The Error of the Childcare ROI

The Upshot over at the New York Times had an interesting piece the other day, How Child Care Enriches Mothers, and Especially the Sons They Raise. Somewhat unsurprisingly for a blog that takes an economic perspective, "enrich" is taken quite literally:

The program was expensive — $18,514 per student a year — but after calculating effects like the cost to society of unemployment, crime and poor health, the researchers concluded that it returned $7.30 for every dollar spent.

Economists, policy wonks, and other observers seem increasingly inclined to frame social issues in terms of Return on Investment (ROI). There are consequences to this, however. Namely, reporting on the ROI of a given social program implies that only programs that at the very least pay for themselves are worthy of implementation or continuation. If pressed, though, I think most people would agree that some things are worth spending money on--even a lot of money--even if the benefits cannot be measured in dollars and cents. I have no idea what an ROI analysis would say about police or fire departments, but I think it's safe to assume that we would all still want them around even if they aren't revenue neutral in the grand scheme. We must insist that journalists consider social benefits beyond the monetary because social life is about more than just monetary concerns.

Scapegoating Neoliberalism for the Sake of Capitalism

All of a sudden, I feel like everyone is talking about neoliberalism. Peter Kaufman has a nice write-up over at the Everyday Sociology Blog. I worry, though, that renewed interest in neoliberalism as a cause of or explanation for current ills (e.g. the election of Trump, increased nationalism, etc.) at best may divert attention away from the more basic role of capitalism broadly and at worse may serve to absolve capitalism of any culpability. To me, neoliberalism is little more than a new name for capitalism. It emerges in the 1980s as a reaction against the dominant global political-economic trajectory that favored progressive tempering of naked capitalism. From at least the 1930s, advanced industrialized states found an increasingly large role for government to play in insuring social stability, especially in intervening in markets at the macro level and offering safety net programs at the micro level. After fifty years, the opposition found a foothold in the rhetoric of "freedom" and "prosperity." If we allow ourselves to critique the status quo by blaming neoliberalism, we run the risk of ignoring the more fundamental issue posed by capitalism. Neoliberalism may be a problem--but it is not the problem

An Economist Likes Sociology--But Finds It Still Lacking

The Upshot's Economic View just penned a love letter of sorts to Sociology. It's great, and it makes me smile. Go read it. I do have a minor quibble with it, though. In particular, the three final paragraphs were somewhat sour to my taste:

And trying to solve social problems is a more complex undertaking than working to improve economic outcomes. It’s relatively clear how a change in tax policy or an adjustment to interest rates can make the economy grow faster or slower; it’s less obvious what, if anything, government can do to change forces that are driven by the human psyche.

...

It may be true that these lessons on identity and community don’t lend themselves immediately to policy white papers and five-point plans. But a deeper understanding of them sure could help policy makers.

Setting aside the fact that boiling down sociology to "the human psyche" is just wrong, I think this is emblematic of a problem particular to sociology that I have to regularly fight with my students, namely that sociology doesn't imply actual solutions to the social problems that we are quite adept at pointing out. I think it's fair to say that sociology has been less explicit in terms of policy per se. However, sociological research typically does point toward relatively obvious solutions. It's not that they're not there; it's just that they tend to be radical! (To be clear here, I use "radical" properly. It means "to the root," though not necessarily "extreme.")

Sociology shows one of the roots of racism in economic insecurity so restructure the labor market to guarantee employment. Sociology shows one of the roots of gender inequality in the way we organize the workplace so change how we conceptualize the workday (e.g. flex time) and family leave (e.g. require fathers to take time off). Sociology shows the roots of poverty in capitalism itself so replace capitalism with another economic system. As you can see, the policy implications are there; they just happen to be radical and, thus, difficult politically. It's one thing to say, "Hey, just tweak this part of the tax code," and another to say, "Um, you'll need to upend an entire social institution."

The issue is that "Economics" as a discipline would more accurately be titled "Capitalism Studies," and if everything is framed within the rules of capitalism, the solutions--inasmuch as we can call them that--are within those rules as well. In Neil Iwin's words from the Upshot piece, "...economics is only a piece of a broader, societal problem. So maybe the people who study just that [i.e. sociologists] could be worth listening to."