Category: Economics

Retiring Later Improves Health in Old Age

(p. 3) Despite what may seem like obvious benefits, scholars can’t make definitive statements about the health effects of working longer. The research is inherently difficult: Just as retirement can influence health, so can health influence retirement.
“I would say, in my experience, the research is mixed,” said Dr. Maestas of Harvard Medical School. “The studies I have seen tend to show that there are health benefits to working longer.”
As the economists Axel Börsch-Supan and Morten Schuth of the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy put it in an article for the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Even disliked colleagues and a bad boss, we argue, are better than social isolation because they provide cognitive challenges that keep the mind active and healthy.”
Other studies have examined the impact of work and employment on the richness of social networks and social connectedness. The economists Eleonora Patacchini of Cornell University and Gary Engelhardt of Syracuse University tapped into a database of some 1,300 people from ages 57 to 85 that asked about their social networks in 2005 and 2010. After controlling for marital status, age, health and income, they concluded that people who continued to work enjoyed an increase in the size of their networks of family and friends of 25 percent. The social networks of retired people, on the other hand, shrank during the five-year period. In the study, the gains were found to be largely limited to women and older people with postsecondary education.

For the full commentary, see:
CHRISTOPHER FARRELL. “Retiring; Their Jobs Keep Them Healthy.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., MARCH 5, 2017): 3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 3, 2017, and has the title “Retiring; Working Longer May Benefit Your Health.”)

The article by Börsch-Supan and Schuth, is:
Börsch-Supan, Axel, and Morten Schuth. “Early Retirement, Mental Health, and Social Networks.” In Discoveries in the Economics of Aging, edited by David A. Wise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014, pp. 225-50.

“Hubs of Genius Do Not Arise from Government Planning”

(p. 13) In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union tried to make a version of Silicon Valley from scratch. A city called Zelenograd came to life on the outskirts of Moscow and was populated with all manner of brainy Soviet engineers. The hope — naturally — was that a concentration of clever minds coupled with ample funding would result in a wellspring of innovation and help Russia keep pace with California’s electronics boom. The experiment worked as well as one might expect. Few people will read this on a Mayakovsky-branded tablet or ­smartphone.
Many similar attempts have been made in the subsequent dec­ades to replicate Silicon Valley and its abundance of creativity and ingenuity. Such efforts have largely failed. It seems near impossible to will an exceptional place into being or to manufacture the conditions that lead to an outpouring of genius.
. . .
As in the case of Zelenograd, hubs of genius do not arise from government planning or by acting on the observations of a traveler. They’re happy accidents. To attempt to clone such things or pinpoint their characteristics is futile.

For the full review, see:
ASHLEE VANCE. “Smart Sites.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., JAN. 10, 2016): 13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JAN. 8, 2016, and has the title “”The Geography of Genius,’ by Eric Weiner.”)

The book under review, is:
Weiner, Eric. The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.

On-Site Work “Is a Remnant of the Industrial Era”

(p. B5) Studies show that when employees have the choice to work remotely, “business is a whole lot better” for “people, the planet and profit,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a consulting firm that focuses on emerging workplace trends.
Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report, released in February [2017], showed that more American employees were working remotely and for longer periods. The “sweet spot” was employees who spend three to four days a week off site; they reported feeling most engaged at work.
Mohammed Chahdi, global human resources services director for Dell, said a large percentage of its 140,000 employees already worked remotely and the goal was to have 50 percent do so by 2020. The strategy has helped the company “grow smart,” he said, by reducing its real estate and environmental footprints and retaining talented employees.
“We have data that show employees are more engaged when they enjoy flexibility,” said Mr. Chahdi, who works remotely from Toronto. “Why insist that they be in an office when it simply doesn’t matter?”
A new study, Future Workforce, released in February [2017] by Upwork, a marketplace for online work, surveyed more than 1,000 hiring managers in the United States. It found that only one in 10 believed location was important to a new hire’s success; nearly two-thirds said they had at least some workers who did a significant portion of their work from a remote location, and about half agreed that they had trouble finding the talent they needed locally.
“Remote work has gone mainstream,” said Stephane Kasriel, Upwork’s chief executive. On-site work between the hours of 9 and 5 “is a remnant of the industrial era.”

