Perpetuating Cycles of Exclusion New study by UCLA Luskin professors Paavo Monkkonen and Michael Lens examines how zoning laws in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas reinforce socioeconomic divides

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By Adrian Bijan White

A new study by researchers at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs shines a light on how zoning law changes in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas are increasing inequality and raising concerns about social mobility.

One of the most influential factors in shaping metropolitan areas, according to the study, is the government’s use of land regulations and zoning laws, which determine building densities and land uses. “The playing field,” according to the researchers, “is far from equal.”

It is well known that zoning laws and land regulation contribute to racial and economic segregation through “exclusionary zoning” policies, but the new study by Michael Lens and Paavo Monkkonen MPP ’05, assistant professors in Urban Planning, examines these processes in depth. Their research revealed four patterns in zoning restrictions.

Zoning policies in metropolitan areas isolate wealth

“We found that more stringent regulatory processes are related to the segregation of the affluent,” Lens said. “What we see is their ability to self segregate and to pass laws and regulations toward that end.” Lens added that policies allow for the concentration of wealth, rather than the concentration of poverty, within cities. The self-segregating ability of the wealthy derives from socioeconomic status and influence, which manifests itself in exclusionary zoning policy. Some classes, as a result, are excluded from certain neighborhoods and congregate in less desirable neighborhoods. Restrictions such as single-family zoning as opposed to higher density apartment complexes, raise housing prices and perpetuate cycles of exclusion.

Zoning laws across the entire metropolitan area are relevant

Within metropolitan areas, individual cities retain high levels of autonomy in terms of their zoning policies. As a result, cities often tailor their restrictions to appeal to higher-income residents. “If we had land use regulation at a regional scale, we could reduce the tendency of smaller, wealthy cities trying to zone for a certain kind of resident,” Monkkonen said. “However, this would require a change which would greatly reduce the city’s individual power.

“If you have a strict enough regulatory regime, you can’t build enough units in city neighborhoods which are experiencing accelerated changes in demographics,” Monkkonen added. “In terms of gentrification, you have an influx of higher income residents, which raises the value of said neighborhood. In terms of building development, if you can build enough units to keep up with rising demand, then lower-income households could stick around, which would result in an integrating process and not an exclusionary one.”

Bureaucratic construction processes and density restrictive policies hinder the development of surrounding cities in metropolitan areas and stagnate the supply of housing, making housing prices highly sensitive to shifting socioeconomic trends.

Localized zoning policies contribute to the segregation of neighborhoods

“Maximum density restrictions (single-family zoning) are the way in which cities restrict multi-family housing. People often assume that places with lower density rules have less poor people, which we can confirm.” Monkkonen asserts that local processes of density restriction contribute to the concentration of wealth. “If we can speed up housing construction processes and adapt zoning regulations to allow for the densification of neighborhoods, we could stabilize housing prices and render neighborhoods more inclusionary.”

Local policies within cities indirectly promote the exclusion of lower-income populations by restricting multi-family housing, according to the researchers. By maintaining lower levels of population density, the forces of supply and demand raise housing prices. Furthermore, different policies play out in different ways in terms of their effects on segregation. Areas that demonstrate very bureaucratic construction processes are highly segregated because of the inability to provide new housing. Segregation is also correlated with stronger local government restrictions, which often restrict population growth. On the other hand, segregation is not strongly associated with open-space requirements, supply restrictions or delayed approvals.

Centralized policies can mitigate segregation across metropolitan areas

There is some variation across states in the extent of local control over land use. “When you see checks on city regulations in metropolitan areas by the state, we witness lower levels of income segregation,” Lens said.

Centralized zoning policies reduce the effects of local government policies, which contribute to the segregation of neighborhoods, according to the study. By reducing the autonomy of individual cities, metropolitan areas as a whole can work towards higher levels of density, inclusionary housing policies and integration. “The government has regulatory tools to promote integration between middle- and lower-class communities; however, wealthy communities retain their ability to self segregate. Our research shows that local government regulations help them do so,” Lens said.

The political and economic influence of wealthy residents renders certain neighborhoods partially immune to the effects of inclusionary zoning regulations; however, authorities can target the integration of lower- and middle-class neighborhoods. “When you see checks on city regulations in metropolitan areas by the state, we witness lower levels of income segregation,” Monkkonen said. By dismantling bureaucratic construction processes and restrictions on density levels, which is often witnessed by state level regulations, cities can work toward stabilizing housing prices and integrating communities.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA). It can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944363.2015.1111163#abstract

Many Happy Returns from Cap-and-Trade New Luskin Center study shows low-income California households are benefiting under the landmark climate program

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By George Foulsham

Low-income Californians feel the pinch when gasoline, electricity and natural gas prices increase. And it’s logical to think that the state’s Cap-and-Trade program might add to those expenses. But this program is generating billions of dollars to provide an array of benefits to Californians, especially those living in disadvantaged communities.

