research paper of 1990s

Retrospective on American Economic Policy in the 1990s

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November 2, 2001

• 28 min read

Abstract This paper is based upon the Introduction to American Economic Policy in the 1990s , which will be published in the Spring of 2002 by the MIT Press. The book is the outcome of a conference held at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in June 2001, which brought together leading policy-makers and economists with the goal of providing a preliminary history of U.S. economic policy-making during the past decade. The book is divided into 14 chapters, each examining a different area of economic policy: Monetary policy, fiscal policy, tax policy, international finance and crises in emerging markets, trade policy, information technology, industrial organization, energy policy, environmental policy, labor and education, poverty and welfare, health care and tobacco policy, Medicare policy, and the policy-making process. This paper, which is based upon the Introduction to the volume, includes a discussion of distinguishing characteristics of “Clintonomics” in historical perspective, a cataloguing of reasons for the good economic performance enjoyed by the country during the years 1993-2000, an explanation of the difficulties of apportioning credit for such outcomes, and some thoughts on the under-appreciated perils of excessive transparency in government.

Decades take on characteristics in our minds. The 1970s make us think of oil shocks and Watergate, and the 1980s of supply-side economics and the end of the Cold War. How will historians—or economic historians, at any rate—remember the 1990s?

It is not too soon to predict. The New Economy and Greenspan. The Internet, dotcoms, and IPOs. Monica and the West Wing. The cell phone and the Palm Pilot. Policy-wonk slogans, some carefully planned and some unplanned: “The Economy, Stupid”; “The era of big government is over”; and “Save Social Security First.” The Contract with America and the Gingrich revolution. NAFTA and the “giant sucking sound.” The Asian crisis. Tobacco litigation and the Microsoft trial.

The two Clinton terms occupied most of the 1990s. Unquestionably, history will remember this period as a time of strong economic performance. Between 1993 and 2000, the United States exhibited the best economic performance of the past three decades. In 2000, the U.S. economic expansion surpassed in length the expansion of the 1960s, and thus became the longest on record. During Clinton’s second term, real economic growth averaged 4 ½ percent per year, and unemployment fell to four percent, the level that had been specified by the Humphrey-Hawkins legislation three decades earlier to be the goal of national policy. During the early 1990s, economists would have considered these outcomes wildly unattainable.

Strong growth and low unemployment were particularly remarkable because they were accompanied by structural budget surpluses and low inflation. Long expansions have historically been fueled in large part by expansionary fiscal or monetary policies, with the result that, by their six-year mark, debt ratios and inflation rates had risen to high levels, sowing the seeds of a subsequent contraction. Furthermore, productivity growth typically slows as an expansion matures. The 1990s American boom, to the contrary, was led by private-sector spending and private-sector employment. And for the first time in three decades, productivity growth rose substantially in the late 1990s, despite the length of the expansion at that point. The cause of this acceleration in productivity is still the subject of debate. (Section II of this paper briefly catalogs the likely contributing factors to the strong performance of the U.S. economy during the 1990s.)

To be sure, some observers found cause for concern in various aspects of economic performance during the 1990s. Personal bankruptcies climbed, the personal saving rate plummeted (as measured in the national income statistics), the trade deficit expanded dramatically, and the stock market may well have become substantially overvalued. Overall, however, U.S. economic performance during the 1990s was outstanding.

The reader may wonder if the subject of American Economic Policy in the 1990s is the years 1991-2000, or the Clinton Administration per se (1993-2000). The answer is that it examines both. The period 1990-2000 approximates a complete business cycle. The economy was close to potential in early 1990, before Iraq invaded Kuwait. The recession of 1990-91 and the continued high unemployment rates over the two years after the recession had technically ended—which initially tarred the expansion with the label “jobless recovery”—are widely thought to have cost George Bush the 1992 election. The years 1990-92 thus set the stage for the years 1993-2000. This is true in macroeconomic terms, and as well in many of the specific areas of policy. By the year 2000, the economy had returned to approximately the same point in the business cycle it had occupied in 1990.

Incidentally, the pattern of recession in the first few years of the decade, followed by steady growth in the remainder, repeated the pattern of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

I. Clintonomics

Arguably, the Clinton Administration had an overarching vision. It sought to adopt some of the pro-market orientation associated with the ascendancy of the Republicans in the 1980s, and marry it with traditional Democratic values such as concern for the environment and a more progressive income distribution. This combination made sense from an economic viewpoint. Standard textbook economics says that environmental externalities, anti-competitive practices, and other market failures or social goals require government involvement, while everything else should be left to the market.

Yet it produced tension within the Administration and with traditional Democratic constituencies. The “soft-hearted” and “hard-headed” components of the strategy were often in conflict, as evidenced by the debate over welfare reform, corporate responsibility, trade and the environment, and deficit reduction instead of aggressive public investments.

The 1993 budget package offers perhaps the most vivid example of the underlying vision of—but also the tensions inherent in—the Clintonomics approach. The 1993 budget agreement was politically difficult. Democrats feared that it might cost them their positions in Congress, a fear that eventually turned out be accurate in some cases. By the end of the 1990s, however, Democrats had largely embraced what one pundit called the “progressive fiscal conservatism” of the 1993 package. Such progressive fiscal conservatism combines modest attempts at redistribution (the progressive component) and budget discipline (the fiscal conservative component). Thus the 1993 package included significant spending reductions and tax increases. But it concentrated the tax increases on upper-income taxpayers, while substantially expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, and other government programs aimed at lower earners.

The experience of the 1990s eventually convinced even many liberal-leaning policy-makers that the progressive fiscal conservatism at the heart of Clintonomics offered an auspicious alternative to more traditional Democratic fiscal policies, which had emphasized government spending and public investment rather than fiscal discipline and private investment. One explanation for the shift may be that fiscal discipline had traditionally been presented as offering long-term benefits in exchange for short-term costs, a calculus that is not usually appealing in a political context. But fiscal discipline appeared to promote strong economic performance even in the short run . The short-run stimulative effect of long-run deficit reduction packages with accommodating monetary policy brought potential benefits for lower-income workers and others disproportionately affected by cyclical fluctuations in the economy. It thus relieved some of the tension inherent in progressive fiscal conservatism. Since economic benefits of fiscal discipline appeared to manifest themselves even in the short run, sound economic strategy was also a viable political strategy. (President Clinton urged supporters to “vote Democratic so that they could live like Republicans.”)

Despite the conflicts in Clintonomics, or perhaps partly as a reflection of them, the combination of fiscal discipline and progressive policies made sense from a political viewpoint. If Democratic leaders in the 1970s and 1980s had often lost office by deviating too far to the “left” of the median American voter, and if Republican leaders since 1996 have often lost by deviating too far to the “right,” Bill Clinton’s policies were more in tune with the preferences of the median voter. This positioning undoubtedly contributed to his generally high popularity ratings and electoral success.

Indeed, critics of President Clinton often argued that he was too much in tune with the median voter—that he allowed polls and public opinion to determine policy positions. This is not to say that he never took positions that differed from what he thought the public wanted. The Mexican bailout of January 1995 provides perhaps the most vivid example. Management of this and subsequent financial crises in emerging markets may have turned out, quite unexpectedly, to be the second most important accomplishment of the Administration, after elimination of the budget deficit.

