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John Oliver Creates the Perfect Video to Help With America’s Lack of Sex Education Standards

by ToddLording Posted on August 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the United States, sex education is legally mandated in only 22 states, with just 13 requiring that information to be medically accurate.

“We essentially have a weird patchwork system that varies wildly and not just from state to state, but from district to district, and even from school to school,” John Oliver explained on the latest Last Week Tonight.

The lack of accurate information, combined with educators’ continued efforts to avoid the issue altogether, has major consequences for young people across the country. As Mother Jones has previously reported, the effects can be alarming: In Mississippi, where sex education deems homosexuality a crime and condom demonstrations are banned, the state ranks second in teenage pregnancy, with a third of all babies born to teenage mothers.

“There is no way we’d allow any other academic program to consistently fail to prepare students for life after school,” Oliver said. “And human sexuality, unlike calculus, is something you actually need to know about for the rest of your life.”

To help, Oliver enlisted Laverne Cox, Nick Offerman, and other celebrity friends to create the perfect sex education video. Watch above.

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John Oliver Creates the Perfect Video to Help With America’s Lack of Sex Education Standards

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No, Smartphones Aren’t Responsible for the Drop in Teen Sex

by RussByrumlqsg Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over at Wonkblog, we learn that American teenagers are having less sex than they used to. But why?

Crotchety adults may joke: Maybe they’re too busy messing with their iPhones.

That’s actually a decent theory, said Dr. Brooke Bokor, an Adolescent Medicine Specialist at the Children’s National Health System. More teenagers than ever have smartphones….Many are more comfortable searching in private for credible information about sexual health….They could be better educated about the risks.”

….Another possible driver of the sexual slowdown is the growing popularity of the HPV vaccine, which is now widely offered to boys and girls as young as 11. The shots, of course, come with an educational conversation. Kids learn earlier about the prevalence of STIs and how they’re spread.

Alert readers will understand immediately not only why these aren’t decent theories, but why they’re ridiculous ones. In case you need a hint, it’s in the chart on the right.

As you can see, the percentage of teens who report ever having intercourse has been dropping since the late 80s, and dropped especially sharply during the 90s. There were no smartphones in the 90s. There was no HPV vaccine in the 90s. No matter how appealing these theories might be at first glance, neither is even remotely credible as an explanation for the decline in teen sexual activity.

So what’s the answer? How about video games? Or hip hop? Or energy drinks? I have no evidence for any of these, and clean-living adults might be scandalized at the idea that any of them could have tangible benefits, but they’re all better theories than smartphones or the HPV vaccine. At least the timing fits decently.

These provocations aside, I suppose you’re now expecting me to get serious and suggest that the decline in childhood lead exposure is responsible for the drop in teen sex. Maybe! There is, after all, some evidence that reduced lead exposure is associated with the drop in teen pregnancy over the past few decades, and it’s reasonable to suspect that less teen pregnancy might be the result of less teen sex. But there are at least two problems with this. First, pregnancy rates can go down even if sex doesn’t, simply due to more widespread use of birth control. Second, the data on teen sex comes from the CDC, and their cohort breakdown doesn’t seem to fit the lead theory. In particular, the percentage of ninth graders reporting sexual experience didn’t start dropping until 2001, and if lead is responsible you’d expect the youngest cohort to drop earlier than older cohorts. At first glance, then, I’m not sure lead explains what’s going on. But it might. I’d just need to see more and better data to be sure.

In other words: we don’t really know for sure why teen sex is down. What we do know is that on a whole range of measures—crime rates, pregnancy, drug and alcohol use, cigarette smoking, math and reading proficiency, high school completion—teenagers have become better behaved over the past couple of decades. They just aren’t as scary as they used to be. That’s a little hard to take if you’re a social conservative who’s convinced that liberal values are destroying America, but it’s true nonetheless. And good news too.

