Archives: Reg Murphy Pubs

Good teachers make a difference. But what makes a good teacher?

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

One week ago in Glynn County, across all our public schools and many of our private ones, K-12 students returned for a new year of learning, laughing, and growing in wisdom and in stature. As a parent, an educator, and a life-long learner, I love this time of year. As a caregiver to children with disabilities and traumatic pasts, I also have a lot of anxiety around this day. For many children, learning and laughing are hard, and school is not a place of joy or felt safety.

Our schools’ teachers, counselors, and administrators are gifted daily opportunities to meet students where they are academically, socially, and emotionally and, through meaningful and intentional relationships, to move struggling students toward success for today and hope for the future.

And, as most of us know anecdotally, good teachers do, indeed, make all the difference. On a personal note, I am immensely grateful for the Glynn County educators who have been difference-makers for the children in my care.

Research from the field of Education Economics provides evidence, more generally, that our anecdotes and gut feelings about teachers are true.

Researchers for decades have studied variations in student achievement and have attempted to uncover causes behind these variations. Across nearly all of these studies, teachers always emerge as the single most influential factor in determining student achievement. Teachers matter more than any other political talking point, including class size, funding, geography, or student and family demographics.

Studies show that identical students who start a school year at identical achievement levels can emerge an entire year apart in terms of achievement gains due solely to the teacher to whom they are assigned. And these variations matter, not just in terms of test scores and student achievement, but also in terms of future earnings. One study found that if we calculate the average effectiveness of a teacher, a teacher one standard deviation above that mean who teaches a class of 20 students adds over $400,000 per year in present value of student future earnings. Over a decades-long career, this certainly adds up!

The same study showed that improving effectiveness of the bottom 5-8 percent of U.S. teachers to make them average, through professional development or replacement, would add increase our annual GDP growth rate by over 1%, in perpetuity.

Clearly, teachers matter. What makes a good teacher is a question harder to answer. Even with hundreds of studies validating the importance of effective teachers in determining student success, there is little scientific consensus on how specific attributes or practices of teachers contribute to their effectiveness.

A recent article combining results of 40 studies on how teacher characteristics affect teacher effectiveness found over 200 different conclusions. The authors did attempt to synthesize the results, dividing teacher characteristics into three categories: 1) sociodemographic (fixed attributes), acquired (training and experience), and psychological (personality and self-efficacy). They concluded that psychological characteristics have the greatest influence on student success, and the most impactful of these characteristics is a reflective attitude—the willingness and ability of the teacher to think about past experiences in order to learn from them and grow for the future. Teacher training and experience alone, separate of the reflective process, have almost no effect on student success.

The good news is psychological attributes often also can be acquired. Educators—and I’m looking at me, too, not just my K-12 friends—need to practice pause, keep open minds and hearts, be curious, and be willing to shift and change to meet the needs before us. When we do, we can make a multi-million dollar difference!

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.

Murder Rates Are Nearing a Historic Low

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

If you watch the nightly news or listen to the rhetoric of politicians, you might think that the United States is experiencing an epidemic of violent crime. The reality is that violent crime rates are way down from historic highs in the nineties and a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In my July column on media’s influence on perceptions of crime, I noted that the U.S. appears on track to record the lowest number of per-capita killings ever in 2025. More recently, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), a nonpartisan think tank, released their “Crime Trends in U.S. Cities Mid-Year 2025 Update.” Preliminary CCJ data show that U.S. murder rate remains on track to approach historic lows.

Building on significant reductions in the U.S. murder rate in 2023 and 2024, preliminary CCJ data show that the number of murders was down by 17% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. CCJ data from 2025 show declines in all forms of crime that were tracked compared to the same period in 2024, except for drug use (no change) and reported motor vehicle theft (increasing). Looking back to before the pandemic, murder rates in the first half of 2025 are 14% lower than in the first half of 2019. These data are preliminary. However, we can cautiously infer that we are headed in the right direction.

Murders and violent crime peaked in the mid-nineties. There was an increase in violent crimes, including murders, in the pandemic. In 2020, young people, especially young men who are particularly at risk of committing or getting victimized by crime, were out of school, out of work, without vital support systems, and unbridled by many traditional social controls. Gun sales hit a historic high in 2020. Violent crime spiked. Post-pandemic, violent crime and murder rates have now fallen to below pre-pandemic levels. Returning to pre-pandemic routines and their associated social supports has mitigated many of the social conditions that are conducive to violent crime.

