++Whether itās your own or someone elseās. +
++In 2020, Dave Venus couldnāt catch a break. First, he got sick with a mysterious illness that caused him constant fatigue. Then, a week before his wife, Claire, gave birth to their daughter, both of them got Covid-19. Dave couldnāt be in the delivery room. After the birth, while Claire made every effort to recover and care for the newborn, Dave was diagnosed as having H.pylori, a bacteria that can infect the stomach and small intestine, likely the trigger of his initial sudden illness. Claireās Covid cleared up, but Daveās never did. He developed an array of long Covid symptoms: tingling hands and feet, crushing pressure on his chest, heart racing like heād run a marathon. The ongoing symptoms made it impossible for him to do even small tasks around the house, let alone return to his job as a physical trainer. But his bloodwork looked fine, and doctors said there was nothing else to do. +
++āI became obsessed with finding solutions,ā Claire said, āI took to Twitter, where people were talking about going to Germany and having their blood cleaned, and there were osteopaths and floatation tanks and all the other kinds of stress relief stuff.ā She knew these treatments werenāt likely to be effective, but, she said, āI was just desperate to try and help him heal.ā Dave, on the other hand, tended to look for solace in prayer and meditation. +
++āI just felt the sickness was stalking me and I was exhausted trying to keep two steps ahead of it,ā Dave said. The ensuing journey for Dave, with his chronic illness, and Claire, as his primary supporter, would be long, winding, and unpredictable. +
++Daveās experience isnāt unique. And it reflects a problem bigger than even long Covid. The incidence of chronic illness is growing rapidly, and today six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease. +
++These include widespread diseases like Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, as well as rapidly rising autoimmune diseases like lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, Type 1 diabetes, and dozens of other disorders that now affect one in five Americans. Some autoimmune conditions can hit in the prime of life, meaning that more people are grappling with the implications of living with chronic illness for decades. Long Covid, which has an autoimmune component, accelerated and highlighted this trend. Even many types of cancer, with new management techniques, have become chronic illnesses. Most people today either struggle with a chronic illness or know someone who does. +
++These conditions challenge many of the cultural narratives about illness that underlie our medical system: that sickness should be fixed, that we address disease with medical interventions and get better on a certain timeline, that we overcome. Instead, people with chronic illness face immense uncertainty about the duration and trajectory of their diseases, often live without clear medical explanations and guidelines, and typically experience cycles of worse and better health rather than a neat linear path back to wellness. +
++As a result, whether you have a chronic illness or know someone who does, it can be difficult to figure out how to process the new reality and find ways to create a fulfilling life in the context of uncertainty and new constraints. Here are some ideas from patients, supporters, and health care practitioners. +
++Itās important to acknowledge grief +
++We tend to associate grief with death and bereavement, but chronic conditions also come with loss and grieving. āYou might lose all sorts of things through illness,ā said Emily Bazalgette, who suddenly came down with unexplained, debilitating fatigue at the age of 28 and was eventually diagnosed with a host of chronic diseases including long Covid. āYou might lose your identity, your career, relationships, hobbies, your lifestyle. Your sense of safety, your sense of trust in your body, and also the futures that you had imagined for yourself. Thatās a lot.ā +
++All of these losses require a grieving process, says Bazalgette, who now conducts interviews, facilitates group discussion, and writes a newsletter on chronic illness grief, all while managing her ongoing fatigue. But for many people with chronic conditions and their supporters, itās not obvious that grief is at the center of the experience, and there are few resources for those going through it. +
++āI wish I had known that word earlier,ā said Bazalgette. āFor a long time I was very angry. I was jealous of other people who were not ill.Ā I spent a lot of time writing very angrily in my journal. Itās hard to feel our grief, so it can manifest as other things, like rage. But over time, I was able to get to the sadness and the sorrow underneath.ā +
++Deborah Miller, who has spent decades as a therapist at the Cleveland Clinic working with patients and families with multiple sclerosis, noted the same theme. āWhether [patients] put the word to it or not, we identify it as a grieving process. That really resonates with people. They are grieving the loss of themselves and who they were.ā It can be a relief to have a name for the experience and to know that it is both common and normal. +
++Inevitably, this grieving process will be different for every person, making it difficult to know how to navigate the process or support someone who is going through it. Meghan Jobson, internist and co-author of the book Long Illness: A Practical Guide to Surviving, Healing, and Thriving, says it will involve learning about yourself or your loved one in this new phase of life. +