Now, a first-of-its-kind study by the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation has found that Cap-and-Trade has produced another very positive result. The study, “Protecting the Most Vulnerable: A Financial Analysis of Cap-and-Trade’s Impact on Households in Disadvantaged Communities across California,” revealed that the state has very effectively put in place measures to mitigate any disproportionate impact that might fall on low-income households.

According to the researchers, protective measures implemented by the state could more than offset Cap-and-Trade compliance costs that are passed on to electricity, natural gas and gasoline consumers.

“As consumers of these three industries, we asked what are the Cap-and-Trade compliance costs for these industries,” said J.R. DeShazo, director of the Luskin Center for Innovation and principal investigator on the project. “What is the cost pass-through from the regulated industries to consumers and what are the strategies to reduce those cost pass-throughs from Cap-and-Trade? And, finally, what is the net financial impact?”

Low-income households inevitably are going to bear a stronger burden from regulation because they pay a higher percentage of their income to electricity and natural gas bills as well as to gasoline. But, according to the study, the state has effectively put in place measures to protect low-income Californians as we transition to a cleaner, lower-carbon economy.

“We actually see that, once you factor in those direct and indirect measures, low-income Californians receive a small but still measureable potential benefit,” said Colleen Callahan, deputy director of the Luskin Center and co-author of the report. “We found that electric utility customers could actually gain $200-250 during our study period, which is the length of the Cap-and-Trade program, through 2020.”

The study also found that low-income households could receive an estimated positive impact of between $44 and $83 as natural gas utility customers.

“And for gasoline customers we are predicting a bigger net benefit,” Callahan said. “We estimate that our representative households could receive a cumulated, indirect benefit of approximately $350 to $700 by 2020.”

“I think it’s been a success because of the way they are implementing various price increase mitigation strategies for consumers, and low-income households especially, along with the Cap-and-Trade program,” Julien Gattaciecca, lead author of the study and a Luskin Center researcher, said. “It is very well made and very well thought-out, and gives the rest of the world a leading path to follow.”

Cap-and-Trade was created in 2012 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It requires that the biggest producers of greenhouse gas — including electricity utilities, natural gas utilities and fuel distributors — purchase carbon allowances. The costs of these carbon allowances create price signals that communicate to consumers the amount of GHG emissions associated with electricity, natural gas, and gasoline consumption. “They have to pay to pollute, or they have an incentive to reduce their emissions,” Callahan said.

“It’s a complicated program, but it’s an important one,” she added. “It’s affecting the lives of us Californians. And it’s generating billions — with a B — of dollars and will continue to do so.”

The state’s portion of the Cap-and-Trade proceeds are deposited in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which are used to make climate investments that further the goals of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32, Núñez and Pavley). Those climate investments provide tangible benefits — energy efficiency and weatherization upgrades for homes, clean vehicle incentives, tree planting and more — in communities across Californians.

Another portion of the Cap-and-Trade proceeds are being directly returned to the millions of Californians who are residential customers of an investor-owned utility, such as Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison. Customers of those utilities respectively received $50 to $60 in climate credits on their electricity bills in 2015.

The Luskin report assessed how the provision of climate credits directed to households would mitigate Cap-and-Trade related costs. The study also assessed two other types of strategies that indirectly mitigate these costs. As such, Gattaciecca factored in low-income rate assistance programs, which although unrelated to the Cap-and-Trade Program, can reduce households’ budgetary burden associated with electricity and natural gas consumption.

Gattaciecca also factored in state and industry predicted trends for electricity, natural gas, and gasoline consumption, which are affected by climate investments and other efficiency, fuel switching, and vehicle-miles reducing programs and policies that help households lower their use of energy and fuels. Because these policies and programs can help lower energy and gasoline bills, they indirectly lower any Cap-and-Trade compliance cost passed on to customers.

The Luskin report utilized a case study approach. The state developed a tool, called the CalEnviroScreen, to identify disadvantaged communities that have elevated environmental health and socioeconomic risks, including poverty and pollution. Using CalEnviroScreen, the Luskin researchers chose four California communities for their study.

Gattaciecca also examined American Consumer Survey data and other databases to learn about common characteristics of households within those four case study communities. He then constructed hypothetical but representative profiles of households in each of the case study communities.

