Suchergebnisse

In 2009 the Gabonese authorities defined a new vision whose strategic guidelines are detailed in an operational plan, the strategic plan for an emerging Gabon (PSGE) whose goal is to turn Gabon into an emerging country within one generation. PSGE includes an ambitious public investment program to develop basic infrastructure and to create the necessary economic environment for the emergence of a diversified economy. The major challenge for PSGE, and how it can be different from previous development plans, will be to become a growth model that is both sustainable and inclusive, leading to a significant improvement in the revenue and living conditions of all Gabonese people. This report is a contribution to the debate on how to achieve this goal. It was developed as part of the implementation of a new World Bank intervention strategy in Gabon wherein competitiveness and employment is the first pillar. It identifies the main obstacles to the low impact of economic growth on employment in Gabon and makes recommendations that will foster dialogue between the World Bank and the Gabonese authorities on the subject. The report is divided into three parts: (i) an analysis of Gabons economic performance since the independence and its effect on employment, (ii) an analysis of the main characteristics of the labor market, and (iii) a review of the main obstacles to job creation. The conclusion recommends some options for reforming the labor market as well as the legal and institutional framework for employment promotion in Gabon.

This publication is the result of an initiative to promote an exchange between Brazil and African countries on lessons learned about the role of community forestry as a strategic option to achieve the goals of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). The initiative was supported by the World Bank with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and coordinated by the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) with support from the National Forestry Agency International (ONFI). Representatives of five countries from the Congo Basin (Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Republic of Congo) and Madagascar participated in this initiative. This publication organizes information, analyses and conclusions on issues relevant to the design and implementation of REDD+ strategies. The findings do not represent an official position of any of the institutions or governments involved. In fact, the material presented here aims to stimulate further discussions, as the REDD+ debate is still unfolding and could benefit greatly from technical exchanges among the various ongoing initiatives. This publication has the following sections: (i) a conceptual approach to community forestry and REDD+; (ii) the key issues of REDD+ in connection with community forestry in Africa; (iii) how REDD+ and forest carbon (FC) are being developed in Brazil; and (iv) conclusions.

Owing primarily to extensive investment in new mining projects, Mongolia's economy is on a path of very rapid long-term growth. While financial intermediation in Mongolia has been growing fast, access to finance remains a critical constraint for enterprises, and especially for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Improving access to financial services will require strengthening the legal and regulatory framework and financial infrastructure, including the secured transactions framework, creditor rights and insolvency regime, credit information sharing system, platform for technology-based banking products, regulation and supervision of nonbank financial institutions, and consumer protection in financial services. To realize fully its economic potential, Mongolia needs to build a diversified, efficient and stable financial system, capable of intermediating both on a large scale and in specific market segments. Due to its focus on the development agenda, and specifically on access to finance for the SME sector, capital markets development, and housing finance market development, this report does not address financial sector stability issues. Financial intermediation in Mongolia has grown significantly in recent years; credit and deposit penetration are on par with the average in the East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) region. Access to finance is particularly constrained for SMEs, which are also more sensitive to an unstable macroeconomic environment, characterized by high inflation and exchange rate fluctuations.

This report reviews the status of Maghreb countries' economic integration with the world, with the Arab world, and within the Maghreb itself. It focuses on trade in goods and services, labor and capital flows, financial integration and cross-border infrastructure integration. It discusses the potential benefits of and key constraints to greater integration. The focus on trade liberalization with the European Union (EU) provides an opportunity for individual Maghreb countries to lock in policies that would eventually help them harmonize policies within their own region. The same argument can be made regarding accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Maghreb countries would reap significant additional benefits if, in parallel to reforms undertaken to improve trade liberalization with Europe, they improved conditions for streamlined trade among themselves. There is significant potential for trade in services in the financial sector, transportation and logistics, and communications and information, among other sectors. According to some studies, comprehensive services reforms that involve increased competition and regulatory streamlining would yield benefits that are at least twice the magnitude of those achieved through tariff removal alone.

Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ; The purpose of this review is to canvas policies and, to the extent possible, practices of major multilateral and bilateral development agencies, aimed at including disability in development. Development that includes disability, as referenced in this review, is understood as development in which persons with disabilities participate as both actors and beneficiaries. It can be achieved by disability specific initiatives, by adding disability-specific components to development programs, by fully inclusive programming, designed to include disability concerns into all development processes, or by a combination of these approaches. While this review does not claim to be exhaustive, it does attempt to provide as comprehensive as possible an overview of policies and practices on disability and development (D&D), both within and among the United Nations (UN) system, and among major bilateral development agencies. It should be noted that this is a dynamic issue and thus many development agencies are either in the process of crafting new disability policies or strategies or are currently reviewing their existing approaches with a view to modifying or amending them. Section two of this report reviews the international legal and policy framework pertinent to the consideration of D&D with particular attention to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Section three reviews multilateral agencies and structures, particularly those within the UN system, and reviews their existing policies and/or practices related to D&D. Section four includes coverage of regional structures supporting the inclusion of disability in development. Section five identifies bilateral development agencies that, either as matter of written policy or as evidenced through practice, have taken steps to design and implement programs and practices that are inclusive of disability. Section six provides conclusions.

This Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) has been developed by the World Bank in cooperation with the Government of Jordan. It aims to integrate environment into development and poverty reduction priorities. The CEA will be a vital instrument for designing Jordans future policies, by integrating the economic policy tools in our decision making processes. As the latest economic crises and its implications have shown, an economic model that is based on consumption alone cannot be sustained; accordingly many countries identified the need to green their economics as the base for sustainable growth and development. Jordans green economic initiative will enhance social integration, economic growth an environmental sustainability within one focused, measured and stable economic plan. Jordan is a small country that is rich in human capital; the green journey will be a twenty years program to retrofit our infrastructure, to become energy, water and resource efficient. The recommendations identified in this document will be the main drivers for the environmental policies in the country. The issue of adequate incentives for better quantity management clearly remains important, but is not addressed in this report. After the national agenda was established, it appears that the reduction of water related subsidies and the creation of incentives for allocating water to higher value added uses are being recognized as necessities that public policies will address in the future.

Egypt's growth accelerated in the second half of FY10. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in FY10 reached 5.8 percent, up from 4.4 percent in FY09 and 4.8 percent in FY10, taking up overall GDP growth to an average of 5.3 percent for the full FY10. Egypt's macroeconomic outlook is stable. Assuming that domestic demand holds up, and Egyptian exports continue their observed recent trend, we expect that the Egyptian economy grows in the range of 6.0 to 6.2 percent in FY11. This is underpinned by strong commitment to maintain structural reforms momentum, and a relatively stable global economy. However, unemployment will remain a challenge as growth as high as 6 percent will barely absorb the increasing number of new entrants to the labor market. Unemployment will continue to be an overriding concern and will gradually fall to around 8.7 percent in FY11. Finally, inflationary pressures are expected to rise, as global prices are likely to filter to domestic consumer prices, domestic demand will gain more solid ground, and gradual adjustment of energy prices will be implemented. Interest rates are not thus expected to rise, yet real interest rates will remain low or negative. This outlook is consistent with that of standard and poor's ratings services which affirmed in 2010.

Doing business in India 2009 is the first country specific subnational report of the doing business series that measures business regulations and their enforcement across India. Doing business in India 2009 covers 10 out of the 12 previously measured cities, and documents their progress. It adds 7 new locations, expanding the study to 17 locations. Comparisons with the rest of the world are based on the indicators in doing business 2009. The indicators in doing business in India 2009 are also comparable with the data in other subnational and regional doing business reports. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. Other areas that significantly affect business, such as a country's proximity to markets, the quality of infrastructure services (other than services related to the trading across borders indicator), the security of property from theft and looting, the transparency of government procurement, macroeconomic conditions, or the underlying strength of institutions, are not directly studied by doing business.

Securities settlement systems should have a well-founded, clear and transparent legal basis in the relevant jurisdiction. The laws, regulations, rules and procedures governing the operations and activities of Thailand Securities Depositories (TSD) are public and accessible to participants. In particular, participants receive comprehensive documentation covering the rules, requirements, procedures and instructions of TSD. This documentation is available on request and is accessible on the TSD website. The public authorities' regulations are also available to the general public on the websites of the Ministry of Commerce (MoC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT). It is recommended to implement adequate legal measures that ensure the netting arrangement is legally protected even in the event of the insolvency of a participant.

Doing Business in Egypt 2008 covers three topics at the sub national level: starting a business, dealing with licenses and registering property. These indicators have been selected because they cover areas of local jurisdiction and practice. In the last two years, doing business in Egypt has become more affordable the minimum capital required to start a business and the costs of registering property and dealing with licenses have been slashed. Doing Business in Egypt 2008 records all procedures required for a business in the construction industry to build a standardized warehouse. Doing Business in Egypt 2008 records the full sequence of procedures necessary when a business purchases land and a building to transfer the property title from another business so that the buyer can use the property for expanding its business, as collateral in taking new loans or, if necessary, to sell to another business. The ease of doing business index is limited in scope. The Doing Business indicators provide a new empirical data set that may improve understanding of these issues.

