Formula shortage exposes familiar weakness in our safety net

Last week, the Ohio Department of Health requested that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allow greater flexibility in its social assistance programs around baby formula.

The program the Ohio Department of Health is most interested in is the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, one of the nation’s most important nutritional programs.

According to the Ohio Department of Health, over 38,000 Ohio women receive WIC benefits per month. These benefits go on to feed over 55,000 infants and over 70,000 children every month.

WIC works differently than the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly “food stamps”). While SNAP gives a dollar allotment, WIC gives women a list of foods they are allowed to purchase, much like a rationing system. Women who receive WIC are given a card by the state that they can then use to purchase “authorized foods” and then are asked to refer to a pamphlet detailing these authorized foods when shopping.

The national baby formula shortage is exposing a flaw in the WIC program design. WIC accounts for about half of all formula purchases in the United States, but WIC vouchers generally only allow purchase of one brand of baby formula. This means that if that one provider of baby formula stops producing formula, millions of families across the country suddenly have nowhere to turn to for food for their infants.

Congress has acted quickly to fix this problem with the program and last weekend President Biden signed a bill to expand access to new types of formula. But why does it take an act of Congress for a key nutritional program to provide the most common source of nutrition for infants during a time of crisis?

If you haven’t picked up on this by now, there is a lot of handholding that comes with the WIC program. While WIC provides $140 million in funding for food and nutrition education per year for Ohio families, it also puts strict limits on what can be bought, with the good intention of delivering healthful foods to families.

Contrast this with the Child Tax Credit, a program that provides families with a cash stipend to buy whatever they need to support their family—no strings attached, no reporting.

While WIC is ostensibly the more direct way to support nutrition in families, it was not flexible enough to deal with a quite predictable nutrition problem—a formula shortage—without a Congressional redesign of the program. A recipient of the Child Tax Credit, on the other hand, could spend their dollars on new formula right away if one formula becomes more expensive or runs out.

The formula shortage is a national problem, but more individual problems are happening every day. A bus pass to get to a job across town. Fees for child care expenses. An overdue rent payment. These are all things WIC can’t buy.

This isn’t to say WIC is worse than the alternative of no program at all. But we run the risk of thinking we know more than we do about the future and plight of individual families when we design a program to be as prescriptive as WIC is. 

Maybe in the future we will have a safety net that trusts families to make their own decisions. Maybe then we will have a safety net that doesn’t require acts of cabinet-level state officials and congressional dealmaking to allow access to the basic resources needed for survival in the face of an all-too-predictable crisis.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

An Energy Storage Roadmap for Appalachia

Earlier this month, the Energy Policy Center at Cleveland State University released an energy roadmap for northern Appalachia co-written by Scioto Analysis Principal Rob Moore.

The report catalogues sector assets for the energy storage industry in southeast Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. It also lays out a framework for growing the energy storage industry in northern Appalachia and includes recommendations for policymakers interested in encouraging growth in the energy storage supply chain in the area.

Based on the study team’s research of Northern Appalachian commercial enterprises engaged in the business of energy storage, at least 17,000 workers are employed across over 200 companies.

The study team also identified metropolitan areas in northern Appalachia with concentrations of certain engineering professions, finding a concentration of materials engineers in Erie and Pittsburgh, PA and Youngstown, OH, electrical and mechanical engineers in Pittsburgh and State College, PA, and chemical engineers in Charleston, WV. Northern Appalachia also enjoys a cost of living advantage, with eight metropolitan areas under the national cost of living.

The study also includes recommendations for development of the energy storage industry in Appalachia, including promoting grid and stationary storage in Northern Appalachia, promoting adoption of energy storage in the transportation sector, and funding market validation programs for energy storage startups.

New report finds a gap in high-paying tech jobs in rural America

The Center on Rural Innovation (CORI), with financial support from the Ascendium Education Group, announced the publication of a report on the state of tech employment in rural America earlier this month.

