percent to 66.2 percent. By October 2020, the male labor force had risen to 85.5 million and the participation rate had risen to 67.7 percent. Since then, little change: the male labor force now stands at 86 million, 1.0 percent less than its February 2020 level; the male labor force participation rate stands at 67.8 percent, 1.4 percentage points less than its February 2020 level.

The female labor force fell by 5.4 percent from February 2020 to April 2020, from 77.5 million to 73.3 million, while the female labor force participation rate fell from 57.8 percent to 54.6 percent. By July 2020, the female labor force had risen to 75.6 million, while the participation rate had risen to 56.2 percent. And again, since then, little change: the female labor force now stands at 76 million, 1.9 percent less than its February 2020 level; the female labor force participation rate stands at 56.2 percent, 1.6 percentage points less than its February 2020 level.

The puny increases in the labor force and labor force participation rates over the past 15 or so months are a bit of a shock. It was widely anticipated that workers who dropped out of the labor force in the first months of the pandemic would return as the economy recovered. It was also widely anticipated that working moms who dropped out of the labor force when schools and day cares closed would return once they reopened.

The aggregate numbers suggest that workers who had not returned to the labor force by October 2020 are not returning at all.

It was also widely anticipated that gobs of unemployed workers would go job hunting full bore and join the ranks of the employed once the extra pandemic unemployment benefits expired.  The aggregate numbers show no evidence of that.

The number of unemployed people who found jobs in January of this year was 2.6 million. According to expectations about expiring unemployment benefits, that figure should have jumped in June and remained high through at least November.

It didn’t. It has fallen almost every month since January. November’s figure was 2.1 million.

Perhaps the missing workers aren’t coming back.

Institutional Reforms to Address Homelessness

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Over the past month, associates of the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies have examined many aspects of homelessness from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. In my article that kicked off our endeavor, I identified a range of institutional conditions that result in homelessness, including housing costs, poverty, the decline of marriage, the weakening of family bonds, and dysfunctions of our healthcare, education, and criminal justice systems. Dr. Melissa Trussell discussed how certain populations are at heightened risk of homelessness, such as teens in foster care. Dr. Heather Farley outlined how our changing climate impacts homelessness. Dr. Don Mathews highlighted how Capitalism has improved living standards over time, which paints an optimistic future for reducing homelessness.

This final article in our series identifies some policy recommendations to address homelessness. Are eviction moratoriums or “tiny home” initiatives practical solutions to keep folks from sleeping on the street?

Most policymakers, religious organizations, and philanthropists adopt individualistic approaches to address homelessness. I argue that these strategies treat the symptom of homelessness, but fail to mitigate the root causes of homelessness. There is no one silver bullet solution to social problems with manifold institutional causes. The range of solutions to homelessness must include both public and private solutions.

Numerous public solutions are necessary to end homelessness. Local governments could require that new housing developments include affordable housing options to ensure housing for low-income populations. In addition, it is necessary to fund supportive housing programs. Supportive housing provides low-cost housing and on-site job training, alcohol and substance abuse disorder treatment, and other support services. Supportive housing programs provide stability and key support services that empower residents to secure and maintain employment.  

Ensuring access to mental health services is key to ending homelessness. Additionally, drug interdiction efforts should be paired with increased access to addiction treatment, counseling, and other mental health services. Expanded access to healthcare, especially mental health services, can address many underlying causes of homelessness. An expansion of Medicaid and greater benefits for those with permanent disabilities promises to provide income that reduces rates of homelessness.

Reforms that go beyond accessing housing and healthcare can also reduce rates of homelessness. Public schools should teach about mental health, revise their drug education curriculum, and teach personal finance. Antivagrancy laws should be reformed. Many existing laws that address homelessness do little more than criminalize the homeless for sleeping in public, panhandling, public urination, or other statute violations.  

In addition, private solutions can also reduce rates of homelessness. Religious organizations and non-profits have long sought to alleviate the hardships faced by vulnerable populations. These efforts must continue or be expanded. Marriage and strong family bonds provide a robust safety net against homelessness. Marriage and cohabitating partners can provide financial and social support that prevents homelessness. Similarly, parents, grandparents, adult children, extended family, and friends can offer support that protects one from ending up on the street.

Structural reforms are necessary to eliminate the institutional conditions that cause homelessness. Individual solutions cannot solve social problems. Individual solutions only treat symptoms of social problems.