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No, Smartphones Aren’t Responsible for the Drop in Teen Sex

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No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age”

by EdithHXAZzf Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A new study and related press release from the Royal Astronomical Society is making the rounds in recent days, claiming that a new statistical analysis of sunspot cycles shows “solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s” to a level that last occurred during the so-called Little Ice Age, which ended 300 years ago.

Since climate change deniers have a particular fascination with sunspot cycles, this story has predictably been picked up by all manner of conservative news media, with a post in the Telegraph quickly gathering up tens of thousands of shares. The only problem is, it’s a wildly inaccurate reading of the research.

Sunspots have been observed on a regular basis for at least 400 years, and over that period, there’s a weak correlation between the number of sunspots and global temperature—most notably during a drastic downturn in the number of sunspots from about 1645 to 1715. Known as the Maunder minimum, this phenomenon happened about the same time as a decades-long European cold snap known as the Little Ice Age. That connection led to theory that this variability remains the dominant factor in Earth’s climate. Though that idea is still widely circulated, it’s been disproved. In reality, sunspots fluctuate in an 11-year cycle, and the current cycle is the weakest in 100 years—yet 2014 was the planet’s hottest year in recorded history.

If you look closely at the original press release, the study’s author, Valentina Zharkova, never implied a new ice age is imminent—only that we may see a sharp downturn in the number of sunspots. Yes, the sun is a variable star, but its output is remarkably stable. The amount of energy we receive from the sun just doesn’t change fast enough to cause a rapid-onset ice age in just a few decades.

The root of the problem here may be a poorly worded quote in the press release implying an imminent 60 percent decline in solar activity. Yes, numbers of sunspots can vary by that much or even more on an 11-year cycle, but the sun’s output—the total amount of energy we get—is extremely stable and only changes by about 0.1 percent, even in extreme sunspot cycles like the one Zharkova is predicting.

But let’s play devil’s advocate: What if Zharkova is right about the decline in solar activity? There’s still no need to worry (or to become complacent about global warming). Even assuming sunspots are in the process of shutting down, as happened during the Maunder minimum and Little Ice Age, it wouldn’t matter much.

An interesting new study published in June showed that a sharp decline in solar activity to record lows could have a relatively large impact on regional climate over a period of decades. But even the return of a Maunder minimum type slowdown in solar activity—an extreme scenario, by any measure—would slow global warming by only about a half-degree in northern Europe. That’s essentially negligible, on a global scale. A half-degree is within the margin of error of predictions for the continued decline in frost-free days in the United Kingdom, for example. Winter will still be a month shorter, on average, by the end of the century. Past research suggests that an extreme decline in solar activity would lead to a shift of just 0.16 degrees Celsius globally—and even that is erased once a more typical solar cycle resumes in a few decades.

For reference, we’ve already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 thanks to fossil fuels, and, despite all our decades of discussion about the problem, we’re still on pace for a worst-case scenario of between 3 and 4 degrees of warming by century end.

If anything, changes in the oceans—especially the Pacific, our largest ocean—over the last couple of years point to an imminent increase in the rate of global warming. El Niño has already grown to record levels in the Pacific for this time of year, and ocean temperatures in the vast patch of sea from Hawaii to California to Alaska are also without precedent. Similar events have coincided with a 10- to 20-year surge in global temperatures.

No matter what the sun does over the next century, we are not heading in to a new ice age. Why am I so sure about that? It may have something to do with the 110 million tons of carbon dioxide humanity is pumping into the atmosphere every single day. The resulting change to our global climate system is so huge, it overwhelms all natural atmospheric forces, including the sun. There is no other plausible explanation for global warming except us.

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No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age”

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Humans really are unprecedented in Earth’s geological history — and that’s a bad thing

by GudrunMcInnes Posted on June 29, 2015

Humans really are unprecedented in Earth’s geological history — and that’s a bad thing

By on 29 Jun 2015commentsShare

There’s no doubt that a) humans have messed up the planet big time and b) our ability to maintain our sanity while barreling toward an uncertain and potentially catastrophic future is perhaps our greatest achievement of all time. But in a new study from the latest issue of The Anthropocene Review, researchers explain just how much we’ve f-ed up this beautiful world.

