5 Accomplishments of the Evidence Act

Last week, I wrote about what the Evidence Act is and what its goals are. The reason for this post was because I attended a panel of government officials and other experts talk about how things had been going over the last five years at last month’s Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management annual conference that helped me understand the importance of the federal evidence act. 

While there is still certainly a lot of room for improvement of federal evaluation practices as agencies further develop their own evaluation capacity and learn how to better cooperate, there have been a lot of major advances already. Here are the five most significant accomplishments of the Evidence Act so far.

Designation of Evaluation Officers

Agencies have appointed evaluation officers to coordinate and oversee evaluation activities at the agency level, ensuring management is available for a structured approach to evidence-building. These officers play a crucial role in implementing evidence-building plans, assessing the agency's evaluation capacity, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Launch of evaluation.gov

Since its launch in August 2021, evaluation.gov has served as a central hub for evaluation efforts across the federal government. This platform enhances transparency and accessibility, allowing the public and government employees to access and engage with evaluation activities. The site also has  a LinkedIn account and newsletter, which each broaden its reach and impact.

Publication of Learning Agendas and Evaluation Plans

Agencies have published inaugural learning agendas, capacity assessments, and four years of annual evaluation plans. These documents guide agencies' evaluation efforts, ensuring that they are aligned with strategic goals and that they address relevant policy questions using evidence-based methods.

Government-wide Standards for Program Evaluation

The Office of Management and Budget published the first-ever government-wide standards for program evaluation, emphasizing relevance and utility, rigor, independence and objectivity, transparency, and ethics. These standards provide a consistent framework for conducting high-quality evaluations across all federal agencies.

Support and Development for Evaluators

The federal evaluation community has developed and participated in numerous events, workshops, and resources to support evaluators. Notable initiatives include the Year of Evidence for Action forum series, over 60 evaluation-focused workshops, and the Federal Evaluation Toolkit. Additionally, the inaugural Evidence-Based Decision-Making Leadership Academy helps senior Federal executives foster a culture of evidence and learning within their organizations.

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Seeing such a strong commitment to evidence-based policymaking at the federal level is encouraging for an analyst to see. The experts that work in federal agencies have valuable information for policymakers.Having well-defined systems through the Evidence Act for sharing that information should lead to better outcomes for everyone. 

At Scioto Analysis, this is the kind of work we hope to bring to state and local governments. The scope of the Evidence Act is massive and would be largely infeasible for state and local governments to replicate in full, but even smaller scale evaluation and analysis can provide strong returns on investment. 

State and local governments should take the lessons learned from these first five years of the Evidence Act and apply them to their own policymaking where possible. 2025 will be a new year with many new lawmakers across all levels of government. Hopefully these new faces will be open to more collaboration and more commitment to evidence-based policymaking.

Is nuclear power ‘green energy?’

Last week, the Ohio General Assembly sent a bill to Gov. Mike DeWine designating nuclear power as “green energy.”

Those who follow energy policy at the Statehouse should not find this particularly surprising. Last year, DeWine signed legislation to designate natural gas as “green energy.” Most experts would consider nuclear to be less harmful to the climate than natural gas, so this is not a particularly bold move.

Nor does it have much of a policy impact. According to analysis by the Legislative Service Commission, the term “green energy” is not used by the Ohio Revised Code in any substantial way. It seems that this is more of a “resolution” than a true policy change by the state.

“Green” is kind of an empty term on its own, though it stands for certain things. We associate “green” fuels as those that are good for the climate, our health, and the sustainability of our energy supply. So let’s ask those questions instead.

Is nuclear power good for our climate? The answer to this is, compared to the alternatives, almost certainly “yes.” In contrast to coal- or natural gas-powered power plants, nuclear power plants do not produce carbon dioxide when they are operating. Every kilowatt-hour of energy generated by a nuclear plant that replaces a kilowatt-hour of energy generated by a coal- or natural gas-powered plant helps reduce global emissions, slowing the changing of the climate.

Is nuclear power good for public health? This question is more tricky. On the one hand, nuclear power plants do not produce the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and mercury emitted by burning fossil fuels. This means nuclear power plants are not associated with the respiratory and cardiovascular problems that burning of fossil fuels generate. 

While direct exposure to radioactive materials is associated with high cancer risk, there is very little evidence that living near a nuclear power plant does the same due to containment of the energy. Living near a coal power plant or natural gas power plant is much more hazardous to your health than living near a nuclear power plant.