Providing emergency shelter, especially for the chronically homeless, can make a huge difference in the outcome of an individual. Eviction moratoriums keep roofs over people’s heads, albeit temporarily. Meanwhile, building tiny homes puts roofs over a few people’s heads. These programs reduce rates of homelessness, but these approaches do not address the root causes of homelessness, only the symptoms. Metaphorically, this is like doctors treating the symptoms of a disease. Therapies can provide relief for those who are sick, but vaccination and preventative care can often avert the onset of disease. Treating the symptoms of homelessness is a start. Institutional reforms to mitigate the causes of homelessness should be the goal.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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Climate Change Poses a Risk for the Homeless

Written by Heather Farley on . Posted in Heather Farley, Reg Murphy.

Over the course of the last month, associates of the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies have been exploring the dimensions of homelessness from multiple interdisciplinary perspectives. We have explored the causes of homelessness, the changes in the economic conditions around homelessness historically, and the risk of homelessness to teens in foster care. In this segment of the series, I want to expand on the themes of risk and vulnerability in homelessness as they relate to climate change. 

There are studies upon studies measuring and describing the impacts of climate change and the associated approaches to mitigation and adaptation. I was interested, however, to learn about the challenges of climate change in the specific context of homelessness.

If you’re versed in climate change language, feel free to skip this part, otherwise I want to briefly lay out the difference between weather and climate. Climate is made up of the weather conditions (like temperature, humidity, rainfall, windspeed, etc.) that occur in a given place over a given period of time. Climate change, therefore, is the change in long-term weather averages. Scientists around the world have studied these averages and concluded that the rate at which the global climate is changing has increased significantly since the advent of the industrial revolution, and some of the outcomes of that rate change are more extreme weather events and natural disasters.

You can infer pretty readily that since climate change leads to more frequent and more extreme weather events and natural disasters, it would follow that those who are exposed to this extreme weather would be at greater risk of its impacts. The literature shows that extreme temperatures (both hot and cold), coupled with humidity levels, impact mortality rates, illness morbidity (such as respiratory or cardiovascular conditions), and vector-borne disease transmission among the homeless and marginally-housed individuals.

This exposure risk to homeless populations is not where the story of vulnerability ends, however. Dr. Allison Gibson of the University of Kentucky explains that “there is a growing field of evidence that individuals experiencing homelessness are disproportionately impacted by disasters due to factors such as exposure to the elements, lack of resources and services, as well as disenfranchisement, and stigma associated with homelessness, all while experiencing greater occurrences of environmental injustice.” Climate change vulnerability lies not only in physical exposure, but also intersects with social and mental health. There is a compounding risk that exists here. For instance, the risk of death from heat increases for those with psychiatric disabilities, alcoholism, and cognitive impairment. These are all conditions that are more prevalent in homeless individuals compared to home-secure individuals. 

Likewise, homeless individuals are less likely to be able to escape extreme weather conditions or natural disasters and they cannot access social resources during emergencies as readily. Because homelessness is often marked by isolation and transience, there is also a risk of not receiving assistance when they are in physical distress. When extreme weather events occur, homeless service providers found that clients not only face physical health challenges (18% of clients), but mental health declines (37%) and drug/alcohol consumption increases (26%) as a result of restricted movement and disrupted social connections due to loss and evacuation. In other words, simply having someone else looking out for your physical health helps to reduce your risk of death from things like extreme temperatures.

Finally, homeless individuals often face social discrimination, which may decrease their access to assistance for the negative outcomes of climate risks.

Together, all of these studies and the data they present point to the need for systematic risk mitigation and response planning. This is a social imperative that can be taken up by a combination of government agencies, non-profit entities, and the private sector. Effective response, however, will depend upon these stakeholders’ ability to understand the unique challenges and vulnerabilities that exist for the homeless.

Dr. Heather Farley is Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, Public Policy & Management and a professor of Public Management in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.

Foster Care as a Highway to Homelessness

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

A couple of weeks ago for this column, my colleague Dr. Roscoe Scarborough wrote the first piece in a collaborative Murphy Center series on homelessness. Dr. Scarborough wrote about the many institutional contributors to the problem of homelessness. From among those contributors, the one that stands out to me, as it intersects with my work in child welfare, is that “Homelessness is often a direct result of lacking strong ties to relatives or a family of affinity.”