++āHaving a new chronic illness identity is no different than when people have experiences with another new identity,ā said Jobson. āLike when people come out, when people become parents, when people go to college ā during all these big changes where weāre learning new things about ourselves and weāre evolving.ā +
++Allow time to adjust to the new normal +
++Adjusting to a new chronic illness rarely happens quickly, which challenges the common desire to find the solution and move on. +
++While some chronic conditions come with clear medical guidelines, many do not, and people facing ongoing symptoms can easily become overwhelmed with trying to learn all the information available to fix the problem. This is often an impossible task and can cause feelings of paralysis and anxiety. āThereās usually a deep desire to learn everything to do because so much focus is on doing things the right way,ā said Beth Kane, a clinical social worker and integrative therapist who focuses on clients with chronic illness. +
++On top of that, well-intentioned efforts from loved ones to propose possible solutions can add to the overwhelm. Juliet Morgan, a physician, co-author of Long Illness, and a neurologist and psychiatrist who works with people with chronic conditions, recognized this pattern in herself in her early career. āI went to medical school steeped in this thought that I was going to make people better. And that was my job, and that if I didnāt, I was doing something wrong.ā +
++This is a common sentiment among supporters as well as doctors, Morgan said. But it can be more damaging than helpful in the case of chronic conditions, when āgetting better,ā in the sense of returning to life the way it was before, may not be possible. Messages on social media about bravery, tips and tricks for wellness, and stories about people pushing through and winning can be further damaging because they imply that the sick person should be able to solve their health problems. Posts like āWake up every morning and fightā or āYour strength and courage defines youā can sound uplifting, but actually add to the emotional burden of illness. +
++āWe put pressure on people that they need to perform perfection, even while theyāre totally struggling,ā said Morgan. +
++The healthy alternative, according to Kane, Jobson, and Morgan, is to allow time for the process to unfold, including the loss and grief, a shifting identity, major lifestyle changes, and figuring out what works within the new reality. Accepting the drawn-out nature of this process can be challenging for both those with chronic illnesses and their supporters. +
++āItās really, really hard,ā Morgan acknowledged. āItās really hard because it forces you to realize you donāt have control, that none of us really do.ā +
++While allowing time for this adjustment is important, there may be indications that you or a loved one should seek professional help. In particular, itās important to watch for signs of depression, including losing interest in hobbies, friends, or things that once were pleasurable; changes in sleep or appetite; changes in concentration; or persistent feelings of hopelessness. If someone is considering ending their life, seek professional help immediately. +
++Depression and other mental health issues can show up in other ways, too; when in doubt, itās important to talk to a licensed mental health professional. +
++Cultivating creativity and community can be therapeutic +
++Even as loss is a defining feature of chronic illness, the changes and new constraints can also prompt discoveries and creative approaches to living. The key for many people with chronic illness is identifying what really matters to them and figuring out new ways to achieve that within the constraints, says therapist Deborah Miller. āI had one patient [with MS] who, the day I met her, she was in four-inch spiky heels, and she swore that she was never ever going to give up her four-inch spikes. I thought that we were headed for trouble,ā said Miller. +
++But as the disease progressed, Millerās patient adapted. She could no longer walk in heels, so āsometimes she would go to parties ā¦ in her flats and then put her high heels on when she sat down so that she had a sense of being that fashionable person, but in a safe way. Itās about keeping in mind whatās important to you.ā +
++For Kathryn Vercillo, who has struggled for decades with major depressive disorder as well as a host of physical symptoms like fatigue and brain fog, learning to crochet has been foundational to her health and sense of purpose. āI couldnāt get away from the feeling that if I was doing nothing, I was worthless. So I had to find something that I could do lying down and that was portable and cheap. With crochet, I could make a gift for someone or I could make a blanket for myself. Turning a piece of yarn into something is a magical thing.ā +
++Vercillo has since interviewed hundreds of chronically ill women about using crochet and knitting as part of their healing process, and has found that, for many people, these creative acts offer a sense of purpose. āWe all need purpose. Making things and gifting things to people gives us that. Even when I am at my lowest, I can find this way to contribute, and that helped pull me out, helped rebuild some self-esteem, helped distract me.ā +
++For people with chronic illnesses, finding new ideas like this often comes from connecting with others who are having similar illness experiences. Vercillo has found this through a vibrant crochet community. +