Critics of Clintonomics also argued that it was consumed with “nano”-level or small-bore policies, such as targeted tax cuts or minor changes to existing programs. The emphasis on small-bore policies reflected several fundamental forces.

First, the defining events in the Administration’s first two years were the enactment of the 1993 budget agreement and the failure to enact the Administration’s Health Security Act. The fiscal discipline created by the 1990 budget agreement and extended by the 1993 budget deal substantially reduced the scope for policy-makers to create or expand programs in a dramatic fashion. As a result, the natural tendency of policy-makers to “do” something, or at least to be viewed as doing something, was subsequently channeled into small-bore activities. The policies of the later years are therefore partly a reflection of the successful macro-policy of 1990 and 1993. Furthermore, the budget agreements also created pressure for emphasizing targeted tax cuts rather than spending programs within the sphere of small-bore policies. The budget agreements of 1990, 1993, and 1997 imposed tight limits on discretionary spending, but allowed tax cuts as long as they were coupled with “offsets” (reductions in entitlement spending or increases in other taxes). The budget rules, combined with the political economy favoring tax cuts rather than spending, biased policy-makers toward narrowly targeted tax cuts. Targeted tax credits were thus used in areas such as higher education (the Hope scholarship and the lifelong learning credit) and environmental research and development efforts (the proposed tax credit for high-mileage vehicles) that would have traditionally been addressed through spending programs.)

Second, the failure of the Health Security Act in 1994 convinced policy-makers in the Clinton Administration that it was wiser to attempt smaller changes than larger ones, since the larger ones were unlikely to be passed. Within health care, the upshot was a focus on providing health insurance coverage to women and children first. This approach continued a trend that preceded the Clinton Administration: Throughout the mid- and late-1980s, policy-makers had successively loosened access to the Medicaid program for poor children and mothers.

The basic continuity of policy across Administrations extends into many other areas. Often a new president, notwithstanding attacks on his predecessor during the election campaign, discovers not long after taking office that there turn out to have been good reasons for the way some things were done.

Third, the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, the so-called Gingrich revolution, affected Administration strategy. In the face of Republican opposition to major Democratic initiatives, the Administration was forced to adopt more modest goals in many areas. The major domestic exception was welfare reform. Welfare reform was opposed by many traditional Democrats and may therefore support the general point that the political split between the executive and legislative branches precluded dramatic policy shifts toward “Democratic” policies; given Republican control of Congress, enactment of significant changes seemed possible only when the executive branch was willing to adopt a “Republican” policy. Some Republicans complained that Clinton was co-opting their issues. Moving to the political center on particular issues is, however, an option that is available to anyone.

This paper focuses primarily on the executive branch. The executive branch, however, does not exist in a vacuum. The constraints imposed by, and policies favored by, the Congress strongly condition executive-branch policy-making.

Fourth, small-bore initiatives often represented sound political strategy in the context of larger budget and programmatic reductions. For example, it was estimated that the Balanced Budget Agreement of 1997 would reduce Medicare spending by $385 billion over 10 years. Yet it also included small expansions in certain benefits—such as coverage for prostate cancer screening, annual rather than bi-annual mammograms, and annual pap smears—that helped to generate support for the overall package. The Administration’s presentations tended to emphasize the expansions almost as much as the overall reductions, despite the dramatically different scales of the two policies. Whether the small-bore policies were necessary in order to make the overall package politically acceptable, and therefore whether the small-bore policies played a critical economic as well as political role, is an important question. In some cases, the complexity created by the small-bore policies was arguably the cost necessary for enacting a broader set of economically beneficial policies.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that many individual policy questions properly merit at most a small-scale government response. The cumulative effect of even small-bore policies can be significant. In information technology, for example, the Clinton Administration adopted an array of initiatives. The cumulative effect of those initiatives represented sound policy with regard to the Internet and other technological developments. In other areas, similarly, relatively small annual expansions in programs cumulated to a significant increase over the eight years of the Administration. For example, funding for Head Start more than doubled in constant dollars between 1992 and 2000, while enrollment rose by 38 percent.

Leaving aside the question of the Clinton Administration’s focus on small-bore policies, some analysts argue that the Administration could not take credit for the success of the U.S. economy during the 1990s because that success was due to factors other than the Administration’s own policies. We turn now to the various factors affecting U.S. performance during the 1990s.

II. Explaining U.S. Economic Performance in the 1990s

What are the reasons for the outstanding U.S. economic performance of the 1990s? A variety of short-term, medium term and long-term factors played a role. The short-term factors were luck, the medium term factors were skill, and the long-term factors are ongoing favorable structural trends in the U.S. economy.

Short-term factors: Temporary good luck on prices

In the 1990s, relative prices for computers and health care fell significantly. Until 1999, world prices for oil also remained low. And U.S. import prices were low generally, due both to the appreciation of the dollar in the second half of the 1990s, and to deflation in some partner countries, particularly in East Asia. All these factors put downward pressure on inflation, and thus prevented overheating despite rapid growth in the economy. Measured consumer price inflation was also temporarily restrained by revisions to the price index. Thoughtful observers knew these trends were unlikely to continue for long, and indeed some of the trends did come to an end at the close of the decade. But even if one adjusted the inflation rate for such short-term factors, the record of price stability at a time of high employment and growth was still impressive.

Medium-term factors: Good macroeconomic policy

The skillful exercise of macroeconomic policy, both fiscal and monetary, contributed significantly to the strong economic performance of the 1990s. Three key fiscal policy turning points included the 1990 budget agreement, the 1993 budget agreement, and the 1998-2000 preservation of the emerging unified budget surpluses for debt reduction. The 1990 budget agreement represented an important step toward fiscal discipline, and included marginal tax rate increases that imposed substantial political costs on President George Bush. In 1993, the Clinton Administration built upon and strengthened the 1990 deficit reduction effort, by further raising taxes on the highest-income taxpayers and reducing spending relative to the budget baseline. These efforts, along with strong growth in income and therefore tax revenue, replaced intractable budget deficits with substantial surpluses by the end of the decade. Indeed, in the last years of the decade, the principal fiscal accomplishment of policy-makers was what they didn’t do—dissipate the accruing surpluses in the form of substantial tax cuts or program expansions—rather than what they did do.

Whatever the explanation, the Federal government’s movement from deficit to surplus accounted for all of the improvement in net national saving between 1993 and 2000. This additional saving restrained long-term interest rates, thereby boosting private-sector domestic investment. As noted above, the experience of the 1990s highlights the economic stimulus that can be provided by long-run deficit reduction accompanied by monetary ease—a phenomenon that had been discounted by many macroeconomists before the 1990s.

Fiscal responsibility ultimately proved to be more politically popular than could have been expected from President Bush’s experience in 1990. The surprising popularity that Ross Perot achieved in 1992 with the budget issue pointed the way. The public had apparently learned from the experience of the 1980s to be skeptical of politicians selling snake-oil tax cuts. A decade ago it looked as if the country might be doomed to a pro-cyclical fiscal policy of pursuing fiscal expansion when times were good and finding discipline only in time of recession, the point in the business cycle when raising taxes was least appropriate. The Clinton Administration’s clever “Save Social Security First” strategy in 1998 underscored the political viability of fiscal discipline even in an expansion, transforming what had previously appeared to be politically unattractive—the preservation of the unified budget surplus for debt reduction—into a politically successful strategy.