For the full story, see:
TANYA MOHN. “ITINERARIES; Digital Nomads Wander World Without Missing a Paycheck.” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 4, 2017): B5.
(Note: bracketed years added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 3, 2017, and has the title “ITINERARIES; The Digital Nomad Life: Combining Work and Travel.”)

Oregon Gadfly Fined for Practicing Engineering Without a License

(p. B2) Mats Jarlstrom acknowledges that he is unusually passionate about traffic signals — and that his zeal is not particularly appreciated by Oregon officials.
His crusade to make traffic lights remain yellow longer — which began after his wife received a red-light camera ticket — has drawn some interest among transportation specialists and the media. But among the power brokers in his hometown, Beaverton, it has elicited ridicule and exasperation.
“They literally laughed at me at City Hall,” Mr. Jarlstrom recalled of a visit there in 2013, when he tried to share his ideas with city counselors and the police chief.
Worse still was getting hit recently with a $500 fine for engaging in the “practice of engineering” without a license while pressing his cause. So last week, Mr. Jarlstrom filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, charging the state’s licensing panel with violating his First Amendment rights.
“I was working with simple mathematics and applying it to the motion of a vehicle and explaining my research,” said Mr. Jarlstrom, 56. “By doing so, they declared I was illegal.”
The lawsuit is the latest and perhaps most novel shot in the continuing campaign against the proliferation of state licensing laws that can require costly training and fees before people can work. Mr. Jarlstrom is being represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian organization partly funded by the billionaire brothers and activists Charles G. and David H. Koch.

For the full story, see:
PATRICIA COHEN. “Crusader Fined for Doing Math Without License.” The New York Times (Mon., May 1, 2017): B2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 30, 2017, and has the title “Yellow-Light Crusader Fined for Doing Math Without a License.”)

FDR’s Attorney General Warned Black Newspapers That He Would “Shut Them All Up”

(p. 12) . . . as the former Chicago Defender editor and reporter Ethan Michaeli shows in his extraordinary history, “The Defender,” the Negro press barons attacked military segregation with a zeal that set Roosevelt’s teeth on edge. The Negro press warned black men against Navy recruiters who would promise them training as radiomen, technicians or mechanics — then put them to work serving food to white men. It made its readers understand that black men and women in uniform were treated worse in Southern towns than German prisoners of war and sometimes went hungry on troop trains because segregationists declined to feed them. It focused unflinchingly on the fistfights and gun battles that erupted between blacks and whites on military bases. And it reiterated the truth that no doubt cut Roosevelt the most deeply: His government’s insistence on racial separation was of a piece with the “master race” theory put in play by Hitler in Europe.
This was not the first time The Defender and its sister papers had attacked institutional racism. That part of the story begins with Robert S. Abbott, the transplanted Southerner who created The Defender in 1905 and fashioned it into a potent weapon.
. . .
The black press was considerably more powerful and self-assured by 1940, when Abbott died and his nephew John H. Sengstacke succeeded him.
. . .
Things stood thus in 1942, when Sengstacke traveled to Washington to meet with Attorney General Francis Biddle. Sengstacke found Biddle in a conference room, sitting at a table across which was spread copies of black newspapers that included The Defender, The Courier and The Afro-American. Biddle said that the black papers were flirting with sedition and threatened to “shut them all up.”

For the full review, see:
BRENT STAPLES. “‘A ‘Most Dangerous’ Newspaper.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., JAN. 10, 2016): 12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JAN. 4, 2016, and has the title “”The Defender,’ by Ethan Michaeli.”)