The report concludes a nearly year-long research project involving a national survey of rural adults, a regional survey of rural employers, economic analysis of relevant labor market data collected by EMSI Burning Glass, and more than 50 interviews with tech employers, training providers, workers, and learners. It offers a variety of key findings and strategies that can be useful for local, state, and federal leaders, employers, rural training providers and higher ed institutions, workforce development professionals, funders, and tech workers alike. The research reveals that:

• Rural America is home to half of the tech jobs — about 244,000 — that one would expect to find based on national tech employment patterns and more than 80,000 of the “missing” rural tech jobs are in core non-tech industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, government, and banking.

• Three-quarters of missing tech jobs in core non-tech industries are in roles such as software developers, computer systems analysts, and cybersecurity and systems engineers.

• Nearly 60% of rural Americans are interested in tech jobs and careers.

• Rural tech workers take a variety of paths into the field — half are self-taught, and less than 40% obtained their training via a four-year college or university.

• The two largest barriers to tech training for rural workers are cost and time commitment.

“This report helps to shine new light on the opportunities for rural America to fully participate in the tech economy,” said Mark Rembert, CORI’s director of research and knowledge. “Our research shows that a majority of rural Americans are eager to increase their tech skills, and that there are untapped opportunities for rural employers to create pathways into technology careers.”

“Rural workers are poised to fill tech roles in the fast-growing digital economy,” said Kirstin Yeado, a program officer at Ascendium. “CORI’s research provides employers and rural postsecondary education and workforce development leaders with a resource that illustrates how and why they must work together to help more rural workers – especially those from low-income backgrounds – gain the skills needed to transition to employment in the digital workforce.”

Scioto Analysis consulted on this study, providing feedback as a firm working on economic and public policy development at the state and local level in the United States.

The report is available here.

Ohio economists agree abortion prohibition will decrease women's educational attainment, labor force participation, earnings

In a survey published by Scioto Analysis this morning, 22 of 24 Ohio economists agreed abortion prohibition in Ohio would decrease women’s educational attainment and earnings.

Of the 22 who agreed abortion prohibition would decrease educational attainment, some said the impact would be small, but many cited the literature on the connection between abortion access and educational attainment. Others commented on the tradeoff women face between having children and earning degrees in secondary and higher education. Economists also commented on how low-income women would be affected more directly by a prohibition.

Of the 22 who agreed abortion prohibition would decrease wages, economists commented on the tradeoff women have between working and parenting. They also commented on how much more likely the prohibition would be to impact low-income women’s wages than higher-income women’s wages.

For reasons similar to the other two questions, 20 economists agreed abortion prohibition would decrease women’s labor force participation. Some economists talked about the impact of policy on this relationship, in particular talking about how the lack of access to child care could decrease labor force participation and income support programs with work requirements could increase it.

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel is a panel of over 40 Ohio Economists from over 30 Ohio higher educational institutions conducted by Scioto Analysis. The goal of the Ohio Economic Experts Panel is to promote better policy outcomes by providing policymakers, policy influencers, and the public with the informed opinions of Ohio’s leading economists.

What does the research say on abortion access?

The world shook last week when Politico releases a draft opinion suggesting Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned. Since President Trump installed three new Supreme Court justices on the bench, court watchers have thought the right to privacy and bodily autonomy were at risk. Now we may see a world where protection of that right is no longer guaranteed.

Ohio’s legislative leaders have been especially hostile to abortion rights, instituting restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, insurance restrictions, mandatory ultrasounds, a 20-week ban, limitation of reasons someone can seek an abortion, and unnecessary physical plant restrictions designed to reduce access to safe and legal abortion. One legislator in Ohio has even put a bill that would authorize any resident of Ohio to act as a “paid bounty hunter,” receiving a guaranteed $10,000 for hunting down and suing doctors providing abortion.

Abortion access is important because of fundamental rights of privacy and bodily autonomy. It also is important because of the measurable impact it has on women’s lives. A brief to the Supreme Court last year signed by 154 economists details the evidence of these impacts.

