pandemic

Justin Wolfers, professor of public policy and economics, recently sat down with the International Monetary Fund, arguing that the time is now to reimagine institutions that foster social cohesion. "The COVID moment has been and still is an...

What would the economy look like if the COVID-19 pandemic didn't happen? Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics, weighed in on the question. "We would have had 5 million more jobs, not 500,000 more jobs," Stevenson said. "A...

Associate Dean and Kohn Professor Luke Shaefer spoke to The New York Times about the positive impact of increased spending on children during the pandemic. “In my career, I’ve never seen anything so dramatic as the shift in resources to families...

Two and a half years later, women are returning to work at pre-pandemic levels. Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics, commented on what that means for the economy. "Women had a very tough road to haul with kids working from...

As part of the Practical Community Learning Project (PCLP), a semester-long independent policy-based community project in Detroit, community engagement manager DeAndré J. Calvert and a team of Ford School students worked on digital access with the...

Despite low unemployment and rising wages, inflation is causing President Biden to struggle with low approval ratings. Justin Wolfers, professor of public policy and economics, discussed how he would frame the economy to raise approval...

The COVID-19 pandemic made big cities less attractive, with no events to attend or restaurants to sample. Reynolds Farley, a research scientist at the Population Studies Center, discussed the trend. “Cities growing and declining, that’s strongly...

Public school districts saw a drop in enrollment during the pandemic, with parents moving their students to private schools with COVID-19 rules parents were happier with. Enrollment rates are staying steady, a sign that those parents have decided to...

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the nation are struggling with rising absenteeism rates. Brian Jacob, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy, weighed in on the issue.  "There was a once-in-a-century global public...

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed governments to roll out higher surveillance systems without pushback from citizens. Such emergencies “can be moments where governments roll out new invasive forms of data collection and it just becomes...

“There’s a question of what we do during severe recessions: What we did [during the pandemic] worked, and it worked better than anything we’ve ever done before,” Luke Shaefer told NC Policy Watch. “… If we ever wondered if the well-being of families...

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of Michiganders living in poverty dropped. Kristin Seefeldt, associate professor of public policy, attributes this to the economic support the government offered. "What we're seeing is really...

During the pandemic, median real income dropped 2.9%, signaling a rise in poverty. But, according to David Johnson, director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and professor of public policy, "the data shows that the official poverty measure is...

New data reveals that food insecurity stayed low during the pandemic stayed at relatively low levels, which Luke Shaefer attributes to expanded government aid.  “We now have definitive evidence that food hardship is responsive to government aid....

As economists realize that the world has entered a new economic era, Foreign Policy asked 13 economists to name and identify this new era. Among them was Betsey Stevenson, Ford School professor of public policy and economics. She named the new era...

Lower-income students are already more likely to be behind in school than their higher-income peers, but the COVID-19 pandemic worsened that gap. Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics, explained how the pandemic hit lower-income...

Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the Jean E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, relates what she has researched and written about the  HIV epidemic to the current COVID-19 pandemic in an interview on Michigan Radio, marking the 40th anniversary of...

The pandemic has forced many working mothers to leave the workforce and instead care for their children at home. The issue as the world opens back up: how can those women return to the workforce. "Returnships", or programs that offer training,...

Paula Lantz, associate dean for academic affairs and the James B. Hudak Professor of Health Policy, is a social epidemiologist. She talks with S&H about COVID, inequality, and what’s to come. State & Hill: We are 10 months into the global...

“The novel coronavirus pandemic has set in high relief the entrenched health, social, racial, political, and economic inequities within American society,” opens an article co-authored by Associate Dean Paula Lantz that appears in the Journal of...