The AP reported yesterday that, “the number of Haitians still displaced by the 2010 earthquake has dropped below 200,000… That marks an 89 percent decline since the camp population peaked in July 2010 at 1.5 million people.” According to official figures, the camp population currently stands at 171,974, compared to over 278,000 in June of 2013 at the time of the last report. The drop is the largest over a single reporting period in nearly three years.

Yet, looking closer, over 50 percent of this reduction since June is the result of a decision by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the entity which monitors the camp population, to remove three areas, Canaan, Jerusalem and Onaville from the official camp list. Together, these three areas are home to an estimated 54,045 individuals. The IOM report states:

On July 11^th 2013, the Government of Haiti represented by UCLBP (Unité de Construction de Logements et Bâtiments Publics), submitted a formal request to IOM to remove the three settlements from the DTM (i.e. from the list of IDP sites that exist in the country).

The UCLBP request is motivated by the observation that the characteristics of these settlements are those of “… new neighborhoods needing urban planning with a long term view …”, not of IDP sites.

But the situation facing those who reside in the three areas is far from secure. This week Amnesty International reported that:

Residents of the Lanmè Frape area of Canaan, an informal settlement in the municipality of Cabaret, on the northern outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, have had their simple dwellings repeatedly destroyed by police officers accompanied by armed men. The residents told Amnesty International that they have been the victims of attacks on more than 10 occasions over the last 18 months and several of them have also been arrested on unfounded charges for periods of up to a month. Two hundred families currently remain in the Lanmè Frape area, although as many as 600 lived there before the forced evictions began.

Amnesty continues, describing how the area came to be occupied:

The Lanmè Frape area of Canaan is part of a large tract of land which the then government declared for “public use” (utilité publique) two months after the earthquake in March 2010. Tens of thousands of people who lost their homes in the earthquake have subsequently relocated there, but many face eviction from people claiming ownership of the land.

Beyond the previously “official” camp communities of Canaan, Jerusalem and Onaville, it is believed that tens of thousands more families have moved to the surrounding area since the earthquake. Over the last year, the UCLBP has lobbied the international community for funding to make investments in urban planning for the area. According to minutes from the February 2013 Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF) meeting (PDF), the head of the UCLBP, Odnell David, made a presentation requesting $15 million as part of a $50 million project to address the situation in Canaan-Jerusalem. The government “has a moral obligation to take care of these people and undertake investment,” David said. Yet, although donor countries all supported the use of HRF funds for investments in the Canaan area, when funding decisions were made this September, no resources were allocated for the project.

There were also other motives for addressing the displacement crisis in Canaan. According to the official minutes, the David explained that, “this area poses a threat to neighboring industrial and touristic development.” Two weeks later, at the next HRF meeting (PDF), he described how this “project is the starting point for the larger project of developing the entire northern area of the city of Port-au-Prince.”

Members of the U.S. Congress are keeping a close watch on Honduras’ upcoming general elections.  In June of this year, 24 U.S Senators signed a letter expressing concern about the human rights situation in Honduras and requesting that Secretary of State J

October 22, 2013

October 22, 2013 (Jobs Byte)

Dean Baker
Truthout, October 21, 2013
The Huffington Post, October 21, 2013

Dean Baker
Al Jazeera English, October 21, 2013

Most discussion in Washington of the projected long-term shortfall in the Social Security trust fund assumes that we can never raise the payroll tax. Many have advocated raising the cap on wages subject to the tax (currently just over $113,000), but raising the tax rate itself has largely been out of the question.

While there are good arguments for raising the cap (the increase in the share of income going over the cap due to the upward redistribution of income is a major reason for the projected shortfall), it is not obvious why increases in the tax rate at some future date should not be considered.

Economic policy debates in the United States suffer from the fact that participants often have trouble deciding whether the problem is too much of something or too little. They do however know the problem is really bad. Steven Rattner treats us to an excellent example of the which way is up problem in a column in the NYT today.

The focus of the piece is Japan. He notes Japan's recent upturn in growth following the aggressive stimulus policy being pursued by its new prime minister, Shinzo Abe. He tells readers:

"In the endless global debate about the importance of macroeconomic budgetary and monetary policies, insufficient attention is often given to the unsexy, often politically toxic pile of smaller-bore policy challenges that can be critical to restarting a faltering economy."

Okay, let's see what these policies look like. Rattner goes on to tell readers:

"During even a short visit, it’s easy to see that the need for microeconomic reform is glaring. All told, Japan’s labor productivity is 71 percent of America’s — and on a par with Italy’s. While Japan is still a wealthy country, its return on capital is equally unsatisfactory."

Okay, high productivity is definitely better than low productivity, but the second sentence is a non sequitur. What does Rattner mean that Japan's "return on capital is equally unsatisfactory?" To whom is it unsatisfactory?

Economists would look for evidence of an unsatisfactory return in Japan's rate of investment. Investment is a higher share of Japan's output than it is of U.S. output. Furthermore, we expect wealthy countries to have lower returns on capital than poorer countries. (Capital is plentiful.) Instead of "while," Rattner's sentence would have made more sense with the word "because." It is difficult to assign any meaning to "satisfactory" in this context other than Rattner thinks that people with lots of money should be making more money at the expense of workers.

The following labor market policy research reports were recently released:

Mark WeisbrotThe Guardian Unlimited, October 18, 2013