One of the major concerns about the one-child policy is its negative impact on the current and future labor force in China. People have talked about the Lewis Turning Point and the end of demographic dividends. Some of these arguments, however, can be misleading. The working-age population (ages 15 to 59) can be treated as the potential labor…

China's one-child policy has been an unprecedented policy experiment in human history. Despite its significant achievements, the policy has induced equally significant potential problems. As problems of the one-child policy have been widely noticed and suggestions for adjustments are available, the leadership transition of China in 2012 and 2013…

China has entered into a new stage of demographic dynamics whereby population-related challenges are more complicated than ever before. The current one-child policy should be modified. However, the anticipated impacts of such a policy change should not be over-exaggerated. China's demographic challenge requires an integrated coping strategy.…

Burkhauser and Daly claim that Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is growing at an unsustainable rate and has depressed employment rates and incomes of people with disabilities following enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. In the authors' view, SSDI is sustainable and affordable, despite increasing prevalence of…

As contemporary students of science and science policy, these authors find it hard to gainsay the easy abstractions of Hurlbut and Robert's commentary. "Good science is an achievement of a good society." They also share much common ground on the details. For instance, they endorse the majority of Hurlbut and Robert's thoughts with regard to the…

Human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has sparked incredible scientific and public excitement, as well as significant controversy. hESCs are pluripotent, which means, in theory, that they can be differentiated into any type of cell found in the human body. Thus, they evoke great enthusiasm about potential clinical applications. They are…

Owen-Smith et al. (this issue) answer the question about expanding funding for human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) research decisively and emphatically. They conclude that the U.S. federal government should expand funding in volume and scope, and stabilize it through regularity. According to Hurlbut and Robert, If the clear goal of policy should…

These are interesting days in the scientific, social, and political debates about human embryonic stem cell research. Pluripotent stem cells--cells that can, in principle, give rise to the body's full range of cell types--were previously derivable only from human embryos that were destroyed in the process. Now, a variety of somatic cell types can…

Since U.S. economic growth began to slow in 2006, both the Bush and Obama Administrations have enacted a number of fairly costly programs designed to stimulate the economy and employment growth. Because many of these programs are fairly new, there has been little comprehensive examination of their impacts, but initial analysis suggests that these…

Comparing the papers on the Korean and the U.S. situations leads to interesting conclusions. Cho and Shin argue that the recent crisis did not create huge problems in the labor market because Korea was firstly in a fundamentally sound economic situation and secondly took adequate anti-crisis measures, in particular by stabilizing internal demand.…

All of the authors seem to share the perception that one can no longer expect much from macroeconomic policies. The authors of this paper share this opinion, but this should not be interpreted as the skeptical view that macroeconomic policies are ineffective on employment. They saw from the Korea's two crises how contrasting outcomes could result…

Caspar, Hartwig, and Moench do little to convince the authors of this paper that they have identified policy prescriptions that might usefully be applied to the United States. Caspar, Hartwig, and Moench suggest that in countries with high shares of temporary contract workers, employment reductions were sharper (because they could be). But does an…

In this paper, the authors first discuss the Neumark and Troske piece, and then compare the U.S. context to that in Europe and Korea, as described by the Caspar, Hartwig, and Moench and the Cho and Shin contributions. Although they are in basic agreement with Neumark and Troske on the extent and depth of the current employment situation, they…

The midterm impact of the economic crisis on the employment situation in the EU member states varied largely (European Commission, 2010a, Chapter 1). Whereas the Baltic States, Ireland, and above all Spain registered job losses of more than 10 percent from immediately before to after the crisis, that is, between the second quarter of 2008 and the…

Since the onset of the Great Recession, the U.S. labor market has been reeling. Public concern has largely focused on the unemployment rate, which rose to double digits and has since been stalled at just over 9 percent. This rate is unacceptably high, and macroeconomic policy efforts have been unsuccessful in bringing it down. The overall…