Nick: In think tank land and academia and policy research world always love to talk
about lessons learned.
We probably should talk a little bit more about lessons forgotten.
Aparna: Thank you, Nick, for being here.
You hold the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.
And thank you for doing the chapter for "The American Family Diaries" volume.
You start off the chapter by saying modern America is beset by a crisis of male nonwork.
That is, these are people who are not just unemployed, they're actively not looking for
work.
And they have dropped out of the labor force.
Could you talk a little bit about your interest in that and why you wrote about this?
Nick: I started writing about the problem of men without work back in 2016 when I sort
of stumbled across it.
I mean, I'm not a labor economist, nor have I ever been a labor economist, but I saw this
big problem in the U.S. labor market.
Our unemployment statistics measure the total number of people who do not have work and
are looking for work.
But there is now a much larger phenomenon, the number of people who are neither working
nor looking for work, especially in arguably prime working ages like the 25 to 54 group.
And if we look at the most recent monthly job report from the BLS at the time that we're
talking together, the work rate, the employment to population ratio for civilian, non-institutional
American men, 25 to 54, is almost as high as it was in 1939.
It's almost up to that.
Which is to say we still have a depression scale problem of nonwork for U.S. men as of
2019, 2020.
Aparna: That's interesting and sort of appalling.
Nick: Sort of appalling.
Aparna: I mean, what is going on?
So you sort of say, "Well, there are a few blind spots in the U.S. statistical system.
We don't capture a lot of data that we need to understand this phenomena."
And this has sort of given rise to this idea that maybe there isn't work available for
these, you know, 7.1 million men that you identify.
But we know, and as you point out correctly in the chapter, we do have, you know, over
7 million vacancies in the U.S.
So it's not as if the jobs don't exist.
So what kind of sort of data, you know, isn't available?
What aren't we asking?
What's going on with those statistics?
Nick: Well, I mean, as you appreciate, Aparna, when the current population survey asks questions,
it has to limit the number of questions which it's asking or otherwise, the respondents
are gonna go screaming out of the room and, you know, tearing their hair.
So the CPS only offers less than a dozen options to respondents for explaining why they are
not working.
And that's a pretty kind of Procrustean bed to force people on to try to answer this.
There are millions and millions of human stories in this troubling situation we have in the
U.S. today.
And we need to get some texture to it.
We need to get some nuance to it.
We need to get the human dimension to it.
And I'm sure that is what informed your entire research project on wanting to follow what
we're calling here ethnographic research.
Aparna: That's exactly right.
I mean, some of the thinking behind this work is to sort of get at those stories.
And as you say, you know, the 7 million stories about why people are not in the workforce.
And the CPS will give you what?
Twelve options to figure it out, you know, "Which of these slots do I fit into?"
And the role of ethnographic research, at least from my perspective, would be to say,
"Okay, go to these men or go to these families and say, 'Well, what is it, you know, that's
holding you back from working?'"
So what do you think...you know, what role can ethnographic research play?
Do you think that there's a role?
There are limitations of that type of research as well, I'm sure, but, you know, where does
the storytelling fit in?
Nick: Well, of course, you've chosen the framework of ethnography for this.
And, I mean, there is a scholarly tradition to ethnography.
To my way of looking, it's wonderful to have a sympathetic, empathetic, interested observer
interacting with people that we're concerned about.
And, I mean, I can see us maybe calling this good journalism.
I can see us maybe calling it anthropology.
There are different sorts of traditions that might be valuable here.
In the case of J.D. Vance, a few years ago, it was just autobiography.
But, again, he was a loving but honest observer of what had occurred in his own chaotic family
and community.
So it's first and foremost, I would say, getting a set of eyes to show us what people like
me and people like you can't see when we're looking at decimal points and big rows of
numbers, it's the human quality.
Aparna: It's the human element.
Nick: Now, I have no doubt that there's a great deal of training that can go into this.
But there's also, I would surmise, a certain inescapable art that if you don't have the
spark for doing this sort of work, there is no number of semesters that you can be imprisoned
in school to get the routine.
So it's a combination of preparing people, but also of having the gift for it just the
same way some people have the human...
Aparna: For trying to get the stories out.
Nick: Yeah.
Aparna: That's exactly right.
You make an important distinction in the chapter between poverty and misery.
What is that all about?
Nick: Sure.
Well, we, in think tank land and academia and policy research world always love to talk
about lessons learned.
We probably should talk a little bit more about lessons forgotten because there are
a lot of lessons forgotten.
And the distinction between poverty and misery, certainly, is one that the late great Gertrude
Himmelfarb described in much of her work on Victorian Britain.
Back in the Victorian era, I think it was clear to any schoolchild that there was a
distinction between poverty and misery.
And poverty, per se, was the shortfall of material resources.
And misery was a condition of human degradation and certain sorts of unhappiness and desperation.
The Victorians would have equated misery with the vice.
We don't talk about vice so much anymore, but we know what we mean when we describe
that.