The book under review, is:
Michaeli, Ethan. The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Government Regulations Suppress Poor Street Entrepreneurs

(p. 7) HANOI, Vietnam — As strips of tofu sizzle beside her in a vat of oil, Nguyen Thu Hong listens for police sirens.
Police raids on sidewalk vendors have escalated sharply in downtown Hanoi since March [2017], she said, and officers fine her about $9, or two days’ earnings, for the crime of selling bun dau mam tom — vermicelli rice noodles with tofu and fermented shrimp paste — from a plastic table beside an empty storefront.
“Most Vietnamese live by what they do on the sidewalk, so you can’t just take that away,” she said. “More regulations would be fine, but what the cops are doing now feels too extreme.”
Southeast Asia is famous for its street food, delighting tourists and locals alike with tasty, inexpensive dishes like spicy som tam (green papaya salad) in Bangkok or sizzling banh xeo crepes in Ho Chi Minh City. But major cities in three countries are strengthening campaigns to clear the sidewalks, driving thousands of food vendors into the shadows and threatening a culinary tradition.
. . .
. . . some experts say street food is not inherently less sanitary than restaurant food. “If you’re eating fried foods or things that are really steaming hot, then there’s probably not much difference at all,” said Martyn Kirk, an epidemiologist at the Australian National University.
. . .
Ms. Hong, the Hanoi vendor, said her earnings had cratered by about 60 percent since the start of the crackdown, when she moved to her present location from a busy street corner as a hedge against police raids.

For the full story, see:
MIKE IVES. “Food So Popular, Asian Cities Want It Off the Streets.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., APRIL 30, 2017): 7.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 29, 2017, and has the title “Efforts to Ease Congestion Threaten Street Food Culture in Southeast Asia.”)

“The System Is Totally Crazy”

(p. D1) Mr. Ahmed, 46, is in the business of chicken and rice. He immigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago, and is now one of two partners in a halal food cart that sets up on Greenwich Street close to the World Trade Center, all year long, rain or shine. He is also one of more than 10,000 people, most of them immigrants, who make a living selling food on the city’s sidewalks: pork tamales, hot dogs, rolled rice noodles, jerk chicken.
These vendors are a fixture of New York’s streets and New Yorkers’ routines, vital to the culture of the city. But day to day, they struggle to do business against a host of challenges: byzantine city codes and regulations on street vending, exorbitant fines for small violations (like setting up an inch too close to the curb) and the occasional rage of brick-and-mortar businesses or residents.
. . .
(p. D6) Mr. Ahmed ties on his apron and pushes a few boxes underneath the cart so he can squeeze inside and get to work. Any boxes peeking out beyond the cart’s footprint could result in a fine (penalties can run up to $1,000), as could parking his cart closer than six inches to the curb, or 20 feet to the building entrance. Mr. Ahmed knows all the rules by heart.
. . .
He applied for a food vendor’s license, took a required health and safety class, bought a used cart and took it for an inspection by city officials. (The health department inspects carts at least once a year, and more frequently if a violation is reported.)
Mr. Ahmed still needed a food-vending permit, though, and because of a cap on permits imposed in the 1980s, only 4,000 or so circulate. He acquired his from a permit owner who has charged him and his partner $25,000 for two-year leases (for a permit that cost the owner just $200), which they are still paying off.
A day ago, Mr. Ahmed received a text message: 100 vendors were protesting the cap. Organized by the Street Vendor Project, a nonprofit group that is part of the Urban Justice Center and offers legal representation to city vendors, they hoped to pressure the City Council to pass legislation introduced last fall that would double the number of food-vending permits, gradually, over the next seven years. Mr. Ahmed, who believes the costs for those starting out should be more manageable, wanted to join them, but like many vendors, he couldn’t get away from work.
“The system is totally crazy,” Mr. Ahmed says. “Whoever has a license, give them a permit. It’s good for all of us.”

For the full story, see:
TEJAL RAO. “A Day in the Lunch Box.” The New York Times (Weds., APRIL 19, 2017): D1 & D6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 18, 2017, and has the title “A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor.”)