“We looked at four households in California,” Gattaciecca said. “We didn’t do that randomly. We took one in Oakland, one in Traver in Tulare County, one in Los Angeles and one in San Bernardino to collectively have a diverse set of case study communities. All four present different patterns when it comes to transportation, racial composition, housing types, family structure, climate and more. That’s the beauty of the report. We cover four very different locations. It’s not just policy and crunching numbers. There’s a human story here.”

“Real households benefits from climate investments deposited into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” Callahan said. Senate Bill 535 (De León) requires that a minimum of 25 percent of the monies in this fund go to projects that benefit disadvantaged communities in California, and a minimum of 10 percent go to projects located in these communities. “I went to Washington, D.C., last year and presented at a national environmental justice conference. This is seen as one of the most significant environmental justice victories of the past decade.”

The results of their study left Callahan and the other researchers impressed.

“The California Air Resources Board is the lead agency on the Cap-and-Trade program and has a lead role in implementing climate investments,” Callahan said. “They’ve done a very thoughtful, thorough job. There’s more that can be done, but we commend them.”

A full copy of the Luskin Center report can be found here.

Urban Planning Faculty Ranked Most Influential In new study, UCLA Luskin department listed as No. 1 in North America for scholarly citations

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By Stan Paul

Topping Harvard, UC Berkeley, NYU, USC and MIT, the Department of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has once again been named the most influential planning school in North America, according to a recently published study.

The analysis was conducted by Thomas W. Sanchez of Virginia Tech, who measured citations of planning scholarship. Citations measure the number of times that publications by one author are referred to, or cited, by other authors. Citations are the most common measure of scholarly influence.

Using the median number of Google Scholar citations per faculty member, Sanchez, a professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech, compared the top 25 planning schools. For the second straight year, UCLA remained at the top. Others in the top 10 are Harvard, UC Berkeley, New York University, USC, Tufts University, University of Minnesota, MIT, University of Maryland and Rutgers.

Ranking faculty in terms of the median number of citations measures the scholarly influence of the typical faculty member in a program, which reflects the overall scholarly influence of an entire faculty.

“That Urban Planning at UCLA ranks first in the median number of citations among all North American planning programs reflects the impressive productivity and influence of our faculty across the board,” said Evelyn Blumenberg, professor and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning.

In addition to being broadly productive and influential as reflected by median citations, Urban Planning professor Michael Storper was the second-most-cited planning scholar out of nearly 900 evaluated in the analysis, with more than 28,000 citations. Sanchez, whose article appears in the “Journal of Planning Education and Research,” writes that his methodology (using Google Scholar data) includes citations “beyond traditional peer-reviewed publications.”

“Recent trends in bibliometrics suggest that including a wider variety of scholarship is especially applicable to the field of urban planning,” said Sanchez, adding that citation data analysis indicates programs that have “relatively high levels of scholarly activity, as well as identifying the planning academics that are generating citations.”

The full article, “Faculty Performance Evaluation Using Citation Analysis: An Update,” may be found at http://jpe.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/03/16/0739456X16633500.full.pdf+html.

On The Security Of Things And Cyber Trust

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By Stan Paul

The Internet is where technology, policy, law, banking and business meet, not to mention the innumerable interconnected electronics and gadgets that we rely on each day — the so-called “Internet of Things.”

Also at this intersection is John Villasenor, professor of engineering and public policy at UCLA. While keeping up with the growth and proliferation of technology, Villasenor is more concerned with the security, safeguards and trust that must accompany our interdependence on this progress — what Villasenor refers to as “the Security of Things.”

At the Luskin School, he brings this expertise to the classroom. He co-teaches, among other things, a course titled Science, Technology and Public Policy, a class for graduate and undergraduate students, with Prof. Albert Carnesale, UCLA Chancellor Emeritus, SALT Treaty negotiator, professor emeritus of public policy and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Villasenor, formerly with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (where he developed methods of imaging the Earth from space), also serves as an adviser for Luskin’s Master of Public Policy (MPP) students’ Applied Public Policy projects.

Villasenor also is a prolific writer, researcher and public commenter on technology issues such as digital privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and corporate cybersecurity, drones and autonomous cars. This year, Villasenor testified at a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., on unmanned aircraft, examining the safety and privacy issues that are emerging as unmanned aircraft fill the skies over areas of peace and conflict. His wide interest and expertise is evidenced by the array of publications that have included his writing: Atlantic, Billboard, Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, Scientific American, Slate, and the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, to name a few.

While the actual application of autonomous cars to the streets is heading toward reality — although a work in progress — some of the legal issues involved are long established, according to Villasenor. In a recent Forbes article, he addresses the headline question: “If a Cyberattack Causes a Car Crash, Who Is Liable?” While the concept, in actual practice, still appears futuristic, unintended consequences may easily be seen through the legal lens of product liability and negligence, which could bring accountability to hackers (often unlikely, according to Villasenor), manufacturers (more likely) and, under some circumstances, even end purchasers, he says.