Legislators often campaign on “tough on crime” policies that are intended to deter lawbreaking. Increased funding for criminal justice agencies promises to increase their crime prevention capacity. If 2025 does see the lowest murder rate on record, President Trump and his allies will likely attribute this to border policies, ICE’s enforcement of immigration law, and deportation of “criminal illegals.” These initiatives might impact crime rates moving forward, but murder rates were already plummeting under the Biden administration. 

It is a common assumption that the criminal justice system prevents crime. It is likely that elevated rates of murder during COVID were, in part, the result of how policing occurred amid the pandemic and “de-policing” in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. The number of police officers in the U.S. is smaller today than it was before the pandemic according to Police Executive Research Forum. Despite fewer police officers on the job, murder rates have fallen for three years in a row.

Local and state authorities in many parts of the country implemented community violence intervention initiatives in response to the pandemic-era surge in murders. These crime-reduction interventions task law enforcement and partnering agencies to deal with gun violence and address the risk conditions in historically disadvantaged communities. These initiatives likely contributed to the multi-year drop in violent crime.

Declining murder rates are encouraging, but the U.S. still has a serious murder problem. Compared to most other developed nations, the U.S. is plagued by extremely high murder rates. Violent crime in the U.S. has declined since the nineties, but violent crime has become increasingly lethal. CCJ data show that the share of violence that results in death was about 3.6 times higher in 2020 than in 1994. Additionally, there are significant racial disparities among offenders and victims of murder in the U.S. There is much work that still needs to be done to both improve our crime data infrastructure and implement evidence-based practices to control and prevent crime in our nation.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

How GDP Came to Be, Part 2

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

The history of our most prominent economic statistic, gross domestic product (GDP), is mostly a war story.

As noted in our previous discussion, the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-1667) prompted British economist William Petty (1623-1687) to wonder: is Britain capable of producing sufficient armaments to defeat Holland and sufficient income to pay for the war with tax revenues? Though many recognized that the answer to both questions depended on the “size” of the British economy, Petty wrote an essay describing how to measure it. Historians of economics consider Petty’s 1665 essay as the first systematic effort to measure national income, which is the first cousin of gross domestic product (GDP), the measure of an economy’s size used today.

The first systematic estimates of national income in the U.S were produced by individual researchers after 1850. Curiosity and data availability, not war, prompted the work. The best work took practical advantage of the detail on American industries provided by the country’s decennial censuses. The researcher used census detail to estimate the value added (the market value of output less input costs) by each U.S. industry, then added up all the value added estimates to get an estimate of national income. 

Interest among U.S. economists, statisticians and politicians in developing national income and other economic statistics increased considerably in the years that brought rapid industrialization and violent business cycles (roughly 1880-1914). But it took World War I to make it happen.

The U.S. officially entered the war in April 1917 with no idea of the amount of resources it would need to fight the war. By the end of November, it had an idea of the amount it would need: an incredibly huge amount. Noting that the U.S. had no official estimates of national income, economist and member of the Federal Reserve Board (1914-1936) Adolph C. Miller constructed estimates of his own to determine the “surplus over necessary consumption and maintenance of capital that could be devoted to the war effort.” When the war ended, Miller’s estimates did, too.

The first federal government agency to estimate national income was the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). FTC published national income and value added estimates for the years 1918-1923 in a 1926 report. Congress refused to fund FTC research the following year. 

In 1932, the Senate passed a resolution assigning the Economic Research Division of the Department of Commerce with the task of estimating U.S. national income for the years 1929-1932. The U.S. was three years into the Great Depression. For lack of national income estimates, no one knew how far the economy had sunk.

Simon Kuznets, “on loan” from the private National Bureau of Economic Research, took charge of the project in January 1933. Kuznets and his small team submitted their estimates to the Senate on January 4, 1934. The estimates indicated that U.S. price-adjusted national income fell by 30 percent between 1929 and 1932.

Commerce began publishing national income estimates on a regular basis in 1935. It shifted to publishing gross national product (GNP) estimates in 1942. World War II prompted the shift.

As 1942 began, the U.S. faced two pressing questions. Does the U.S. economy have the capacity to produce armaments in the amounts and in the time deemed necessary to win the war? If so, at what cost to the civilian standard of living? 

