Among the many negative impacts that COVID-19 has had on health, the economy, and social well-being there has been one well-documented silver lining. As states and whole countries issue stay-at-home orders, air quality has increased markedly. In California, which is home to 10 of the 25 U.S. cities with the worst levels of air pollution,
Record breaking unemployment claims, sweeping shutdowns, and a volatile stock market have made predicting the full effect of COVID-19 near impossible. Yet what we can say with certainty is that the effects of this shock are strongly heterogenous. Nowhere is this clearer than in stock market returns. While the S&P 500 is down over 20%
Economic data arrive with a lag. In any recession, it is a challenge to forecast the present and recent past, let alone the future. Because gubernatorial executive orders have essentially shut down large swaths of the economy, the onset of the Covid–19 induced recession has been unprecedentedly swift, making out-of-date data unhelpful in assessing the
Are California’s poorer counties catching up to the richer ones? Analysis of California county growth from the Lowe Institute finds that the oft-debated theory of economic convergence should not be discounted. In classical economics, the theory of economic convergence proposes that weaker economies grow at a faster rate than more developed economies, eventually catching-up or
The Lowe Institute calculated the average personal income state tax rates for various income brackets from 1980 to 2015. We find that, in this most visible category of taxation, California has increasingly leaned on the 1% in the twenty-first century. In October, economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez of University of California, Berkeley published their
One of the best ways to prevent car crashes is to keep unsafe drivers off the road. Following this logic, many states institute restrictions on the renewal of elderly persons’ driver’s licenses. The Lowe analyzed whether or not three of the most popular restrictions are correlated with a decrease in fatal car accidents involving elders.
California counties are becoming more diverse, but not uniformly across the state. Data visualization by student researchers at the Lowe Institute illustrates the geographic heterogeneity in the rapidity of this process. The increasing prevalence of Hispanics in the agricultural central valley and Asians in the Bay Area, the early diversity of the Los Angeles area,
The Hidden Cost of America’s Trendiest Fruit The U.S. – Mexican avocado trade has proven to be a lucrative business, with some estimates for the total avocado earnings as high as two billion dollars. Roderic Camp, Philip M. McKenna Professor of the Pacific Rim at Claremont McKenna College, emphasized the new role of organized
One of California’s closest ever votes was one of its most important. In 1911, nearly 250,000 residents showed up to the ballot boxes to vote on Proposition 4, an amendment to the Constitution of California that would recognize women’s right to vote. The amendment passed by a margin of just 3,587 votes — approximately one
In this article we examine Prohibition’s legacy to understand the 115 U.S. counties that remain dry to this day. 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of prohibition. Enshrined as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, the law prohibited the production, sale, and transport of alcohol within the United States. Originally promoted by the
