FRAMING THE ISSUE: MAKING THE ECONOMIC CASE, AS WELL AS THE SOCIAL JUSTICE CASE, FOR SOCIAL

EQUITY

STANDING PANEL ON SOCIAL EQUITY

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

14 MARCH 2008

By

Blue WooldridgeFellow, National Academy of Public

Administrationand Professor

The L. Douglas WilderSchool of Government and Public AffairsVIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY

Richmond, VA 23284-2028bwooldri@vcu.edu

(and a lot of help from my friends)

SOCIAL EQUITY

“The fair, just and equitable management of all institutions serving the public directly or by

contract, and the fair and equitable distribution of public services, and implementation of public

policy, and the commitment to promote fairness, justice, and equity in the formation of public

policy” (National Academy of Public Administration, Standing Panel on Social Equity).

PERSUASION

It would appear that advocates of Social Equity have the responsibility of persuading key stakeholders to both embrace and be committed to this vital concept.

PERSUASION

Persuasion strategies should have the following attributes: “Statements (that) must seem correct, explanations (that) must seem plausible, evaluations (that) must seem legitimate, and actions (that) must seem necessary and advantageous” (Neidhardt (1994. p. 18).

FRAMING THEORY

The framing concept assumes that the presence, emphasis on, or combination of the various aspects of an issue influences the way it is perceived…” (Invenger,1991).

It would appear that Social Equity could be presented, at least, through a Social Justice or an Economic Benefit frame.

SOCIAL JUSTICE FRAME FOR

SOCIAL EQUITY

• In the 19th Century, Charles Darwin stated: “"If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."

Political theorists Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned in The Social Contract (as cited in Shafritz and Russell, 2004, p. 434): “It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends always to destroy equality that the force of legislation must always tend to maintain it.” Roger Wilkins (2001) in his keynote speech to the NAPA Leadership Conference on Social Equity in Governance states that public administrators have an obligation to find ways of strengthening the weak, poor, and in need of our society.

A recent UN Organizations for Economic Cooperation and Development Conference on

Social Equity, Economic Growth and Good Governance stated that “The balancing of social equity, economic growth and good governance is

at the heart of nation building and policy formation” and that “achieving this balance

becomes even more pertinent as nations confront new challenges and new decisions” (Kondo, P.

2001 p. 2).

We must recognize the full human equality of all people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

Robert F. Kennedy,University of Cape town South AfricaJune 6, 1966

As Roger Hughes said in his presentation at the 7th Annual Social Equity Leadership Conference in Phoenix last month: . For those who care deeply about issues of social equity – and I count myself among them – (social inequity) isn’t right. It’s not fair, it’s not moral, it’s not just. It needs to be addressed, and that means we need to become more proactive in addressing social equity issues.Well, I’ve learned the hard way that the language you use – or more precisely, how you frame your language in an argument to persuade somebody of something – makes all the difference in the world.

Hughes goes on to say:

“To flourish, we will all need to become masters of Rhetoric – the art of persuasion – and adapt our language accordingly.”

MAKING THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR REDUCING

SOCIAL INEQUITIES

Economic research suggests that individuals living in poverty face an increased risk of adverse outcomes, such as poor health and criminal activity, both of which may lead to reduced participation in the labor market….

Regardless of whether poverty is a cause or an effect, the conditions associated with poverty can limit the ability of individuals to develop the skills, abilities, knowledge, and habits necessary to fully participate in the labor force.

Research shows that poverty can negatively impact economic growth by affecting the accumulation of human capital and rates of crime and social unrest. (Highlights of GAO-07-344, a report to the Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means, House of

Representatives http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07344.pdf)

As reported in The Economic Costs of Poverty in the United States: Subsequent Effects of Children Growing Up Poor by Holzer, Schanzenbach, Duncan, & Ludwig (January 24, 2007, Center for American Progress):

Most arguments for reducing poverty in the U.S., especially among children, rest on a moral case for doing so—one that emphasizes the unfairness of child poverty, and how it runs counter to our national creed of equal opportunity for all.

But there is also an economic case for reducing child poverty. When children grow up in poverty, they are somewhat more likely than non-poor children to have low earnings as adults, which in turn reflects lower workforce productivity. They are also somewhat more likely to engage in crime (though that’s not the case for the vast majority) and to have poor health later in life. Their reduced productive activity generates a direct loss of goods and services to the U.S. economy.

The upshot: Our results suggest that the costs to the U.S. associated with childhood poverty total about$500B per year, or the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of GDP.

More specifically, we estimate that childhood poverty each year:

Reduces productivity and economic output by about 1.3 percent of GDP

Raises the costs of crime by 1.3 percent of GDP Raises health expenditures and reduces the value of

health by 1.2 percent of GDP. (Holzer, et al, 2007).

• More than four million infants, toddlers and preschoolers lived in poverty in the United States in 2005. Our paper focuses on this question: What economic benefits would a policy provide that brought poor children’s prenatal-through-age 5 family incomes up to the poverty line but made no other concurrent changes in the socioeconomic status of those children’s families?