True, the long-term fiscal positions of Social Security and, especially, Medicare have not yet been fully addressed. Furthermore, it should be noted that the new Bush Administration succeeded in passing a significant tax cut in 2001. But despite an active Bush Administration effort to convince the public that the tax cut was needed, polls indicated that many Americans would rather have spent the money on paying off the debt and putting Social Security and Medicare on a sound footing than on a tax cut.

We turn now from fiscal policy to monetary policy. The Clinton Administration made two contributions to monetary policy. First, the elimination of the budget deficit allowed the Fed to lower interest rates. Second, the Clinton Administration’s monetary policy otherwise was simple to state: leave it to the Fed. Adhering to this policy is more difficult than it sounds. The political temptation is always strong to nudge the central bank toward an easier monetary policy: even if the monetary authorities don’t respond, the complaints give the Administration someone to blame in the future if the economy slows down. In addition, officials are naturally tempted to respond to press inquiries with statements that, while not intended to be critical, or even substantive, are nevertheless inevitably interpreted as second-guessing the Fed. With remarkably few exceptions, the Administration adhered to its self-imposed rule of silence.

The lack of Administration interference worked well because the Fed was skillful. Even if, in retrospect, the tightening of 1999-2000 may have gone one step too far, Chairman Greenspan’s record overall during the decade was quite impressive. The truly remarkable feature of the 1990s was not just its low inflation, but its low and steady inflation. At least some of the credit for this stability must belong to Greenspan. Like Paul Volcker before him, Greenspan followed a tight monetary policy early in his term, established a reputation for discipline, and was thereby able to take a more moderate stance during the remainder of his term. His forbearance during 1995-1998, even as growth and employment exceeded levels previously considered inflationary, was a gamble; but from many perspectives it appears to have been a wise gamble and an important component of the expansion’s longevity.

Perhaps the simplest overall conclusion one can draw from the 1990s is that the U.S. economy runs relatively well given a little luck and the avoidance of major macroeconomic policy mistakes.

Long-term factors

Many of the most fundamental factors in explaining U.S. economic performance during the 1990s stretch back over two decades or more:

• Deregulation. The U.S. economy has long been less regulated than most other industrialized economies. But the past 25 years have witnessed important further steps toward deregulation. The deregulation trend began during the Carter Administration, in trucking, airlines, natural gas, and banking. During the Reagan Administration, deregulation was extended to the telecommunications sector. More recently, further deregulation has occurred in the electricity market, and market-friendly environmental regulation, such as in the sulfur dioxide permit program, has been expanded. Some of these deregulation efforts have faced bumps in the road, particularly banking and electricity. Nevertheless, the overall effect of deregulation has been to make the U.S. economy more efficient in the long run. The fundamental continuity of policy across Administrations in these areas also highlights a theme mentioned above: despite the drama of changes in Administrations, policy does not shift nearly as much as one would imagine.
• Globalization. With important exceptions, the U.S. has had a basic free trade orientation since World War II. The ratio of trade to GDP has more than tripled since the middle of the 20th century and now stands at 26 percent (imports plus exports, including services, which have increased especially rapidly). Economic theory tells us that trade improves economic performance. This is true both of old trade theory (classical “comparative advantage”) and of new trade theory (which allows for changing technology, increasing returns to scale, and imperfect competition). Perhaps more convincingly, the statistical evidence also tells us that openness contributes to growth. Exports grew rapidly, a major selling point for free trade policy. Even the increases in imports and in the trade deficit during the 1990s, though politically unpopular, were a useful safety valve during the strongest phase of the U.S. expansion. They released pressure from rapidly growing domestic demand, pressure that would otherwise have shown up as higher inflation and interest rates.
• Innovation. The third category of favorable long-run structural factors is innovation. Innovation can be further divided into three types: technology, competition and flexibility in goods and labor markets, and the public sector. Technological innovation, especially information technology, received much attention during the 1990s. Although the IT revolution was not the sole reason for strong U.S. economic performance in the 1990s, it certainly was a positive factor. The second type of innovation involves competitive markets. The United States has always had relatively competitive goods and labor markets, compared with Europe for example. But the last two decades have seen a further movement in this direction, including the initially unpopular corporate restructuring of the 1980s and the initially popular dot-com start-up firms of the 1990s. Anti-trust enforcement became more active during the Clinton Administration. The final category is innovation in the public sector. Public-sector reforms include reinventing government and defense reconversion, which have allowed previously low-productivity resources to be shifted to more productive uses, and welfare reform.

Apportioning credit

Short-term luck on the supply side, medium-term skill in macroeconomic policy management, and long-term favorable structural trends that were called by some a “New Economy”—this is a long list of factors. After compiling the list, is it possible to apportion the credit among the various factors? In particular, many observers and pundits are interested in how much credit for the strong economic performance of the 1990s should be given to the Clinton Administration’s policies. Unfortunately, providing a specific answer to this question is not possible, at least not in this book.

On the one hand, we often speak as if the perceived performance of the economy during a given period shows directly the virtues of the president and his team during that period. On the other hand, observers often note that the course of the economy in fact reflects exogenous factors to a greater extent than it reflects the actual personal strengths and weaknesses of the man who was president, with the implication that the contribution of the latter should be dismissed. It should be evident that the president in fact generally deserves a share of credit for what happens on his watch that is neither zero nor 100 percent. But it is more complicated than that.

A metaphor may offer insight. Imagine the president as the captain of a large ship. Whether the passengers in the hold experience rough seas or a calm ride depends on factors such as the weather and the construction of the ship to a greater extent than the skills of the captain. Nevertheless, helmsmen can be skilled or incompetent, and the difference affects the ride.

Disentangling causality, credit, and blame for either a smooth sail or a rough one is exceedingly complex. Things can go wrong through no fault of the leadership, or can go right for the wrong reason. If an unpredictable squall arises on a particular navigational route, it does not mean that the captain erred in choosing that route over another. Conversely, smooth sailing does not mean that he picked the best route. Thus it is not meaningful to parse out fractions of the total credit for the economy’s good economic performance in the 1990s to Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, information technology, or other forces.

An example illustrates the problems in parsing out credit for what happened (or did not happen). The White House sent Zhu Rhong Zhi away in the spring of 1999 without an agreement on Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), even though China had made many important concessions (relative to what other developing countries have agreed to when joining the WTO, or what had been expected). Was this a mistake on the part of the White House? It seemed like a mistake over the subsequent months, as the U.S. business community reacted adversely, Zhu and other reformers were undercut politically in China, and the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade further worsened U.S.-China relations. In judging the wisdom of the spring 1999 decision, however, the key question is: Did the decision reflect a sensible balancing of the pros and cons at the time, given the information that was available? Such an evaluation would have to include the political constraints on the White House, which are often conveniently forgotten in discussions of this type. For example, the White House had to consider the reactions an agreement on Chinese accession would elicit from Senators opposed to such an agreement, and the reaction (or absence thereof) from businessmen favoring it. It would have been of little use to sign a good agreement that could not have been ratified by the Senate. Complaints from the business community about the lack of an agreement were in the end important in persuading Congress to vote for it.