In this paper, authors first review the literature on the relation between finance and growth. Theory provides ambiguous predictions concerning the question of whether financial development exerts a positive, causative impact on long-run economic growth. The second part of this paper reviews the literature on the historical and policy determinants of financial development. Governments play a central role in shaping the operation of financial systems and the degree to which large segments of the financial system have access to financial services. The authors discuss the relationship between financial sector policies and economic development. The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. Sections one and two review theory and evidence on the relation between finance and growth. Section three turns to an examination of financial sector policies, and section four concludes.

The public expenditure and institutional assessment (PEIA) were motivated by a number of factors. First, both the Government of Iraq (GoI) and its international development partners have recognized the critical importance of sound management of Iraq's substantial public financial resources. Both parties support the reform and modernization of public financial management (PFM), as articulated in the International Compact for Iraq (ICI). Secondly, international experience demonstrates the importance of establishing a baseline against which progress in PFM over time can be measured. This implies the need for an assessment which provides the information necessary to measure the performance of a country's PFM system. Thirdly, the devastating circumstances in Iraq during the past 5 years have made the institutional arrangements for PFM the subject of considerable uncertainty. The PEIA can help to shape and prioritize the necessary development program. The report is organized in two main parts. Volume one contains a summary of the main issues to emerge from the public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA) assessment and a discussion of a number of specific PFM issues of current importance to Iraq, including: capital investment budgeting (CIB), oil revenue management, the Iraq financial management information system (IFMIS), public accounting and accountability, and payroll management. Volume two contains a detailed technical analysis behind the PEFA assessment.

