The Woefully Distorted Federal Policies on Child Abuse

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The Woefully Distorted Federal Policies on Child Abuse

By Eric Pianin
May 6, 2015

Here’s something just in from the world of grossly distorted government policy:

Every year, roughly 680,000 children are reported victims of neglect or abuse by their parents in this country – a tragic statistic reflective of troubling societal, psychological and economic problems. Even worse, 1,520 children died from maltreatment in 2013, nearly 80 percent of them at the hands of their own parents.

Related: Feds Blow $100 Billion Annually on Incorrect Payments

Federal and state authorities over the years have developed a large and costly system for reporting and investigating maltreatment, removing endangered children from their homes, and preventing and treating problems of parents and children.

But as a new study touted on Wednesday by the Brookings Institution concludes, the federal government provides states with far more money to support kids once they have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care than it provides for prevention and treatment programs to keep the kids out of foster homes in the first place.

And the disparity is startling.

Two of the largest grant programs in Title IV-B of the Social Security Act provide states with funding totaling around $650 million annually for “front end” services designed to prevent or treat parent and child problems that contribute to abuse and neglect. They address problems such as substance abuse, family violence and mental health issues.

Related: Time to Stop Social Safety Net Child Abuse

Yet another series of programs in Title IV-E of the Social Security law provides states with open-ended funding that totaled about $6.9 billion in 2014. Those funds pay almost exclusively for out-of-home care for children from poor families, along with the administrative and training expenses associated with foster care, adoption, and guardianship.

That’s a 10 to 1 disparity in funding for the two efforts – one to try to hold families together and the other to move children out of their homes and into foster care. 

“Congress has the opportunity to change the funding formula under Title IV of the Social Security Act so that states have the flexibility to put money where it will be most effective at keeping at-risk children safe, ensuring that they have a permanent home, and promoting their well-being,” wrote Ron Haskins, Lawrence M. Berger and Janet Currie, the authors of the study.

In their policy brief, “Can States Improve Children’s Health by Preventing Abuse and Neglect,” Haskins, a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, Currie of Princeton University and Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, write that revising the grant programs could improve the welfare of children who are at risk of abuse or neglect.

This is something else that lawmakers might consider later this year when they begin to focus on disability insurance and other programs within the Social Security law.

Why U.S. Productivity May Be Worse Than We Think

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By Beth Braverman
June 26, 2015

The new economy may be making it easier for people to work from home and in other non-office settings, but it isn’t necessarily making us more productive.

This week, the Bureau of Labor statistics released new data, which showed that Americans spent more time working last year than at any time in the survey’s 12-year history. However, employers aren’t paying workers for those additional hours worked, according to a new research note from Michael Feroli, Chief Economist at J.P. Morgan

That’s bad news for workers, who are doing additional work without earning any additional compensation, but it’s also bad news for the economy. The BLS measures productivity growth (output divided by hours worked) based on the number of hours reported by the employer.

Related: The Do’s and Don’t’s of Boosting Your Productivity

Even by that measure, productivity expanded just 0.6 percent per year from 2010 to 2014, compared to 2.1 percent per year from 2003 to 2009. But when looking at productivity growth based on hours worked from an employees’ perspective, productivity has remained totally flat since 2010, according to Feroli.

What’s behind the discrepancy? Feroli writes that it may have to do with the way we work in today’s economy. “Technology can tether one to the office every minute of the day and in every place, regardless of whether the employer pays for that degree of connectedness.”

How Snapchat Wants to Win the 2016 Election

By Millie Dent
June 26, 2015

Snapchat is getting a lot of attention for its presidential ambitions.

In an effort to both appeal to the youth vote and bolster its events coverage built on a growing volume of video posted by its users, the app recently posted a job opening for a Content Analyst in Politics & News.

The new hire will curate photos and videos for the app’s “Our Story” curated events coverage of the presidential race and other news events. That stories feature has already proven to be a massive success. On average, Snapchat’s Our Stories draws around 20 million people in a 24-hour window, director of partnerships at Snapchat, Ben Schwerin, told Re/code. The three-day story in April about Coachella, the music festival, generated 40 million unique visitors.

Political events might not be draws on that same scale, but Snapchat apparently believes its massive influence with younger Americans could attract millions millennials to engage in the political process at a time when voter turnout is at its lowest levels since World War II. In the 2012 mid-term election, the national turnout rate was 35.9 percent. Of that, only 13 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.

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Boasting more than 100 million daily users, Snapchat is valued at $16 billion — giving it the reach and the financial clout to become a force in 2016 campaign coverage. About 60 percent of U.S. smartphone users aged between 13 and 24 have used the app, according to The Financial Times. The largest demographic of users is between the ages of 18 and 24 (45 percent), followed by those between 25 and 34 (26 percent).