“We think of major changes to the biosphere as the big extinction events, like that which finished off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period. But the changes happening to the biosphere today may be much more significant,” Mark Williams, a geologist from the University of Leicester and leader of the study, said in a press release.

Indeed, Williams and his colleagues claim that not since the evolution of photosynthetic microbes or multicellular animals has the course of Earth’s ecosystem changed so much. Scientists already acknowledge that we’ve entered a new human-induced geological epoch called the Anthropocene (although they disagree on when it began).

“But what is really new about this chapter in Earth history, the one we’re living through?” Williams says in the press release. “Episodes of global warming, ocean acidification and mass extinction have all happened before, well before humans arrived on the planet. We wanted to see if there was something different about what is happening now.”

Here are the four key changes from the press release, that they say define this unprecedented time in Earth’s history:

The homogenisation of species around the world through mass, human-instigated species invasions — nothing on this global scale has happened before

One species, Homo sapiens, is now in effect the top predator on land and in the sea, and has commandeered for its use over a quarter of global biological productivity.  There has never been a single species of such reach and power previously

There is growing direction of evolution of other species by Homo sapiens

There is growing interaction of the biosphere with the ‘technosphere’ — a concept pioneered by one of the team members, Professor Peter Haff of Duke University — the sum total of all human-made manufactured machines and objects, and the systems that control them

On the plus side, if humanity is headed for demise, at least we’re going out with a bang — like that drunk guy who gets tossed out of the bar and triumphantly knocks down every chair on his way to the door.

Source:
Extreme makeover: mankind’s unprecedented transformation of Earth

, University of Leicester.

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Humans really are unprecedented in Earth’s geological history — and that’s a bad thing

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This Cartoon Is Going to Become Iconic

by FredricCorones Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Southern Poverty Law Center posted this cartoon to its Facebook page. The credit reads CagleCartoons.com but I can’t actually find it on there. I’ll update with proper credit when I figure it out. Safe to say, this is amazing.

(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)0; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));

There it is.

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This Cartoon Is Going to Become Iconic

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

by RoxannaZiq Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama came before a grief-stricken but ebullient crowd in Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday afternoon to eulogize the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was among the nine people gunned down on June 18 in the massacre at the historic Mother Emanuel church. Obama delivered more than a presidential speech—he gave a sermon, a powerful and lively invocation of Pinckney’s life, punctuated by applause, cheers, and notes from the church organ. He drew on the history of pain and survival of the church community that Pinckney led, and situated Pinckney’s life within the broader historical struggle for civil rights for black Americans.

But it was Obama’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”—begun a cappella by the president in a moment of quiet pause near the end, and soon joined by the church band and the entire audience—that will surely be the most remembered part of this extraordinary presidential address. (The song starts around the 35:20 mark.)

Taking the stage after a series of passionate eulogies and moving gospel numbers at a packed arena at the College of Charleston, Obama called Pinckney “a man who believed in things not seen, a man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered” and was “wise beyond his years.”

“Rev. Pinckney embodied a politics that was never mean, nor small,” Obama said, to regular vocal agreement from the crowd. “He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas along, but by seeking out your ideas.” Pinckney, Obama said, “embodied that our Christian faith demands deeds, not just prayer.”

“Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church,” the president continued, going on to detail the history of the struggles faced by black churches—what he called “hush harbors,” “rest stops,” and “bunkers” along the turbulent path to freedom, desegregation, and beyond. “A foundation stone for liberty and justice for all,” he said. “That’s what the church meant.” He was met with more than one standing ovation.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre, Obama has spoken forcefully both about race and gun violence. As the eulogy crescendoed, he all but merged the two subjects. First, he said, “None of us can or should expect a transformation of race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, ‘We have to have a conversation about race.'” He then said emphatically, “We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.”