Abortion legalization gives access to an important form of contraceptive. A seminal study used pre-Roe legalization and trends before and after the Roe v Wade decision to study the impact of Roe on birth. It estimated that a complete national recriminalization of abortion would lead to 440,000 new unwanted pregnancies annually, though the impact would be blunted if some states kept the procedure legal.

Abortion legalization was most crucial for young women and Black women. Even controlling for cultural trends, abortion legalization and guarantee of freedom from parental consent reduced teen motherhood by 34% and teen motherhood by 20%. Black women experienced a 28-40% reduction in maternal mortality due to abortion legalization with better access to quality abortion care.

Abortion legalization improved educational outcomes for women. Black women graduated high school and attended college at rates 22-27% higher due to abortion legalization. Abortion allowed more women to enter the workforce, do more jobs, and earn more as well, especially Black women.

Abortion legalization is important in the face of lack of access to reliable, universally-available contraceptives. Contraceptives are expensive and often not full proof. Often abortion is the last resort option for contraceptive care when all others fail.

Lack of parental leave policy gives women little chance to care for themselves and their family in the case of a pregnancy. Parental leave is scarcely provided for throughout Ohio, especially for lower-income women who are less likely to have access to other forms of contraceptive in the first place.

Abortion legalization is especially key for women in dire economic circumstances. One in two women seeking an abortion are in poverty and three in four are low income. Over half already have children and over half are dealing with disruptive events such as death of a close friend or family member, job loss, end of a relationship with a partner, or mounting rent or mortgage payments.

Abortion legalization is important for access. Making abortion illegal will make it harder for women to obtain necessary care, with mainly only more well-off women having the means to travel for abortion care.

We don’t know exactly what will happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned. But we do have a pretty good idea of what happened after it was put into place. If many in the legislature get their way and make abortion illegal in the state, Ohio’s women will be worse for it.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

Ending extreme poverty in Ohio would be the state’s 16th-largest tax write-off

Often in state government, policymakers are chipping away at the margins of public policy. Legislation is usually aimed toward tweaking small technocratic problems to try to deliver services better or fighting culture war battles to score points with interest groups. Too often these policies do little to nothing to help people.

So what would it take to really help people in a state like Ohio?

One way to think about this problem is to look at the problem of extreme poverty, defined as those living on under $2 a day in the United States — an international threshold for extreme poverty.

It seems unconscionable, right? Could people in Ohio really be living on under $2 a day?

According to the Center for Community Solutions, the leading human services think tank in Ohio, they are. In 2016, the Center estimated that between 184,000 and 198,000 Ohioans — or about 1 in every 60 state residents — is living on under $2 a day.

What would it take to bring these folks above this threshold? Providing $2 a day to each of these about 200,000 Ohioans would cost a little under $150 million a year. That’s not chump change, but how does it compare to other expenditures by the state? I wrote about how Franklin County could afford such a measure in Columbus Alive in 2019: Let’s see what that would look like to do something like this statewide.

One way to consider the size of this sort of program is to look at the state’s Tax Expenditure Report, a report that details the cost over 100 tax exemptions to the state tax code required by law to be estimated every other year by the Ohio Department of Taxation.

In Fiscal Year 2022, Ohio will spend nearly $9.2 billion on various tax exemptions to individuals and businesses within the state. Of these tax exemptions, 15 of them are on their own larger than the $150 million needed to end extreme poverty in the state. Let’s look at some of these exemptions the state gives.

The largest are various exemptions for property used to create products. Manufacturing property is written off in Ohio to a tune of $1.8 billion. Other large expenditures are write-offs for agricultural equipment ($290 million), sales to electricity providers ($270 million), and packaging ($250 million). The goal of these write-offs is to not tax production at two different places, but these huge expenditures show a $150 million expenditure to end extreme poverty is not unreasonable.

Another is sales to churches and certain non-profits ($700 million). Theoretically, some of this money should encourage antipoverty programs. But with this money we could end extreme poverty four times over in the state. Maybe an efficient use of funds, maybe not. Definitely a large use of funds.

