Employment, Education, Poverty and Inequality During the Great Recession

Abstract

The “Great Recession” (GR) is the most dramatic economic downturn the United States has experienced in more than six decades. Tumbling stock and housing markets erased more than US$15 trillion in national wealth in 2008, or nearly 10 percent of real total national financial assets, the largest drop on record (since 1945). As financial markets and the rest of the economy slowed to a halt, real Gross Domestic Product did not grow in 2008 and fell by 2.6 percent in 2009, the largest decline in six decades. In addition, house prices have dropped 30 percent since their 2005 peak (Kowalski, 2011). Overall, the GR has resulted in over US$7,300 in foregone consumption per person, or about US$175 per person per month by 2011 (Lansing, 2011) and 20 percent of prime age workers (25-54) are jobless, the largest fraction since records began in 1947. Poverty and inequality have both risen during the crisis. The GR tremor was felt much less strongly in Asia and most of Europe. The long term outlook here is that the race between technology and education is so far being lost in the United States, but won in Asia and elsewhere.

About the speaker

Prof. Timothy Smeeding is the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and founder of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). Prof. Smeeding’s recent and forthcoming publications include: Cross-National Research on the Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage (CRITA—under final review); Persistence, Privilege and Parenting: The Comparative Study of Intergenerational Mobility, co-edited with Robert ERIKSON and Markus JANTTI (Russell Sage Foundation, September 2011); the Handbook of Economic Inequality , co-edited with Brian Nolan and Weimer Salverda (Oxford University Press , April, 2009); Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America's Children in Comparative Perspective, co-authored with Lee Rainwater (Russell Sage Foundation, 2003); The Future of the Family, co-edited by Daniel Patrick MOYNIHAN and Lee RAINWATER (Russell Sage Foundation, 2004; paperback ed., 2006) and The American Welfare State: Laggard or Leader?, co-authored with Irv GARFINKEL and Lee RAINWATER (Oxford University Press, February 2010). His recent work has been on mobility across generations; and inequality, wealth, and poverty in a national and cross-national context.