After the applause subsided, he turned to guns. “None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy—it will not,” he said, acknowledging that worthwhile policy arguments will go on. “There are good people on both sides of these debates.” Obama continued:

But it would be a betrayal of everything Rev. Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on—to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do, to avoid the uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change. That’s how we lose our way again.

The president appeared with first lady Michelle Obama, alongside Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden. House Speaker John Boehner was also in attendance (the White House confirmed to CBS News reporter Mark Knoller that it had been Boehner’s first time aboard Air Force One with Obama).

The eulogy in Charleston capped an extraordinary two days for Obama in which he hailed two landmark Supreme Court decisions. The first, handed down Thursday, saved a key part of his signature health care law. The second, on Friday morning, cleared the path for marriage equality across America. Then the president strode onto a stage to inspire a grieving community, and nation, using words and song like no president had before.

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

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Educated Liberal Journalist With Friends Pays Money to Join Bike Cult

by vserko45 Posted on June 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last year, a SoulCycle opened up in our office building. There were dozens upon dozens of bright young things lined up around the block for days. I don’t mind admitting that I thought they were lunatics. They looked like lunatics—albeit attractive lunatics. In the months since, the lines have faded away, but every day I have walked past a robust collection of SoulCyclists constantly milling about on our sidewalk.

I have had a gym membership in one form or another since I was a #teen. For most of that time I was paying $120 a month to “go to” Equinox. Occasionally when I’d be overcome with guilt about wasting money on a membership that I always found an excuse to avoid, I would go to the website, hover my cursor over the CANCEL MEMBERSHIP button…but then stop. This will be the month I get serious about going. That was a fantasy. (Let the record show that I have finally let it expire. This is progress.) Anyway, gyms and personal fitness are a constant thing in my mind if only because I am acutely aware how ridiculous it is that I spent many thousands of dollars to go to a gym all together like 50 times. This guilt and shame keeps me up at night.

Last week, Alex Abad-Santos published a post at Vox called “I used to make fun of SoulCycle. Now I’m an addict.” I immediately mocked it.

Then something terrible and predictable happened.

Then came the inevitable.

A friend agreed to go with me at 7:30 pm last Monday. This is perhaps a good time to point out that SoulCycle is ridiculously expensive. Your first class is $20. After that it goes up to $30+. Twenty dollars poorer, I prepared to feel like an idiot and huff and puff and hate it, but I figured I would then write about how dumb it was. “Local Man Proclaims Vox Wrong” would be the headline.

So Monday comes and my friend flakes because friendship is just a construct. Going alone seemed far more daunting than going with her, and by 5 pm I was convinced I’m not going to go. My ankle hurts! I’m tired. Work work work. But I had paid that $20! I wasn’t going to let this be like Equinox. Not again. So I drag my lazy, crazy ass down to the first floor of our building.

I walk in and am immediately embarrassed. There are lots of women there waiting for the class to begin, and at first I see not a single other man. I approach the lady at the counter.

“Hi, I’m here for my first class and I’m very embarrassed and scared and please don’t laugh at me but if that’s a part of the ritual of the first time I understand.”

“OK, don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

She directs me into a unisex locker room which immediately makes me wonder if I am the first straight man ever to do SoulCycle. (I am not.) I get into gym attire and put on cycle shoes. Cycle shoes are weird. There are like stupid clips on the bottom and you can’t walk properly with them. You walk like an idiot. I walked like an idiot, is what I’m trying to say.

We—maybe six men and 60 women—wait to go into the spin room. I do not make eye contact with anyone. The doors open and out comes the previous class. They are drenched in sweat. We enter—I apprehensive, they eager—and find our preassigned bikes. A second nice lady comes and asks if it’s my first time and helps me click my dumb shoes into the dumb bike. The room is very dark. She tells me that there are hand-weights under my seat. I do not know why I will need hand-weights. I babble on about how a friend was supposed to come with me but bailed. She does not believe my friend exists.