Villasenor outlines the issues coming to the fore with autonomous vehicles in a Brookings Institution report titled “Products Liability and Driverless Cars: Issues and Guiding Principles for Legislation.”

And, writing in Forbes (July 2015) on the recent wireless hack of a Jeep Cherokee that disabled control over the vehicle, Villasenor comments, “In the rush to increase connectivity, manufacturers — not just vehicle manufacturers — are often giving insufficient attention to the additional security exposures created when complex systems become increasingly linked.” He adds, “More connections mean more pathways and back doors that could be exploited by a hacker — especially when a system’s own designers may not be aware that those pathways and back doors even exist.”

On the recent VW emissions scandal, Villasenor wrote in Forbes Magazine (Sept. 21), “More broadly, the Volkswagen emissions scandal provides an important reminder that cyber trust involves more than cyber security. What we want, at the end of the day, is confidence that the software that runs everything from cars to medical devices to the critical infrastructure can be trusted.”

John Villasenor is a professor of electrical engineering, public policy and management at UCLA. He also teaches at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Law and is an APP (Applied Policy Project) adviser for the Department of Public Policy. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Cybersecurity and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

UCLA Luskin Adds Six New ‘Outstanding’ Faculty Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning announce the appointment of two new scholars in each department

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By George Foulsham

In the biggest expansion since its inception, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has announced the addition of six new faculty for the 2016-17 academic year. The new hires bring to 100 the number of professors, assistant professors, lecturers and instructors at the Luskin School.

“We are thrilled to welcome six new faculty to the UCLA Luskin family,” Interim Dean Lois M. Takahashi said. “These six outstanding scholars will bring to Luskin a wealth of expertise and knowledge that will be shared with our current — and future — students for years to come. This is a very exciting time to be a part of one of the best public affairs schools in the country. These new faculty members will help us continue the pursuit of our mission at Luskin: advancing solutions to society’s most pressing problems.”

The six new faculty members, by department:

Public Policy

Darin Christensen, a new assistant professor of Public Policy, will receive his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University this year. His research interests, with support from the World Bank and other funders, span comparative politics, the political economy of conflict and development, foreign investment, and political accountability, with regional interest in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, Kenya, and Sierra Leone. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science and German from Duke University, and his master’s degree in economics from Stanford. Christensen’s teaching focus at Luskin is expected to be comparative political institutions, the political economy of development and advanced data analysis.

Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, a new assistant professor of Public Policy, will receive his Ph.D. in political science from UC San Diego this year. He also has a master’s degree in political science from UC San Diego and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and economics from Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests are in international politics; exploiting in particular vast social media data to study subnational conflict; the mobilization of mass protest such as the Arab Spring and Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests, as well as elite behavior and state repression in authoritarian regimes. At Luskin, his teaching focus will be on subnational conflict, statistics and advanced data analysis of various kinds, including the analysis of “big data.”

Social Welfare

Leyla Karimli, a new assistant professor of social welfare, received her Ph.D. in social welfare from Columbia University’s School of Social Work in 2013 and is completing postdoctoral training at New York University School of Social Work’s Institute for Poverty, Policy and Research. Dr. Karimli has 13 years of international research and practice experience focusing on poverty and social exclusion including post-masters practice experience with international development agencies in the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research interests include a multidimensional and systems-oriented analysis of poverty and social exclusion that complements the Department of Social Welfare and Luskin School’s commitment to understanding the complex nature of social and economic inequalities and addressing the needs of vulnerable and diverse populations.

Laura Wray-Lake, a new assistant professor in social welfare, received her Ph.D. from Penn State University’s highly regarded Human Development and Family Studies program. Dr. Wray-Lake is a lifespan developmental scientist from the University of Rochester where she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology. Dr. Wray-Lake utilizes a “civic engagement” framework to examine the social and income inequalities facing vulnerable children and families and how and why individuals can become re-engaged in society. Dr. Wray-Lake has a strong commitment to teaching and mentoring. Her courses on community engagement incorporate her social justice approach to teaching and as such, will support our commitment to diversity and social justice.

Urban Planning

Kian Goh, a new assistant professor of urban planning, received her Master of Architecture from Yale University and her Ph.D. in Urban and Environmental Planning from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She is currently an assistant professor of Urban Landscape at Northeastern University. Dr. Goh’s research investigates the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Her work has centered on sites in New York, Jakarta and Rotterdam.  She also has ongoing projects on queer space and the sociopolitics of smart cities. In addition to her scholarly work, Goh is a licensed architect and co-founder of SUPER-INTERESTING!, a multidisciplinary architecture and strategic consulting practice located in Brooklyn.