The development of GNP enabled the U.S., Great Britain and Canada to answer those pressing questions with remarkable accuracy, which turned out to be crucial to the Allied victory. We’ll discuss that in Part 3.

Media Influences Perceptions of Crime

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Almost a quarter century ago, I was enrolled in my first undergraduate course on victimization as a criminal justice major. At the time, the recent Columbine High School mass shooting loomed large in the minds of many Americans. Talking heads on cable news speculated that first-person shooter video games, violence in movies, or even music caused the shooters’ violent behavior. Fear of school shootings haunts many Americans to this day.

How does media shape perceptions of crime in the U.S.? Does exposure to violence in media cause violent crime?

Since the 1980s, 24-hour news channels have broadcast continuous news coverage into our homes. In pursuit of profit, mass media news features violent crimes and crimes involving high-profile people ad nauseum until the next major story emerges. Uncommon violent crimes, like mass shootings, receive disproportionate coverage. The result is exaggerated perceptions of violent crime.

Similarly, social media disproportionately highlights violent crimes. Social media offers immediate information and misinformation on crimes, but this news is light on details, offers limited context, and is typically not fact checked. Social media is now the primary news source for many Americans.

Criminologists find that mass and social media coverage of crime, especially violent crimes between strangers, entrenches the perception that rampant societal violence is endemic to the U.S. As a result, Americans have distorted perceptions of crime and elevated fear of crime.

The media we consume colors our understandings of the criminal justice system, what we deem to be appropriate responses to crime, and the crime legislation that we endorse. One’s preferred cable news network shapes whether you support “defunding the police” or “deporting criminal illegals.”

Media coverage of crime shapes our laws, especially if these events align with the political currents of the day. Politicians have long sought to gain favor with voters by “getting tough on crime.” Certain crimes receive a lot of media coverage, including the tragic murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Laken Riley. These were uncommon, outlier crimes that got a lot of media coverage and resulted in legislation. Arbery’s murder became a catalyst for Georgia’s hate crime laws. Riley’s murder resulted in the Laken Riley Act, mandating detention of non-U.S. nationals for certain crimes.

Is media criminogenic? Does exposure to violence in media or news coverage of crime cause criminal behavior? Criminological research finds that there is no clear-cut relationship between exposure to violence in media and committing crime. However, there is a correlation between exposure to media violence and violent behavior. Some individuals copy crimes that they see in media. It is possible that the same social influences, motivations, or personality attributes that lead one to commit crime also lead one to seek out violent media. There are many intervening variables that shape criminality. In sum, there is no clear causal relationship between media and crime.

Media coverage of crime, including news of local events and sensationalized cases, shapes our perception of crime rates and fear of crime. News coverage can lead to moral panics and excessive or reactive responses from the public and government.

Individuals can be mindful of how mass media and social media exposure shapes our own perceptions of crime, the criminal justice system, and appropriate legislation. Confronting facts about crime allow us to temper exaggerated fears of crime and advocate for effective public policy. Both violent and property crime rates in the U.S. are way down since peaking in the 1990s. Murder rates in the U.S. have plummeted for three years in a row and the U.S. might record the lowest number of per-capita killings on record in 2025. Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, have lower rates of arrest and incarceration compared to native-born citizens. Unfortunately, hate crimes are on the rise in the U.S. in recent years. Criminal justice agencies and our elected officials should develop crime policy that is informed by empirical facts—not media-induced fear of crime or moral panics.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

How GDP Came to Be, Part 1

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

People with a historical bent know that behind things that are often quickly dismissed as boring, tedious or mundane, there’s usually a good story. Consider gross domestic product.

Gross domestic product, which often goes by its initials, GDP, is the big kahuna of economic measures. Defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as “the total market value of the final goods and services produced within a country in a year,” GDP is the most comprehensive measure of a country’s economic activity.

Ask an economist how big the U.S. economy is and you’ll be provided with the most recent estimate of U.S. GDP. Ask how the U.S. economy is doing and you’ll be provided with the most recent one-year percentage change in U.S. GDP.

GDP is not a topic for everyone. But before moving on or dozing off, readers in touch with their inner historian ask, “Who thought of GDP, and why?”

The story of GDP begins in Britain with William Petty (1623-1687): physician, philosopher, economist. Historians of economics credit Petty with the first systematic effort to measure not GDP but national income, GDP’s first cousin. What prompted Petty’s effort? His country was at war.