To capitalize on that user base, Snapchat recently hired former CNN political reporter Peter Hamby to oversee its expanding news team. Snapchat wants to promote content from debates, rallies, appearances and other election events and allow users to follow along. But this isn’t purely an experiment in civic participation. Candidates can pay for political ads to appear on the social media app.

The social media app has an ace up its sleeve to incentivize candidates to purchase ads. The app already has age-gating technology and a form of geographic targeting. Originally put into place to make sure underage kids wouldn’t see alcohol ads, the age gate could be used to reach only voting-age users. The geographic targeting allows Our Stories to only be viewable by people in the same city or area, so politicians could target specific areas, especially ones in a tight race.

Snapchat, best known as the service that allows users to send disappearing photos, claims that ads inserted into “Our Stories” have an advantage over other social media advertisements because they leave more lasting impressions.

If campaigns buy into that and turn to Snapchat as a way to connect with a hard-to-reach demographic, the social media company could be the big winner in the 2016 election.

Coming Soon: Free Wi-Fi From Google’s Sidewalk Labs

Google’s latest startup wants to use technology to improve city life.

Judge narrows Google patent suit against Microsoft
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By Suelain Moy
June 25, 2015

Google is about to hit the streets with Sidewalk Labs, a Google startup that will focus on developing new technologies to improve urban life. Billing itself as an “urban innovation company,” Sidewalk Labs was founded to tackle urban problems such as housing, pollution, energy consumption, and transportation with the goal of making cities “more efficient, responsive, flexible and resilient.”

The first project? In New York City, LinkNYC will replace aging pay phones with slim, aluminum pillars that provide free high-speed Wi-Fi. The hubs also will allow people to charge their mobile devices and look up directions on touch screens. Qualcomm will be the wireless provider

Related: Why Google’s Internet Balloons May Be a $10 Billion Business

According to the Federal Communications Commission, 17 percent of the population, or 55 million people, in the United States don’t have access to high-speed broadband. Sidewalk Labs hopes that projects like LinkNYC can help bridge that gap.  

For the LinkNYC initiative, Google acquired and merged two companies -- Control Group and Titan -- into a new venture called Intersection, which aims to provide free, public Wi-Fi in cities around the world using such familiar urban infrastructure as bus stops and pay phones.

Related: Google Spends More Than Any Other Tech Giant to Influence Congress

Daniel L. Doctoroff, a former Bloomberg CEO and deputy mayor for New York City, has been tapped to head Sidewalk Labs. Doctoroff, who conceived the idea for Sidewalk Labs with a Google team headed by CEO Larry Page, told Wired, “The vision really is to make cities connected places where you can walk down any street and have access to free ultra high speed Wi-Fi. The possibilities from there are just endless.”   

Just don’t give us any automated, self-driving taxis, please.

Presidential Candidates Respond to SCOTUS Obamacare Ruling

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By Josh Stelzer
June 25, 2015

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling Thursday may have kept the health care law and its insurance subsidies in place, but that doesn’t mean Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” the law are done. Major GOP presidential candidates took to Twitter following the Supreme Court’s announcement to blast the high court’s decision. Here are their responses and those from the Democratic candidates.

This Is America’s Biggest Financial Fear

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By Beth Braverman
June 25, 2015

More than 60 percent of Americans are losing sleep at night because of financial concerns, and the biggest concern is that they’re not saving enough for retirement, according to a new report from CreditCards.com.

The second-biggest worry is about the cost of education, with half of those between the ages of 18 and 29 saying that concern keeps them up at night.

The percentage of Americans worried about education costs has been growing for the past eight years and is the only category that has become a bigger problem since the Great Recession. “Unless something slows the rapid rise in college costs, this could soon be Americans’ biggest financial fear,” CreditCards.com senior analyst Matt Schultz said in a statement.

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That echoes a Gallup poll released in April, which found that 73 percent of parents with kids under age 18 ranked paying for college as a financial worry, more than were concerned about saving for retirement or covering medical expenses.

Nearly one in three Americans are losing sleep because of medical bills, 27 percent are worried about their mortgage or rent payment, and 21 percent fret over credit card debt.

Older Americans and those with higher incomes seem to have fewer financial anxieties than younger generations. Less than half of those age 65 or older are losing sleep over their finances, versus more than two thirds of adults 64 or younger. Of those making less than $75,000 per year, 69 percent had financial worries, compared to just 51 percent of those making more than $75,000.