Michael Manville, a new assistant professor of urban planning, is returning to UCLA Luskin after receiving his MA and Ph.D. in urban planning from UCLA Luskin.  Dr. Manville is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. His research examines the willingness of people and communities to finance different government services, and the tendency of local governments to hide the costs of transportation in the property market. Dr. Manville is particularly interested in how land use restrictions intended to fight traffic congestion can influence the supply and price of housing.

Carbon Upcycling: Turning CO2 into a New, Sustainable CO2NCRETE Interdisciplinary research team at UCLA discovers a game-changing technology to capture and repurpose carbon dioxide

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By George Foulsham

Imagine a world with little or no concrete. Would that even be possible? After all, concrete is everywhere — on our roads, our driveways, in our homes, bridges and buildings. For the past 200 years, it’s been the very foundation of much of our planet.

But the production of cement, which when mixed with water forms the binding agent in concrete, is also one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, about 5 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from concrete.

An even larger source of CO2 emissions is flue gas emitted from smokestacks at power plants around the world. Carbon emissions from those plants are the largest source of harmful global greenhouse gas in the world.

A team of interdisciplinary researchers at UCLA has been working on a unique solution that may help eliminate these sources of greenhouse gases. Their plan would be to create a closed-loop process: capturing carbon from power plant smokestacks and using it to create a new building material — CO2NCRETE — that would be fabricated using 3D printers. That’s “upcycling.”

“What this technology does is take something that we have viewed as a nuisance — carbon dioxide that’s emitted from smokestacks — and turn it into something valuable,” said J.R. DeShazo, professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.

“I decided to get involved in this project because it could be a game-changer for climate policy,” DeShazo said. “This technology tackles global climate change, which is one of the biggest challenges that society faces now and will face over the next century.”

DeShazo has provided the public policy and economic guidance for this research. The scientific contributions have been led by Gaurav Sant, associate professor and Henry Samueli Fellow in Civil and Environmental Engineering; Richard Kaner, distinguished professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Materials Science and Engineering; Laurent Pilon, professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Bioengineering; and Matthieu Bauchy, assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

This isn’t the first attempt to capture carbon emissions from power plants. It’s been done before, but the challenge has been what to do with the CO2 once it’s captured.

“We hope to not only capture more gas,” DeShazo said, “but we’re going to take that gas and, instead of storing it, which is the current approach, we’re going to try to use it to create a new kind of building material that will replace cement.”

“The approach we are trying to propose is you look at carbon dioxide as a resource — a resource you can reutilize,” Sant said. “While cement production results in carbon dioxide, just as the production of coal or the production of natural gas does, if we can reutilize CO2 to make a building material which would be a new kind of cement, that’s an opportunity.”

The researchers are excited about the possibility of reducing greenhouse gas in the U.S., especially in regions where coal-fired power plants are abundant. “But even more so is the promise to reduce the emissions in China and India,” DeShazo said. “China is currently the largest greenhouse gas producer in the world, and India will soon be No. 2, surpassing us.”

deshazo-gaurav

J.R. DeShazo, left, and Gaurav Sant. Photo by Roberto Gudino

Thus far, the new construction material has been produced only at a lab scale, using 3D printers to shape it into tiny cones. “We have proof of concept that we can do this,” DeShazo said. “But we need to begin the process of increasing the volume of material and then think about how to pilot it commercially. It’s one thing to prove these technologies in the laboratory. It’s another to take them out into the field and see how they work under real-world conditions.”

“We can demonstrate a process where we take lime and combine it with carbon dioxide to produce a cement-like material,” Sant said. “The big challenge we foresee with this is we’re not just trying to develop a building material. We’re trying to develop a process solution, an integrated technology which goes right from CO2 to a finished product.

“3D printing has been done for some time in the biomedical world,” Sant said, “but when you do it in a biomedical setting, you’re interested in resolution. You’re interested in precision. In construction, all of these things are important but not at the same scale. There is a scale challenge, because rather than print something that’s 5 centimeters long, we want to be able to print a beam that’s 5 meters long. The size scalability is a really important part.”

Another challenge is convincing stakeholders that a cosmic shift like the researchers are proposing is beneficial — not just for the planet, but for them, too.

“This technology could change the economic incentives associated with these power plants in their operations and turn the smokestack flue gas into a resource countries can use, to build up their cities, extend their road systems,” DeShazo said. “It takes what was a problem and turns it into a benefit in products and services that are going to be very much needed and valued in places like India and China.”