Discord over trade policies unresolved by the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654) had Britain and Holland at each other’s throats again in the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-1667). Petty felt confident that Britain had the economic capacity to finance the war from tax revenue and produce sufficient armaments to defeat the Dutch. But he wanted reliable evidence on the size of Britain’s economy to prove it – to himself and his countrymen.

Petty devised a system for estimating national income and wealth using double-entry bookkeeping, then described his system in a work published in 1665. Petty’s use of double-entry bookkeeping established a precedent: the BEA’s National Income and Product Accounts, from which we get estimates of U.S. GDP, is a system of double-entry accounts.

High government officials found Petty’s system impressive but his underlying data, thin. The idea of measuring the size of an economy soon receded from political consideration. Charles Davenant (1656-1714) brought it back with greater effect in a pamphlet published in 1694. The inspiration for Davenant’s pamphlet is clear from its title: “An Essay upon the Ways and Means of Supplying the War,” in this case, the Nine Year’s War with France. Davenant’s purpose for estimating national income was the same as Petty’s: to empirically assess Britain’s capacity to wage and finance a war.

Small subsets of successive generations of economists spent the next 196 years arguing about what should and what shouldn’t be included in national income. Adam Smith (1723-1790) instigated much of the arguing by insisting, in his “Wealth of Nations” (1776), that a nation’s wealth is enhanced only by the production of physical commodities.

Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) ended much of the arguing in 1890 by showing, in his “Principles of Economics,” why Smith was silly to think that services contribute nothing to a nation’s wealth. Economists have found it silly to think about services the way Smith did ever since.

 The German government entered 1914 with $70 million in gold stored away for the sole purpose of financing a future war, should one arise. World War I did that summer. By 1916, a major German offensive would ring up $70 million in expenses in a day and a half. After World War I came the precarious 1920s, the Great Depression and World War II, one right after the other. The quest for GDP grew more urgent with each event. We’ll explore that in my next column.   

ICE Expands Partnerships in Georgia

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

There has been rapid expansion of state and local participation in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) program in 2025. ICE’s 287(g) program extends immigration law enforcement authority by delegating it to officers in state and local agencies. The 287(g) program results in more intense immigration enforcement and a higher rate of deportation for unauthorized immigrants in these jurisdictions.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations administers three 287(g) program models. The “Jail Enforcement Model” is designed to identify and process removeable aliens with criminal charges or pending criminal charges when these individuals are arrested by state or local law enforcement. The “Warrant Service Officer” program allows ICE to train, certify, and authorize state and local enforcement officers to serve and execute warrants on individuals who are in custody. The “Task Force Model” is a force multiplier for law enforcement agencies to enforce limited immigration authority with ICE oversight. ICE covers the cost of training, but salaries, travel, lodging, and other expenses are paid for by the partnering agency.

Donald Trump made immigration a central issue in his 2024 campaign. On his first day back in office, President Trump issued an executive order—“Protecting the American People Against Invasion”—that charges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to partner with state and local law enforcement to enforce existing immigration laws, including identifying and apprehending undocumented immigrants.

As of June 3, 2025, 40 states have at least one active 287(g) agreement in place. Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont have no active or pending 287(g) agreements in place. California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington have no agreements because these agreements are prohibited by state law.

State and local law enforcement agencies, largely in conservative districts, are expanding participation in the 287(g) program. In March, Governor Kemp announced an expansion of Georgia’s partnership with ICE. The Georgia Department of Corrections has participated in the Jail Enforcement Model since 2020. The Georgia Department of Public Safety is now participating in the Task Force Model. Under the Task Force Model, all 1,100 Georgia Department of Public Safety officers are to be trained by ICE on immigration enforcement and will work collaboratively with ICE to enforce immigration law in the field.

Several county-level agencies, including Glynn County Sheriff’s Office, have active or pending applications with ICE. Glynn County Sheriff’s Office is participating in the Warrant Service Officer program as of May 13, 2025, according to ICE’s website. Across the Peach State, there are 29 active agreements and 4 pending agreements.

Georgia’s participation in ICE’s 287(g) programs had been declining with Cobb and Gwinnett discontinuing their participation in the program several years ago. There were no new agreements signed during the Biden administration.

According to June 3, 2025 data on ICE’s website, 500 of 635 active agreements to participate in ICE’s 287(g) programs have been approved since January 2025. There are 88 pending agreements.