As famine looms in northern Gaza, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees is hurtling toward collapse."What I can say today is that we can run our operation until the end of May, whereas a month ago I had just the visibility for the next week or two weeks," Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Palestinian refugees agency (UNRWA), told reporters in Geneva last week, just days after Israel denied him entry into Gaza. "But that shows also how bad the financial situation of the organization is."The money crunch stems in part from a fateful U.S. decision. When Israel accused a dozen of UNRWA's 13,000 Gaza-based employees of facilitating the Oct. 7 attacks, American officials immediately paused funding for the organization pending an investigation. Many other top donors followed suit, leaving UNRWA scrambling to stay afloat.It's since become clear that Israel's accusations relied on less-than-definitive evidence. This revelation led most funders to turn the spigot back on. But the U.S., with its unusually deep pockets, is now banned from changing course. Less than two weeks ago, Congress passed a law blocking all funding for UNRWA until March 2025. The timing of this decision is nothing short of disastrous, according to Christopher Gunness, a former spokesperson for UNRWA. "Mass starvation has already set in, but without UNRWA it's impossible to even slow that down," Gunness said.Despite Israel's claims to the contrary, there is no way to replace UNRWA's role in Gaza, especially amid the largest Palestinian humanitarian crisis since Israel's war of independence, according to experts on humanitarian aid and UNRWA's history. Analysts also fear that potential interruptions in the agency's operations across the Middle East — including in war-torn Syria and crisis-riven Lebanon — could further undermine regional stability.A State Department spokesperson told RS that getting aid to Palestinians in Gaza is a "team effort." "[W]hile we will continue to provide funding to organizations like the World Food Programme [WFP], we will be looking to other donors to continue to provide critical funding to UNRWA as long as our funding remains paused," the spokesperson said in a statement.But groups like WFP simply don't have the capacity to fill the gap made by defunding UNRWA, according to a humanitarian working to get aid into Gaza who requested anonymity to prevent Israeli retribution."The work they do on a day-to-day basis, no one else does it, and you couldn't stand up an organization to do it," the humanitarian worker told RS. "There's literally no other place for [Gazans] to go."A love-hate relationshipDecades removed from its founding, it can be easy to forget where UNRWA came from. In a practical sense, it sprung from the need to get aid to 700,000 Palestinian refugees when it became clear that Israel would not let them return home after the 1948 war. But ideologically, UNRWA's story begins in the Tennessee Valley.
In the 1930s, Congress launched a New Deal project known as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA was a development initiative; it enlisted some of those hardest hit by the Great Depression and put them to work building dams, boosting crop yields, and bringing electricity to rural communities. It was, by most accounts, a rousing success.
After the humanitarian disaster of the 1948 war, President Harry Truman hoped TVA chief Gordon Clapp could bring that success to the Middle East. With the support of the fledgling U.N., which had yet to establish an agency for refugees, Clapp visited the region in 1949 and became convinced that the Jordan Valley and other fertile areas in the Levant were ripe for TVA-style development. The U.N. General Assembly agreed, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency was born.
It didn't take long for "works" to disappear from the mission. Development projects sputtered, missing deadlines due to infighting among host countries and the refugees' general unwillingness to be relocated once more. "Most refugees refused to work," said Jalal al-Husseini, an expert on UNRWA's history and an associate researcher at the Insitut français du Proche Orient (Ifpo). "They wanted to go back home." Donor states also realized that large-scale public works are a good bit more expensive than more mundane relief projects.
UNRWA's other activities — from schools to healthcare facilities and aid distribution — were far more successful. The organization provided much-needed help to the governments of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, each of which had little capacity to manage the refugee influx on their own.
Besides a brief period in the early 1950s, Israel had little to do with UNRWA until 1967, when its forces routed Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the provocatively named Six Day War. The conquest created a problem: As an occupying power, Israel was suddenly in charge of the welfare of millions of Palestinians. Tel Aviv quickly struck a deal with UNRWA to keep its operations going in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Since the vast majority of UNRWA's local staff is Palestinian, the agency was "never really seen by Israel as a neutral and independent and impartial U.N. organization," according to Lex Takkenberg, a 30-year veteran of UNRWA who left the agency in 2019.
"It started off with an explicit request by Israel for UNRWA to continue operating," Takkenberg said. "Since that time, there has sort of been a hatred-love relationship."
Israel-Palestine watchers will recognize the pattern. Since the 1960s, Israel has periodically bemoaned the contents of UNRWA textbooks or accused staff of ties to Palestinian political groups (or terrorist organizations, in Tel Aviv's telling), drawing scrutiny from Western donors. UNRWA responds by excising objectionable content from courses and firing employees with apparent conflicts of interest. Over the years, these back-and-forths forced the agency to develop a comprehensive "neutrality framework" to keep politics out of its work.
"Almost without exception, Israel never provided evidence" that employees had ties to groups like Hamas, Takkenberg recalled. But UNRWA would still usually fire them to protect the organization as a whole. "Then the Israelis would be back to business as usual," he said. "It never reached the point that [Israel] asked UNRWA to stop operations."
In substance, the Oct. 7 allegations were the latest entry in this story. Israeli officials made bold allegations that UNRWA employees facilitated the attacks but have yet to provide evidence, even to U.N. investigators.
But the reaction from donors was different. While the International Court of Justice has twice demanded a surge of aid into Gaza to avert disaster, most Western countries suspended support for the strip's leading relief group. Many have restarted their funding, but the U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia are still holding out.
"Prohibiting the Biden administration from contributing to UNRWA creates a large gap in the Agency's annual operating budget," said William Deere, the head of UNRWA's Washington office. The shortfall "will make it harder for UNRWA to assist starving Gazans and potentially further weaken regional stability," Deere argued.UNRWA in crisisUNRWA is, of course, no stranger to crises. When Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Israel imposed a blanket curfew on the West Bank and Gaza, leaving many Palestinians with limited access to food. Quick mobilization from UNRWA prevented a bad situation from getting worse, according to Takkenberg."I organized massive food distributions during short periods that Israel lifted the curfew so that people could collect food from distribution points," he remembered.In the tumultuous period since, UNRWA has managed to stay afloat and provide aid across the Levant despite wars and a blockade in Gaza; a brutal conflict in Syria; and a protracted economic crisis in Lebanon.When President Donald Trump cut off funding in 2018, it came as a shock. "We found out that the Americans were not going to be giving us their money when the check did not arrive in the post," Gunness, the former spokesperson, recalled. This diplomatic equivalent of an Irish goodbye lit a fire under UNRWA staff, who put fundraising efforts into overdrive and filled the gap with pledges from wealthy Gulf countries. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly backed the effort to avert "disaster" in Gaza.But all of these crises pale in comparison to the trial that the organization faces today. Gulf donors have so far failed to fill the gap left by the U.S. decision to cut off funding. At least 154 UNRWA employees have been killed since Oct. 7, and many of its facilities have been destroyed in the bombing. These direct attacks have been paired with an unprecedented Israeli PR effort to discredit the organization, all with the substantive backing of a Democratic U.S. president.Fringe Israeli activists have long argued that UNRWA is illegitimate in some fundamental sense, perpetuating a fanciful dream that Palestinians will eventually return home. Its existence, they argue, encourages false hope and prevents an end to the conflict. As Israel's political scene has lurched to the right, this view has become more popular. Now, multiple members of Netanyahu's cabinet are publicly opposed to UNRWA's very existence.Israel is now actively working to undermine UNRWA. In January, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked a large shipment of U.S. aid in order to stop it from reaching UNRWA. The U.N. claims that Israeli officials are holding up visas for aid workers affiliated with the agency."UNRWA are part of the problem, and we will now stop working with them," an Israeli spokesperson said last week. "We are actively phasing out the use of UNRWA because they perpetuate the conflict rather than try and alleviate the conflict."Israeli opposition can only do so much to block the agency's work in the short term, according to Takkenberg, who noted that other groups are likely importing humanitarian aid in their own name and simply handing it off to UNRWA upon arrival. But that workaround has its limits as Israel allows only a trickle of aid to enter Gaza each day. There are currently as many as 30,000 trucks sitting in Egypt waiting to cross the border, according to a Jordanian official who spoke with NPR. "There are trucks that have been at the border for three months," the humanitarian worker told RS. "There's all sorts of crazy restrictions that make no sense, even from a security standpoint," they said, adding that they've had medical equipment and food confiscated during inspections.This has left UNRWA, and Gaza as a whole, on the verge of collapse. Israel and its Western backers will likely regret their role in bringing the crisis to this point, argued Gunness. "Any donor governments, especially those who are friends of Israel, who think that it's somehow in Israel's security interests to have millions of angry, hungry, radicalized, mourning, grief-stricken people living in appalling refugee camps and other circumstances on the doorstep of Israel, I wonder what planet they are living in," he said.