For this reason, teens in foster care are at significant risk of homelessness and other economic and healthcare crises if they age out of the child welfare system without being placed with a forever family. According to the National Foster Youth Institute (NFYI), 20 percent of teens who age out of foster care become homeless immediately upon leaving the system. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that 31-46% of young adults who age out of foster care have been homeless at least once by their 26th birthday. And, NFYI report that fully half of the homeless population in the US were at one time in foster care. They describe the child welfare system as a “highway to homelessness.”

This is no doubt a large contributor to youth homelessness more generally. We know that not only are former foster youth at increased risk for homelessness, but they also are at increased risk for teen pregnancy. A study in Children and Youth Services Review found that among former foster youth, 55% of females and 23% of males had become parents by age 19. This is in contrast to about 20% of females and, from the best data I can find, 7-9% of males in the general population.

When homeless young adults are also parents, we begin to see cycles of generational homelessness, poverty, and involvement with the child welfare system.

In the 2019-2020 school year, Glynn County schools served 234 homeless students. This is 1.5% of all school-aged children in Glynn. This is slightly lower than the state-wide figure of 1.71% of school-aged children living in homelessness (36,678 homeless children in Georgia). In Camden County, 0.63% of school-aged children (68 children) are homeless. McIntosh County seems to have a much greater problem, with 3.19% of school-aged children (69 children) reported as being homeless.

The Department of Education classifies a student as homeless if they “lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” In Glynn County, many of our homeless students are living in hotels or camping trailers. Though they do technically have roofs over their heads, the volatility of their living situations qualifies them as homeless and puts them at increased risk for involvement in the child welfare system, which, in turn, increases their risk of returning to homelessness and poverty.

Regardless of whether one approaches the causes of homelessness in terms of individualistic problems or institutional problems, as described by Dr. Scarborough, I believe we all can agree that youth homelessness is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy occurring far too frequently in Coastal Georgia.

I encourage readers to consider how you can get involved in transforming child welfare and ending the highway to homelessness. One organization I work with that is making significant strides in this area is Hope 1312 Collective. Check out their website (www.hope1312co.org) for some practical ways to join efforts to rewrite the story of child welfare in Coastal Georgia.

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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.

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There Are No Quick Fixes to Poverty or Homelessness

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Last week’s column on homelessness by my colleague, Professor Roscoe Scarborough, has left me wondering whether homelessness is an intractable problem.

Dr. Scarborough listed conditions that cause or contribute to homelessness. The list took up the entire column. He had no space left to elaborate or provide details.

Research on homelessness is new to me, but research on poverty is not. Studying poverty will knot up your guts but give you hope. The gut knots come from realizing that the problem is much more difficult than we social scientist policy wonks think it is. The hope comes from history.

Most poverty studies focus on present circumstances: low-paying jobs, factories moving or shutting down, inadequate access to health care, etc. The list of circumstances that cause or contribute to poverty is long and looks much like Dr. Scarborough’s list of conditions that cause or contribute to homelessness.

An exclusive focus on present circumstances can understandably lead one to conclude that, with so many shortcomings, something must be fundamentally wrong with the country’s economic system. A historical perspective yields a different assessment.

In 1900, 3 percent of U.S. homes had electricity, 15 percent had flush toilets, 24 percent had running water. No homes had central heating, a refrigerator or a washing machine. Today, a home without electricity, running water, a flush toilet and central heating would be condemned as unfit to live in.

In 1900, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 46 years; today it’s 79. Of every 1,000 babies born in 1900, 165 died before their first birthday, 239 died before their fifth. In 2019, the figures were 5.6 and 7.

Children under age 5 years accounted for 30 percent of all U.S. deaths in 1900; they accounted for 0.86 percent in 2019. Infectious diseases accounted for 46 percent of U.S. deaths in 1900 but 2 percent in 2019.

The fact is, for all its flaws – and there are plenty – our type of economic system has delivered an increase in living standards over the past 150 years that is utterly without precedent. Nothing in human history comes even remotely close to the increase in living standards that this type of economic system has brought, and the primary beneficiaries have been not the rich but the poor.

This type of economic system – capitalism is a stupid word for it, but that’s the word we use – has turned things such as the innovations that have reduced the infant mortality rate from 165 to 5.6 and the child mortality rate from 239 to 7, things that but a few generations ago the richest of the rich could only dream of, into things that all of us, including the poor among us, now consider basic. 