Americans’ attitudes on immigration enforcement are polarized. Enforcing immigration law is a top policy priority for a majority of Republicans, but a low priority for Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center’s Annual Policy Priorities Survey. Environmental issues are the only policy priorities with a larger divide between Republicans and Democrats.

It’s a safe bet that opinions on state and local agencies partnering with ICE through 287(g) program are split along party lines. Proponents of the program assert that enforcing immigration law should be a priority, often fueled by concerns about crime among immigrants. Detractors of the program raise concerns that the 287(g) program results in family separations, potential rifts between immigrant communities and law enforcement, and concerns about local tax dollars being squandered to support a federal program.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

Examining the productive potential of Americans with disabilities

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

There has been a lot of spotlight and controversy around the current U.S. administration’s rhetoric regarding Americans with disabilities. The rhetoric has not been kind, and there have been exaggerated claims about the causes and effects of developmental disabilities, particularly autism.

Actual policymaking has been a bit more nuanced.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced this month a new partnership between National Institutes of Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to collect and analyze health data with the goal of better understanding causes and effects of autism. As an academic, I am always in favor of more data and more scientific discovery.

Also this month, HHS committed to funding $1.1 billion in grants to provide services to older adults and persons with disabilities through the Administration for Community Living (ACL). This is welcome news for affected groups after last month’s announcement of staff reductions and a major restructuring of ACL.

In March, disability advocates spoke out against the Justice Department’s withdrawal of 11 pieces of guidance on implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In the Department’s defense, though, 5 of the 11 were specific to the COVID-19 pandemic, and withdrawal of administrative guidance does not negate the statute itself. In fact, in the same breath, the Justice Department encouraged compliance with ADA, reminding businesses of tax incentives available to cover costs of improving access for employees and customers with disabilities.

I want to pause on the point of businesses accommodating employees with disabilities. First, the numbers.

Currently, 8% of non-institutionalized American civilians between the ages of 16 and 64 are living with a disability. However, only 4.3% of the labor force—those working or looking for work– within that age range are individuals with disabilities. The percent of working-age Americans with disabilities who are either employed or seeking employment is 41%, whereas the rate for non-disabled working-age Americans is 78%. And within the labor force of working-age Americans, 8.8% of participants with disabilities are unemployed (i.e. actively looking for work), while only 3.7% of non-disabled participants are unemployed.

A July 2021 supplement to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey allowed respondents who reported having disabilities to give more details on their labor market participation decisions. Those who were working age and either not in the labor force or unemployed reported several barriers to employment besides their own disability: lack of education or training, lack of job counseling, lack of transportation, loss of government assistance, need for special features at the job, and employer or coworker attitudes.

It is striking to me how many of those barriers could easily be removed by employers or communities if we more highly valued not only the humanity of our neighbors with disabilities but also their willingness and ability to contribute as employees.

They want to work. More than a quarter of unemployed working age Americans with a disability report having taken advantage of at least one career assistance program.

They can work. Among employed individuals of working age and with disabilities, 42.6% report no difficulty completing their work duties, and only 7.2% report severe difficulty.

Their work benefits us all. The AbilityOne Program is a federal program funding the employment of individuals who are blind or have significant disabilities. A 2023 study on the economic impact of AbilityOne found that every dollar spent on the program resulted in a $2.66 return to society. And, as icing on that cake, being employed cuts by more than half the likelihood that a working age American with disabilities will use financial assistance programs.

In my From the Murphy Center column in February, I wrote about the necessary and effective work of accommodating students with disabilities in America’s public schools. Especially when we do that work well, many individuals with disabilities are a promising source of untapped productive potential in the labor market. We can change that by removing barriers to their employment.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.

Imports Do Not Subtract from U.S. GDP

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

The notion that exports and trade surpluses are good and imports and trade deficits are bad for the economy is one of the oldest and most egregious fallacies in economics. The fallacy is perpetuated each time the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases a new estimate of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).

The source of the problem is a thing called the production-expenditure identity. The production-expenditure identity is fundamental to the national income and product accounts, the set of accounts, maintained by BEA, that provides a detailed picture of the U.S. economy as a whole. The production-expenditure identity expresses GDP, the market value of final goods and services produced in the U.S. in a year, in terms of expenditures. In short, the identity is meant to indicate the amount of domestic production purchased by households, businesses, governments (federal, state and local) and foreigners. 