Adam N. Michel and Vanessa Brown Calder


First introduced by Republicans as part of the Contract with America, the child tax credit (CTC) has won wide bipartisan support as an income‐​transfer program to fight poverty, a subsidy to middle‐​class families, and a tool to boost declining fertility, yet it is poorly suited to meet each of these goals.
Republicans doubled the CTC in their 2017 tax reform, and Democrats temporarily expanded it again in their 2021 COVID package, increasing the dollar value and removing the de facto work requirements. Republicans and Democrats agree that the CTC should be larger, the only disagreement is on how much the credit should be enhanced. There are bipartisan efforts in the House and the Senate to expand the CTC, while some states have moved forward with their own child tax credit programs.
The CTC is a costly transfer program for taxpayers with kids who do not need government handouts and who do not meaningfully change their fertility decisions in response to larger payments. As an anti‐​poverty program, the CTC is poorly targeted, and without income requirements, regular no‐​strings‐​attached payments from Washington are counterproductive for the most vulnerable families.
There are better ways to support families by reducing the regulations and other barriers that increase the costs of core child‐​related goods and services. Without substantial deregulation, increasing direct government payments to families will simply lead to higher prices rather than expanded supply.
By making payments through the tax code, the CTC allows Republicans to support spending they would otherwise oppose since tax credits operate outside the annual Congressional appropriations process. Democrats support the CTC because they recognize it for what it is, a subsidy program administered through the tax code. Congress should repeal the CTC and use the savings to lower tax rates for Americans broadly. It certainly should not be expanded.
History of the CTC
The child tax credit was first introduced in 1997 as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act. It quickly increased from $400 to $1,000 while lowering the earned income requirement from $10,000 to $3,000. The credit was further expanded in 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which increased the credit to $2,000 per child, lowered the earned income threshold, and raised the beginning of the income phaseout from $110,000 to $400,000 for married taxpayers ($75,000 to $200,000, single). The 2017 reform also eliminated the child and dependent exemption, which was more than offset by the $1,000 increase in the CTC for a taxpayer at or below the 25 percent income tax bracket (about $150,000). Along with a majority of the other changes enacted in 2017, the CTC and additional exemptions return to their previous values in 2026.
In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act temporarily increased the CTC for just one year to $3,600 for children under 6 years old and $3,000 for children under 18 years old. The full credit was also made temporarily fully refundable by removing the earned income requirements, and half of the credit was delivered as advance payments directly into taxpayers' bank accounts each month. Figure 1 shows the maximum CTC amount from its introduction through 2026 for 0–5‑year-olds, including the scheduled reduction under current law.