Accident and security risks and waste disposal are the most concerning potential public health problems with nuclear power. While U.S. regulatory requirements have prevented a meltdown from happening in the United States (the closest being the near-miss at Three Mile Island) and even the more recent accident in Fukushima, Japan having no definitive casualties, Chernobyl still looms large in the public consciousness. And while domestic terrorism drives fear around security risks, the fact that the war in Ukraine has been fought so brutally and still avoided a nuclear disaster is a good sign for the energy source.

Long-term deep geological storage is the best practice in disposal of nuclear waste, but Congress’s inability to authorize a permanent repository has been a barrier to safe long-term storage.

From a sustainability perspective, nuclear power also poses challenges. The world currently has an estimated 90 years of uranium reserves. While a more abundant alternative fuel thorium is starting to be used, technological change will be needed to make nuclear sustainable in the long-term.

So let’s stop talking about whether an energy source is “green.” Let’s talk about what really matters: whether it is good for the planet, good for our health, and provides us with affordable, sustainable energy that we can use to provide for our businesses, our homes, and our families.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

Is Ohio’s school voucher experiment panning out?

On Nov. 5, voters in three states — Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska — rejected state private school voucher programs.

Private school vouchers are a program where a family can take public dollars to spend on private school tuition. Arguments in favor of a system like this have been made since the 1950s, when famous libertarian economist Milton Friedman argued that allowing school vouchers would improve educational outcomes for children by increasing parental choice, promoting competition among schools, and reducing government inefficiencies.

Friedman’s arguments came under fire in the decades hence, not the least of which in the public policy classic Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, where German Economist Albert Hirschman argues that Friedman overlooks an important mechanism available to parents in struggling schools: their ability to voice their concerns through the democratic process.

Policymakers in Ohio have largely embraced private school vouchers. Last year, the Ohio General Assembly expanded eligibility for private school vouchers to all families in the state, regardless of income. According to reporting from the Ohio Newsroom, this led to a quadrupling of use of private school vouchers, while enrollment in private schools has been steady.

From Fiscal Year 2023 to Fiscal Year 2024, voucher use increased by 60,000 students while enrollment in private schools increased by only 3,000 students. This means 95% of new voucher use in 2024 was by students who were already enrolled in private schools or would have enrolled in private schools anyways.

This means the policy change in Ohio to expand eligibility was largely a windfall to families that were already planning on sending children to private schools. And because of the policy change that was made, it was likely a regressive windfall that accrued mainly to well-off households. The most recent estimate of the size of total spending on private school vouchers in 2024 is about $970 million. For context, that is more than the state spent on the entire Department of Children and Youth (which runs state child welfare, child care, and early education programs) and the Department of Natural Resources combined.

What are we getting for these investments? Last year, when this expansion was being considered, my firm asked 23 Ohio economists what expanding Ohio’s school choice voucher program would do for the state economy. They were tepid about the potential change. Only six thought the expansion would increase test scores, only three thought it would decrease poverty, while 11 believed it would lower the quality of public schools.

Certainly there are arguments for limited use of school vouchers. I think especially of innovative education models or schools that are focused on technical education, schools with workplace tie-ins and trade schools. Having innovative options for families that want a niche offering could help them learn and could create new learning opportunities for students that did not exist before.

That being said, it seems like the experiment of school vouchers in Ohio may have swung a bit far. Are we getting any value from the hundreds of millions of dollars we are pouring into private schools with our taxes? If we are, I would like to see evidence of it. Because we certainly wring our hands much more about programs that cost much less.

This commentary first appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.

What is the Evidence Act?

When I joined Scioto Analysis in 2022, I didn’t have much experience with public policy. I had a background in economics from my undergrad degree and I had a masters degree in statistics. Both of those gave me the foundational skills I needed to do policy work, but only over the past two years have I really started engaging with public policy issues. 

So, while many of you may already know about this, it wasn’t until last month’s Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management conference that I learned about the existence of the Foundations for Evidence Based Policymaking Act (the Evidence Act for short). I learned about this when I attended a panel discussion talking about a Government Accountability Office report summarizing the current state of the Evidence Act.