A splash of nerdiness is necessary at this juncture. For convenience, the production-expenditure identity is written: GDP = C + I + G + X – M, where C stands for consumption, as in household spending on final goods and services; I stands for investment, as in business spending on capital goods plus goods in inventories; G stands for government purchases, as in federal, state and local government spending on final goods and services (as in tanks and fire trucks, not subsidies or social security); X stands for exports; M for imports.

That splash of nerdiness has unleashed a world of mischief and nonsense. It still does. People read all sorts of things into the production-expenditure identity. Some use the identity to bolster arguments that have been shown to be bogus many times over, such as the fallacy that exports and trade surpluses are good and imports and trade deficits are bad for the economy.

The fallacy has several variants. Exports create jobs, imports destroy them; exports increase the demand for domestic output, imports reduce it. There are others. What’s crucial is the plus sign in front of exports (X) and the minus sign in front of imports (M) in the production-expenditure identity. The common translation of those two signs is: exports increase GDP; imports reduce GDP. A small step leads to a related translation: trade surpluses (when exports exceed imports) increase GDP; trade deficits (when imports exceed exports) reduce GDP.

What perpetuates the exports good-imports bad fallacy with each new BEA estimate of GDP is a similar misinterpretation. Ever encounter a statement along the lines of: “U.S. inflation-adjusted GDP would have been higher if imports hadn’t increased. Imports, of course, subtract from GDP.”?

With each new BEA estimate of GDP, “Imports, of course, subtract from GDP” is blasted out to every electron-compatible speck of the media-verse. That’s unfortunate, because the minus sign in front of imports in the production-expenditure identity does not mean “imports subtract from GDP.”

By reading BEA’s literature on how it estimates GDP, one learns that BEA estimates expenditures on final goods and services by households (C), businesses (I), governments (G) and foreigners (X) without regard for where the purchased products were produced. Consumption, investment, government purchases and exports thus comprise spending on both domestic products and imports, which means the sum of consumption, investment, government purchases and exports equals the value of domestically produced products – GDP – plus imports.

To get GDP, BEA subtracts its estimate of imports, which it obtains through a different process, from the sum of consumption, investment, government purchases and exports. That’s the reason for the minus sign in front of imports.

The next time you hear or read “imports subtract from GDP,” remember: they don’t.

The Moral Foundations of Political Division

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Many Americans don’t see eye to eye when it comes to what they believe is right and wrong. Americans hold polarized opinions on deportations of undocumented persons, tariffs, access to abortion, and a host of other social and political issues. Moral foundations theory can help us to understand why liberals and conservatives hold different views of what’s right and wrong.

Moral foundations theory comes out of social psychology. Jonathan Haidt and collaborators first published the theory back in 2004. The most recent version of the theory contends that humans evolved to possess six moral intuitions that shape moral judgments: care for the vulnerable, fairness in how people are treated, loyalty to in-groups, respect for authority, reverence for the sacred, and safeguarding individual liberty. A growing body of research shows that liberals prioritize care and fairness foundations, while conservatives value all six foundations.

Social scientists have applied moral foundations theory to a broad range of issues, including crime control, policing, abortion, prayer in schools, and other contentious culture war issues. For example, liberals’ focus on care for the vulnerable leads to hostility toward police use of force. Conservatives’ focus on respect for authority leads to supporting law and order, including police officers’ use of force. Different “moral foundations” lead conservatives and liberals to maintain incongruous views of what’s right and wrong.

Haidt and collaborators claim that the six moral foundations are innate psychological systems at the core of our intuitive ethics. As a sociologist, I am often suspect of evolutionary theories. The capacity to possess moral foundations is likely a product of our evolution, but a sociological critique is that our morality is largely a product of our socialization. The individuals and institutions in our lives shape our morality. Parents, teachers, and friends shape our views on what’s right and what’s wrong. Media, church, and schools do as well. Sociologists theorize that our idiosyncratic experiences shape our moral worldviews.

I have my doubts that Haidt’s moral foundations are universally applicable to all groups and all contexts. Across all the cultures and groups of the world, there are a plurality of views on what’s right and wrong. Social factors, including our class, race, and gender shape our moral worldviews. Context matters too. The social structures, power dynamics, and cultural norms of our society shape our morality. Those who are in poverty and those who are wealthy have different views on the morality of welfare programs. Similarly, there are patterned differences in attitudes toward affirmative action programs across different racial groups. As a sociologist, I would contend that these differences are not biological, but result from how we are socialized.

