“…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
“…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
“…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
“…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
“Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
“…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
“A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
“…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
“Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
“…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

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The Fight to Revive Europe’s Shrinking Rural Areas

Valentina Romei and Barney Jopson Financial Times

Date Posted:: July 17, 2025

Between 2014 and 2024, rural areas in the EU lost 8.3% of its population due to falling birth rates and internal migration. The OECD warns this “creates political discontent.”

In the decade to 2024, the estimated number of people living in predominantly rural EU regions fell by nearly 8mn, an 8.3% drop, while the urban population rose by over 10mn, or 6%. Regions making up about 40% of the EU’s land area and containing almost one-third of its population, are experiencing a sustained drop in residents. This is not simply a concern for those left behind in the emptying rural communities, says Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, director at the OECD’s Centre for Regions and Cities. Depopulation threatens Europe’s cultural heritage, local languages, cuisines, crafts, farmland, traditions and even national security. It carries a wider cost to society, generating “a geography of discontent, which in turn creates political discontent, social discontent, putting our democracy in danger”, says Kamal-Chaoui.

Incentives And Outcomes

Louis-Vincent Gave Gavekal

Date Posted:: July 2, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Louis-Vincent Gave notes that while “Airbus can hire the cream of the French, or even European, crop,” established American industrial firms like Boeing may struggle to attract engineering talent due to competition from startups and Wall Street.

Shifts in staff compensation stacked the decks against Boeing and other big US industrial companies—at least relative to other industrial powers. In France, for example, graduates of engineering schools will gladly take jobs at Airbus and be paid a fraction of what an engineer makes in the US. The same is true in Japan, China, and Germany. In the US, however, a new engineering graduate today likely has his or her sights on a job at Google, Microsoft, or Meta, or alternatively at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Such jobs offer better pay and more social prestige, along with the promise of stock options and potential riches. Now the SpaceX IPO has turned this dial all the way up to 11. In short, for the past 15 years or so, the US tech industry has sucked most of the oxygen out of the room. This is true for capital allocation and stock market performance, and it follows that the same has also been true for human resources and talent acquisition. This seems like a genuine hurdle to today’s widespread hopes of re-industrializing the US.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

I cannot generate the requested takeaways because the provided text contains no quantitative data, numerical findings, or measurable comparisons that.
To produce compliant takeaways, I would need data such as.
Quantified talent flows (e.g., “X% of engineering graduates chose tech vs. manufacturing 2010–2024”).

Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T’s 2007–2011 Carrier Monopoly

Caitlin Myers and Ezekiel Hooper National Bureau of Economic Research

Date Posted:: June 10, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Using spatial variation in AT&T 3G coverage, an event study of the 2007 introduction of the iPhone finds that iPhone use reduced fertility, particularly among women <24, likely because it was associated with reduced in-person interactions.

The general fertility rate (GFR) — annual live births per 1,000 women aged 15–44 — remained roughly constant at 65 to 70 from 1980 through 2007, then began a sharp decline that has continued for nearly two decades. The iPhone, which was launched in June 2007, diffused rapidly across every demographic group and is consequential for how young adults spend their time. The cohorts whose adolescence overlapped with smartphone diffusion spend sharply less time on face-to-face socialising, dating, paid work, drinking, and driving, and report fewer sexual partners and rising sexual inactivity in young adulthood. Figure 4 reports the results of an SDID (synthetic differences in differences) event study by five-year age band. At ages 15–19, the average ATT coverage effect on fertility is −8.0%, and at ages 20–24, the ATT is −6.6% (p < 0.01). It is much smaller, but still statistically significant for the older cohorts. Figure 6 uses the results of these analyses to produce adjusted predictions of the log fertility rate in an alternate world in which the iPhone was not introduced in 2007. Figure 9 shows in-person social interaction and psychological well-being, for the isolation channel; Figure 10 shows pornography access. These are descriptive trends in nationally representative survey data, consistent with the channels we propose but not a test of any of them.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Smartphone diffusion reduces face-to-face dating and sexual activity among adolescents, leading to 6.6% fewer births among women aged 20–24 in.
The iPhone’s 2007 launch correlates with a two-decade fertility decline, suggesting smartphone adoption mechanically shifts young adults away from family.

Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline’

Claire Cain Miller, Francesca Paris and Sarah Mervosh New York Times

Date Posted:: May 14, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Btw 2015 and 2025, 70% of American school districts saw a decline in math scores and 83% a drop in reading scores. The losses cut across demographic groups, and are not merely a consequence of the pandemic.

Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new district-level test score data released by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford. Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83% of school districts where data was available, and math scores were down in 70%. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts and crossed racial and geographic divides, [though the biggest losses have been among the lowest-achieving students]. From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024. Education experts say there is no single reason for the declines. But the timing provides some clues. Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Reading scores fell in 83% of U.S. school districts vs. a decade ago, signaling workforce skill gaps that drive long-term.
Math scores climbed since 2022 while reading gains remained modest, suggesting uneven skill recovery that leads to divergent workforce readiness.