Too often, we evaluate the captain’s performance only by conducting polls among the passengers in the hold. It is indeed worth knowing whether the passengers feel they are experiencing a smooth ride. But journalists, academics, and other opinion leaders have the ability to go on deck and observe for themselves what sort of job the captain is doing. It is their responsibility to do so, and they owe it to the passengers to report on what they see. In undertaking such evaluations, five different levels of performance are relevant:

• Personal characteristics: How do the president’s abilities compare to others who have held the office or could have held the office? Relative criteria include stamina, capacity to absorb and synthesize information, ability to make decisions, speaking ability, ability to communicate warmth and inspire confidence in common people, honesty, skill at picking good staff, and so on. In the specific case of economic policy, another relevant attribute is whether the president is economically literate and numerate.
• Process: How well does the president’s administration function? When it is reported in the press that the president has done something, often it is in fact not he but his representatives who have done it. Of course it is appropriate to hold him, as a manager, responsible. But analytically we must realize that other random factors begin to enter at this second stage. To take but one example, if many of the president’s nominees have not been confirmed by the Senate, nor even considered by the Senate, the president may not be wholly to blame if the policy process then does not run smoothly.
• Quality of policies implemented: How good are the spending programs, tax policies, regulatory decisions, international negotiations, and so forth that are implemented? In the face of Congressional opposition, it may be foolish to blame the White House for a budget or a trade measure if it is clear that it did its best to argue for some other better outcome but was stopped by the Congress.
• Outcomes: What are the actual outcomes in the economy? What are the rates of growth, unemployment, and inflation? How strong is the budget position? The government may function well, and the policies chosen may be good, but exogenous shocks, like the oil price increases of the 1970s or some favorable developments in the 1990s, may be beyond its control.
• Perceptions: What are the public’s perceptions of the president’s performance? Although economists are primarily interested in actual outcomes, much of the rest of society is interested in this final level. What are the president’s popularity ratings, what do polls say on aspects of his performance, what are the editorial writers and other opinion leaders saying, how well do he and his party do at the next elections, and what is the judgment of history?

to be sure, causality runs in all directions among these five levels of evaluation. For example, confidence about the direction in which the country is headed is often reflected in consumer confidence and stock market prices, which in turn can affect consumption, investment, and overall growth. But the central point is that, even though only the first level concerns the intrinsic abilities of the president, additional exogenous random factors can enter at each stage as we move down the chain to lower levels. This makes it hard to judge a president solely by perceived or actual outcomes: we can’t trace our way back up the chain from the perceived or actual outcomes to the president’s own characteristics.

Thus it is not the task of this paper or the forthcoming volume to evaluate the quality of presidential leadership in the 1990s. Rather the point is primarily to examine in detail the many policy decisions that were made—the third stage above. This examination will shed light on the links back to the first and second levels, as well forward to the fourth and fifth levels. But it does not answer, nor even attempt to answer, what specific share of the credit for good economic performance during this period should be given to the Clinton Administration.

III. A Note of Warning

We close this paper with a note of caution: future endeavors of the type embodied in American Economic Policy in the 1990s may be undermined by the rules governing disclosure of internal information. Advocating transparency has become akin to advocating motherhood and apple pie. For example, it is an important part of reforms urged on governments in developing countries, as well as on the International Monetary Fund itself, in the aftermath of the international currency crises of 1997-98. But there can be such a thing as too much transparency. To take an example, sunshine laws essentially forbid a group of governors of the Federal Reserve Board from informally discussing monetary policy with each other outside official meetings. What is gained by this?

Our experience in the Clinton Administration suggests that despite the general benefits of disclosure in promoting good government, the formal disclosure rules have become counter-productive. In particular, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the rules governing Congressional subpoena powers sometimes discourage executive-branch policy-makers from writing things down. Such written material is too often subject to Congressional inquiry, discovered through the FOIA process, or otherwise proven to be politically problematic.

The intent of these rules is to expose the decision-making process to scrutiny. Such scrutiny is generally beneficial. But the ultimate effect of the rules may be to expose decisions to less scrutiny, because of the response of policy-makers to the incentives posed by the rules. It is not only the policy-making process that suffers as a result; historians will also find it much more difficult to discern what actually happened and why without the benefit of an accurate paper trail. Furthermore, compliance with the current system consumes an inordinate amount of policy-makers’ time.

The balance between public disclosure and internal candor has thus, in our opinion, tipped too far toward the former in the United States. For example, top Administration economists spent substantial amounts of time combing through files in response to Congressional subpoenas, looking for internal background memoranda on climate change. Such internal memoranda, which explored potential policy options and evaluated the pros and cons of different approaches, were essential to an honest internal policy process. But some were also politically sensitive. The benefits of transparency in such cases are not entirely clear: What specific public benefit (as opposed to political benefit to the Administration’s opponents) arises from publicly releasing the CEA’s internal analyses of potential Administration policies, including those not chosen by the Administration? How should one weigh any such benefits against the costs of the associated incentive to avoid writing things down?

In our view, it would be beneficial to provide more protection for pre-decision internal analyses. Put simply, the Administration should be expected to provide rigorous analysis of the option it finally chose, but should be able to protect—at least temporarily—materials regarding the options not chosen as well as internal views of the pros and cons regarding the chosen option. For such politically sensitive internal analyses, disclosure could be undertaken after some suitable period of time had elapsed, thereby limiting the potential political costs but still imposing discipline on policy-makers (who know that their internal analyses may eventually see the light of day).

This model would mimic the policy of the Federal Reserve Board, which releases the minutes of its confidential meetings only after some delay.

This volume benefited from the policy-making paper trail on numerous issues. The danger is that future volumes of this type may not benefit from such access, if disclosure rules discourage policy-makers from committing their thoughts and opinions to paper. The ultimate cost will then not be borne by future Administrations, but rather by those seeking lessons to be learned but finding only incomplete or inaccurate histories.

Federal Reserve

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Quantitative Research in 2015, as Imagined in 1990

If you want to get some perspective how much quantitative research has changed in the past few decades, try going back to 1990.

Working with government data—or, really, any data—can be frustrating. Maybe it takes too long to access new data, or perhaps the search engine is clunky. Maybe it’s a challenge to download a data set into something that Excel can understand.

It’s easy to take for granted, however, how much technology has improved how quantitative research is conducted. If you want to get some perspective how much has changed in the past few decades, try going back to 1990. In that year, the Monthly Labor Review asked producers and users of Bureau of Labor Statistics data to imagine how the statistics would change over the following 25 years. Their guesses about the year 2015 demonstrate just how much has changed in a quarter-century.

Writing an imaginary dispatch from 2015, Michigan State University economist Daniel S. Hamermesh quite accurately reports that “Today’s young labor economists surely are as incapable of appreciating the difficulties, in 1980s, of conducting empirical research using data tapes that had to be obtained and manipulated with great effort as their young counterparts in 1989 must have been of appreciating the difficulties of doing research on data that, in the 1960’s, had to be hand-copied and keypunched onto small cards.”