Some have argued that moral foundations theory could be used to justify and perpetuate existing social inequalities by framing these moral differences as innate or natural. Support for loyalty and authority can be used to support hierarchical social structures.

Even if Haidt and colleagues have not identified the timeless foundations of human morality, their work has value. Moral foundations theory gives us the tools to research and better understand moral differences. In our era of identity-driven politics, moral intolerance is on the rise. Bipartisan cooperation and civility have fallen out of favor. Being a liberal or a conservative is no longer about political values and approaches to governance, but these have become group identities that place one group in opposition to the other. I am optimistic that moral foundation theory provides us a way to understand “the other.” Our neighbors’ understandings of right and wrong might just emphasize different foundations of morality than our own. Instead of vilifying the other, we can find opportunities for compromise and collaboration.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

Aaron’s Story: How grown up failures lead to adolescent crime

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Gang violence is not new to Brunswick. In recent months, though, local law enforcement report an increase in the rate of youth arrests, many of which are gang related.

I know families affected by gang violence, and I know a child who was arrested and charged in a gang-related incident here in the last year. His story highlights numerous egregious failures in state and local systems that research suggests are directly correlated with increased adolescent gang activity.

Before he became part of our “gang problem,” Aaron (a pseudonym) was no stranger to our local systems. He was not an under-the-radar kid. In fact, he was all over every radar we have for identifying at-risk children.

Early in his life, Aaron came onto the radar of the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), who eventually removed him from his mother’s care. His mother requested Aaron be placed with willing friends in their neighborhood. But, by state policy, DFCS prioritizes placement with biological family. Aaron was taken from his home community and placed with a relative who physically and psychologically abused Aaron. Isolation and abuse in childhood are known by social science researchers to be strongly correlated with adolescent gang activity. But DFCS had moved Aaron to the fringes of their radar.

Aaron’s mother, to her great credit, worked her DFCS case plan and regained custody of Aaron. But, her plan had focused on compliance over healing, and Aaron returned home to a parent whose best intentions were not enough. When a parent regains custody of their child, our systems essentially leave them helpless. DFCS aftercare is extremely limited both in time and scope. There is little consideration for the long-term impact of what both parent and child have endured, and there is no systematic support for rehabilitation beyond reunification. Aaron’s childhood continued to be marked by chronic trauma. But DFCS had cleared Aaron from their radar.

Soon, Aaron appeared on the radar of the juvenile justice system (DJJ). With very little interaction between DJJ and DFCS, the family dynamics that led to Aaron’s delinquent behavior were not addressed. Aaron would eventually serve time in a youth detention center (YDC). At the end of that time, DJJ returned Aaron to live with his mother. Georgia’s DJJ Office of Reentry Services emphasizes the importance of reentry supports, including healthy family and living arrangements. The literature on juvenile recidivism emphasizes the word “healthy.” Returning Aaron to his unhealthy home environment meant returning him to the streets where he had already begun to flirt with gangs. Ignoring his statistically sky-high risk of recidivism, DJJ had cleared Aaron from their radar.

Within months of returning home, Aaron re-appeared on a radar he had frequented throughout his childhood– that of the Glynn County School System (GCSS). This time, it was for non-attendance. When confronted, Aaron’s mother signed a letter of intent to homeschool. Many families homeschool well. But they would tell you that in Georgia, it is very easy to homeschool very badly. By state law, that letter of intent, filed with the state Department of Education, is the only documentation required to be submitted to any regulating body. There are rules about teaching and testing, but record-keeping is up to the parent. Georgia has virtually no accountability for homeschooling families. Nevertheless, homeschool was presented as an acceptable solution to the problem of truancy from GCSS, for a child who had also been on the radars of DFCS and DJJ. They all simply cleared Aaron from their radars.

Mere months later, Aaron became one of the juvenile offenders on all of our radars through local media reports of increased gang violence. We are asking local law enforcement to crack down on our children when we should be demanding accountability from the adults in the systems that are failing them. We must get serious about understanding childhood trauma, and we must commit to doing the hard work of healing wounds that are our responsibility even if they are not our fault. We must stop passing the buck, shifting children from one radar to the next.

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Published with permission from Aaron’s family.

Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.