The music starts and the instructor, Kelly, arrives.

“Is it anyone’s first time?” Kelly shouts. I am too shy to acknowledge that it is my first time. “Great! So we all know what we’re doing.” I’m going to die. For the next 45 minutes we pedal to EDM while Kelly shouted inspiring buzzwords at us.

Some inspiring new age bullshit. Soulcycle

But it isn’t just pedaling. Remember the hand-weights? You do moves with them. You also do moves without hand-weights. A lot of it has a rhythmical dancing quality.

Here’s how the more seasoned Abad-Santos describes the experience:

The moves vary from crunches (while riding, you drop your elbows and support yourself through your abs) to tap-backs (you thrust your hips backward while riding out of the saddle), and many of them hit weird muscles you didn’t know existed. You’re also told to position yourself in a certain way (hips back, arms tucked close to your body, shoulders locked down, etc.) that ensures you’re getting a good workout.

There are “hills” — intervals where you crank up the resistance and pedal against it — where it feels like you’re moving your legs through thick mud. There are fast sprints that will make you gulp oxygen and feel like your lungs are leaking. There’s even an arms section where you curl and press your biceps and triceps until they fail, all while pedaling. You never stop pedaling; if you stop pedaling, a cannon sounds and you’re airlifted out of the arena. By the end of every class, I’ve left a small puddle of glistening sweat beneath my bike and my shirt is soaked through.

For some reason, I find all of this thrilling.

Here is the thing about SoulCycle: It totally is new age weirdness. It totally is a therapy session. It totally is a cult. It totally is really hard. But I get it! I get the allure! It’s fun. It’s releasing. It’s cathartic. It pushes you more than I’ve ever been able to push myself. Even those dumb cycle shoes shoes proved pretty cool! (They make it really hard to fall off the seat!)

Ivylise Simones

SoulCycle is like working out in a nightclub while someone tells you “it’s not your fault.”

And after you feel pretty great!

It’s probably not for everybody. But I like it. I’m going back. I bought the five class pack. I’m a cultist.

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Educated Liberal Journalist With Friends Pays Money to Join Bike Cult

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This Is the Most Heart-Wrenching News Photo of the Week

by DouglasOshea Posted on June 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Chinatopix/AP

This remarkable photo captures the grim reality setting in for the relatives of those aboard the Eastern Star cruiser, which capsized and sank Monday on China’s Yangtze River: the vanishing chance that any more people will be found alive.

In the foreground, dozens of paramilitary policemen dressed in white overalls wait to recover bodies after the ship was lifted by cranes. For most of the week, the boat sat in the water with just its hull exposed, as passengers’ families became increasingly desperate for answers from secretive government officials.

More than 100 bodies have been recovered, according to Chinese state media. There were only 14 survivors, a fraction of the 456 passengers, most of them elderly tourists.

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This Is the Most Heart-Wrenching News Photo of the Week

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My Neighbor Ratted Me Out for Watering My Garden. Bring It On.

by JeroldMcmullen Posted on May 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last summer, one of my neighbors in Oakland, California, anonymously reported me to the East Bay Municipal Utility District for wasting water. I’d been dousing my front yard once or twice a week with arcing sprays from three huge Rain Bird sprinklers. Upon receiving written notice of the complaint, I called the utility and learned that I wasn’t actually violating water use rules, but the incident got me thinking. My ample vegetable garden was certainly green. Other yards the neighborhood were going brown. Did my neighbors think I was a water hog?

Confronted with a fourth year of drought and mandatory conservation measures, California has become a minefield of water politics. Snared in the web of blame are almond eaters, rice farmers, out-of-state grocery shoppers, rich people, China, and even hipsters. In cities and suburbs, the owners of dust-bowl lawns have squared off against their neighbors, including those of us who hand-water a few flowers or tomato plants at dusk while nervously looking over our shoulders. There’s a name for our fear: Drought shaming.