The conversation was pretty hard for me to follow since I didn’t have the background of what the Evidence Act was. Since then, I’ve tried to learn more about the Evidence Act and what it might mean for federal agencies. Here are some of the most important takeaways:

Evidence-Building and Evaluation

The act emphasizes the importance of systematic evidence building and evaluation plans within federal agencies. It mandates that these plans be part of the agency's strategic plans and annual performance plans. Specifically, it requires covered agencies to develop systematic plans for identifying and addressing policy questions using evidence-based methods. This includes identifying policy-relevant questions, outlining methodologies, data sources, and steps for evidence development, and consulting with stakeholders including the public, other agencies, and researchers.

Open Data and Transparency

The act promotes open government data by requiring federal agencies to make data publicly available by default. This focus on transparency aims to enhance public trust and enable greater collaboration. Title II, known as the Open Government Data Act, emphasizes that all federal agencies must make data open by default and actively engage the public in using and collaborating with open data. The Evidence Act also requires agencies to maintain comprehensive data inventories and publish them on a centralized Federal Data Catalogue, ensuring data is accessible while protecting personally identifiable information.

Data Accessibility and Security

Balancing data accessibility for statistical purposes with the protection of confidential information is a core focus of the Evidence Act. Title III, the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018, addresses this by expanding secure access to data for statistical purposes while protecting confidentiality. Agencies have to focus on expanding secure access to data, including categorizing data based on sensitivity, conducting risk assessments, and using de-identification techniques to protect privacy.

Strengthening Agency Capacity

The Evidence Act seeks to bolster federal agencies' capacity for evidence-based policymaking by establishing key roles and promoting data expertise. Agencies are required to designate senior Evaluation Officers responsible for implementing evidence-building plans and assessing the agency's evaluation capacity. Additionally, the Evidence Act mandates the appointment of statistical officials within agencies to advise on statistical matters and serve on the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy.

I hope going forward that these types of changes are not isolated to the federal level. State and local governments should look at some of this guidance and see if they have the capacity to take on some of these mandates voluntarily.

It can be expensive, but these are the types of investments that can generate major returns on investment. Avoiding inefficient rules and regulations while promoting equity, effectiveness, and efficiency is hard to do without first looking at the evidence.

New Report Details Poverty and Economic Insecurity in Franklin County

On Wednesday, the RISE Together Innovation Institute and Scioto Analysis released a groundbreaking report, Poverty and Economic Insecurity in Franklin County, shedding light on the systemic challenges facing residents of one of Ohio's most populous counties. The report reveals that while Franklin County is a hub of economic prosperity, nearly 40% of households still struggle to afford basic necessities like food, housing, and healthcare.

The study outlines the drivers of economic instability, including rising costs, low wages, and the enduring effects of systemic racism. It also provides recommendations for policymakers, community leaders, and organizations to promote economic mobility and security for all residents.

"This report lays out the reality: poverty is not inevitable; it's the result of policy choices,” said Rob Moore, Principal for Scioto Analysis, “by adopting solutions that address poverty and its causes, we can ensure a future where every Franklin County resident has the opportunity to succeed."

Key findings include:

• High Cost of Living: The median home price in Franklin County has jumped 54% since 2017, while rent for a two-bedroom apartment has increased by 47%.

• Economic Disparities: Black residents are more than twice as likely as white residents to live in poverty.

• Child Poverty: Nearly 1 in 5 children in the county live below the Federal Poverty Level, amounting to an estimated 59,000 children in the county living in poverty.

The report also highlights successful programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while calling for initiatives to boost childcare access, housing stability, and job quality.

For more information or to download the full report, visit the RISE Together Innovation Institute website.

What's the matter with ALICE?

A few years ago, I first heard about a research project conducted by United Way affiliates called ALICE.

ALICE stands for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, and Employed. The goal of the ALICE project is to estimate the number of people in every community who fit into this category. Why does this category matter? Because people with low levels of assets, limited income, and employment still often cannot afford what we call “necessities.”

How do we know if someone lives in an ALICE household? Well, it’s very similar to how we determine if someone is below the federal poverty level: researchers set a threshold based on some conception of what qualifies as sufficient income. If a household has income below that threshold, they are an ALICE household. If their income is above that threshold, they are not.

The way ALICE researchers set the threshold is by adding up the local cost of a range of goods. This list comprises housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, technology, taxes, and other miscellaneous goods. This differs from the methodology of the federal poverty threshold, which uses the cost of food times three as its threshold. It also departs from the supplementary poverty threshold methodology, more popular among poverty researchers, which uses average spending amounts to anchor its threshold.

