Moore Elected President of Gross National Happiness USA

On Wednesday, Scioto Analysis Principal Rob Moore was elected president of Gross National Happiness USA, a non-profit organization with a mission to increase personal happiness and our collective wellbeing by changing how we measure progress and success.

“Scioto Analysis’s mission is Gross National Happiness USA’s mission—helping improve public policy by helping policymakers understand the impacts of their decisions,” said Moore. “This is a natural fit.”

Moore has been a board member for Gross National Happiness USA since 2018 and Scioto Analysis published its first genuine progress indicator study, Ohio’s Economy: 2009-2016, in conjunction with Gross National Happiness USA.

Moore will lead GNHUSA as it executes its strategic plan, which comprises of gathering data that contributes to measures of wellbeing, advocating for the use of holistic measures of wellbeing by promoting data-driven approaches, working with decision-makers to facilitate policies based on wellbeing, and engaging with individuals and organizations to build a nationwide effort for better metrics.

His term will be begin July 1st, 2020.

Race is a big factor in Ohio police killings

According to CNN, police shot and killed about 1,000 people in the United States in 2018. Compare this to Germany, where police shot and killed 11 people, Sweden, where police shot and killed six people, the U.K., where police shot and killed three people, and New Zealand, where police shot and killed a whopping one person.

These numbers aren’t just because the U.S. has more people, either. Even on a per-capita basis, U.S. citizens are shot and killed by police anywhere from five times as much as in Sweden to over thirty times as much as in the U.K.

It’s not just the prevalence of police killings that is prompting hundreds of thousands of people across the country to take to the streets, though. It’s the disparity in victimization rates between black and white Americans. About a quarter of people killed by police in America are black, much higher than the 13% of total Americans who are black.

Ohio is an especially bad offender when it comes to racial disparities in police killings. From 2013 to 2019, 215 Ohioans were killed by police, 80 of whom were black. That means over a third (37%) of people killed by police over that time period were black, despite the fact that only 12% of Ohioans as a whole are black according to Census Bureau estimates. This 25-percentage-point disparity makes Ohio a top 10 worst state for racial disparities in police killings and constitutes a bigger disparity than all of its neighboring states.

When people across the country think about large-scale activism, they might not think Columbus, Ohio, but Ohio’s capital city has exploded with protests over the past couple of weeks in the wake of the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd. Columbus is no stranger to police killings, though: Officers of the Columbus Division of Police killed 40 people from 2013 to 2019, more than three times as many as any other agency in the state of Ohio. Of those 40 people killed by Columbus Division of Police officers, 27 were black, a number more than three times as high as any other agency in the state.

In case you were following along, this means that over two-thirds of people killed by Columbus Division of Police officers were black. This is in a city that is, according to the US Census Bureau, only 29% black as a whole. That means that black people are being killed by police at a rate 39 percentage points higher than would be expected by their share of the Columbus population. If Columbus was its own state, it would only be behind Rhode Island for how disproportionately its police officers kill black residents.

So this means that Columbus police are killing black people at higher rates than police across Ohio are, who are killing black people at higher rates than police across the United States are, who are killing people as a whole at higher rates than police in other developed countries are.

Despite these sobering statistics, police in the Ohio kill people on average less than the country as a whole, killing 26 people per 10 million citizens per year compared the nationwide average of 34, a lower rate than 36 other states. Hopefully after this nationwide wakeup call, cities across the state will figure out why they can’t extend the same courtesy to their black residents.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

Analyzing the Impacts of Motor Fuel Taxation

This morning, Scioto Analysis released a brief on motor fuel taxation, projecting the impacts on policy options for raising the motor fuel tax.

“Through our analysis, we were able to determine that an increase in the motor fuel tax would reduce consumption of gasoline by 1.6 million to 9.1 million gallons per year, which would reduce use of non-renewables and carbon emissions,” said Scioto Analysis Principal Rob Moore. “At the same time, the options we studied could raise anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion in new revenue, which could significantly bolster state revenues at a time they are lacking.”

This policy brief is one in a series of briefs on raising revenues while preserving the state economy. A recent study by Scioto Analysis found that use of non-renewables was one of the biggest drags on the state economy throughout the 2010s, leading to a less sustainable state economy.

“If use of non-renewables had stayed from from 2009 to 2018, the economy would have been $5.2 billion larger at the end of the decade than it was,” said Moore.

This analysis was conducted by Masashi Hamano, MPP candidate at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Writing and analytical support was provided by Rob Moore of Scioto Analysis and additional analytical support was provided by Isabel Clayter, Ashwin MB, and Cruz Eduardo Flores Vera of the University of California, Berkeley.

