Econ_May_05

30 United States

The Economist

May 5th 2018

they receive the extra income. The entire

experiment has been assessed by the Insti-

tutional Review Board (

IRB

) at Columbia

University’s Teachers’ College, with sepa-

rate

IRB

boards at all nine hospitals either

verifying those terms, or drawing up their

own, before the experiment starts. Ethical

approval has been particularly complex,

since mothers will be both research sub-

jects and medical patients recovering from

childbirthwhen they sign up.

The experiment is unique in two as-

pects. One is its exclusive focus on the im-

pacts of income, unrelated to employ-

ment. The other is its focus on the first three

years of a child’s life. “We know virtually

nothing about the causal effects of income

in years zero to three,” says LisaGennetian,

who studies the psychology of poverty at

NewYorkUniversity.

MsGennetian, one ofseveral collabora-

tors on Baby’s First Years, says its closest

analogues were carried out in Minnesota

in the 1990s. There parents were randomly

assigned to a different mix of welfare poli-

cies which altered their incomes, and their

children’s development was monitored.

The Minnesota studies suggested that

about $4,000 a year is enough to see signif-

icant effects on a child’s development, but

because the extramoneywas connected to

parents’ work, they did not control for oth-

er factors that might also have influenced

the children’s development. In contrast,

mothers in the new experiment are free to

leave their jobs to look after their new

child, if theywant to.

Howto spend it

Dr Noble, Ms Gennetian and their col-

leagues are not alone in their ambition to

study the impact of cash on well-being.

Combinator, a startup accelerator in Sili-

conValley, has formed a research armto in-

vestigate the more general impacts of di-

rect cash gifts ofthis kind. That experiment,

which has not yet started, plans to give

$1,000 a month to a randomly selected

third of 3,000 people from two American

states, monitoring any changes in health,

time-use and crime induced by the cash.

Part of the Baby’s First Years study will

be about seeing how the extra cash is

spent, but signs already suggest where it

might go. In a pilot study of just 30 moth-

ers, run inNewYorkin 2014 toworkout the

logistics of handing out cash, the money

was usually spent within three days of re-

ceipt, mostly at supermarkets and depart-

ment stores. Ms Fernandez says nappies

are a particular problem for new mothers

on low incomes, as they often cannot af-

ford the upfrontmembership fees required

to shop at large discount supermarkets in

the suburbs, or the costs of travelling to get

there, and so have noway around paying a

premium at nearby corner shops. “Food,

diapers and travel,” says Ms Fernandez, is

what this money will go towards. “You

know what you do when you can’t afford

to buy diapers? You change your baby less

often. You let them walk around in a dirty

diaper,” says Katherine Magnuson, the

team’s poverty expert at the University of

Wisconsin-Madison.

Ms Fernandez suggests that the experi-

mental moneywill not somuch transform

newmothers’ lives, as make it possible for

them to take advantage of what they al-

ready have. For example, many young par-

ents would like to rely on their own par-

ents for child care, but cannot afford the

travel costs to drop their children off. In

American cities, where public transport is

often scarce and connections are slow, hav-

ing the money for an extra tank of fuel, or

even a lease on a cheap car, might save

new parents tens of hours every week.

That extra time might be spent with their

children, earning extra money, or just im-

proving an otherwise stressful life.

The results of the experiment will take

years to arrive. If the researchers’ hypothe-

sis, that the unconditional handout will

have a positive impact on early childdevel-

opment, is confirmed, then old arguments

about welfare will get a new evidentiary

kick. It would mean that no amount of re-

flexive bootstrap-tugging could make up

for the disadvantages that poverty casts

over a child’s developing brain. In the

meantime, families like those at Federal

Hill will keep struggling to get by.

Trucking

Sikhs in semis

URJITKHAN’S “TruckUnion” is part of

a newcrop of trucker songs hitting

America’s highways. Like the 1970s clas-

sics, Mr Khan’s ditty is all blue jeans,

workboots and American-dream fulfil-

ment. Unlike those classics, though, the

music video features turbaned dancers in

flashy kurtas belting out Punjabi lyrics

while gyrating to bhangra beats, before a

stage-set of lorries.

Mr Khan’s is one of a growing chorus

of Indian trucking songs, the soundtrack

to a shift in the freight industry. Gurinder

Singh Khalsa, the chairman of Sikhs

PAC

a Sikh political organisation, says there

are approximately150,000 Sikhs in truck-

ing, 90% ofwhomare drivers. Those

numbers are growing rapidly, with

18,000 Sikhs entering the industry in 2017

alone. The North American Punjabi

TruckingAssociation (

NAPTA

) estimates

that Sikhs control about 40% of trucking

in California (Sikhism is closely associat-

edwith Punjab, a region that straddles

India and Pakistan).

This is an extension of a trend that

began farther north; Sikhs already play

an outsize part inCanadian trucking.

NAPTA,

which is based in California but

seeks to represent Sikh truckers in both

America and Canada, was formed this

year. Last October, Sikhs

PAC

joined

other organisations to protest against

new trucking regulations. This is not the

onlyway Sikh truckers aremaking their

presence felt. Anetworkof Indian truck

stops is spreading along themain routes,

serving some fine daal and naan bread.

Before deregulation in the 1980s,

truckingwas a blue-collar route to the

middle class. Since then, pay has stagnat-

ed, and the job has lost much of its ap-

peal. The Bureau of Labour Statistics

reportsmedian earnings of $42,000, or

about $20 an hour, a sum that may dwin-

dle after expenses. Annual turnover rates

within firms hover around 90%. The

American TruckingAssociationswarned

of a shortage of 50,000 drivers by the end

of 2017, rising to174,000 by 2026. The

median age of the private-fleet driver is

52; many youngerwould-be drivers

refuse to take on a jobwith a gruelling,

erratic schedule and long stretches away

fromhome.

Yet, thoughmost Americansmay not

thinkhighly of trucking, Sikhs regard it as

a prestigious career. Many Sikh drivers

come from trucking families in India,

where Sikhs are also prominent in the

industry. In February, for the first time,

Overdrive

magazine, the self-described

“Voice of The American Trucker”, fea-

tured a Sikh driver on its cover.

EUGENE, OREGON

An all-American industrychanges the all-Americanway

Singher-songwriter

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