According to the 2022 ALICE report, 54 million of the United States’s 129 million households fell below the ALICE threshold. This means more than three times as many households are ALICE households than there are households in poverty.

Some have claimed that the ALICE framework should be a replacement for the federal poverty level. This means that policymakers should shift their focus from the 12% of households struggling the most to the 42% of households who do not have income that meets the ALICE threshold.

Policymakers have been making this shift for decades now. At last month’s Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall Research Conference, a number of sessions focused on the changing nature of the federal social safety net. One of the biggest takeaways I took from these sessions is (1) that the social safety net is larger now than it was a few decades ago, and (2) that the social safety net has shifted from supporting people at 0-50% of the federal poverty line to supporting people at 100-150% of the federal poverty line.

A big reason for this is welfare reform in the 1990s. In 1993, a household claiming Assistance for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC, colloquially known as “welfare”) could bring their total income over the federal poverty level with wage income at 0% of the federal poverty level.

Let the implications of that sink in: before welfare reform, the United States had guaranteed income for households with children.

That changed with welfare reform. With Assistance for Families with Dependent Children transformed into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the program was block granted and significantly reduced. What took its place was the Earned Income Tax Credit, a program that primarily gave cash to households with children with working parents.

The growth in the social safety net since then has been documented by Dr. Katherine Michelmore of the University of Michigan, who recently won the David N. Kershaw Award for this work. The growth in support for families has been on the backs of expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit in the decades since welfare reform.

This has led to a change in overall support for families. Overall, families are receiving more support today than they did in the early 90s. But this support has shifted from families at the lowest level of the income distribution to families who are at or a little bit above the federal poverty level.

This is because Assistance for Families with Dependent Children did not require a household to work to receive support. If a household had children, they needed support, so Assistance for Families with Dependent Children gave it to them. Today’s social safety net does not work that way. Both the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit require wage income to claim. This means our current social safety net currently supports low-income people who are near or above the federal poverty level, not people who are in deep poverty.

Despite the current structure of our social safety net, the fixation in safety net policy is still on people who are low-income but not below the federal poverty level. Policymakers’ attention to the “benefits cliff” is a great example of this. In Ohio, eligibility for food assistance was recently expanded significantly. Who was it expanded to? You guessed it–people at 130-200% of the federal poverty level. This likely means hundreds of millions of dollars of new annual support for low-income families, but none for families below the federal poverty level.

Helping low-income people should be no crime from a social welfare perspective. What worries me is who is left out of that conversation. ALICE purports to widen the scope of our safety net by demonstrating how 42% of families are struggling rather than only the 12% of families who are below the federal poverty level. But it sets its ALICE threshold for a family of four in Franklin County, Ohio with two parents, a preschool-age child, and an infant at over $91,000. The federal poverty level for that same family is about $28,000. Can we seriously say that a family of four making $90,000 should be lumped into the same category as a family of four making $27,000? Or that a policy that helps the family making $90,000 is just as socially beneficial as a policy that helps the family making $27,000?

This isn’t to say that ALICE is a bad framework: it helps us learn something, especially about the cost of goods that many families need to survive. But it also lumps a wide swath of the population together that are dealing with varying problems and can make us lose sight of those who are struggling most.

Great 20th Century Political Philosopher John Rawls put forth his famous “difference principle” in his 1971 classic A Theory of Justice. He argued that social and economic inequalities “are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society.”

Helping people who are struggling is good. Supporting people who are dealing with problems like benefits cliffs is socially beneficial, but losing sight of people who are struggling the most is a huge problem in our current safety net. Our fixation on the population of low-income people above the federal poverty line has come at the expense of people in deep poverty. The longer we continue to follow this path, the more people who are the least-well-off will continue to suffer.

Does paid family leave pay off for society?

Earlier this week, I wrote about the differences between academics and policy analysts and how policy analysis needs to be more comprehensive than research to be relevant to policymaking decisions. I used the example of the papers I heard presented at the APPAM Fall Research Conference about paid family leave and how those were narrowly focused on labor market outcomes. I may have left that session wanting to hear more about the whole range of benefits and costs associated with paid family leave, but there are people out there who are doing the kind of work I find most interesting. 