Moore speaks at Genuine Progress Panel

Scioto Analysis Principal Rob Moore spoke Wednesday afternoon at a webinar hosted by the United States Society for Ecological Economics on Scioto Analysis’s work on the state Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) over the past two years.

“It was such a pleasure to present with GPI researchers from across the country on this topic,” said Moore. “We had some tough conversations about right calculation of GPI and how an indicator like GPI can be used to inform the policymaking process.”

Also presenting their work calculating state GPIs Mairi-Jane Fox of Regis University in Colorado, Eli Lazarus of the University of California, Berkeley, Gunseli Berik of the University of Utah, and Regina Ostergaard-Klem of Hawaii Pacific University.

The full recording of the presentation can be found here, with Moore’s portion beginning at 17:30. The 2020 release of Scioto Analysis’s GPI report can be found here.

Road Pricing for Ohio

This morning, Scioto Analysis released an analysis of road pricing options for the state of Ohio. The brief covers the costs incurred by commuters and the public in the form of time and CO2 emissions from commuting, how road pricing can free up traffic and reduce emissions from stop-and-go gridlock while raising revenue for the state.

“The revenue impacts would not be large, but the $2 million in projected revenue could go to public transportation, support for low-income commuters, or plugging COVID-19 budget holes,” said Scioto Analysis Principal Rob Moore.

The study reviewed options for more or less aggressive road pricing strategies and their impact on commute times and the environment. On average, strategies could save the average commuter 3-10 hours a year in added commute time and could reduce 10 to 20 million gallons of excess fuel consumption per year.

This analysis was conducted by Isabel Clayter, MPP candidate at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Writing support was provided by Rob Moore of Scioto Analysis and additional analytical support was provided by Masashi Hamano, Ashwin MB, and Cruz Eduardo Flores Vera of the University of California, Berkeley.

Ohio crosses the 2,000-death mark: COVID-19 in the Buckeye State

On Tuesday, the state of Ohio crossed the 2,000-death threshold for COVID-19. The crisis is far from over over, but in this moment when restaurants and other businesses are opening back up, we have an opportunity to look at what COVID-19 has looked like in Ohio so far. First, let’s look at cases.

Data from Ohio Department of Health and US Census Bureau.

The most concentrated outbreaks by far have been in Marion and Pickaway counties, home to two medium-security correctional institutions that were revealed to have serious outbreaks through widespread prison testing. As can be seen from above, the third- through tenth-most concentrated counties don’t even compare to the top two counties in cases per 100,000 residents.

Data from Ohio Department of Health and US Census Bureau.

Deaths are more spread out than cases by county, suggesting that testing was behind some of the large numbers in Marion and Pickaway counties. That being said, Pickaway county is still the third-highest in the state for deaths, which means the outbreak may be more severe in this county. The top 10 counties for deaths per 100,000 residents are mostly suburban, but with some urban and rural counties included as well.

Data from Ohio Department of Health.

Ohio’s deaths have been heavily skewed towards older residents. About half of Ohio’s deaths were among people age 80 or older, three quarters were among people 70 or older, and more than 9 in 10 were people 60 or older. Only 3% of Ohio’s deaths were among those younger than 50 and there have been no recorded COVID-19 deaths in Ohio among children or teenagers.

Data from Ohio Department of Health.

Brookings reports that in each the ten countries with the most COVID-19 deaths, men outnumber women in number of deaths. In eight of these ten countries, men are dying in numbers 50% higher than women and in the Netherlands the number of men who have died is more than double the number of women who have died. In Ohio, we are seeing a lot more parity between men and women when it comes to deaths than in these countries.

Data from Ohio Department of Health.

We haven’t heard the phrase “flatten the curve” a lot recently, but that was the original goal of social distancing: to ease the burden on our medical system so everyone who needed treatment could get it. This means that looking at cases or death rates is not the appropriate chart to judge our success with, it is tracking hospital admissions. Hospital admissions reached a peak at about the very end of March, declined sharply through the first half of April, stayed steady through the second half of April, then declined gradually throughout May. Ohio still has a while to go in the COVID crisis, but if we play our cards right, we might be past the worst of it.

There is no script for reopening Ohio

Ohio is opening back up. While our state garnered national and international praise for its initial handling of the coronavirus crisis, we have experienced some notable bumps in the road on the way towards reopening ranging from crowded patios that skirt rules in place to questionable definitions of “mass gathering” that seem to make such skirting unnecessary in the first place.

Probably most troubling for public health advocates and those threatened by COVID-19 during this phase of reopening is how nakedly political the process has been. While the swift enactment of social distancing measures in March operated under the auspices of scientific credibility, even the governor acknowledges the timing of the lifting of these measures has not aligned with White House guidelines for relaxation of social distancing measures.

