Economic Security at Risk

On July 22, in partnership with the New America Foundation’s Economic Growth Program, Professor Jacob Hacker of Yale University presented a Rockefeller Foundation report on a new statistic aimed at illuminating levels of economic stress and insecurity of American families. The metric, called the “Economic Security Index” (ESI) counts households that realized a 25% or greater loss in real income over the course of a given year, and tracks the data over the decades. The ESI allows for in-depth relative comparisons of economic security instead of merely looking at absolute data. In addition, the interactive website allows for temporal and demographic factors to be adjusted; Professor Hacker showed the crowd how to follow different cohorts. The ESI highlighted the increasing troubles many households have faced over the last quarter century – economic insecurity that has only been exacerbated by the Great Recession.

After Dr. Hacker’s presentation, a panel of experts, including those on the technical oversight committee for the ESI project, gave their thoughts on the new measurement’s capacity and limitations.
Moderator E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, along with panelists Dr. Henry Aaron and Dr. Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution and Robert Greenstein, Executive Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, shared their initial skepticism and evolving optimism about the value of the index. While the panel recognized that official adoption of the metric may not be realized soon, everyone agreed that the ESI provided a useful empirical foundation for ideas about the economic performance of households that had previously been mere speculation.

Participants

Introduction
David Gray
Director, Workforce and Family Program
New America Foundation

Featured Speakers
Jacob S. Hacker
Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science
Yale University

Janice Nittoli
Associate Vice President & Managing Director
The Rockefeller Foundation

Henry Aaron
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies
Brookings Institution

Gary Burtless
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies
Brookings Institution

Robert Greenstein
Executive Director
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Moderator
E.J. Dionne Jr
Columnist, Washington Post