We also give a large write-off for building and construction materials ($300 million), one for transportation of people and property ($260 million) and for motor vehicle trade-ins ($210 million). Ohio also gives write-offs for the first $1 million in taxable gross receipts for businesses ($230 million) and for distribution center receipts (also $230 million).

I’m not going to say all of these expenditures are bad. There are perfectly reasonable economic justifications for many of these expenditures. But in order to put a little grease in the wheels of Ohio’s economy, we’re able to spend more than $150 million on industry after industry, year after year. Why is it crazy to say we could do the same to end extreme poverty?

Ohio economists say universal pre-k would be good for economy, poverty alleviation, educational attainment

In a survey published by Scioto Analysis this morning, 22 of 26 Ohio economists agreed a universal pre-k program for Ohio would grow the state economy, reduce poverty and inequality, and improve graduation rates and enrollments.

Of the 24 economists who believed a universal pre-k program would grow the economy, many emphasized the importance of pre-k as a workforce development program. They focused on the importance of training students at young ages and emphasized the strong empirical evidence in support of this claim. Respondents were also interested in the quality controls that would be a part of such a program and whether the program would be mandatory. While no economists disagreed with the statements, two were uncertain, with one bringing up some recent evidence calling into question the empirical research in favor of universal pre-k.

Economists were nearly equally in agreement that a universal pre-k program would reduce poverty and inequality, with 22 economists in agreement with the statement. The empirical research was again a focus of the comments by economists, as was workforce development and the long-term sustainability of a universal program compared to a targeted program. While no economists disagreed with the statement, four were uncertain, with one who was certain about the impact of universal pre-k on the economy maintaining that universal pre-k on its own would not be sufficient to reduce levels of poverty and inequality.

Respondents were also bullish on a universal pre-k program’s ability to improve educational outcomes, with 23 economists saying it would improve graduation rates and college enrollment. Economists who agreed believed early investment was preferable to later investment and that the economic research supported this claim. No economists disagreed with the statement, though three were uncertain about the impact on educational outcomes without additional educational investments.

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel is a panel of over 40 Ohio Economists from over 30 Ohio higher educational institutions conducted by Scioto Analysis. The goal of the Ohio Economic Experts Panel is to promote better policy outcomes by providing policymakers, policy influencers, and the public with the informed opinions of Ohio’s leading economists.

How can a policy analyst select criteria for her analysis?

The heart of policy analysis is trying to understand what happens when a certain policy is adopted. This is done by projecting how a policy will advance or detract certain policy criteria—hallmarks of good policy.

The problem is that good policy can be evaluated a number of ways. Does the policy grow the economy? Does it reduce poverty and inequality? Does it advance education and improve health? Does it make people happier? In order for a policy analysis to be manageable, a policy analyst needs to narrow this list by selecting criteria for the analysis.

Eugene Bardach details a few commonly used evaluative criteria in his book A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: the Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving. The first criteria Bardach deems “Hit the Target!” This includes goals like cutting water consumption by 5 percent for a quarter or de-leading all painted interior surfaces in a neighborhood by December 31st.

Bardarch then goes on to talk about “efficiency,” or the measure of the sum of economic welfare impacts of a policy. He also mentions “equality, equity, fairness, justice” as a criteria, which in short means how a policy will impact different groups of people. Bardach gets more abstract talking about “freedom, community, and other ideas”—criteria that help capture the type of community policymakers want to create and the types of lives that can be lived in those communities.

Lastly, Bardach mentions “process values,” a criteria that focuses on processes that keep democracy strong or give people opportunity to take part in the political process. This can be different than an efficiency or effectiveness analysis, but can nonetheless be helpful for policymakers who are interested in understanding if a policy will further participation and healthy democratic goals.