Drought shaming isn’t just for celebrities or the rich. Smartphone apps such as Vizsafe, H20 Tracker, and DroughtShame allow users to snap and post geotagged photos of alleged water abuse. In Los Angeles, the infamous “water crusader” Tony Corcoran, a.k.a. YouTube’s Western Water Luv, bicycles around town videotaping homeowners with modestly sized green lawns who dare venture outside with a hose in hand:

Few water scolds take such a confrontational approach. Most don’t have the time to hunt down gushing sprinklers or the inclination to anger their neighbors. More common is the mild, polite sort of water shaming that a next-door neighbor directed at me last week, suggesting that I cover my garden in a layer of moisture-retaining bark mulch. I’d already felt pangs of guilt watching her irrigate her ragged flowers with a watering can filled with leftover dishwater.

With many California cities facing mandatory water cutbacks of 25 percent or more, it’s probably for the best that keeping up with the Joneses sometimes means not keeping up your yard. After all, most utility districts lack the will to cut off people’s water or the manpower to send out a fleet of water cops. And tiered water rates aren’t a silver bullet, either; they face new legal challenges and aren’t really steep enough to be all that effective. Ultimately, peer pressure is pretty much all we’ve got.

But here’s the problem: Even as progressive urbanites police each other’s water consumption, many California communities continue to treat water as a bottomless resource. In hose-happy suburbs such as Palm Desert, you’re still more likely to be treated as a pariah if you let your lawn die. Even in my own water district, some neighborhoods over the hills stubbornly cling to the East-Coast ideal of glistening Kentucky bluegrass and fluffy hydrangeas.

A tech startup has figured out how to bring a measure of constructive drought shaming to communities that were once impervious to it. San-Francisco-based WaterSmart sends out individualized reports that show water users how they stack up against their neighbors. Using insights gleaned from behavioral science, the reports essentially traffic in the same kind of peer pressure one might get from living in, say, a Berkeley enclave of graywater guerillas. The result is an average water savings of 5 percent—a big deal at a time when every drop counts.

WaterSmart

The goal, says WaterSmart marketing director Jeff Lipton, is to coax out the feelings of tribal affinity that drive human behavior. “As we evolved, humans turned to the tribe and the behavior that was normal in that group as a survival mechanism,” he says. “There is sort of an existential threat of not fitting in. So it’s not shame and it’s not competition; I think it is a little more abstract than that.” And a lot more wonky: WaterSmart has a 19-page paper on this stuff, including the science of “goal setting,” “feedback,” and “injunctive norms.”

Though the WaterSmart interface seems simple, the calculations behind it are not. Two households of the same size can’t be expected to use the same amount of water if one has townhouse without a yard and the other a suburban spread on half an acre. That’s why WaterSmart combines utility data with property records to control for variables such as lot size, house size, microclimates, and the likely age of a home’s appliances. Users can further tweak their homes’ specs. If you have a large yard, WaterSmart will suggest installing drip irrigation and drought-tolerant plants. If you live in an old apartment building, it may prompt you to install a low-flow toilet or shower head.

Founded in 2009 by Peter Yolles, the director of water resource protection for The Nature Conservancy, WaterSmart grew slowly for several years, hindered, in part, by the low cost of water across the United States. Then came the drought. Last year, it tripled its customer base to 40 utilities in six states that represent 2 percent of all residential water meters in the country. It’s expecting a similar rate of growth this year. “I think we are at the very early stages of a transformation of the industry,” Lipton says.

WaterSmart still faces obstacles. Only about 20 percent of municipal utility districts employ advanced meters that can transmit residential usage in close to real-time, making it possible to frequently update customers on their water use. And glaring inefficiencies in agriculture, which uses 80 percent of California’s water, provide a convenient scapegoat for homeowners who’d prefer to keep running their taps.