Self-Driving Cars Would Help Older Adults Continue to Live at Home

(p. B4) Single, childless and 68, Steven Gold has begun to think about future mobility and independence. Although in good health, he can foresee a time when he won’t be a confident driver, if he can drive at all. While he hopes to continue to live in his suburban Detroit home, he wonders how he will be able to get to places like his doctor’s office and the supermarket if his driving becomes impaired.
For Mr. Gold and other older adults, self-driving cars might be a solution.
The number of United States residents age 70 and older is projected to increase to 53.7 million in 2030, from 30.9 million in 2014, according to the Institute for Highway Safety. Nearly 16 million people 65 and older live in communities where public transportation is poor or nonexistent. That number is expected to grow rapidly as baby boomers remain outside of cities.
“The aging of the population converging with autonomous vehicles might close the coming mobility gap for an aging society,” said Joseph Coughlin, the director of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology AgeLab in Cambridge.
He said that 70 percent of those over age 50 live in the suburbs, a figure he expects to remain steady despite a recent rise in moves to urban centers. Further, 92 percent of older people want to age in place, he said.

For the full story, see:
MARY M. CHAPMAN. “Wheels; For the Aged, Self-Driving Cars Could Bridge a Mobility Gap.” The New York Times (Fri., March 24, 2017): B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 23, 2017, and has the title “Wheels; Self-Driving Cars Could Be Boon for Aged, After Initial Hurdles.”)

Lower Ivory Prices Reduce Incentives to Poach Elephants

(p. A9) NAIROBI, Kenya — Finally, there’s some good news for elephants.
The price of ivory in China, the world’s biggest market for elephant tusks, has fallen sharply, which may spell a reprieve from the intense poaching of the past decade.
According to a report released on Wednesday [March 29, 2017] by Save the Elephants, a respected wildlife group in Kenya, the price of ivory is less than half of what it was just three years ago, showing that demand is plummeting.

For the full commentary, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “Ivory Prices May Mean a Reprieve for Elephants.” The New York Times (Thurs., March 30, 2017): A9.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 29, 2017, and has the title “Elephants Get a Reprieve as Price of Ivory Falls.”)

Banks Often Less Transparent and Less Flexible than Bank Alternatives

I saw a C-Span interview on their weekend Book TV today (3/16/17), with Professor Lisa Servon. She pointed out that many of the highly regulated, and much-criticized, alternative banking services, offer a more transparent, more flexible, and more friendly service environment than the incumbent banking industry. She even argues that for those with low-incomes, and low-education, the alternative services are often less expensive. This happens because those with low-incomes and low education are often those who by mistake or by difficult circumstance, incur high fees at banks.
She points out that many who are bankless, previously made use of bank services, but decided to go with the alternatives. She suggested that in a free market environment, some of the alternatives might creatively destroy the incumbent banks.
Servon is clearly no libertarian, but much of what she says is thought-provoking.

Servon’s book is:
Servon, Lisa. The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2017.

DARPA’s $66 Million Fails to Develop Tech to Match Dog Noses

(p. A2) “What’s cool about dogs is when they do come into contact with an odor, they can track it to its source,” said L. Paul Waggoner, co-director of the Canine Performance Sciences Program at Auburn University. “There is not an instrument out there that replicates a dog’s nose.”
That’s not for lack of effort.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense spent $66 million between 1997 and 2010 drawing on the expertise of at least 35 different research institutions to develop sensors that could detect explosives as ably as a dog and identify other chemicals.
They couldn’t do it.
. . .
Surprisingly, pigs and ferrets outperformed German shepherds and Labrador retrievers, breeds often chosen for odor detection.
But overall, dogs won out because of their combination of qualities: Not only do they have strong noses, they are compatible with people, they respond to training, and–for now–they beat technology paws down.

For the full commentary, see:
Jo Craven McGinty. “THE NUMBERS; Dogs Still Beat Technology in the Smell Test.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 25, 2017): A2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 24, 2017, and has the title”THE NUMBERS; Making Sense of a Dog’s Olfactory Powers.”)