Bardach goes on to talk about how criteria relate to one another, making the claim that some evaluative criteria deserve more weight than others. The analyst can deal with this problem in a few ways. One way is for her to allow the political process to take care of it, with policymakers deciding how to weigh different criteria against one another. Another option is for the analyst to impose a solution, focusing on criteria that are overlooked in the political sphere so a new criteria and people served by that criteria are supported by good analysis. Another is to focus on the topic of “rights,” though Bardach is critical of this approach as it leaves little space for consensus to be achieved.

Beyond core criteria, practical criteria have a place in some policy analysis. One such criterion is legality, or whether a policy would conflict with a constitution or law superseding the level of the policy analysis. A second is political acceptability, or how much opposition or support a policy would attract. Another is administrative robustness: how easily will a policy be implemented with available or possible bureaucratic structure? Last, Bardach talks about political sustainability, or how long a policy is likely to survive in the long-term political climate.

Bardach also talks about criteria as logical constructs. This could mean minimizing or maximizing a criterion for policy analysis. For instance, if a policy analysis is built on the problem definition of “too many people are homeless in Cleveland, Ohio,” a criteria could be “minimization of homelessness,” with policies that minimize homelessness the most deemed fulfilling this criteria best. Another is what Bardach calls “linear programming,” or trying to maximize a criteria based on certain goals. For instance, “minimize homelessness spending no more than $2 million and weighting child homelessness at twice the level of adult homelessness.”

Analysts should also specify metrics, ideally using quantitative, specific metrics rather than qualitative, broad metrics. The goal here is to reduce confusion and philosophical argument and to shift the conversation toward empirics.

Bardach warns against confusing alternatives with criteria. Don’t let your criteria creep into your alternatives and then presuppose the effectiveness of a given alternative. Remember: alternatives are policy options someone can carry out, criteria are the values we use to assess them.

Ohio can measure ‘genuine progress’ over pandemic losses

The 2020s have been a tumultuous time for Ohio’s economy. The shock of quickly closing the economy to stave off the overcrowding of hospitals has been followed by two years of hesitancy for state residents to shop, eat out and engage in public life.

This tumult was captured in state Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, state GDP dove in the first half of 2020, falling from $615 billion of annualized chained GDP at the end of 2019 to $549 billion in Q2 of 2020—an 11% decrease.

To conceptualize this, think of where you’d be if your last few paychecks came in 11% lower than the one before. And this is after you expected your pay to increase. That’s how bad things were in 2020.

Ohio’s state GDP bounced back in the second half of 2020, but didn’t recover to 2019 levels until the second half of 2021.

This is how we tend to talk about economics. GDP is useful because it totals up the sum value of the formal economy, summing personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports.

The problem with GDP is that the measure gives us an incomplete picture of the economy. While it gives us an idea of how much people are paid to do things, it gives us little information of how people economize their time and resources more broadly.

For instance, according to GDP, when millions of Ohioans stopped eating out and started cooking at home, the value of food preparation completely dissipated. Suddenly, 4.7 million households were cooking at home instead of paying people to cook for them, but since dollars were no longer changing hands, GDP was blind to the new way people were creating value.

Similarly, with the onset of COVID-19, fewer people were driving to work and more people were working from home. According to GDP, this means fewer people were paying for gasoline and car maintenance, and the economy was shrinking. No accounting was done for the extra time people had on their hands due to cutting out their commutes and the value of reduced greenhouse gas emissions due to fewer cars being on the road.

In order to account for these sorts of problems, a new generation of economists have been calculating a new measure of the economy for the past twenty years called the Genuine Progress Indicator. 

The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) starts with personal consumption expenditures then adjusts it by supplementing it with economic indicators such as underemployment. It then subtracts out environmental damage and adds the net benefits of social indicators such as the value of unpaid housework and childrearing, the spillover benefits of higher education, and the cost of lost leisure time.

In an ideal world, the research office of Ohio’s Department of Development would publish quarterly GPI numbers and release them to the media. The Department would also report them to the Governor’s Office of Budget and Management and key legislative committees such as the House and Senate Finance and Ways and Means committees. 

With better data that captures the full picture of the state economy, we can craft better policy. Why would we want any less than that for our state?