Hamermesh didn’t exactly predict modern web-based data tools, but he came fairly close, anticipating the development “in the late 1990’s, of essentially error-free transmission mechanisms from BLS computers to individual users around the country via fiber-optic methods.”

“As a result,” he predicted, “Researchers now can sit by their home or office computer and operate on data files located at BLS, extracting the data they desire or performing statistical analyses on BLS data files.”

Thomas J. Plewes, an official with the BLS, also anticipated technology-based changes to data collection, resulting in more and richer information. For example, he suggested that computer-assisted telephone interviews used to collect workforce data from companies would be enhanced with more direct transfers of data—something that has, indeed, come to pass.

Like Hamermesh, Plews also predicted improvements in researchers’ access to data.

“The labor force data programs of the future will be much more oriented toward individual records, utilizing the emerging power of the computer to process those records on demand to provide tailored aggregations of characteristics of interest,” he wrote.

That’s a good reminder for those of us who get annoyed by awkward user interfaces: Not that long ago, these interfaces—and some of the data they provide access to—didn’t exist at all.

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Contextualizing the 1990s’ Economic Reforms in India: A Politico-Economic Narrative

• First Online: 21 September 2023

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• Tanmoy Sarkar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8711-3563 5 &
• Mukunda Mishra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7039-9043 6  

Part of the book series: New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives ((NFRSASIPER,volume 71))

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The policy framework for economic reform in India in 1991, which is believed to have been revolutionary for the Indian economy, had its foundation rooted in the practical experiences of ups and downs in the Indian economy since independence. India found higher economic growth in the 1980s than in its preceding years, with the cost of high variance. In the early decades after independence, the Nehruvian socialistic views that focused on centralized planning and a robust regulatory framework to enable the government to supervise every sector of the economy were replaced by bold economic reforms in 1991 to respond to a balance of payment crisis that led to economic turmoil. Later, the Prime Minister, Ms. Indira Gandhi, made radical decisions (not economic reforms) to rescue the crisis. The decontrol of a few industrial sectors and encouraging foreign investment in automobiles started in the 1980s. During the 1985–1986 industrial policy reforms, along with encouraging foreign investment and reducing restrictions on the growth of private companies, Rajiv Gandhi’s ministry was somehow building the path for 1991’s economic reforms. The external shock in the form of the breakup of the Soviet Bloc and the Iraq-Kuwait war adversely contributed to the trade and disrupted the current account balances during 1990–1991. The external crisis and internal sociopolitical environment led the BOP crisis to demand a compelling and bold response to rejuvenate the economy. Finally, Rao and Singh led the Indian economy to enter the twenty-first century with the bold decision of economic reforms by accepting liberalization, privatization, and globalization to shift India from a closed to an open system economically and acted as the stimuli to get the state emerged as the regional power politically. This chapter serves as a systematic analysis of the backdrop of economic reform in India.

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Sarkar, T., Mishra, M. (2023). Contextualizing the 1990s’ Economic Reforms in India: A Politico-Economic Narrative. In: Mishra, M., Saha, S., Sinha, M. (eds) Public Policies and Sustainable Development in Post-Reform India. New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives, vol 71. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3696-0_1

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• | Government Spending Government Spending
• | Research Papers Research Papers
• | June 30, 2015

US Federal Budget Restraint in the 1990s: A Success Story

• David R. Henderson
• DOWNLOAD PUBLICATION SUMMARY PDF
• Download PDF

Many observers think that it is impossible to cut federal government spend- ing as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But it can be done. And the evidence is hidden in plain sight: it’s called the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2000, federal spending fell from 21.85 percent of GDP to 18.22 percent, a drop of 3.6 percentage points. Most of the reduction was in defense spending after the Cold War ended. Domestic spending also fell slightly as a percentage of GDP. This drop cannot be attributed to higher economic growth in the 1990s because average growth in the 1990s was the same as growth in the previous two decades.

Many have declared it impossible to cut federal government spending as a share of the economy, particularly in a time of divided government. They’re wrong—it can be done. The proof is hidden in plain sight: it’s called the 1990s. 

A new study published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University reviews the example of the 1990s to debunk some of Washington’s most frequently cited reasons why spending cannot be cut now. The economic and budgetary lesson from the decade is clear: it is possible to reduce federal government spending as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by cutting some spending and restraining the growth of the rest. The political lesson equally clear: divided government may make spending cuts more difficult, but it does not render them impossible. 

Below is a brief overview. To view the paper in its entirety and learn more about the author, David R. Henderson , a professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School and former senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, please see “ US Federal Budget Restraint in the 1990s: A Success Story .” 

Despite divided government for 8 of the 10 years of the 1990s, federal spending was cut from 21.9 percent of GDP to 18.2 percent, amounting to an economically significant 17 percent reduction in the share of the economy spent by the federal government. 

• Most of the cuts—61.2 percent of the reduction in total spending—occurred in national defense, primarily due to the end of the Cold War. Over the decade, defense spending dropped from 5.2 percent of GDP in 1990 to 3.0 percent in 2000, and these cuts reflected a broad consensus among Republicans and Democrats.
• Net interest had the second-highest level of reduction in spending. The decline in federal debt—from a peak of 49.5 percent of GDP in 1993 to 35.1 percent in 2000—led to falling interest payments, which dropped from 3.2 percent of GDP in 1990 to 2.3 percent in 2000. 

Domestic spending—defined as all spending other than defense, international affairs, and net interest—fell slightly as a percent of GDP.

• Although the decline from 13.2 percent to 12.8 percent of GDP was small, it was significant that this spending—which includes the major entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—did not rise.
• Medicaid eligibility had expanded through the 1980s, and the program’s spending rose in the first half of the 1990s. After 1995, however, Medicaid stayed relatively flat. Spending on Medicare actually declined as a percent of GDP in the later years of the decade, partly due to reforms adopted in 1997.
• Social Security—the largest of the three programs—peaked at 4.6 percent of GDP in 1993, then fell over the rest of the decade to 4.2 percent. The decrease resulted from demographics—the baby boomers had not yet started retiring—not from changes in the program. Now that the baby boom retirements have started, that demographic pattern will not repeat.

Yet with this pattern of government spending reductions, the economic results defied what many expected: the cuts did not impair growth. 

• To be sure, growth was low during the early 1990s, but the spending cuts continued even as the economy strengthened through the rest of the decade. Growth in the second half of the 1990s, while the spending cuts were ongoing, averaged 4.0 percent.
• Nor did employment suffer. The unemployment rate reached 7.8 percent in 1992, but then fell through the rest of the decade, to 4.0 percent in 2000. Much of the decline resulted from the booming economy of the late 1990s, but unemployment dropped even through the defense spending cuts of 1992 through 1995.