++Some people find in-person groups through a health care provider, or they find like-minded people on internet forums for a specific disease. It can be tricky to find a good fit, particularly in online forums where there is often a fire hose of recommendations and it can be unclear who is citing credible, evidence-based information. Ideally, people with chronic illnesses can explore a variety of groups and formats ā Facebook forums, Zoom support groups, in-person workshops, and others ā to figure out what works best for them. +
++More than anything, people with chronic conditions say that these communities provide comfort and relieve isolation. āFor years, I didnāt know anyone else with a similar illness, so it was a very lonely journey,ā said Bazalgette. āFinding my community of people online gave me a sense of solidarity, and it also introduced me to a network of researchers, clinicians, and patient advocates who are pushing research and treatment forward, which gave me hope.ā +
++Expect to receive and give help imperfectly +
++For many people with chronic illnesses, particularly those who are newly diagnosed, it isnāt obvious what help they need. And within a state of overwhelm, itās difficult to come up with ideas. Typically, friends and family who want to help also donāt know exactly what to do. +
++āIt seemed like everyone just kept saying, āHow can I help?ā And I kept saying, āI donāt know.ā And then we got no help,ā said Claire Venus, Daveās wife. The best times, she said, were when someone just did something, like bringing over a meal, or offered a specific favor, like picking up their son from school. +
++Across the board, patients and health care professionals recommend that, when in doubt, supporters default to just listening. āYou could say, āDo you want to talk and Iāll just listen?āā said Claire. āPeople are quite quick to try and move you on to a more positive frame of mind or another place, but thereās nowhere to move on to, this is so heavy. I just need to talk it out.ā +
++Morgan echoed this sentiment. ā[Supporters] want to give a life raft, but sometimes youāve just got to hold someoneās hand while theyāre going through the bad part.ā +
++This approach can also help avoid common pitfalls, like offering solutions or trying to look on the bright side, which can increase feelings of overwhelm. āI really noticed a tendency of people to brush off the grief and say, āIt isnāt so bad, Emily, other people have it worse,āā said Bazalgette. āI wish that people around me had been able to just listen to my grief and to witness it.ā +
++Inevitably, in trying to adjust to the new reality, supporters and people with chronic illness will make mistakes communicating. It is helpful to expect these imperfections and frame the experience as a time of learning and growth. +
++āI think itās a time as a friend and as an ally to grow as a person, and to learn, and to listen,ā said Jobson. And the same thing goes for people who have chronic illnesses. āThe biggest gift you can give yourself is to be patient with yourself, to be compassionate toward yourself, and to be open to different paths on the journey that can get you to the healing you want.ā +
++For the Venuses, this journey has included losses and gains. The couple now says no to many activities that used to fill their life ā social engagements, work obligations, certain travel ā and says yes to other ideas that may have felt too weird or scary before, like buying a used camper van and loading in their family for local summer camping trips. +
++It is still hard, of course. Things will not go back to how they were before, and the couple has had to remove themselves from their former lives in many ways. But on many days, they feel empowered in their decisions, like they are charting a new course. āThereās almost less fear now,ā Claire said. āAll the rules are made up, so we get to choose. Even if weāre living a life that nobody else understands, and even if society at large doesnāt make space for it, itās still our life, isnāt it? Itās not anybody elseās life, itās ours.ā +
++What supply-side liberals can learn from the past +
++These days, political leaders and commentators talk often about āindustrial policyā and stimulating supply in the economy, rather than just demand. Whether itās to spur new construction to tackle the nationās affordable housing crisis, or decarbonize the country through clean energy tax credits, or pour subsidies into a nascent US microchip sector, policymakers have paid a lot more attention to the idea of government playing a more proactive role in private-sector development. +
++But central to the debate over this idea known as āsupply-side liberalismā is whether the government should attempt to do more on top of these efforts to stimulate businesses, like leveraging public subsidies to strengthen unions and environmental protections, or helping women and people of color access new jobs and opportunities. +
++Critics of this latter approach say a government that tries to do too much at once will inevitably do nothing at all, and that if we want a public sector that can actually deliver at scale, weāll need to cut red tape, stay laser-focused on production, and resist pressure from clamoring interest groups. Others say bringing interest groups along and fighting for progressive goals while boosting industrial production is essential. āThe answer is not a liberalism that builds, but a liberalism that builds power,ā argued American Prospect editor David Dayen earlier this year, in an essay defending a more multifaceted approach, calling them āmutually reinforcing.ā Brent Cebul, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, offers some new perspective to this often intractable-seeming debate. The author of Illusions of Progress, a book that traces earlier iterations of āsupply-side liberalismā throughout the 20th century, Cebul argues that a government hoping to march forward on economic objectives under the belief it can circle back later to tackle social problems should expect to find those social problems in much worse shape. He thinks the key to doing both at once involves ensuring everyone can claim some semblance of victory. +