To say we followed the playbook in March and threw it out in May, however, is wrong. There was no playbook in March. There was no national, White House protocol provided for promoting social distancing. There was no CDC guidance for what should trigger business closings and shelter-in-place orders in the face of a novel coronavirus or any other highly communicable disease for that matter.

While we like to think of pandemic response as a carefully-scripted play, in reality it’s a lot more like taping an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” where actors have a general idea of a plot but are making up their lines as they are hit with new conflicts in every successive scene.

That being said, the DeWine administration’s aggressive action against coronavirus was vindicated early. There was no formal cost-benefit analysis conducted prior to the administration’s decision to close large sectors of the economy for months, but subsequent national studies of social distancing measures all suggested that the national-level social distancing measures generate trillions of dollars in risk of death reductions and would almost certainly outweigh the severe economic damage they may create. Subsequent research studying the impact of stay-at-home orders seems to support this analysis, suggesting that stay-at-home orders had a significant impact on reduction of spread of disease in Illinois compared to no-stay-at-home Iowa counties across their border.

Both friends and foes of state social distancing measures have characterized the current moment as a conflict between public health and the economy. This, however, is a false dichotomy. We know that economic factors impact health at the community and individual level. We also know that health impacts economic success, whether it means taking off sick days today or missing school and losing out on human capital accumulation.

Ultimately, the DeWine administration is dealing with an uncomfortable truth: If we didn’t have a script for closing, we certainly don’t have a script for reopening. Sure, the White House has issued a series of recommendations based off an American Enterprise Institute report thrown together in the first weeks of Ohio’s stay-at-home order by a team headed by a former FDA administrator. This is better than nothing but still leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering that original report on how to reopen the economy had no economists among its five coauthors.

No script can’t mean no guidance, though. Policymakers need to listen to public health researchers who continue a familiar refrain: distancing, screening, treatment, vaccine. Ohioans should be asking if mass gatherings for weddings and graduations are necessary in the short-term. Ohioans should be asking why places like Vermont have universal COVID testing while Ohio doesn’t. Ohioans should be asking if we have enough ventilators so we don’t become the next Lombardy or New York City in the case of a second outbreak. And Ohioans should be asking what little things we can do to chip in to speed the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.

In the meantime, we need to preserve our economy, not as some abstraction that correlates with electoral outcomes for incumbents, but as a system that we use to get people things they need and want. This means measuring what matters comprehensively and using these measures to guide our policymaking. There is no tradeoff between economic activity and public health: They are two enterprises inextricably linked. It’s up to us to make sure they walk forward in tandem, supporting one another, with a script or without it.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

Ohio's Long-Term Trend: Economics Up, Environment and Social Indicators Down

This morning, Scioto Analysis released a new report on Ohio’s Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a comprehensive economic measure that fills the environmental and social gaps neglected by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures.

This year’s study covers ten years of data on Ohio’s GPI, addressing the time period from 2009 to 2018, where the best primary data is available. Ohio’s GPI grew over this time period by about 19%, mostly driven by economic factors. Below are some positive trends from 2009 to 2018 that drove GPI growth:

• Personal spending was up $4,400 per capita, net saving was up $2,600 per capita, and Ohio’s unemployment and underemployment rate was cut in half over that period.

• Higher education is on the rise: 420,000 more people had bachelor’s degrees in Ohio in 2018 than in 2009.

• Air pollution is on the decline: four out of five major pollutants saw emissions declines, with nitrogen oxide emissions cut in half over the period and 2018 sulfur dioxide emissions at one-sixth the level of 2009 emissions.

• Inequality growth has slowed: after increases in inequality levels from 2009 to 2013, the trend of Ohio’s Gini coefficient flattened from 2013 to 2018.

Despite the positive overall trend, GPI growth was stymied by environmental and social factors, leading to a growth rate in GPI that was about half the GDP growth rate over that time period. Below are the main factors that decreased GPI over this time period.

• A boom in natural gas drilling and substitution away from coal led to a decline in CO2 emissions, but relied on extraction of limited nonrenewable resources that chipped away at Ohio’s stock of nonrenewables.

• The average worker spent 31 more hours at work and 8 more hours commuting and the average adult spent 18 fewer hours on housework and caring for children or other family members in 2018 than in 2009.

• Trends in farmland pricing and economic hangover from the Great Recession in the consumer durables market also took a bite out of GPI growth.