• We first calculate simple differences in a number of adult outcomes between individuals whose early childhood incomes were below, close to and well above the poverty line. Relative to children with early childhood incomes exceeding at least twice the poverty line, poor children complete nearly two fewer years of schooling, work 25% fewer hours, earn only about half as much, receive $750 more per year in food stamps, and are more than twice as likely to report poor overall health or high levels of psychological distress. Poor males are nearly twice as likely to be arrested, and their rates of incarceration are three times as high, as those of males in higher-income families. For females, early poverty is associated with a nearly $200 increase in annual cash assistance from the AFDC or TANF programs. (Economic Costs of Early Childhood Poverty By Greg J. Duncan, Northwestern University,Ariel Kalil, University of Chicago,Kathleen Ziol-Guest, Harvard University 28 February, 2008. Partnership for America’s Economic Success

PROVEN EDUCATIONAL

INTERVENTIONS

INVESTMENT IN QUALTY EARLY CHILDHOON DEVELOPMENT

The Social Equity arguments for preschool programs have recently been reinforced by compelling economic evidence which suggests that society at large benefits from investing in these programs (CED 2006)

HIGH QUALITY PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS:

Improve the later education, employment, earnings, and crime outcomes of students who attend preschool.

Extending preschool programs to all students could yield $2-$4 in NPV

benefits for every $1 invested

HIGH QUALITY PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS:

Improve the fiscal position of states and the nation by reducing education and criminal-

justice costs, while boosting income-tax revenues.

For every $1 spent on preschool, states are projected to recoup 50-85 cents in reduced

crime costs and 36-77cents in school savings.

HIGH QUALITY PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS:

Contribute to long-term economic growth and development for states and the

nation. By 2080, GDP could be higher by 3.5%. Preschool also increases the long-run employment level of states by more than twice as much as traditional

economic development programs.

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR SUPPORTIVE SHELTER“We came up with three names that were some of our chronic inebriates in the downtown area, that got arrested the most often,” O’Bryan said. “We tracked those three individuals through just one of our two hospitals. One of the guys had been in jail previously, so he’d only been on the streets for six months. In those six months, he had accumulated a bill of a hundred thousand dollars—and that’s at the smaller of the two hospitals near downtown Reno. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that the other hospital had an even larger bill. Another individual came from Portland and had been in Reno for three months. In those three months, he had accumulated a bill for sixty-five thousand dollars. The third individual actually had some periods of being sober, and had accumulated a bill of fifty thousand.”The first of those people was Murray Barr, and Johns and O’Bryan realized that if you totted up all his hospital bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets—as well as substance-abuse-treatment costs, doctors’ fees, and other expenses—Murray Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada.“It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray,” O’Bryan said.

(MILLION-DOLLAR MURRAY Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage. by MALCOLM GLADWELL. New Yorker Magazine / Issue of 2006-02-13 and 20 / Posted 2006-02-06)

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR SUPPORTIVE SHELTERCulhane estimates that in New York at least sixty-two million dollars was being spent annually to shelter just those twenty-five hundred hard-core homeless. “It costs twenty-four thousand dollars a year for one of these shelter beds,” Culhane said. “We’re talking about a cot eighteen inches away from the next cot.” Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, a leading service group for the homeless in Boston, recently tracked the medical expenses of a hundred and nineteen chronically homeless people. In the course of five years, thirty-three people died and seven more were sent to nursing homes, and the group still accounted for 18,834 emergency-room visits—at a minimum cost of a thousand dollars a visit. The University of California, San Diego Medical Center followed fifteen chronically homeless inebriates and found that over eighteen months those fifteen people were treated at the hospital’s emergency room four hundred and seventeen times, and ran up bills that averaged a hundred thousand dollars each. One person—San Diego’s counterpart to Murray Barr—came to the emergency room eighty-seven times.

THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR SUPPORTIVE SHELTER

The cost of services comes to about ten thousand dollars per homeless client per year. An efficiency apartment in Denver averages $376 a month, or just over forty-five hundred a year, which means that you can house and care for a chronically homeless person for at most fifteen thousand dollars, or about a third of what he or she would

cost on the street. The idea is that once the people in the program get stabilized they will find jobs, and start to pick up more and more of their own rent, which would bring someone’s annual cost to the program closer to six thousand dollars. As of today, seventy-five supportive housing slots have already been added, and the city’s

homeless plan calls for eight hundred more over the next ten years.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS FROM REDUCING INEQUITIES IN OTHER POLICY AREAS:

College graduation rates between NonHisp Whites,Blacks and Hispanic (Robles,2/7/08)

Health Disparities (Woolf, 2007).Investments in high school drop out

programs

NEXT STEPS

WE NEED TO IDENTIFY BENEFIT COST RATIOS IN OTHER POLICY AREAS

WE NEED TO ESTIMATE CUMLATIVE ECONOMIC BENEFITS USING A FLOW

SIMILAR TO WOOLF’S ON SLIDE 21

FOR REFERENCES CONTACT ME

AT

bwooldri@vcu.edu