++Senior policy reporter Rachel Cohen talked with Cebul about his research and how Democrats interested in leveraging markets might avoid some of the mistakes of the past. Their conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. +
++ā +
++Rachel Cohen: Your book focuses on something you call āsupply-side liberalismā ā an idea you trace back to the 1930s. Can you briefly explain what you mean by the term? +
++Brent Cebul: So āsupply-side conservatismā is about cutting taxes and regulations in hopes that economic growth will trickle down. In broad strokes what I mean by āsupply-side liberalismā is structuring markets to deliver social goods rather than the state delivering them directly itself. In the book, I walk through a handful of different ways in which, beginning in the New Deal, liberals sought to stimulate markets to ensure market activity. +
++Rachel Cohen: Is that the same thing as āneoliberalism,ā which people typically trace back to the 1970s? Or is it an earlier descendant? +
++Brent Cebul: So the way I think about its relationship to neoliberalism is the supply-side liberalism I write about was always embedded in a broader set of social aspirations that New Dealers and mid-century liberals pursued, that contained some more universal-style benefits, like Social Security. Eventually, in the 1960s, we get Medicare and Medicaid. Part of what I try to show in the book is that by the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the 1970sā fiscal and political crises, a new generation of Democrats start using some of these same supply-side ideas to basically shear off some of the more progressive universal direct budget items. +
++The case that I use in the 1990s, in particular, is welfare. Bill Clinton replaces Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and takes the same money that would have gone to support mothers to instead subsidize businesses that hire people who are coming off welfare rolls. Part of what I try to show is that the logic and tools of Clintonās policy are similar to the supply-side liberalism of the earlier 20th century, but the tools are turned back on the liberal state itself in an effort to drain the politics out of welfare. +
++Rachel Cohen: Today we have an emergent intellectual movement calling themselves supply-side liberals, or supply-side progressives, organizing around what they call an āabundance agenda.ā Led by people like Vox co-founder Ezra Klein, theyāre calling for more housing, transit, more stuff in general, and say they want to help make democratic governments more effective and nimble. Do you see this movement as part of the same supply-side lineage you trace? +
++Brent Cebul: I do think that they see a similar sort of market-sculpting role for government to play, and I think thereās a similar developmental pragmatism that defines both of these periods, which is making the best of what the constitutional federal structure will offer. +
++I think in both cases, thereās much to commend that outlook for in terms of recognizing the ways in which the government can actually play a remarkably innovative role in creating new markets. And what I think they recognize is that there are vast sectors of business that, despite all the ideological pronunciations against government and regulation, are absolutely happy to take subsidies. I think thatās actually a really crucial insight for liberalism in general, and just the rediscovery of the potential for partnerships between the liberal state and business is really promising. +
++Rachel Cohen: What lessons or historical advice would you give to this modern-day supply-side liberal movement? Are there any mistakes you think they should work to avoid or be mindful of? +
++Brent Cebul: Where they risk repeating the same kinds of mistakes as liberals going back to the New Deal is if they are less willing to impose certain types of progressive regulations along with those subsidies. The classic case recently is the resistance to using green subsidies, electric car subsidies, to stimulate union employment. My historical assumption is basically that if the subsidies are good enough, businesses will go along with that. And I think thereās a liberal tendency to sort of negotiate down before youāve even had the hard conversation with the businesspeople or your opposition. And so the historical lesson from this is thereās been in the past an unwillingness to really include protections for minority constituencies in communities all across the country. +
++I think liberals sell themselves short if they donāt demand more. One example I talk about at the end of my book is the number of businesses like Steris that received venture capital startup funds from the federal government and have now done things like tax inversions. +
++Rachel Cohen: Can you say more about what you mean by demanding more? +
++Brent Cebul: One of the things that you often saw in the 1980s and ā90s with the neoliberal generation of Democrats is this sort of hard-nosed language around economic growth, that itās more important than social values at the moment, and once we get our economic house in order then weāll be able to deal with these downstream social issues. And surprise, it turns out theyāre completely inextricable from each other. And if you only focus on the economic, then youāre largely going to entrench and worsen the social issues. +