Is the Child Tax Credit an effective subsidy?
The CTC provides a large subsidy to families with children. Unlike the earned income tax credit (EITC), cash aid (TANF), food aid (WIC, SNAP), and public health care (Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program), the CTC is primarily a subsidy for middle‐ and upper‐​income Americans. As currently designed, the CTC is not primarily an anti‐​poverty program. Only 19 percent of child tax credit expenditures are claimed by the lowest quintile of income earners. Jacob Goldin and Katherine Michelmore find that 87 percent of filers in the bottom income decile of AGI are completely ineligible for the CTC, and "the majority of filers in the bottom thirty percent of the distribution are only eligible for a partial credit."
Arguments for expanding the CTC usually assume that the cost of raising a child has increased and affordability has broadly declined. Relatedly, some proponents worry that U.S. fertility is below the replacement rate and believe that expanding government subsidies will meaningfully increase women's lifetime fertility. Still, others focus on how larger income transfers could reduce poverty. The CTC is poorly targeted to meet each of these goals.
Poverty
Because the CTC phases in for filers with income over $2,500 at a 15 percent rate, the credit creates an incentive to work by adding a 15‐​cent subsidy to each additional dollar earned, until the full credit is reached. As is the case with the EITC, the work incentives are often partly or fully offset by the "income effect," under which the subsidy allows a worker to meet his material needs with fewer hours worked.[1] Expanding the dollar value of the credit will have income effects that at least partially offset the work incentive.
To better target the lowest income families, others propose permanently increasing the credit and eliminating the earned income requirement, as was temporarily done in 2021 during the pandemic. Proponents claim that such a permanent change would reduce child poverty by more than 40 percent. Such estimates fail to account for how newly eligible families will change their behavior.
Taking behavioral effects into account, Kevin Corinth, Bruce Meyer, Matthew Stadnicki, and Derek Wu estimate that the larger CTC without income requirements would lead 1.5 million workers to stop working (83 percent of whom would be the sole earner in the household). The net effect of expanding the CTC would reduce overall child poverty by 22 percent and would not reduce deep poverty (50 percent of the poverty line). Results from the Joint Committee on Taxation found that the expanded CTC would result in similar reductions in labor supply.
Corinth and Meyer estimate that any reductions in poverty from a larger CTC that is targeted at families without market income would come at a fiscal cost that is almost double that of other programs, such as food stamps. The CTC is neither an efficient nor an effective policy tool to reduce child poverty.
Cost of raising a child
Although Americans frequently cite affordability concerns as an obstacle to fertility, analysis indicates that family costs have not outpaced incomes and that the cost of raising a child has fallen, not grown, over time.
For example, Angela Rachidi compares family incomes to family‐​related costs and finds that family incomes have grown steadily since the 1980s and costs have generally not outpaced them. Instead, Rachidi suggests that family's increasing expectations around—and consumption of—various goods and services (home size, vehicle ownership, clothing) drive perceptions of affordability decline. Moreover, various measures of social support and community support have declined in ways that may make it more difficult to raise a family.
Economist Jeremy Horpedahl similarly finds that the annual cost of raising a child in the United States has fallen from 21.8 percent of median family income in 1960 to 12.6 percent of median family income in 2020 for two‐​earner families, with the 2020 figure constituting the lowest cost yet (Figure 2). For single‐​earner families, the annual cost of raising a child in the United States fell from 27 percent of median family income in 1960 to 23.7 percent of median family income in 2020.[2]











Some proponents of the CTC argue that the presence of children reduces a family's ability to pay and thus deserves an offsetting subsidy, regardless of whether the cost of raising a child is increasing or decreasing. While children do come with additional costs, so do many other decisions individuals and families make, such as living in a high‐​cost area for economic or educational reasons.
Lastly, subsidies could be counterproductive as they will tend to be captured as higher prices of child‐​related services without supply‐​side reforms to expand access. Although evidence indicates that family affordability is not broadly in decline, the price of core child‐​related goods and services could certainly be lower with regulatory reforms.
Fertility
U.S. fertility is below‐​replacement level and converging with the low fertility rates of other countries. Subsidies for families with children, including the CTC, have been proposed as one way to mitigate this decline. Such financial transfers or cash benefits are especially ineffective at reducing fertility decline.
A review of studies with experimental or quasi‐​experimental designs finds that financial transfers result in a short‐​term increase in births while leaving the long‐​term total unaffected. A United Nations working paper finds that financial transfers' "impact on completed fertility is rather small… Furthermore, the effects of financial transfers usually have the biggest influence on fertility of the low educated, low‐​income, or jobless for whom public transfers are of higher value."
As stated elsewhere, these low‐​income households rarely qualify for the CTC's middle‐ and upper‐​income benefit. The CTC is thus doubly ineffective at increasing fertility: not only do financial transfers have a small or insignificant effect to begin with—altering fertility timing rather than total births—but the CTC does not target the demographic that would be most influenced to increase their fertility behaviors in the presence of financial benefits. Targeting low‐​income households comes with other costs to labor force participation and more fundamental questions about the prudence of governments' involvement in fertility decisions.
A better way?
Although the CTC fails at many objectives, there are numerous options for state, local, and federal policymakers interested in supporting families and making family life easier. To increase affordability, reforms to housing, food, formula, and childcare policy should be enacted. To reduce stress, increase opportunity, and reduce the cost associated with buying a home in the "right" neighborhood, further reforms to educational choice must be adopted.
Parents typically have limited financial resources, but just as importantly, limited time. Enacting reasonable independence laws and reforming home supervision laws would reduce the time cost of parenting while providing growth opportunities for school‐​age kids. Overly burdensome car seat requirements, with little associated safety benefit, should also be reconsidered.
Adopting these reforms would do much more for parents and children than expanding the CTC. On the other hand, expanding CTC spending without deregulating the goods and services that parents demand would be counterproductive and regressive. Ultimately, Congress should repeal the CTC entirely.