DeShazo cited the interdisciplinary team of researchers as a reason for the success of the project. “What UCLA offers is a brilliant set of engineers, material scientists and economists who have been working on pieces of this problem for 10, 20, 30 years,” he said. “And we’re able to bring that team together to focus on each stage.”

According to Sant, UCLA is the perfect place to tackle sustainability challenges.

“As one of the leading universities in the world, we see ourselves as having a blue-sky approach,” Sant said. “We see ourselves wanting to develop technologies that might be considered fanciful at one point but become reality very quickly. So we see ourselves looking at a blue sky and saying, well then, let’s come up with ideas which will change the world.”

The Color of Wealth in Los Angeles Luskin researchers among co-authors in new study revealing nuanced story of race and wealth in L.A.

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By Melany De La Cruz-Viesca and Erin Fogg

A new report examining wealth inequality across racial and ethnic groups in Los Angeles shows substantial disparity with Japanese, Asian Indians, Chinese and whites ranking among the top, while blacks, Mexicans, other Latinos, Koreans and Vietnamese rank far behind.

“The Color of Wealth in Los Angeles” is the first report to compile detailed data on assets and debts among people of different races, ethnicities and countries of origin residing in the Los Angeles area. Researchers from UCLA, Duke University and The New School, with support from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, analyzed data on assets and debts. Assets included savings and checking accounts, stocks, retirement accounts, houses and vehicles, while debts, included credit card debt, student loans, medical debt, mortgages and vehicle debt.

Three of the co-authors of the report have ties to the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, the lead author of the report, is a 2002 graduate of the Luskin School’s Department of Urban Planning, and is assistant director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA. Other co-authors include Paul Ong, professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Asian American studies; and Zhenxiang Chen, a Public Policy graduate student. Also contributing were C. Aujean Lee, a doctoral student in Urban Planning, and Chhandara Pech, a MURP alum and currently a staff member at UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.

“Data that truly reflect the diverse and emerging patterns of wealth inequality across specific ethnic and racial groups has been hard to come by,” said William “Sandy” Darity, co-author and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke. “The patterns we were able to document may well be the first in-depth study of wealth, ethnicity and race in Los Angeles, especially for Mexicans and particular Asian national origin groups.”

Although much of the inequality discourse has focused on income, wealth is a better indicator of economic well-being and metric for understanding economic inequality. The accumulation of wealth is more likely to ensure financial security and opportunity for American families in the future, the authors said.

The report provides estimates for U.S.-born blacks, blacks who are recent immigrants from Africa, Mexicans, other Latinos, Asian Indians, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and non-Hispanic whites in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Statistical Area (Los Angeles and Orange counties) using new data from the National Asset Scorecard and Communities of Color survey.

Racial and ethnic differences in wealth show the extreme vulnerability of some nonwhite households in Los Angeles. The authors estimate that the typical U.S.-born black or Mexican family, for example, has just 1 percent of the wealth of a typical white family in Los Angeles — or one cent for every dollar of wealth held by the average white family in the metro area. Koreans hold 7 cents and Vietnamese possess 17 cents for every dollar of wealth owned by comparable white families.

The median value of liquid assets — those assets that quickly can be converted to cash — for Mexicans and other Latinos is striking, zero dollars and only $7, respectively, while the median value of liquid assets for white households is $110,000. This not only implies financial hardship in the long term, but it also makes families particularly vulnerable to short-term financial disruption, the report states.

White households in Los Angeles have an estimated median net worth of $355,000. By comparison, Mexicans and U.S.-born blacks are estimated to have a median net worth of $3,500 and $4,000, respectively.

Additionally, among nonwhite groups, Japanese ($592,000), Asian Indian ($460,000), Chinese ($408,200) and Filipino ($243,000) households had estimated median wealth values far in excess of blacks who recently emigrated from Africa ($72,000), other Latinos ($42,500), Koreans ($23,400) and Vietnamese ($61,500).

“The socioeconomic status of immigrants prior to entering the U.S. plays an important role in influencing the wealth position of particular groups,” said De La Cruz-Viesca. “This report not only reveals a nuanced story of racial wealth differences in L.A., perhaps more importantly, it also explores the local nature of asset markets and what factors influence the wealth status of communities of color.”

The majority of immigrants who came to the United States after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act are highly educated, possess higher levels of wealth than the average American, and are highly skilled professionals who are more likely to hold jobs that pay more. One exception is Vietnamese immigrants, many of whom came to the United States as refugees generally with limited financial resources. The National Asset Scorecard and Communities of Color survey findings are consistent with this general pattern.