++So they just have to be dealt with at the same time, and what I would say is that subsidizing economic growth actually gives the state leverage to pursue some of the social goals if they choose to take advantage of it. I think thatās precisely one of the things that the Roosevelt administration bumbled its way into. I donāt think itās an accident that they were able to get a whole lot of their social programs through in the 1930s at a moment when all of these local Chambers of Commerce were also feeding at the trough of federal subsidies. +
++Rachel Cohen: Your book is called Illusions of Progress. Can you talk about the title? +
++Brent Cebul: The illusion is that by putting businesspeople in the cockpit of momentous federal programs that youāre going to be able to deliver broader gains for the poor and the racially and socially marginalized. +
++Rachel Cohen: You describe how Black Americans started to demand āadministrative enfranchisementā in new federal programs. Can you talk briefly about what happened? +
++Brent Cebul: Cities are so dependent on property values for property taxation, which is their lifeblood. So very early in the New Deal, urban governments started using the Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration, and the housing programs as an excuse to clear out what they viewed as ādecadent communitiesā ā meaning Black communities that didnāt have very high property values and were perceived as being a sort of net drain on city services. So under the aegis of the New Deal, and its subsidized labor programs, all these local governments started clearing Black neighborhoods, and as early as 1937 the NAACP and local Black political leaders are calling for a seat at the table to help determine how these really momentous federal programs are being handled at the local level. +
++What I tried to show is that protesting urban renewal was central to what the civil rights movement was up to, no matter where you look. +
++Rachel Cohen: So how do we go from that pursuit of āadministrative enfranchisementā to where we are today, where it feels like powerful interests and lobbyists so often monopolize this community input process? +
++Brent Cebul: What happens in the 1960s is totally fascinating, because the community action programs in the War on Poverty had this incredibly radical idea, which is what they call āmaximum feasible participationā ā that theyāre going to allow local community groups to apply for federal community development funds, to do a whole range of things from opening community centers, to job training programs, to even, you know, opening a McDonaldās franchise in one case. But then marginalized community members start using it to protest local business, and peopleās domination of the local political scene, and almost immediately the Lyndon Johnson administration moves to bring local businesspeople back in to lead these very programs. And so what I tried to show in the book is that the actual maximum feasible participation principle gets kneecapped really quickly. +
++But the participatory principle itself sort of retains this sort of curious half-life, really up until today, where the federal government, local governments, and businesspeople learn that they need to have something that looks and feels like participation for marginalized people, but by the 1980s itās really about managing their participation ā getting them to buy in on various austerity measures by choosing where the cuts are going to be made, that sort of thing. So to your point, more mobilized interests have since been able to capitalize on those same practices and to actually implement their vision or block programs that they might otherwise not have been able to do without this āparticipation.ā +
++Rachel Cohen: After studying these periods, do you have any thoughts on how we can better bring in community participation or administrative enfranchisement without getting ensnared in the kind of co-optive politics and NIMBYism we see today? +
++Brent Cebul: One of the things that I think Lyndon Johnson failed to do in the 1960s was to anticipate the blowback he was going to get for the community action program. As a result, he didnāt realize that it would have benefited him to buy off the local businesspeople by having a commensurate program for them. So one of the things I would urge modern-day supply-side liberals to do is to have as capacious a range of potential beneficiaries of any given program as possible, and to make sure that youāre being careful that there isnāt, you know, jealousy structured by the programs. +
++Thereās obviously going to be competition and jealousy anyway, and there are going to be normative claims about who should and shouldnāt be getting federal aid and there are going to be scandals, but I think you could turn the temperature down on that if youāre willing to build a big enough bill and a big enough boat. +
++For these families, the last few yearsā economic tumult has been particularly pronounced. +
++Of all the difficult questions Democrats face ahead of 2024, two storylines are particularly confounding. The first is the economy: Most Americans are still pretty pissed about its state, even though economists can point to plenty of positive indicators. And the second is in the polling: Joe Biden continues to underperform among Black and Latino Americans, who are a significant part of the Democratic base. +