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Credit When You Need It

We estimate the causal effect of emergency credit on households' finances after a negative shock. To do so, we link application data from the U.S. Federal Disaster Loan program, which provides loans to households that have uninsured damages from a federally-declared natural disaster, to a panel of credit records before and after the shock. We exploit a discontinuity in the loan approval rules that led applicants with debt-to-income ratios below 40% to be differentially likely to be approved. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences research design, we find that credit provision at the time of a shock significantly reduces severe financial distress, decreasing the likelihood of filing for bankruptcy by 61% in the three years following the disaster. We explore mechanisms using additional quasi-experimental variation in interest rates, finding support for a liquidity-based explanation. Credit provision in a time of crisis has real consumption effects in the form of additional car purchases even 3 years after loan receipt. Our findings suggest that well-timed liquidity provided to households in acute need can have substantial and persistent positive effects.

We thank Peter Ganong, Nitzan Tzur-Ilan, Amine Ouazad, and conference and seminar participants at Columbia Business School, University of Wisconsin Business School, Temple University, Emory University, Rutgers University, the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and Philadelphia, UT-Dallas, the Chicago Area Macroeconomics and Housing conference, HUD, FMA, ARIA, meetings of the Risk Theory Society, the FDIC, Federal Reserve System applied microeconomics conference, the CFPB Research Conference, and the IPA Research Gathering for helpful comments. We thank the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Energy Center, the Wharton Dean's Research Fund, and the Research Sponsors Program of the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center for support. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Experian, the Small Business Administration (SBA), The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, or the Federal Reserve System. We thank the administrators at the SBA for their assistance in understanding the setting. Any remaining errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Volume 30, Number 9—September 2024

Research Letter

Thelazia callipaeda eyeworms in american black bear, pennsylvania, usa, 2023.

Suggested citation for this article

We identified a Thelazia callipaeda eyeworm in an American black bear in Pennsylvania, USA, on the basis of its morphological features and molecular analysis. Our finding highlights emergence of a T. callipaeda worm sylvatic transmission cycle in the United States.

Thelaziosis is an emerging zoonotic disease caused by nematodes of the genus Thelazia (Spirurida, Thelazioidea). In the United States, 3 zoonotic species have been identified: Thelazia gulosa ( 1 ), T. californiensis ( 2 ), and most recently T. callipaeda ( 3 ). In Asia and Europe, T. callipaeda is considered the main agent of thelaziosis in humans, domestic animals, and wild animals ( 4 ). Over the past decade, the geographic distribution and prevalence of T. callipaeda infection has increased worldwide in scale and intensity ( 4 ). The first autochthonous case in the United States was reported in 2018 in a domestic dog ( Canis lupus familiaris ) from New York with a history of unilateral epiphora and blepharospasm. Since then, additional cases in domestic dogs and cats have been reported, predominately from the northeastern United States ( 3 , 5 ).

T. callipaeda eyeworms are found in the conjunctival sac and lacrimal duct of the definitive host. They are transmitted when a male zoophilic secretophagous Phortica variegata fly ingests first-stage larvae from the host’s lachrymal secretions. In the vector, the first-stage larvae develop to the infective third-stage larvae in the testes, migrate to the mouthparts, and are transferred to another host during subsequent feeding on lachrymal secretions ( 4 ).

The role of wildlife in the epidemiology and emergence of T. callipaeda eyeworms is not completely known. In Europe, cases of T. callipaeda eyeworm infection have been detected in a wide range of hosts, including wild carnivores, omnivores, and lagomorphs ( 6 , 7 ). Wild canids, particularly red foxes ( Vulpes vulpes ), seem to play a large role in maintaining the sylvatic cycle in thelaziosis-endemic areas of Europe ( 7 ). However, knowledge of the sylvatic transmission cycle of T. callipaeda eyeworms, along with their environmental and anthropogenic factors, remains limited. Considering the emergence of those zoonotic nematodes in non–thelaziosis-endemic areas and the need for more information about their ecology and epidemiology in the United States, we report a case of T. callipaeda eyeworm infection in an American black bear ( Ursus americanus ) and identify a new geographic location of transmission.

In November 2023, an adult, female American black bear was legally harvested in Coolbaugh Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania. During processing of the bear for taxidermy preparation, multiple linear nematodes were observed behind the third eyelid. Nematodes were extracted and submitted for identification. Two additional harvested bears from Monroe and Pike Counties, Pennsylvania, were also reported to have similar ocular nematode infections, but specimens from those bears were not collected.

• Figure 1 . Morphologic features of adult female Thelazia callipaeda eyeworm isolated from an American black bear in Coolbaugh Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania, USA, 2023. A) Anterior end showing the large, deep,...

We identified 9 female and 4 male adult nematodes from the bear as T. callipaeda on the basis of morphologic and morphometric features ( 8 ). The nematodes were characterized by the presence of a cup-shaped buccal capsule and cuticular transverse striations, as well as the location of the vulvar opening anterior to the esophageal-intestinal junction on the female worms ( Figure 1 ). Female nematodes were 1.16–1.46 cm long and 0.36–0.42 mm wide; male worms were 0.82–1.06 cm long and 0.31–0.42 mm wide. The number of transverse cuticular striations ranged from 160 to 400/mm in the cephalic, midbody, and caudal regions.

Figure 2 . Phylogenetic relationship of Thelazia callipaeda isolate from an American black bear in Coolbaugh Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania, USA, 2023 (GenBank accession no. PP739308), and other species of ...

We extracted genomic DNA from a midbody fragment of a female adult worm and amplified, sequenced, and analyzed the partial cytochrome oxidase c subunit I ( cox 1) gene, as previously described ( 2 ). We generated a 623-bp cox 1 sequence (GenBank accession no. PP739308), which showed 99%–100% maximum identity with T . callipaeda sequences available in GenBank. Phylogenetic analysis was performed by using the maximum-likelihood method and confirmed the taxonomic identification of T . callipaeda . The isolate clustered with all previous isolates from domestic animals in North America and with some isolates from Europe ( Figure 2 ), indicating circulation of the newly introduced pathogen in wildlife habitats and transmission from domestic animals to wildlife.

The presence of adult T. callipaeda eyeworms in an American black bear suggests the establishment of a sylvatic transmission cycle in the United States and expansion of the number of definitive host species used by the zoonotic nematode. In the past decade, wild carnivores have been identified as primary definitive hosts associated with the sylvatic cycle in thelaziosis- endemic and non–thelaziosis-endemic areas of Europe and Asia ( 7 ). American black bears are the most widely distributed species of bear in North America, inhabiting diverse regions throughout Mexico, Canada, and the United States ( 9 ). Given the bears’ extensive geographic distribution and frequent and close interaction with humans and pets ( 10 ), thelaziosis in the black bear population raises concerns about the rapidly increasing incidence and geographic range of T. callipaeda eyeworms in the United States. Although further research into the extent to which black bears play a role in the maintenance of the sylvatic cycle and transmission of T. callipaeda eyeworms is needed, the presence of the zoonotic nematode in such a wide range of hosts implicates exposure and risk for transmission to threatened and endangered species and direct or indirect risk for transmission to humans and domestic animals.

Dr. Sobotyk is an assistant professor of clinical parasitology and director of the Clinical Parasitology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Her research focuses on zoonotic helminth infections in domestic and wild animals and improvement and development of diagnostic techniques for detecting parasitic infections of veterinary and public health relevance.

Acknowledgment

We thank the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Dillon Gruver for their continued support. We also acknowledge Shawn Lamparter’s Wildlife Design for recognition and prompting submission of the specimens.