“While we’re in the midst of a short-term economic crisis, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees when it comes to the long-term trajectory of our economy,” said Rob Moore, Scioto Analysis Principal and study co-author. “When we measure what matters, we see that Ohio’s long-term economic vitality is being stymied by increased family time constraints and rapid depletion of state natural resources, side effects that can be addressed by public policy decisions.”

This study was a partnership between Rob Moore of Scioto Analysis and Isabel Clayter, Masashi Hamano, Ashwin MB, and Cruz Eduardo Flores Vera, a group of graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. This is the first of a series of briefs on Ohio’s economic trajectory and options for policymakers interested in improving it.

What do school shutdowns do to kids?

By Noah Stein and Rob Moore

As states are reopening for recreation, office work, and even dining across the country, states are keeping schools shut down. On its face, this decisions seems like a no-brainer: buildings with hundreds of young children are breeding grounds for germs and our influenza shutdown protocol prominently features school closings as a strategy to limit the spread of disease. 

As students switch from in-school instruction to at-home instructions, though, they switch from an in-person learning experience to a virtual learning experience. This has the potential to erode the human capital development of children if virtual learning is not a good substitute for in-person learning, which could mean lower wages down the road and cascading harm to the economy.

For years, researchers have been working to understand variations in a student’s long-term earnings in the context of access to education. Now that the nation’s students have been pushed into a new virtual learning environment, understanding the impact of education on different learning outcomes has taken on a new urgency. According to a recent article published by Brookings, access to steady education is directly related to one’s lifetime earnings. Brooking’s valuation of education and Ohio’s current K-12 enrollment data suggest children in Ohio alone could see a loss of over $58 billion dollars in foregone lifetime labor market earnings due to lost educational time from school shutdowns associated with COVID.

A study looking at Ohio students who voluntarily participated in “E-schools” found them to be at higher risk for failing on their graduation tests relative to traditional public school students.  This study drew its conclusions from virtual classrooms of students who knew what they signed up for. Now, Ohio students across the board are dealing with the abrupt transition to a virtual learning environment they have no experience navigating. This means the existing risk of lowered test scores and increased achievement gap could be even more significant than past data shows. 

That being said, some studies have found online classes to be more cost-effective, accessible, and environmentally friendly than in-person instruction. Theoretically, anyone with access to the internet can access classes from home. This ability to have more agency on how the student digests the material has been shown to increase retention rates by up to 60%. And due to reduced community times, The Open University in Britain has concluded that switching to virtual learning reduces CO2 emissions by 85% per student.

The unexpected switch to online learning will likely result in lower test scores, an increased achievement gap, and severe economic consequences if students respond to virtual learning the way they have in the past. On the other hand, there is some silver lining in the potential for increased retention rate and reduced environmental impact. Ultimately, it will be years before we know the eventual impact of months of school closures. In the meantime, it is up to us to delicately balance the potential public health benefits of school closures against their severe human capital costs.

Why are state policymakers saving funds for the recovery?

Over the past couple of months, the state of Ohio has seen a $200 million budget surplus evaporate into a nearly $800 million budget deficit. Faced with what look like a 30% annualized drop in GDP in the second quarter of 2020, the governor of Ohio has issued a budget plan for the end of the fiscal year that calls for $780 million in Fiscal Year 2020 budget cuts, with four out of five dollars in budget cuts coming out of K-12, Medicaid, and higher education spending. 

Data from Cleveland.com

To state budget watchers, this move should be surprising. Ohio has saved about $2.7 billion since the Great Recession to use during a budget crisis such as the one Ohio is experiencing now. The Kasich administration had resisted Democratic calls to spend the funds when the economy was strong and the budget was stable, and now the DeWine administration has stated it does not intend to use these funds, quite literally called “budget stabilization funds,” to stabilize the budget in what may end up being the most dramatic quarterly shortfall in Ohio fiscal history.

This implies that the state could continue to cover historic shortfalls for the rest of the year, which itself is an extremely unlikely worst-case scenario even using the state’s own reported forecasts, without cutting its budget at all. 

Governor DeWine has said "The 'rain' is not a passing spring shower - it could be a long, cold, lingering storm, and we should not use the fund until it is necessary." The implication of the governor’s statement has been that budget shortfalls will worsen in the coming quarters, though sources cited by the governor’s budget office suggest the economy is expected to improve over the last half of 2020 and early 2021.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to education and health care coverage means that people will not build human capital and get access to health care in the middle of a national pandemic. It also means dollars will sit in state coffers while people who want to work sit at home unemployed. Maybe the state’s decision to hold back funds in the midst of a fiscal crisis is informed by bad information. Maybe it’s informed by bad politics. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be informed by the fiscal reality and economic forecasts its budget office reports.