[1] Incentives depend on whether a person is not working or working to begin with, and whether the worker's earnings place them on the phase‐​in, plateau, or phase‐​out region of the benefit schedule. See here.


[2] Where single‐​earner families includes both single parent families and married couples where one parent is in the labor force.

Marc Joffe


San Francisco is proving to be ground zero in the nationwide commercial real estate collapse. While the values of offices and malls are tumbling in many US cities, the losses in San Francisco are more dramatic and, unlike elsewhere, have extended to hotels. City and state government mismanagement have played a major role in destroying billions of dollars in assessable real estate values, but the role of these policies is easily overlooked.
San Francisco's plight was thrown into sharp relief on June 5, when the owner of two downtown hotels containing a combined 2,925 rooms announced that it would cease making payments on a $725 million mortgage backed by the properties. Commercial bond investors will now have to find a company willing to purchase the hotels at a small fraction of their estimated 2020 valuation of $1.561 billion.
In explaining the company's decision to walk away from the hotels, Thomas J. Baltimore, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Park Hotels and Resorts stated:
After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest for Park's stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market. Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco's path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges – both old and new: record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand and will likely significantly reduce compression in the city for the foreseeable future.

Another nearby hotel is also experiencing a dramatic valuation decline. The 1,195-room Westin St. Francis Hotel has asked the local tax assessor to slash the combined assessment of its two parcels from $1.037 billion to $101 million.
The hotels are within walking distance of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall that is losing its anchor retailer, Nordstrom, this summer. Before Nordstrom announced the closure, S&P had already estimated that the mall's value had declined by over 70% since it was appraised in 2016.
An even larger value decline was suffered by a 22‐​story office tower at 350 California Street. After being valued at around $300 million in 2019, the property recently changed hands for between $60 million and $67.5 million according to media reports.
When considering why San Francisco has suffered so much commercial real estate value destruction in the 2020s, it is tempting to conclude that the city's tech‐​heavy workforce was better equipped to work from home. This factor played a role but should not be overestimated. Indeed, one common software development methodology, known as agile, often involved daily in‐​person team meetings. So, it is not strictly true that software engineering is a solitary job.
Rather than blame the pandemic or the local business mix, San Francisco and California political leaders should look inward at their policy errors that exacerbated the city's distress. Among these unforced errors were their harsh lockdown policies and the failure to provide adequate security in the downtown core.
The Lockdown
San Francisco and neighboring counties were the first to impose sweeping stay‐​at‐​home orders at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in the US. More importantly, San Francisco and its neighbors were slower than most other population centers to relax COVID-19 restrictions.
Over a three‐​year period, San Francisco's public health officer issued a blizzard of rules that were often lengthy and challenging to implement. As late as January 27, 2021 (over ten months into the pandemic), he issued an order that required "all residents in the County to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission by staying in their residences to the extent possible and minimizing trips and activities outside the home." At the time, California had more cases per capita than the less restrictive states of Texas and Florida, begging the question of how effective lockdown measures were.
By continuing shelter‐​at‐​home restrictions for so long, San Francisco normalized remote work, thereby encouraging employers and employees to adopt to a new normal. Many employees moved beyond easy commuting distance from the city on the assumption that they could retain hybrid or fully remote work arrangements permanently.
Although San Francisco's political leaders trumpet the city's low per capita death rate from COVID-19, some of that is attributable to individuals temporarily or permanently leaving the area, thereby deflating the true denominator of any death rate calculation. Economist Stephen Hanke has concluded that lockdowns had "a negligible effect" in COVID deaths.
Lack of Security
As the accompanying map shows, San Francisco has a very high concentration of high value properties in a small geographic area. Many of these $100 million plus properties (based on assessed value) are within walking distance of the Tenderloin neighborhood which has struggled over several decades. But in recent years, the social problems of the Tenderloin have increasingly spilled over into the adjacent, high‐​value areas, deterring tourists, shoppers, and office workers from visiting.