• Bradbury  RS , Breen  KV , Bonura  EM , Hoyt  JW , Bishop  HS . Case report: conjunctival infestation with Thelazia gulosa : a novel agent of human thelaziasis in the United States. Am J Trop Med Hyg . 2018 ; 98 : 1171 – 4 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Sobotyk  C , Foster  T , Callahan  RT , McLean  NJ , Verocai  GG . Zoonotic Thelazia californiensis in dogs from New Mexico, USA, and a review of North American cases in animals and humans. Vet Parasitol Reg Stud Reports . 2021 ; 24 : 100553 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Schwartz  AB , Lejeune  M , Verocai  GG , Young  R , Schwartz  PH . Autochthonous Thelazia callipaeda infection in dog, New York, USA, 2020. Emerg Infect Dis . 2021 ; 27 : 1923 – 6 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Otranto  D , Mendoza-Roldan  JA , Dantas-Torres  F . Thelazia callipaeda. Trends Parasitol . 2021 ; 37 : 263 – 4 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Manoj  RRS , White  H , Young  R , Brown  CE , Wilcox  R , Otranto  D , et al. Emergence of thelaziosis caused by Thelazia callipaeda in dogs and cats, United States. Emerg Infect Dis . 2024 ; 30 : 591 – 4 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Papadopoulos  E , Komnenou  A , Karamanlidis  AA , Bezerra-Santos  MA , Otranto  D . Zoonotic Thelazia callipaeda eyeworm in brown bears ( Ursus arctos ): A new host record in Europe. Transbound Emerg Dis . 2022 ; 69 : 235 – 9 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Otranto  D , Dantas-Torres  F , Mallia  E , DiGeronimo  PM , Brianti  E , Testini  G , et al. Thelazia callipaeda (Spirurida, Thelaziidae) in wild animals: report of new host species and ecological implications. Vet Parasitol . 2009 ; 166 : 262 – 7 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Otranto  D , Lia  RP , Traversa  D , Giannetto  S . Thelazia callipaeda (Spirurida, Thelaziidae) of carnivores and humans: morphological study by light and scanning electron microscopy. Parassitologia . 2003 ; 45 : 125 – 33 . PubMed Google Scholar
• Garshelis  DL , Scheick  BK , Doan-Crider  DL , Beecham  JJ , Obbard  ME . The American black Bear ( Ursus americanus ). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Washington (DC): International Union for Conservation of Nature. 2016 :e.T41687A114251609.
• Di Salvo  AR , Chomel  BB . Zoonoses and potential zoonoses of bears. Zoonoses Public Health . 2020 ; 67 : 3 – 13 . DOI PubMed Google Scholar
• Figure 2 . Phylogenetic relationship of Thelazia callipaeda isolate from an American black bear in Coolbaugh Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania, USA, 2023 (GenBank accession no. PP739308), and other species of Thelazia available...

Suggested citation for this article : Sobotyk C, Dietrich J, Verocai GG, Maxwell L, Niedringhaus K. Thelazia callipaeda eyeworms in American black bear, Pennsylvania, USA, 2023. Emerg Infect Dis. 2024 Sep [date cited]. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid3009.240679

DOI: 10.3201/eid3009.240679

Original Publication Date: August 14, 2024

Table of Contents – Volume 30, Number 9—September 2024

Please use the form below to submit correspondence to the authors or contact them at the following address:

Caroline. Sobotyk, University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine, Matthew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital, Rm 4034, 3900 Delancey St, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6051, USA

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• The Religious Composition of the World’s Migrants

4. Muslim migrants around the world

Table of contents.

• Asia and the Pacific
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Middle East and North Africa
• North America
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Distance traveled by migrants
• Growth of migrants among each religious group, 1990-2020
• Regional patterns over time
• Destinations
• Country pairs
• Change since 1990
• Spotlight on Europe
• Spotlight on the Gulf Cooperation Council countries
• Spotlight on India
• Spotlight on the United States
• Acknowledgments
• UN migrant estimates
• Pew Research Center religious composition estimates
• Estimating religious compositions when no census or survey data is available
• Religious compositions of overall populations
• Study period
• Distance analysis
• ‘Faith on the Move’
• Asia-Pacific
• Latin America-Caribbean
• Middle East-North Africa
• Appendix B: Sources for the religious distribution of migrants, by destination country

The United Nations counts international migrants as people of any age who live outside their country (or in some cases, territory) of birth – regardless of their motives for migrating, their length of residence or their legal status.

In addition to naturalized citizens and permanent residents, the UN’s international migrant numbers include asylum-seekers and refugees, as well as people without official residence documents. The UN also includes some people who live in a country temporarily – like some students and guest workers – but it does not include short-term visitors like tourists, nor does it typically include military forces deployed abroad. 

For brevity, this report refers to international migrants simply as migrants. Occasionally, we use the term immigrants to differentiate migrants living in a destination country from emigrants who have left an origin country . Every person who is living outside of his or her country of birth is all three – a migrant, an immigrant and an emigrant.

The analysis in this report focuses on existing stocks of international migrants – all people who now live outside their birth country, no matter when they left. We do not estimate migration flows – how many people move across borders in any single year.

Roughly 80 million international migrants are Muslim, representing 29% of all people living outside their country of birth. By comparison, Muslims were about 25% of the world’s total population in 2020, making Muslim identity a little more common among migrants than in the overall population. 14

Muslims have moved shorter distances on average (1,700 miles) than migrants from other major religious groups, staying closer to their countries of origin. For example, large numbers of Muslims from Syria have sought refuge in nearby Turkey and Lebanon.

Muslim migrants most commonly live in the Middle East-North Africa region, which hosts 40% of them, and in the Asia-Pacific region (24%). Two-in-ten Muslim migrants live in Europe, and one-in-ten are in sub-Saharan Africa. Only 6% of all Muslim migrants now reside in North America, and even fewer live in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As of 2020, almost half of the world’s stock of Muslim migrants was born in Asia and the Pacific, the most common region of origin for Muslims who have left their country of birth. About a third of today’s Muslim migrants were born in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13% are from sub-Saharan Africa. Smaller percentages of Muslim migrants originated in Europe (6%), North America or the Latin America-Caribbean region (less than 0.5% each).

Muslims most commonly move to countries that are wealthy, predominantly Muslim, or both.

They have migrated to many different regions: Four of Muslims’ top 10 destinations are in the Middle East and North Africa, two are in Europe, three are in Asia and the Pacific, and one (the United States) is in North America.

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, is the most common destination country for Muslim migrants by a wide margin, with an estimated 13% of all Muslim migrants (10.8 million) living there.

The Saudi kingdom also is the third-most common destination for migrants overall – roughly four-in-ten Saudi residents are foreign born. The vast majority of migrants to Saudi Arabia are Muslim (80%), as is Saudi Arabia’s overall population (93%).

The United Arab Emirates hosts over 6 million foreign-born Muslims, making it the second-most popular destination for Muslim migrants. Like Saudi Arabia, the UAE is a wealthy Muslim nation with a strong demand for foreign labor. International migrants overall make up the vast majority of the UAE’s population (94%). Muslim migrants in Saudia Arabia and the UAE most frequently come from India.

