Upjohn Press WE focus Series

Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.

Switch View View Slideshow

Unemployment Insurance Reform: Fixing a Broken System

Stephen A. Wandner
2018

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a lasting piece of the Social Security Act which was enacted in 1935. But like most things that are over 80 years old, it occasionally needs maintenance to keep it operating smoothly while keeping up with the changing demands placed upon it. However, the UI system has been ignored by policymakers for decades and, say the authors, it is broken, out of date, and badly in need of repair.

Stephen A. Wandner pulls together a group of UI researchers, each with decades of experience, who describe the weaknesses in the current system and propose policy reforms that they say would modernize the system and prepare us for the next recession. Contributors include: David E. Balducchi, Christopher J. O'Leary, Suzanne Simonetta, Wayne Vroman, and Stephen A. Wandner.
Extending Work Life: Can Employers Adapt When Employees Want to Delay Retirement?

Robert L. Clark and Melinda Sandler Morrill
2017

Aging men and women are increasingly remaining in the labor force. Most often the reason for this is that they need to work additional years in order to be able to support an increasing number of years in retirement. This leaves employers scrambling for ways to adapt to a growing number of retirement-aged workers. Clark and Morrill provide a thorough assessment of the costs and benefits of accommodating later retirement ages, and they describe options employers may use to create some new form of employment contract with aging workers.

The most prominent issues employers with aging workers face are declining productivity, rising labor and benefits costs, and a suboptimal age distribution of their workforces. According to the authors, employers could respond to these issues by finding new ways to accommodate older workers with, for instance, phased retirement and return-to-work policies. But the success of such policies also depends on tax policies and whether government-provided retirement benefits could be redesigned to play a role in a newly-defined employment relationship.
Workers' Compensation: Analysis for Its Second Century

H. Allan Hunt and Marcus Dillender
2017

Hunt and Dillender review the status of workers' compensation programs on three critical performance areas: 1) the adequacy of compensation for those disabled in the workplace, 2) return-to-work performance for injured workers, and 3) prevention of disabling injury and disease.
Lessons Learned from Public Workforce Program Experiments

Stephen A. Wandner
2017

This book chronicles many of the most important experiments and the key lessons derived from the evaluations of both existing large-scale public workforce programs and the development of new interventions—including low-cost experiments based on behavioral science methods.
Surviving Job Loss: Paper Makers in Maine and Minnesota

Kenneth A. Root and Rosemarie J. Park
2016

Root and Park examine the plight of long-tenured workers displaced from two paper mills—their paths to reemployment, retirement decisions, and the personal struggles they confront.
Sustaining Social Security in an Era of Population Aging

John A. Turner
2016

John A. Turner offers a set of reforms for restoring solvency to Social Security that are deemed to have merit in the current political climate. These reforms relate to several vexing issues including increased life expectancy, the growing relationship between income and life expectancy, the declines in the physical demands of jobs, growing income inequality, and the pattern of poverty increasing at older ages.
Guild-Ridden Labor Markets: The Curious Case of Occupational Licensing

Morris M. Kleiner
2015

In his third Upjohn Press book on occupational licensing, Morris M. Kleiner examines why the institution of occupational licensing has had such a curious evolution and influence in the United States, the European Union, and China. He also discusses the many similarities it has to guilds.
Promise Nation: Transforming Communities through Place-Based Scholarships

Michelle Miller-Adams
2015

Miller-Adams describes how the various "Promise-type" place-based scholarship programs impact college access, financial aid, and community transformation.
From Preschool to Prosperity: The Economic Payoff to Early Childhood Education

Timothy J. Bartik
2014

Bartik shows that investment in high-quality early childhood education has several long-term benefits, including higher adult earnings for program participants.
The New Scarlet Letter? Negotiating the U.S. Labor Market with a Criminal Record

Steven Raphael
2014

This book explores the difficulties facing ex-offenders as they try to enter and remain in the U.S. labor market.
Privatizing Railroad Retirement

Steven A. Sass
2014

Sass discusses the evolution of the U.S. Railroad Retirement System and whether its ability to invest its assets in private equities offers any lessons for Social Security.