The NASCC survey findings reveal staggering disparities that should serve to urge lawmakers to identify and pursue policies that can help narrow racial wealth differences, the authors said. In particular, there’s a need to develop policies that address structural discrimination in asset and credit markets and the inherited inequalities associated with vast differences in parental wealth.

“The wealth disparities uncovered in this report are enormous, likewise it will take bold initiatives to address them,” said co-author Darrick Hamilton, associate professor of economics and urban policy and director of the Ph.D. program in policy at The New School. “‘Baby Bonds’ provide an example of a bold policy proposal that addresses the racial wealth gap, which locks in inequality at birth.”

Hamilton said that these government-provided trusts would take into account a person’s family wealth at birth. “The accounts would be used to seed a down payment on an asset like a home or a new business, so that everyone would have an opportunity to attain the economic security and wealth building mechanism of an asset that will appreciate over their lifetime.”

Are Workfare Programs In India Effective? Public Policy professor Manisha Shah evaluates the impact of antipoverty programs

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By Stan Paul 

Manisha Shah’s work in development economics has taken her around the world, from Mexico and Ecuador to India and Indonesia.

Her work seeks to evaluate the impact of seemingly well-intentioned efforts such as antipoverty programs as well as their unintended consequences, using primary data collection and applied microeconomics as a tool. At home at the Luskin School, she is the Applied Policy Project coordinator for the Department of Public Policy’s Master of Public Policy (MPP) students. In addition, she teaches graduate courses in microeconomics as well as a course on international development.

In a recent working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), where she is a faculty research associate, Shah and her co-author, Bryce Steinberg, have evaluated the effect of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). In “Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence From India,” the authors posit that the NREGS workfare program, which requires beneficiaries to work on local public works projects in order to receive benefits, “could increase the opportunity cost of schooling, lowering human capital investment even as incomes increase due to increased labor demand.”

The research shows that this government program, one of the largest in the world, actually lowers both school enrollment and math scores for students ages 13 to 16. For boys in India, the antipoverty program has them substituting work for school, while adolescent girls are substituting into unpaid domestic work at home (since their mothers are now more likely to be working outside the home). Put in human terms, this means, according to Shah, that the program in India “may have caused anywhere from 650,000 to 2.5 million adolescents to leave school prematurely.”

Interestingly, the additional income from the workfare program may benefit the very young children in the household — the 2- to 4-year-olds. The authors find that human capital outcomes improve for the very youngest children as a result of NREGS.

Overall, the workfare program may serve as a disincentive for adolescents to invest in education. This is important to policy makers, who may be considering workfare as a means of poverty alleviation, says Shah. “If we believe education is important for economic growth, and that workfare programs raise prevailing wages and cause older students to substitute toward work and away from school, lump sum grants or conditional cash transfers might be other policy options to consider.”

“The takeaway from these results is that social programs have price effects, and that these price effects can have very real consequences,” Shah’s report concludes. “Ultimately it is important to maximize their potential to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the poor.”

Other areas Shah has examined include child health and development. Recent work has involved evaluating impacts of improved sanitation on child health outcomes in rural Indonesia. She also has written on the economics of sex markets to learn how more effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

Where will her research take her next?

Shah says her next destination is Tanzania in East Africa to study intervention programs for adolescent girls. Programs to help girls stay in school and avoid risky sex and its harmful consequences are proving unsuccessful. Shah wants to know what’s going on and why this is happening, looking to the data to provide answers.

Manisha Shah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She also is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Faculty Affiliate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) and a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

Hilda Solis Named 2016 Commencement Speaker Former Secretary of Labor and current L.A. County Supervisor to deliver address at Luskin ceremony on June 10

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By George Foulsham

Hilda L. Solis, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and current First District Supervisor for Los Angeles County, has been named the 2016 Commencement speaker for the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Solis, who served as Labor Secretary from 2009 to 2013 under President Obama, will speak during the Luskin ceremony at 9 a.m. on June 10 at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

“Supervisor Solis is both an advocate and a legislator who works to address the needs of the Los Angeles community,” Luskin Interim Dean Lois Takahashi said. “She is a champion of issues that we care about here at UCLA Luskin: access to affordable health care, environmental protections and workers’ rights.

“Supervisor Solis can speak to the opportunities and challenges our graduates will face in the job market,” Takahashi added. “As an experienced public servant at all levels of government, and as the first Latina to hold a cabinet-level position, Supervisor Solis has a unique perspective on the contributions our graduates can make.”

Solis was sworn in as Los Angeles County Supervisor on Dec. 1, 2014. Prior to serving as Secretary of Labor, Solis represented the 32nd Congressional District in California, a position she held from 2001 to 2009.

