Brookings Press Blog

David Brooks cites WHAT WORKS IN DEVELOPMENT?

In his New York Times column, David Brooks discussed the underlying causes of the tremendous destruction from the earthquake in Haiti. He referred to What Works in Development? edited by Jessica Cohen and William Easterly to back up his point that “we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty.” Countries have spent trillions of dollars in foreign aid worldwide, yet this assistance has not generated growth. According to the book:

The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

- Read the full New York Times column by David Brooks

- Learn more about What Works in Development?

Clive Crook discusses “Creating an Opportunity Society” in Financial Times: “book is full of excellent analysis and proposals”

In his Financial Times column, Clive Crook finds much to like in Creating an Opportunity Society, the new book by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill.

The great virtue of this book—a comprehensive policy manual and the outline of a new social contract—is not just in recognizing that upward mobility in the U.S. is less than it should be, but is in calling for action, and in insisting on fiscal discipline. Its real strength is its distinctively American remedies, with their emphasis on rewarding effort rather than idleness, and insisting on personal responsibility.

Crook applauds the bold centrist and fiscally responsible policies Haskins and Sawhill outline to beef up spending on early education, improve schools, provide incentives to work, and postpone having children until after marriage.

- Read the column

- Learn more about Creating an Opportunity Society

Is America truly the “Land of Opportunity”? Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins dispel 5 myths

Hard work + talent = financial success

For generations, Americans have believed that this formula will allow them to get ahead in our land of opportunity. But do Americans really enjoy more economic opportunity than people in other countries? Is each generation better off than the previous one? Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill provide somewhat surprising answers to such questions in a myth-busting piece in Sunday’s Washington Post (October 31).

- Read “5 myths about our land of opportunity”

- Learn more about Haskins and Sawhill’s new book Creating an Opportunity Society

Brookings Asks “Is America Really an Opportunity Society?”

On Tuesday, October 27, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill will discuss their new Brookings Press book, Creating an Opportunity Society, which explores how to help more people achieve the American Dream. The event will be moderated by E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist and senior fellow at Brookings. Panelists will include David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times; Linda Gibbs, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services for New York City; Haskins and Sawhill, both senior fellows in Economic Studies at Brookings; and Juan Williams, senior correspondent for NPR and political analyst for Fox News Channel.

- Register for the event
- Check out David Brooks’s column in The New York Times
- Read E.J. Dionne's column in The Washington Post
- Learn more about Creating an Opportunity Society

HOPE VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in America’s Cities

Book launch hosted by current HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and former secretary Henry Cisneros

Among lessons learned, HOPE VI has taught us that replacing public housing with vouchers isn't always the best option for displaced families. “Many of them ended up in new ghettos of Section 8 because they took the path of least resistance and because landlords were unscrupulous and piled people on top of each other to get the money,” said Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President Bill Clinton. “In some cases we didn’t improve people’s lives as we could have done,” he added. Today, current HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan faces many of the same challenges.

On July 14, the current and former HUD secretaries teamed together to host a discussion on the next steps for urban revitalization and opportunity. Secretary Donovan announced new funding for the current HOPE VI program and outlined the future of Choice Neighborhoods.

In the new book From Despair to Hope: Hope VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in America’s Cities, Cisneros and co-editor Lora Engdahl document the evolution of HOPE VI, one of the most ambitious urban redevelopment initiatives yet. The authors also chronicle the major federal effort to replace desolate public housing with mixed-income communities, and discuss the lessons learned.

- Learn more about the book, From Despair to Hope

- Read articles on the event from CQ Politics and Next American City

Opportunity 08: Independent Ideas for America's Next President

Brookings book launches an intense focus on issues, not partisanship

The book Opportunity 08 emerges from a special bipartisan project created by Brookings, in partnership with ABC News, to offer solutions to America’s most pressing policy challenges. This new book will help candidates, the media, and voters focus on the critical issues at stake in the first presidential election since 1928 that does not include an incumbent president or vice president.

The diverse roster of contributors to Opportunity 08 reflects an impressive breadth of expertise, opinions, and political beliefs. This team of experts addresses voters’ demand to hear more about issues and less about partisan politics by presenting authoritative analysis and innovative policy solutions on a wide array of domestic and foreign policy questions.

Furthermore, this volume contextualizes these crafted plans for action by explaining not simply what should be done but why it should be done. This framework serves as a launching pad for a sharp focus on specific issues, which shapes the three distinct sections of the book. Part One of the book is titled "Our World," and its topics include the challenge of dealing with Iran, the rise of China, climate change, oil dependence, Middle East peace and the future of Iraq. Part Two, "Our Society," features accessible treatment of domestic issues such as voting reform; housing policy; poverty, inequality, and upward economic mobility. Part III, "Our Prosperity," tackles vexing problems such as the budget deficit, health care access and quality, retirement security, and the challenge of strengthening information technology in the United States.

- Learn more about Opporunity 08.

- Learn more about the Opportunity 08 Research Project.

Global Trade and Poor Nations

New book assesses the impact of reformed trade policies on the world’s poorest nations

Global Trade and Poor Nations presents the likely effects of global trade reform on seven of the poorest countries in the world. The contributors, led by editors Bernard M. Hoekman and Marcelo Olarreaga, take into consideration the reforms agreed upon under the auspices of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round and investigate the economic changes that would likely arise. The seven selected nations (Bolivia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Zambia) represent a geographical and cultural cross-section of countries, allowing the analysis presented in the book to reach more than just one localized area of international trade policy. The researched showed that trade liberalization can potentially be a powerful catalyst for economic growth, which is crucial to mitigating poverty and sparking development.

The new book is published in conjunction with the Groupe d’Economie Mondiale at Sciences-Po, Paris and the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (YCSG). YCSG strives to examine “the impact of our increasingly integrated world” on every level: individual, local, and national. The Center disseminates its cutting-edge analysis in the hopes of ultimately linking “academia and the policy world.” The current director of the YCSG, Ernesto Zedillo, who writes the foreword for Global Trade and Poor Nations, was preceded by current Brookings President Strobe Talbott.

- Learn more about Global Trade and Poor Nations.

- Learn more about the Groupe d’Economie Mondiale at Sciences-Po.

- Learn more about the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

All Together Now

John Edwards’s plan to integrate schools draws from work of Brookings Press author Richard Kahlenberg

A Washington Post editorial last week discussed John Edwards’s ideas to integrate schools.

“On his poverty tour last week, former North Carolina senator John Edwards moved the debate forward in a useful way, endorsing a plan to focus integration efforts on income rather than race -- in other words, to promote schools that are economically diverse. This is not a new idea, but especially in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, it is a timely one.”

Much of the Edwards plan is based on the work of Brookings Press author Richard D. Kahlenberg. In his book, All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools Through Public School Choice, Kahlenberg provides a plan for promoting economic and racial integration among public schools.

Economically integrated schools, the book argues, will do far more to promote achievement and equal opportunity than vouchers, standards, class size reduction, or any of the other leading education proposals on the left and right that seek to make “separate but equal” schools work.

- Learn more about All Together Now.

- Of related interest: Rescuing Brown v. Board of Education: Profiles of Twelve School Districts Pursuing Socioeconomic School Integration, a report from The Century Foundation by Richard D. Kahlenberg.