Capitalism may look like a dog’s breakfast in the here-and-now, but nothing in human history has done more to improve the living standards of the poor. 

The point is not to downplay the difficulty of living in poverty or to distract from the subject at hand, homelessness. Just the opposite.

People live in the here-and-now. A family in poverty doesn’t have several generations to wait for capitalism to do its thing. But that’s as fast as an economy can deliver.

Public policy has made a dent in mitigating poverty, but only a dent. That’s no wonder. Every family is unique, with their own unique circumstances. Public policies devised to help poor families are devised by people who know nothing about those families or who they even are.

Poverty is a difficult problem. But homelessness makes poverty look like a walk in the park. I look forward to learning more from Dr. Scarborough.

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The Manifold Causes of Homelessness

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

The CDC’s eviction moratorium has ended. The cost of housing keeps going up. The prices of goods and services are rising due to inflation. For many, homelessness is coming for the holidays.

According to HUD data, more than 580,000 people are homeless on a single night in the US. 61% are in sheltered locations and 39% are in unsheltered locations. Rates of homelessness are higher among men and African Americans. Nationally, the number of homeless persons has increased in recent years, but Georgia has experienced a significant decline in homelessness over the past decade. Conversely, Georgia has high rates of rural homelessness and unsheltered veteran homelessness.

But, why does homelessness persists? Americans tend to think in individualistic terms, focusing on character, motivations, personality, or mental illness. As a sociologist, I strive to transcend individualism and examine how social institutions shape behavior. If one individual in a city is homeless, it’s likely the result of a personal failing. If many people in a city are homeless, there are structural conditions that cause homelessness.

Housing costs, poverty, and the economy impact rates of homelessness. Many people are priced out of the housing market by the high cost of homes or a lack of affordable options. Meanwhile, wages have stagnated since the 1970s. Many local economies do not provide enough careers with incomes that cover the costs of housing. Our modern economy offers many opportunities for part-time and service-industry work, but this work often pays less than a living wage and often does not provide health insurance. Poverty and reduced labor market participation increases one’s chances of homelessness.

Declining marriage rates and weakening of family bonds put individuals at risk of homelessness. Spouses, parents, grandparents, and adult children provide a social safety net that keeps people off the streets. Homelessness is often a direct result of lacking strong ties to relatives or a family of affinity.

The cost of medical care, a lack of emphasis on preventative medicine, and insufficient access to mental healthcare contribute to homelessness. 28 million Americans did not have health insurance at all in the past year. Many millions more had gaps in insurance coverage or were underinsured. In particular, deficient access to counseling, mental healthcare, or addiction treatment services perpetuates chronic homelessness.

The criminal justice system contributes to homelessness. Anti-vagrancy laws and similar statutes criminalize homelessness in many communities. Homeless people who have run-ins with the law develop criminal records that create a barrier to employment, resulting in a cycle of homelessness.

Low quality education increases rates of homelessness. Our schools offer deficient health, drug, and personal finance education. In the U.S., 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate. Many Americans lack basic quantitative reasoning skills. Those who attend low quality schools or fail to graduate are at heightened risk of poverty and homelessness.

Other structural conditions play a role, such as underfunded public health departments, inadequate support programs for veterans, political alienation, ineffective drug interdiction efforts, and weak government responses to climate change. Taken together, these are some of the manifold institutional causes of homelessness.

Sociology challenges us to transcend individualistic explanations of behavior. Personal troubles can lead to homelessness, but these are often symptomatic of institutional conditions. For example, an individual may experience homelessness due to a substance abuse disorder. Americans tend to think about this as a personal problem, but addiction is also a product of deficient health education, underfunded public health, failed drug interdiction efforts, and poor access to mental healthcare.

If we ever hope to end homelessness, it’s essential to transcend individualism and identify the manifold institutional conditions that cause homelessness. This is a prerequisite to developing practical policy recommendations to mitigate homelessness.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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Bitcoin, Cigarettes, and Money

Written by Skip Mounts on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Skip Mounts.

I think to get our collective heads around this, I should start at the end. Bitcoin is one form of digital money and the blockchain is a digital ledger. Clear? Now, let’s start at the beginning.

Money is anything that performs the functions of money. Money, then, is anything that is (1) a medium of exchange, (2) a standard of value, and (3) a store of value. Please note that this does not include a required role for government.