++Those two features are likely connected. And understanding that connection might offer some greater insights into why todayās vibes remain so lousy. +
++Those vibes are independent of whether the economy is āgoodā or ābadā in any objective sense. Thatās a political hornetās nest, particularly when Bidenās economic record will be front and center in 2024 ā and it will likely matter less than how voters are feeling when they go to the polls. Some pundits argue that the sour feelings about the economy are a reflection of real-world conditions and lived experience, while others argue that itās a perception issue, and that the economy is objectively lifting Americansā fortunes. +
++But not all Americans live under the same economic conditions, and two recent reports shed light on the different economic experiences of Black and Latino Americans. +
++The news is, in short, a mixed bag. One study found that during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, years that included the end of Trumpās term and the beginning of Bidenās, Black and Latino households made gains in accumulating wealth. But in the years that followed, those gains slowed significantly or even reversed. +
++Part of that slide was due to inflation, the main economic villain of the Biden years. Another 2023 study found that Black and Latino households suffered more from inflation than their white counterparts, as the higher costs of transportation and food took bigger bites out of their paychecks. But itās not all bad news: Thereās evidence that real wages ā the value of workersā pay when inflation is taken into account ā grew for Black and Latino workers in recent years, and even that it grew faster for them than for workers overall. +
++Still, those silver linings do not seem like theyāre putting Black and Latino voters in a good mood about the nationās economic environment. In the New York Timesās surveys of battleground states, Black voters, a loyal Democratic constituency, view the economy as negatively as white voters. And Latino voters viewed the economy more negatively than white voters in these states. +
++Itās worth breaking down these studies for answers on why that might be so. +
++The early pandemic years saw Black and Latino families make economic gains +
++Despite the initial shock of mass unemployment and fears about just how much lasting damage the Covid-19 pandemic would do to people of color in the US, it turns out that the worst of the pandemic years saw significant financial benefits for low-income and working-class Black and Latino families. +
++The clearest positive sign was an increase in wealth. The typical US household saw its wealth increase by about 37 percent from 2019 to 2022, even after adjusting for inflation, according to analysis from the Federal Reserveās Board of Governors. Those are overall numbers, but a recent report from the Pew Research Center suggests that those gains in wealth were shared by the lowest-income Black and Latino households. (By āwealth,ā Pew means net worth ā or the sum of all the investments, property, and savings a family has, with debt subtracted from that figure.) +
++That greater wealth was born of a combination of factors. The job market recovered quickly after the economy began to open up, and competition for workers led to better wages for employees, who either got raises at their workplace or moved to better-paying jobs. Stocks and investments delivered better returns, while home values rose quickly. Families built up their savings during the pandemic, while the federal government gave out huge amounts of assistance. That help, which came in the form of direct stimulus payments, tax credits, or small business aid, was especially impactful for lower- and middle-income families. +
++The fact that low-income and working-class Black and Latino Americans saw their wealth increase during these years did not, by any stretch of the imagination, vault them into the upper class. The median low-income Black household, for example, was able to cut debt by about $6,000 ā an improvement, but one that left them still in debt and with a negative net worth. The median low-income Latino household, meanwhile, was able to cut debt by about $1,000 and get itself out of debt. But even that growth meant achieving a net worth of zero. +
++And despite Black and Latino households gaining wealth during these years, the massive gap in actual wealth between Black and Hispanic families and white families actually grew. In 2019, the typical white household had $168,800 more in wealth than the typical Latino family, according to Pew. By 2021, that gap had grown by nearly $33,000. +
++Even among Black and Latino households only, those pandemic gains were still uneven. Richer Black and Latino families still did better than poorer ones. And despite increases in wealth across both richer and poorer families, richer households still held the overwhelming majority of wealth going into 2022. This uneven recovery meant that those who were already better off benefitted more in absolute terms. +
++But despite being uneven, the pandemic-era gains were still improvements. They were meaningful in getting families through a crisis and helping them improve their finances, even if for a brief moment. The next two years would bring more challenges, including some that would make many families, including Black and Latino households, feel like they were taking a step back. +