Turkey is the third-most common destination for Muslim migrants (5.9 million) as of 2020. Turkey has been economically better off than many of its neighbors and has absorbed a large number of asylum-seekers since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Mostly due to this influx, there were about six times as many Muslim migrants living in Turkey in 2020 as there had been a decade earlier.

The next most popular destinations for Muslim migrants are Germany and the U.S.

Like migrants as a whole – who gravitate to places that offer safety and better economic conditions – Muslim migrants often leave their birth countries to escape poverty and danger. 

The most common country of origin for Muslim migrants is Syria, where a war broke out in 2011. Fully 10% of the world’s stock of Muslim migrants (8.1 million) were born in Syria. Most have migrated to countries nearby, like Turkey and Lebanon, while some have gone as far as Europe and the U.S.

India is the second-most common country of origin among Muslim migrants, with 6.0 million living there. They are much more likely than people in the country’s Hindu majority to emigrate. Although India’s population is only 15% Muslim, an estimated 33% of all India-born migrants are Muslim.

Most Muslim migrants from India live in Muslim-majority countries with job opportunities, including the UAE (1.8 million), Saudi Arabia (1.3 million) and Oman (720,000).

Afghanistan is the third-most common origin country for Muslim migrants (5.5 million). A majority of Muslim migrants from Afghanistan live in neighboring Iran (2.7 million) or Pakistan (1.6 million). Migrants from Afghanistan have fled challenging conditions over the decades, including an occupation by the Soviet Union in the 1980s and a U.S.-led invasion in the early 2000s.

The most common pair of origin and destination countries for Muslim migrants is Syria to Turkey. About 3.9 million Syrian Muslims, including many war refugees, now live in Turkey.

The next most common routes for Muslims have been Afghanistan to Iran (2.7 million), and the Palestinian territories to Jordan (2.2 million). 15

The Muslim migrant population grew from 40 million in 1990 to 80 million in 2020 (up 102%), outpacing overall migrant growth (up 83%).

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey have seen the biggest jumps since 1990, with 16.8 million additional Muslim migrants in those three countries alone as of 2020 (a 278% rise). Saudi Arabia and the UAE have had booming economies over these years, while Turkey has seen increased migration primarily from Syria.

Elsewhere, the Muslim migrant population has declined. The number of Muslim migrants living in Pakistan dropped from 4.1 million in 1990 to 2.1 million in 2020 (a 50% drop), partly reflecting the return of Afghan migrants to their home country. During the same three decades, Iran’s population of foreign-born Muslims declined from 4.3 million to 2.8 million (down 35%).

Of all origin countries, Syria accounted for the biggest surge in Muslim migrants by far, from 570,000 in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2020, a rise of about 1,300%.

India and Pakistan also have seen sharp increases, as more and more Muslim migrants have left South Asia for work in the Persian Gulf. The worldwide stock of Muslim migrants from India grew from 2.1 million to 6 million (up 192%), while the number from Pakistan rose from 1.8 million to 5.3 million (up 202%).

The largest decrease by origin came from Afghanistan, which was the birth country of 7.4 million Muslim migrants living elsewhere in 1990, compared with 5.5 million in 2020 (down 26%). This difference reflects return migration to Afghanistan as well as the gradual death of a generation of Afghans who left their country during the Soviet occupation.

Refer to our “ Geographic spotlights ” section for an in-depth analysis of migration in the GCC countries.

• This report presents interim estimates of the overall population in each religious group (including migrants and nonmigrants) using data from three Pew Research Center studies: “ The Future of World Religions ” (projections of religious composition to the year 2020 published in 2015), “ Modeling the Future of Religion in America ” (2022) and “ Measuring Religion in China ” (2023). In the future, the Center will produce new estimates of the overall size of religious groups in 2020, based on data sources that have become available in recent years. Read the Methodology for details. ↩
• The United Nations includes in this count migrants who were born in the Palestinian territories as well as their descendants, some of whom were born in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon . ↩

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Religious composition of the world’s migrants, 1990-2020

The future of world religions: population growth projections, 2010-2050, modeling the future of religion in america, faith on the move – the religious affiliation of international migrants, measuring religion in china, most popular, report materials.

• Interactive table: Religious composition of the world’s migrants, 1990-2020
• Dataset: Religious composition of the world’s migrants, 1990-2020

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Transforming braille education could help millions of visually impaired Americans

Emily Kwong

Rebecca Ramirez

Regina G. Barber

Rachel Carlson

Braille literacy is directly linked to higher rates of academic success and better employment outcomes for blind and low vision adults. Hill Street Studios/Getty Images hide caption

Braille literacy is directly linked to higher rates of academic success and better employment outcomes for blind and low vision adults.

All his life, Robert Englebretson has been a bookworm.

He was a good kid. But he often bent the rules for this early love.

"One of the cool things about braille is that you could sneak a book under your covers and not need a flashlight — and you wouldn't get caught," Englebretson recalls.

Braille is a tactile writing system of raised dots, primarily read by those who are blind or have low vision. The CDC estimates that nearly 3% of people under 18 in the U.S. are blind or visually impaired, which means millions of kids and teenagers could read braille.

To read braille is powerful .

Braille literacy is directly linked to higher rates of academic success and better employment outcomes for blind and low vision adults. Every year, the Braille Challenge , a national braille literacy contest, encourages students to fine-tune their skills.

As Braille Literacy Declines, Reading Competitions Held To Boost Interest

Big toymakers introduce more accessible toys hoping to engage more kids.

But there's a problem.

The U.S. is facing a national shortage of qualified braille teachers. Each state has different requirements for braille literacy, so some students are getting less than two to three hours of instruction a week.

As Englebretson continued his education and pursued a career in linguistics, he could not shake the injustice of that reality.

"Reading is a basic human right. Literacy is a basic human right. And that is just as true for blind people as it is for sighted people," says Englebretson, who is now the director of undergraduate studies in linguistics at Rice University.

But to improve braille education, Englebretson needed a team – one made up of researchers in other fields.

Author Interviews

Lessons on blindness, 'for the benefit of those who see'.

That's why, for years, Englebretson has been working with cognitive neuroscientist Simon Fischer-Baum , also at Rice University, and Cay Holbrook , a professor at the University of British Columbia and longtime educator of teachers of the visually impaired.

Together, the group is talking to teachers and students, and pursuing research questions. Their hope is to advance braille research – and ultimately transform braille education.

"Our goal is to have every student who is going to be a braille reader to have direct, ongoing and consistent instruction by a qualified teacher of the visually impaired," said Holbrook.

Read some of the team's work here:

• Englebretson R, Holbrook MC, Fischer-Baum S. A position paper on researching braille in the cognitive sciences: decentering the sighted norm . Applied Psycholinguistics. 2023.
• Englebretson, R., Holbrook, M.C., Treiman, R. et al. The primacy of morphology in English braille spelling: an analysis of bridging contractions . Morphology. 2024.

Interested in hearing more linguistics stories? Email us at [email protected] .

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify , Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts .

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Rebeca Ramirez, edited by Rebecca and fact-checked by Emily Kwong. The audio engineer was Kwesi Lee.

• linguistics
• tactile books
• visually impaired