Richard A. Radford was a flyer for the Royal Air Force during World War II. He was shot down over France and spent the rest of the war trying to escape from prison camps. At war’s end, he wrote a classic article called ‘The Economics of a POW Camp’ where he described the economic system that arose and developed in a camp of prisoners. It is fun to read.

Two things are of interest. Every so often, the Swiss Red Cross would bring packages to the prisoners that contained assorted items. The first thing that would happen as the boxes were being distribute, is that each prisoner would look in their box and then start trading with others. Apparently, barter is basic to the human condition. Next, with time, the cigarettes that came with the Red Cross packages began to serve as money, replacing barter. Barter requires a coincidence of wants – to get what I want from you, I must have something you want. It is costly and difficult. With cigarettes as money, I can get what I want from you by giving you cigarettes because you know that those cigarettes will be accepted in exchange by others. All we need to agree on is the price – the number of cigarettes. With time, every item, like blankets, had prices expressed in cigarettes.

Cigarettes became a medium of exchange and shows the fundamental reason that makes something money —- others accept it. I accept money – whatever the form – because I know that you will accept it. Nothing is said of government. The key is acceptance.

The Radford article is cool. All of what we call monetary theory, was found in cigarettes. When the Red Cross brought a new supply of cigarettes, prices in terms of cigarettes would rise (inflation). As the supply of cigarettes decreased (by smoking for example), the money supply declined and prices in terms of cigarettes fell.

There two types of money in our economy – private and government: coins and currency (cash) are government money and checking accounts are private money created by commercial banks through the system of fractional reserve banking.

The largest part of the money supply is in privately produced checking accounts. As private money is used in transactions, it goes through third parties like commercial banks, other financial institutions, and the Federal Reserve. If you want to keep your transaction private, you need to use cash. Cash transactions are only between a buyer and a seller and no one else need to know about it. (We have been binge watching The Sopranos so I will leave out rat informants.)

Where does government fit in? The creation of money needs to be guided by a rule, a monetary regime. Excessive money creation reduces the value of each monetary unit and impacts whether it will be accepted by others. A gold standard, a silver standard, the Federal Reserve are examples of monetary regimes. Yet, a government presence is not necessary for value in acceptance. It is just one way.

Bitcoin was created, it is claimed, by Satoshi Kakamoto. This may be a pseudonym for several founders wishing to be anonymous. Remember that cash transactions are only known between a buyer and a seller and can be secretive (again, see The Sopranos). This is cumbersome. For example, coins and bills must be carried around. But what if the coins and currency could be represented digitally? Things would become much easier. This is the idea behind Bitcoin. It is a digital money that can be traded directly between buyers and sellers and avoid the third parties present in traditional check transactions.

For Bitcoin to become money, it simply must be accepted by others and be subject to a monetary regime. The Bitcoin regime is very simple. Bitcoins cannot increase (referred to as mined), and the supply of coins is limited to 21 million units. The blockchain is a ledger – an accounting book – that keeps track of Bitcoin transactions. This ledger is observable by everyone and validates Bitcoin acceptance. There must also be on and off ramps. These are places where Bitcoins can be exchanged for more traditional forms of money, like dollars. These ramps form the marketplace which creates a dollar value to a single Bitcoin, like $61,000 per coin unit recorded while I was typing this article. Ramps are everywhere. A few weeks ago, I saw a Bitcoin ATM machine outside of Metter in a run-down gas station, but I could not tell if it was better than other ATMs (Get it?).

These are the principles for Bitcoin to be money. But can it really be money? I think it is true that before anything can really be money it must have stable and relatively predictable value. The volatility of the dollar price of a single Bitcoin coin would suggest that they will not truly be acceptable in exchange. Also, these price fluctuations compromise the ability of Bitcoin’s to be a standard of value and as a store of value. In theory, Bitcoin may be money but in practice not so much.

While there is much more to discuss, there is nothing new about Bitcoin other than they are new. What is interesting, however, is that the digital world is allowing the development of alternative forms of money. As a result, there will be competition between them. This competition to me —- someone whose intellectual development has not moved too much beyond the Scottish Enlightenment —– will be, in the long run, a good thing.

Dr. Skip Mounts is the Dean of the School of Business and Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia, an economist, and an associate of the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.

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