A nationally recognized leader on the environment, Solis became the first woman to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2000 for her pioneering work on environmental justice issues. Her California environmental justice legislation, enacted in 1999, was the first of its kind in the nation to become law.

A native of Los Angeles County, Solis grew up in La Puente, Calif. She was born in 1957 to Juana and Raul Solis, who met in citizenship classes in California. Her mother, a native of Nicaragua, worked on an assembly line while her father, a Mexican immigrant, worked as a steward for the Teamsters union.

As the third of seven children, Solis served as a role model for her younger siblings by becoming the first person in her family to attend college, at Cal Poly Pomona.

“He always reminded us that it was important to stand up for your rights, and regardless of who you are and where you come from, to hold your head up high with dignity and respect,” Solis said of her father during a 2001 interview with California Journal.

Solis was also the first Latina elected to the California State Senate, in 1994. While serving as a state senator, she helped push through legislation to increase the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75 an hour.

“We are looking forward to hearing from one of L.A.’s leading public servants,” Takahashi said.

A Road Map for Advancing Women in Tech New report by Luskin Center provides strategies for reducing inequality in the tech sector

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By George Foulsham

The importance of quality mentorships is one of eight key recommendations in a new Luskin Center for Innovation report about strategies for increasing diversity and retaining women in high-tech careers.

The Luskin Center report, “What Are We Missing? Rethinking Public, Private and Nonprofit Strategies to Advance Women in Technology,” is a compilation of feedback from those who attended the April 2015 Women in Tech conference at UCLA and a review of salient literature. The Luskin Center is part of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The conference brought together 250 influential leaders in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. With a focus on systemic change, the conference strategically explored ways to reduce inequality in the tech sector in three main categories: personal, private, and public. The conference was sponsored in part by Google and Cisco.

“The most important feedback we received from the people who attended —accomplished men and women at all levels of private tech companies, government agencies, nonprofits, startups, academia — was the importance of mentorship,” said Rebecca Sadwick, co-author of the report, one of the conference organizers and a former project manager at the Luskin Center. “The importance of informal mentorship to career advancement didn’t occur to me before we began. Or how these mentorships tend not to cross gender lines. But the importance of understanding this and actively seeking resources to advance men and women’s careers equitably is vital.”

According to the study, technology is one of the fastest growing and most profitable fields. Yet, in the U.S., women and minorities continue to be underrepresented at every stage of the tech pipeline. Despite recent efforts by prominent companies to address the gender and diversity gaps, women’s representation in both technical and executive leadership roles has not greatly improved.

“We are entering into a digital era which will require millions of new tech-related positions to be filled,” the report states. “To the detriment of the American workforce and economy, we currently lack the talent to fill such positions. Educating, recruiting, hiring and retaining women and minorities in STEM professions would not only increase company’s profitability but it would alleviate the societal and economic repercussions of disenfranchising half of the workforce.”

“We have this push to educate computer science to all students,” said Sarah Godoy, lead researcher on the Digital Technology Initiative at the Luskin Center. “It’s wonderful, but if women get into the marketplace, and they’re going in looking for a career, and if they work for a company that doesn’t value them, then they’re not going to succeed. They’re dropping off.

“There needs to be more strategies from both the private and public sectors to really affect change comprehensively,” Godoy added.

Eight overarching themes emerged from the literature review and crowd-sourced knowledge from UCLA’s conference. These themes served to guide the report:

  1. Using data to assess diversity
  2. Providing female entrepreneurs with access to funding models that reduce bias
  3. Focusing on the hiring process to reduce subconscious biases
  4. Standardizing performance reviews
  5. Increasing quality mentorship
  6. Expanding public-private partnerships
  7. Building upon mandate-driven public policies
  8. Commitment to diversity at all levels of leadership

The report outlines strategies for startup and small companies, medium and large companies, resource providers, the public sector, and academia and the education pipeline.

“We knew going into the conference that public policy strategies were limited and fragmented, but the research that followed really underscored just how limited public strategies are,” Sadwick said. “With few exceptions, strategies to advance women and diversity in the tech sector remain fragmented by state and local municipalities.

“Companies themselves still play the most direct role in addressing the diversity gap,” Sadwick added. “Companies that make it a priority at all levels of leadership to counter systemic inequalities that limit their talent pool have remarkable success.”

Lessons learned from the companies that get it right can be the guideposts for everybody, according to the study.

“By observing the strategies that have been effective in other companies and countries,” Sadwick said, “and measuring the impact of the tactics tried throughout an organization, they are more likely to implement tactics that directly impact their company’s ability to attract and retain top talent of all backgrounds.”

The full report can be found at http://innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/content/what-are-we-missing-rethinking-strategies-advance-women-technology