The Myth of Nordic Mobility: Social Mobility Rates in Modern Denmark and Sweden

Gregory Clark and Martin Hørlyk Kristensen Historical Economics & Development Group

Date Posted:: April 16, 2026
Is Database:: Database
Is Important:: Important

After correction for measurement error, Denmark and Sweden show very limited mobility in educational attainment. Indeed, “19th-century England had intergenerational and sibling correlations that only modestly exceed those of modern Denmark and Sweden.”

Attempts to compare societies in terms of their degree of social mobility across time and place have often failed to take any account of the problem of measurement error. In this paper we suggest a method of correcting for measurement errors that is based on looking not at the absolute correlation of relatives in outcomes, but at their relative correlation. Applying such methods to Denmark, Sweden and England now, as well as England in the nineteenth century [that] actual educational intergenerational mobility rates in modern Denmark and Sweden are much lower than conventionally measured, [and] the correlation of parents and siblings in educational attainment is much higher than conventionally measured. Denmark and Sweden’s more generous public support of education, and compression of household income inequalities, has at best modestly reduced the importance of families in determining child educational outcomes. Table 3 suggests that Denmark and Sweden have underlying social mobility rates that are similar, though not quite as high, as modern England, across all three dimensions of mobility. Marital assortment is as strong in the Nordic countries as in modern England, and intergenerational and sibling correlations are nearly as high. Even more remarkable in Table 3 is that nineteenth-century England had intergenerational and sibling correlations that only modestly exceed those of modern Denmark and Sweden.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Intergenerational educational correlations in Denmark and Sweden are nearly as high as modern England, revealing that generous public education spending.
Sibling correlations in educational attainment across Denmark, Sweden, and modern England differ minimally, indicating family background remains the dominant determinant.
Nineteenth-century England’s intergenerational mobility rates only modestly exceeded modern Nordic levels, suggesting structural family influence on educational outcomes has persisted.

Unprecedented ‘Jobless Boom’ Tests Limits of US Economic Expansion

Augusta Saraiva and Enda Curran Bloomberg

Date Posted:: February 18, 2026
Is Database:: Database

2025’s “Jobless Boom” is the result of a divergence btw strong real GDP growth and slow growth in nonfarm payrolls, a dynamic that has “never happened” this far into an expansion.

Forecasters expect Friday’s report on gross domestic product to show the economy expanded 2.7% in 2025, a solid pace by any standard for a developed country. But employment barely grew, and the combination is drawing comparisons to the infamous “jobless recovery” of the early 2000s that followed the tech bubble and collapse. There’s one major difference between then and now that makes the current divergence all the more unusual: The 2000s episode kicked off with a recession. This time, the “jobless boom” is happening without one. That marks a first in the postwar era.

California Cuts Back on Costly Immigrant Healthcare

Paul Kiernan Wall Street Journal

Date Posted:: December 22, 2025

California is currently providing healthcare for 1.8mm illegal immigrants via its Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. Facing a budget deficit of 4.3% in the current fiscal year and 11% next year, the state has begun to roll back the program.

The federal government doesn’t cover most Medicaid spending for immigrants in the U.S. unlawfully. So California taxpayers had to foot the bill for the state’s expansion [of health care for illegal-immigrants], and a lot more people signed up than expected. The cost of Medi-Cal coverage for adults with “unsatisfactory immigration status” ballooned to a projected $12.5 billion for the current fiscal year, the state’s Department of Finance says. Overall Medi-Cal spending is projected to reach $197 billion, up from $104 billion in the fiscal year ended mid-2019, before Newsom gradually began expanding immigrants’ eligibility between 2020 and 2024. California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office projected that general-fund expenses will exceed revenue by 4.3%, or $9.6 billion, in the current fiscal year, and 11% in the next year. The budget difficulties have raised red flags since they are coming in a time of economic growth, and as the artificial-intelligence boom lifts compensation for California’s tech workers, boosting income taxes.

Between 2014 and 2024, rural areas in the EU lost 8.3% of its population due to falling birth rates and internal migration. The OECD warns this “creates political discontent.”

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Louis-Vincent Gave notes that while “Airbus can hire the cream of the French, or even European, crop,” established American industrial firms like Boeing may struggle to attract engineering talent due to competition from startups and Wall Street.

Why are U.S. manufacturers losing engineering talent to other sectors?

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Using spatial variation in AT&T 3G coverage, an event study of the 2007 introduction of the iPhone finds that iPhone use reduced fertility, particularly among women <24, likely because it was associated with reduced in-person interactions.

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Btw 2015 and 2025, 70% of American school districts saw a decline in math scores and 83% a drop in reading scores. The losses cut across demographic groups, and are not merely a consequence of the pandemic.

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After correction for measurement error, Denmark and Sweden show very limited mobility in educational attainment. Indeed, “19th-century England had intergenerational and sibling correlations that only modestly exceed those of modern Denmark and Sweden.”

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2025’s “Jobless Boom” is the result of a divergence btw strong real GDP growth and slow growth in nonfarm payrolls, a dynamic that has “never happened” this far into an expansion.

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California is currently providing healthcare for 1.8mm illegal immigrants via its Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. Facing a budget deficit of 4.3% in the current fiscal year and 11% next year, the state has begun to roll back the program.

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