++Inflation picked up quickly starting in the second half of 2021, and many of the factors that contributed to the pandemic-era wealth boost either changed direction or became less favorable for all families. And incomes fell. As Pewās report notes, after rising during the peak of the pandemic, the pre-tax income of US households then fell by 2.3 percent. After-tax income fell even more (8.8 percent), likely because federal stimulus payments stopped and tax breaks like the expanded child tax credit ended. +
++Meanwhile, spending remained high as pandemic-era savings were used to offset inflation and address pent-up demand ā which also slowly drained some of the wealth that had been accumulated, including by lower-income Black and Latino households, Pew notes. Home values, which had been increasing quickly in 2021, slowed down in 2022. And mortgage rates doubled as the Federal Reserve began responding to inflation. +
++Inflation became a huge problem in 2021, especially for Black and Latino families +
++When talking about economic concerns, Black and Latino survey respondents in recent years are usually talking about inflation. And thereās good reason for this: Not everyone was affected by inflation in the same way. Inflation inequality ā what the Federal Reserve Bank of New York calls the uneven rates of inflation experienced by different subgroups of Americans ā got worse for Black and Latino families over the last two years. +
++New York Fed analysts did a deep dive into this question earlier this year, looking at the subcategories of spending that may have put greater strain on the personal finances of Asian American, Black, Latino, and white families. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ā specifically, CPI numbers (which track inflation) and the Consumer Expenditure Survey (which tracks how subgroups spend their money) ā the analysts found a stark difference in how inflation played out throughout 2021 and 2022. +
++Black and Latino Americans experienced āsteadily higher price increases relative to the overall average between early 2021 and June 2022,ā largely because of the way prices increased for transportation (specifically the price of cars and gasoline) and food. A few things explain this: larger families than white or Asian American households, different jobs that require different modes of transportation, and the kind of urban communities in which they live. But the evidence the analysts found is convincing: Black and Hispanic families spent a bigger portion of their paycheck on these more costly things than Asian American and white families did. +
++Those disparities were biggest for Latinos when it came to spending on food, used cars, and gasoline, the New York Fed analysts found. And compared to white families, both Black and Latino families spent a bigger share of their paychecks on housing as well. +
++As overall inflation rates have declined, these gaps have also shrunk, according to the New York Fedās report. But theyāre not entirely gone. And if you look at how inflation rates vary depending on income, you also see another disparity: For most of 2021 and 2022, it was middle-income families that felt the biggest crunch from inflation. But about halfway through 2022 and into 2023, the burden of inflation got worse for low-income families ā which disproportionately tend to be Black and Latino households. +
++Into 2023, according to the New York Fedās latest update, those gaps still exist despite improvements. But Black and Latino families have also experienced another positive change in the last few years. Real wages, or the amount of money workers make after taking into account inflation, have steadily increased for Black and Latino workers since the pandemicās onset, a November working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) confirmed. Despite some volatility throughout the last couple of years, Black and Latino workers are making more money than they did before the pandemic. This matches another trend these NBER authors found earlier in the year: Real wages for the least-well-off workers, who disproportionately tend to be Black or Latino, have also been improving in the last two years. This is one reason why inflation isnāt a full picture of economic well-being. If wages (and other sources of income) remain higher than inflation, then households can still be better off ā even if theyāre paying higher sticker prices. +
++That doesnāt mean, however, that people feel better off. +
++In the New York Times poll, only 19 percent of Black voters and 14 percent of Latino voters had a generally positive view of the economy. (Twenty percent of white voters had a positive view.) Meanwhile, 48 percent of Black voters and 50 percent of Latino voters rated the economy as āpoor.ā +
++While Black and Latino households have faced particular headwinds in recent years, and reaped fewer benefits from pandemic-era stimulus relative to already better-off white households, theyāre not alone in feeling disgruntled: 52 percent of white voters rated the economy as āpoorā in the same New York Times poll, more than either Black or Latino voters. +
++For the Democratic Party, however, the frustrations of voters of color should be sounding some particularly loud alarms with the 2024 election on the horizon. For one, thereās a partisan gap in how voters feel about the economy, and white voters make up a far larger share of the Republican electorate. And second, a turnout problem among voters of color, fueled by flagging economic satisfaction, would be a much bigger deal for Democratic candidates ā including Joe Biden. +
++In other words, Democrats have a long way to go if theyāre going to convince Black and Latino voters that todayās economy is anything to celebrate. And with election year approaching, they have relatively little time to do it. +