The point I think is that it is possible to have adequate resources and still to find
oneself in a miserable condition.
And understanding that the shortfall of resources is not necessarily the cause of all misery
and degradation in modern America just seems like something we ought to bear in mind.
Aparna: That's interesting.
That's right.
Now, I think when you were talking about sort of looking at potential reasons why people
drop out of the labor force, you say that researchers have tried to connect disability
receipts where, you know, men in and out of work, you know, what's going on there?
I don't think we have a clear picture.
Some people are saying disability is actually encouraging people to leave the workforce.
So what's the story there?
And, you know, what can we learn from qualitative research per se?
Nick: Well, first of all, we might not need quite as much ethnographic research in this
area if our quantitative data were a little bit better.
We have a crazy quilt of government disability benefit programs that don't communicate with
each other.
And this means that we don't have any statistical sources that can give us a comprehensive overview
of the profile of disability participation in the United States today.
You can find some information from the social security administration, from SSI, SDI...
Aparna: As anybody has walked through.
Nick: Yeah.
But they don't talk to the Veterans Administration and none of them talk to the state programs
or to a workman's comp.
There's no comprehensive source of information that we can look at for our analysis and inter
alia.
I think that's why in 2016, the Council of Economic Advisers' admirable report on declining
labor force participation rates for men made a kind of an error because they said, "Well,
you can't really say there's any connection between this and disability."
They just looked at the social security administration's numbers, which are less than half of the numbers
that we can look at just through a single-sip survey by the Census Bureau.
So since we are needlessly challenged quantitatively, it seems to me that it might be beneficial
to use ethnographic research to learn a little bit more about what the real-life circumstances
of people are.
Now, with our social science techniques, we will never be able to establish causality
between...we will be able to establish associations, but never causality between the existence
of a benefit program and some consequence.
But an observer may be able to give us a little bit more nuance and sympathy as to what's
actually going on here and what the family dynamic is.
And, of course, we know that resources are fungible.
So a benefit to another member of the family may also affect the calculations or the behavior
of somebody else.
So one needs to take, I think, a more human and holistic approach to this.
And as I say, an empathetic observer may be able to provide us with a certain amount of
understanding that we can't get just from the numbers.
Aparna: That's exactly right.
And similarly, I think, you know, you talk about people who have a history of, you know,
incarceration or who have...
And a distinction between people who have been arrested but not incarcerated, you know.
And that seems to be a big, big chunk of the population that is out of the workforce, or,
you know, even generally across the country, we're seeing many more cases where people
are just dropping out or not getting jobs because of that history.
Nick: Absolutely.
Aparna: You know, where does that fit in?
Nick: Well, it's a huge gap in our national social statistical system at the moment.
And the reason for this is just if you think of it, it's stock and flow.
If you are sentenced, you permanently have a conviction in your background.
And so, it's accumulating over time.
And if you look at the stock and flow, there have been, I think, some fine demographic
reconstructions attempting this.
We're now at a situation, most likely, where there are more than 20 million American adults,
not behind bars, who have a felony conviction in their background.
Overwhelmingly guys.
My back of the envelope calculation suggests that would mean over one in eight adult guys
who is in the civilian, non-institutional but not behind bars population, more than
one in eight would have a felony conviction in their background.
Probably a higher ratio for prime, working-age guys.
And we have no comprehensive information on their circumstance at all.
We've got zero on their labor force participation, living arrangements, health situation.
All the things that you want to know about human beings.
So while we wait for the Census Bureau and others to cast some light on this enormous
invisible part of America, we can kind of jumpstart things through ethnographic questions.
Through seeing if we can understand a little bit better what it's like for people who have
felony convictions to try to function after they re-enter society.
It's a huge gap and it's sort of kind of scandalous.
It's an absolutely unnecessary blind spot for America.
But through the sort of work that you're promoting, I think we can get to that an awful lot quicker.
Aparna: Right.
And my hope has always been that once we learn from these stories, then we can try to, you
know, put in the right questions in the household surveys, in the CPS and other BLS data sets
so that then you can, you know, approach the problem more systematically and have more
aggregate data.
Nick: Absolutely.
I mean, it seems to me to be potentially an extremely valuable tool for asking smarter
questions and forgetting the sorts of quantitative data.
Better focused, better refined, so that we can have the evidence that we want for evidence-based
policies right.
I mean, we see it the same way.
Aparna: Absolutely.
Thank you so much, Nick.
This has been a fascinating conversation.
And I encourage everybody to read your chapter in "The American Family Diaries" volume.
Thank you so much.
Nick: Well, congratulations on this volume.
I think it's a real contribution.
Aparna: Thank you.
Hey, everyone.
That's the end of our discussion with Dr. Nick Eberstadt.
Thanks for watching.
As always, let us know what other topics you would like AEI scholars to cover on Viewpoint.
And to learn more about "The American Family Diaries" project, check out the links in the
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