Working Class Studies Can Help Save Lives and the Economy

WASHINGTON - Aug. 7, 2017 - PRLog -- Increasing our understanding about white working class Americans may provide a boost to the economy by helping to reverse a trend which is holding back long-overdue growth, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.


        The willingness of people to move from one location to another, primarily to obtain or improve employment, is at an all-time low.  Indeed, in rural America, the percentage of people who moved even just across a county line in 2015 was only about 4%.

        Some economists think this is a primary reason why our economy is no longer growing as fast as it did in the past, since people who want to work are less willing to move to areas where suitable employment is much more readily available.


        This lack of mobility hurts not only many of the working poor, but all of us, says Banzhaf, who first called for academics to create white working class studies, similar to the black studies, Hispanic studies, women's studies, and LGBT studies now so popular at major universities.

        The lack of non-professional workers in locations where they are sorely needed is choking off the labor supply and limiting the economic growth that naturally occurs when people and capital cluster together, says David Schleicher, a professor at Yale Law School who has studied the issue.

        The Wall Street Journal says that culture is a primary reason who so many white working class Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, especially those in rural areas, do not move to where the jobs are.  The Journal concluded that "the lack of mobility has become a drag on the entire U.S. economy."

        It reported that: "beyond the practical difficulties, rural residents and experts say there is another impediment to mobility that is often more difficult to overcome - the growing cultural divide."

        According to recent surveys, the ready acceptance by city residents of immigration, same-sex marriage and "secularism" creates distrust and a cultural barrier strong enough to discourage many moves.

        The Journal notes that "economists have tried to measure whether Americans' eroding trust in one another is damping mobility - such confidence helps ease the transition to a new town - and found signs that this sliding trust may be keeping people from uprooting. . . . Raven Molloy, an economist with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, found in research that states with large declines in overall trust were also places where job-switching had decreased markedly."

        "One of the big cultural divides when people move from small towns to cities is this feeling that you can't be involved in your community," says David J. Peters, associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University. "You feel powerless to change large cities."

        The Journal also cited the experience of a woman who dropped her studies in the city because of strong cultural differences.  "As a conservative Christian, she also found the cultural divide on campus difficult to bridge. Students smoked pot, engaged in casual sex and had parties at their parents' homes behind their backs. 'Our world now is godless,' she says. 'I don't know if the places where I've been are places where I could discover God better.'"

        Banzhaf suggests that establishing a new discipline and courses in white working class studies might help both sides to bridge the gap in understanding, interacting, and accepting each other, and thus boost the number of white working class members who move to where good jobs are plentiful.  It could also encourage college grads to hire - and then to work better with - those without such a degree.

        This is especially true on college campuses where straight white students now readily mix with students they know to be black, Hispanic or gay, but may never talk with students knowing that they come from white working class families because the latter are reluctant to talk about their backgrounds, and there are no ethic studies classes where they can easily interact with each other.

        Prof. Banzhaf has previously noted that life expectancy - which has always been a reliable indicator of improvement in the human condition - is now sharply declining among white working class Americans, both male and female, although it continues to rise for those with a 4-year degree.

        Indeed, mortality is suddenly rising for white middle-class Americans after decades of decline, a startling development for an economically advanced nation.

        In a related matter, poor health is becoming more common for each new generation of middle-aged white Americans without 4-year college degrees,  and they are going downhill faster.

        It's not just a result of economic setbacks, the difficulty of finding jobs, lack of growth in the spending power of their paychecks, etc., he suggests.

        We know this because researchers have reported that the death rate of non-Hispanic white middle class Americans had risen steadily since 1999 - in sharp contrast with the death rates of black and Hispanics workers who in many situations suffer from the same economic problems.

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com  @profbanzhaf