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

How does a policy analyst construct policy options?

Construction of alternatives is in some ways the most creative step of the policy analysis process.

After a policy analyst has defined the problem the policymakers are trying to solve and assembled evidence to inform the policy analysis, the analyst needs to then decide which policy alternatives she will analyze to solve that problem.

“Alternative” is an annoying word, but it is prevalent in policy analysis literature. I prefer the phrase “policy option” because it makes it more clear what we are searching for when constructing alternatives. Basically these are the policies that we are analyzing when doing a policy analysis.

In Eugene Bardach’s A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving, Bardach has some useful tips for analysts who are constructing these policy options to analyze. 

His first tip is to beware a linguistic pitfall: just because we call policy options “alternatives” does not mean they are mutually exclusive. Any government by necessity has more than one policy they are putting into practice, so think of alternatives as options that could be compared against one another, but more for prioritization rather than exclusive choice.

I ran into this mistake in an early policy analysis, saying that one policy was the “best” at bringing about a certain outcome. A client was confused, saying that all the policies should be implemented. By admitting that all policies could be useful and worth implementing, I could have made the client understand better that one policy was particularly good at carrying this out without implying the other policies were not worthwhile.

After this aside, Bardach then goes into strategies for constructing alternatives, providing the general advice to start comprehensive, end up focused. This means first listing as many policy options as possible, then whittling them down as you go along.

Bardach suggests starting with policy options policymakers are putting forth, which is a great place to start, especially if your client is giving you policy options to analyze. Another is to look at the suite of tools governments have to bring about change. These include taxation, regulation, subsidization, service provision, budgeting, information provision, structuring of rights, setting standards for markets, education, financing and contracting, and administration.

Another path is to try more creative approaches. Bardach suggests asking yourself certain questions: “how would you solve a problem if cost were no object?” “Where else will one idea work?” “Why not?”

Bardach also pays special attention to two particular alternatives. The first is the status quo, or “let present trends continue.” Any policy analysis should first consider what the baseline is, otherwise it will not have a good comparison for new policies. Second is “learn more.” There is a cost for waiting and learning more, but sometimes present information is sufficiently murky that taking time to learn could be preferable to a more active policy option, especially if that policy option is particularly costly.

Another way to construct alternatives is by modeling the system in which the problem is located. This can be done by modeling the market a problem is located in, modeling government production processes, modeling sociological and psychological behavior, or using institutional models to understand how processes change over time. 

As the policy analysis progresses, an analyst will need to conceptualize and simplify the list of alternatives. This means taking a more abstract view of policy options and making it easier for a lay reader to understand what policy options there are at the disposal of policymakers. Keep in mind that this comports well with the advice to beware the linguistic pitfall: policymakers can always adopt multiple policies and they generally do.

Sometimes, points on a continuum are alternatives. If you are making a recommendation for a tax, subsidy, charge, or budget item, there are often many different alternatives that can be chosen. Focusing on reasonable bounds for setting a dollar amount and then choosing based on recommendations out there or goals can be a good way to narrow the scope and make options more digestible.

Bardach also says that alternatives should be detailed. Of course a policymaker can choose to adopt a policy she wishes to, but more detailed alternatives that explain who will be doing what and how much they will do them makes the conversation clearer and makes it easier for people to understand what policies will actually do and be able to evaluate them.

Lastly, Bardach addresses the inevitability of evolving policy through multistage analysis. This could be simply waiting and seeing how conditions on the ground develop, contingency planning in case of facts on the ground changing over time, making adjustments for political reasons, or intentional learning by doing.

Policy analysts have a role to play in constructing better policy. I saw this happen with the California Legislative Analyst Office’s analysis of earned income tax credit alternatives. The Office put forth an analysis that included a new design of the state earned income tax credit targeting those in deep poverty—a policy design never adopted by a state before. This ended up being what the state adopted. Only through good construction of alternatives by creative policy analysts did this new antipoverty policy come about.