Monthly Archives: April 2016

Life expectancy, suicide and wealth

As the life expectancy gap widens between the rich and poor and suicides increase at alarming rates, could financial stress be a contributor to both?   Life expectancy continues to improve for the wealthiest top 1 percent. They’ve gained three years in this century alone. However, the poorest are not seeing the same gains. The […]

Eviction Victims of the Impersonal Market

Arleen lost her 2 boys suddenly and by force. She had fallen behind on her rent and couldn’t pay the electricity bill. No electricity means no food in the refrigerator, no clock to get to school on time, no lights for evening homework. And for Arleen, no more kids. Child welfare determined that her sons […]

Restricting Access to Abortions Will Backfire

Banning abortions won’t stop them from happening; it will just make them more likely to result in health complications or even death.   The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade landmark case in 1973 legalized abortion in all 50 states. However, in 1992 it was declared that states could pass restrictions that do not present an […]

The Latest Trend: Outdoor Pre-schools

Can outdoor preschools and farm-to-preschool programs help make our children healthier or are they just the latest trend? An urban farm preschool took first place this year at an international contest that focuses on innovative ideas in architecture, interior design, industrial design and urban planning. The idea is that children learn through experience, using their […]

An Opportunity Development Bank

A child jumping a puddle

As inequality reaches unprecedented heights in America, there is growing—and increasingly realistic—concern for social and political stability.   Although inequality could be redressed by explicit redistribution, political gridlock in Washington and in many states makes this solution unlikely, and potentially economically disruptive. Yet many Americans, hostile to redistribution, are sympathetic to the need to create […]

Black White Displacement Disparities

Black-White differences in displacement for highway construction

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is getting serious about the damage done to African-American neighborhoods by highway construction.   As Angie Schmitt reports: Growing up in Charlotte, Foxx’s own street was walled in by highways, he recalled in a speech today at the Center for American Progress. Building big, grade-separated roads through thickly settled neighborhoods devastated communities, uprooted residents, and cut off […]

The Blue and the Green

Julien Sorel wishes to make his fortune. With intellectual talent but not much creativity, he understands that there are only two paths upward from his petty bourgeoisie background: the priesthood—the black—or the military—the red. He chooses the black.     Two centuries’ time has changed a lot since Stendahl’s nineteenth-century novel The Red and the Black, […]

A Tale of 200 Cities

We think we control the size of our cities by restricting outsiders. How vain is human striving!   At the level of individual neighborhoods, there is certainly control over whether outsiders are let in.  Neighborhoods, and even some small cities, can simply refuse to build any new housing for years or decades. But the size […]