Measuring crime trends is challenging. According to Police Department statistics, reported crimes in the first five months of 2023 are below pre‐​pandemic levels. But some proportion of crime goes unreported and it is possible that this proportion has increased given the low likelihood that San Francisco police will identify a suspect. In 2022, only 2.9% of larceny thefts were cleared within one year.
Also, residents clearly perceive an increase in crime. The most recent City Controller survey found that San Franciscans rated the city's safety a C+, the lowest grade since 1996. Safety ratings were especially low in the Tenderloin and two adjoining neighborhoods with high‐​value commercial real estate: South of Market and Financial District/​South Beach.
Critics have highlighted various public safety policy concerns including the defund the police movement, lax prosecution, reclassification of shoplifting goods worth less than $950 as a misdemeanor, disincarceration, and lack of enforcement against open air drug markets. Since these issues have been covered elsewhere and libertarians have varying opinions about them, I'll address a couple of other aspects that have received less attention.
First, the city has encouraged many individuals who may be more prone to criminal activity to concentrate in and around the Tenderloin. It has done this by establishing a cluster of thousands of supportive housing units, mostly in converted hotels in the area. Although residents of supportive housing are no longer defined as "homeless", many if not most are still dealing with issues such as drug addiction that contributed to their loss of shelter.
During the pandemic, the city converted hundreds of additional hotel rooms in the area to temporary residences for unhoused homeless individuals in hopes of preventing them from getting and spreading COVID-19. But the unintended effect of this program, known as Project Roomkey, seems to have been to increase drug abuse and disorder at the periphery of the Tenderloin.
One Project Roomkey property, Hotel Whitcomb, housed about four hundred homeless individuals, many of whom were continuing to use drugs. Shortly thereafter, a new open air drug market became established in an alley just south of Market Street. Both the hotel and the drug market were near a new Whole Foods store which was forced to close due to high rates of theft and violent criminal activity.
Aside from concentrating potential offenders in the area, the city and activists appear to have neutered two quasi‐​private mechanisms that allow business districts to enhance security levels beyond that which the city government would normally provide.
Since 1847, San Francisco has had a category of law enforcement officers known as a Patrol Special Police. These trained officers can be directly hired by groups of merchants and/​or homeowners to patrol and provide other security services within a designated area. In 1994, there were 72 patrol special police serving 65 areas. But their ranks decreased in recent decades and, as of 2022, only one officer remained.
Although clients expressed a high level of satisfaction with their services, city policies have decimated the program. San Francisco's charter requires the city's Police Commission to approve new patrol special officers, but in recent years it has rarely done so. At the same time, the San Francisco Police Department offered a competing program under which city‐​employed police officers could provide security services to local business when they would otherwise be off duty.
Since clients must cover officer pay at overtime rates, this alternative is more expensive. Further, given the shortage of police officers in San Francisco today, there may not be enough staff to regularly serve clients who might be interested in purchasing their services.
California has also given property owners the ability to form their own Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) since the 1990s. BIDs, also known locally as Community Benefit Districts (CBDs), are formed when owners representing a majority of the assessed valuation in a given area vote to tax themselves to finance district operations.
San Francisco's Union Square area, the hotel and retail center that borders the Tenderloin, has had a BID in place since 1999. By 2018, the district was employing a large staff of cleaning ambassadors and safety ambassadors to deal with trash and quality of life issues respectively. The BID also installed a network of security cameras.
But the district's efforts to force homeless individuals out of the area faced criticism from UC Berkeley's Public Policy Clinic and local activists. Since the pandemic, the BID, now known as the Union Square Alliance, may have become less effective at maintaining cleanliness and safety in its neighborhood. It is not clear whether this is due to the criticism it has received, the retirement of its long‐​time executive director, or some other factor.
Conclusion
An overly energetic lockdown and actions that concentrated violent and unstable individuals in the downtown area have contributed to the collapse of real estate values in San Francisco's prime hotel, office, and retail districts. Quasi‐​governmental institutions that might have stepped in to provide improved security and street conditions have been enfeebled in part by city policy.
At this point, it does not appear that any set of feasible policies can restore downtown San Francisco to the heights it reached in 2019. A more realistic possibility is that it will stabilize at much lower levels of occupancy, activity, and value forming a new base from which to grow. New and remaining property owners should be given the tools and the space to restore a sense of security among those visiting, shopping, and staying in the neighborhood. Finally, city and state leaders should avoid overreacting to pandemics.