Some users may interpret their favorable WaterSmart reports as an excuse to use more water. I asked the company to crunch the numbers for my house. Comparable dwellings, I learned, use an average of 336 gallons per day during the summer. In the summer of 2013, my house used 156 gallons per day. Behavioral scientists call the impulse that I might feel to use more water “the boomerang effect.” WaterSmart expects that it can keep the boomerangers in line with the virtual equivalent of a scowling neighbor, a frowning emoji.

Of course, the true dynamics of social pressure can be much more complicated. Last summer, my house used a whopping 591 gallons of water a day. I feel bad about this, but not that bad; most of the water went toward irrigating plugs of festuca rubra, a native grass that doesn’t need any summer water once it’s established. Now that it has taken root and I’ve mostly stopped watering it, I expect to easily best my neighbors’ water savings this year and still have an attractive lawn. Other than my fescue, the greenest thing in the neighborhood will be all the envy.

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My Neighbor Ratted Me Out for Watering My Garden. Bring It On.

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Obamacare Is Making It Easier to Be a Young Working Parent

by WeldonGalloway Posted on May 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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With Kevin Drum continuing to focus on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from economist Dean Baker.

The main point of the Affordable Care Act was to extend health insurance coverage to the uninsured. While this is a tremendously important goal, a benefit that is almost equally important was to provide a guarantee of coverage to those already insured if they lose or leave their job. This matters hugely because roughly 2 million people lose their job every month due to firing or layoffs. As a result of the ACA most of these workers can now count on being able to get affordable coverage even after losing their job.

The ACA also means that people who may previously have felt trapped at a job because of their need for insurance now can leave their job without the risk that they or their family would go uninsured. This could give many pre-Medicare age workers the option to retire early. It could give workers with young children or other care-giving responsibilities the opportunity to work part-time. It could give workers the opportunity to start a business. Or, it could just give workers the opportunity to leave a job they hate.

While it is still too early to reach conclusive assessments of the labor market impact of the ACA, the evidence to date looks promising. Republican opponents of Obamacare have often complained that the program would turn the country into a “part-time nation.” It turns out that there is something to their story, but probably not what they intended. The number of people who are working part-time for economic reasons, meaning they would work full-time if a full-time position was available, has fallen by almost 16 percent from the start of 2013 to the start of 2015. This is part of the general improvement in the labor market over this period.

The number of people working part-time involuntarily is still well above pre-recession levels, but it has been going in the right direction.

It is true that the employer sanction part of the ACA has not taken effect (which required that employers with more than 50 workers provide insurance or pay a penalty, but it is not clear this would make a difference. Under the original wording of the law (Obama subsequently suspended this provision), employers would have expected that the sanctions would apply for the first six months of 2013. We found no evidence of shifting to more part-time work during this period compared to the first six months of 2012.

But there is a story on increased voluntary part-time employment. This is up by 5.7 percent in the first four months of 2015 compared to 2013. This corresponds to more than 1 million people who have chosen to work part-time. We did some analysis of who these people were and found that it was overwhelmingly a story of young parents working part-time.

There was little change or an actual decline in the percentage of workers over the age of 35 who were working part-time voluntarily. There was a modest increase in the percentage of workers under age 35, without children, working part-time voluntarily. There was a 10.2 percent increase in the share of workers under the age of 35, with one to two kids, working part-time. For young workers with three of more kids the increase was 15.4 percent.

Based on these findings it appears that Obamacare has allowed many young parents the opportunity to work at part-time jobs so that they could spend more time with their kids. Back in the old days we might have thought this was an outcome that family-values conservatives would have welcomed.

As far as other labor market effects of Obamacare, there has been a modest uptick in self-employment, but it would require more analysis to give the ACA credit. Similarly, older workers are accounting for a smaller share of employment growth, perhaps due to the fact that they no longer to need to get health care through their jobs. These areas will require further study to make any conclusive judgments, but based on the data we have seen to date, it seems pretty clear that Obamacare is allowing many young parents to have more time with their kids. And that is a good story that needs to be told.

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Obamacare Is Making It Easier to Be a Young Working Parent

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