In February of this year, Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center released a cost-benefit analysis of a paid family leave proposal in Pennsylvania. They looked at all the different ways this program could impact people’s wellbeing, and condensed it into an incredibly readable report. Here are some of the key takeaways they found: 

Positive Net Benefits

The Pennsylvania proposal would offer a 20-week paid family leave program funded by a 1% payroll premium split between employers and employees. These researchers found that it would generate an estimated $379 million in annual net benefits. Over a lifetime, the net benefits per birth year reach $1.7 billion. When compared to the costs of this program, this represents a benefit-cost ratio of $18 of benefits for every $1 of costs. 

Positive Economic Impact

The program is projected to increase maternal employment, boost earnings for families with infants, and reduce infant care costs. Additionally, businesses would benefit from decreased job turnover, increased productivity, and more female leadership. This reinforces the idea that paid family leave is beneficial not just for families but for the broader economy as well.

Public Health Benefits

The analysis links paid leave to improved food security, reduced infant hospitalizations and mortality, increased breastfeeding rates, better postpartum health for mothers, and a decrease in severe child maltreatment. These public health benefits underscore the policy's potential to promote public health and reduce long-term healthcare costs.

Reduced Societal Costs

The program is expected to lead to significant cost savings in healthcare, special education, criminal justice, and subsidized child care. By supporting families during critical periods, paid family leave can help mitigate long-term societal costs. We’ve seen in other contexts how this kind of short-term assistance can help bridge the gap for some people and enable them to achieve better long-term economic stability.

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Any policy that can return hundreds of million dollars in annual net benefits is worth considering for policymakers. This is not to say that paid family leave is a silver bullet that will solve all our problems by any means, but it does seem to make things better for a lot of people. 

Some people may still be negatively affected by a paid family leave program. I’ve written before about how different firms feel the costs and benefits of these programs differently. Policymakers who are excited about the topline benefit number should also be thinking about how they can use these social dividends to help support the people and businesses that might be individually worse off as a result of this policy. 

This type of comprehensive policy analysis provides the most useful information to policymakers. Doing this type of analysis, however,  would be impossible without the contributions of academic research. Analysts need academics to create this rich literature so we can understand all the impacts a policy might have, and policymakers need analysts to wade through all that research and pull out these comprehensive insights to guide their decisionmaking process.

Good policy analysis reveals the big picture

Last month, I attended the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management’s annual conference. This was a meeting of people from seemingly every academic discipline whose research was at all related to public policy. More than many other conferences, APPAM is a great opportunity to learn about new developments in some of the fields that impact our work as policy analysts.

The first session I attended was focused on the impacts of paid family leave programs. Paid family leave is the policy that allows new parents to take paid time off work when they give birth to or adopt a child. Usually people who take paid leave do not earn 100% of their paycheck while on leave, but it still puts more money into the pockets of people to take time off work to bond with their children.

All of the presenters asked slightly different questions about paid leave policies, but there was one conclusion that was consistent across all three papers: paid family leave policies do not do a good job of keeping new mothers attached to the labor force. 

Viewed through the narrow lens of labor economics, it seemed as though paid family leave was an ineffective policy. These papers touched on some ancillary impacts, but these presentations were largely focused on the labor market. 

This is one of the most important differences between academic research and policy analysis: academics can focus on getting the most accurate results possible on a single aspect of a policy, while analysts need to synthesise all the information they can find about a particular policy to look at it holistically. 

In the case of paid family leave, we as analysts should not just be interested in the labor market impacts, but in every way this could change peoples lives. I would have loved to hear more discussion about the poverty impacts of paid family leave, or more about how paid family leave impacted the firms that had to respond to this new policy.

Another important consideration is how this might lead to intergenerational effects. With any policy that impacts children, especially newborns, we need to consider not just what the effects are today but what sort of investment we are making in the long run. A robust paid family leave policy could potentially contribute to better developmental outcomes for children, improved health for both parents and children, higher wages in the future, and other positive impacts that come from a small boost delivered early on. 

Additionally, policy analysts need to keep our research focused on policies that could reasonably exist. For example, it isn’t feasible for policy makers to implement a paid family leave program that would pay individuals 300% of their salary for a full year. It’s obviously not sustainable, so policy analysts shouldn’t waste time exploring it. It might be an interesting question for an academic to approach though, just to see if there are any interesting insights we can glean from such an outlandish policy idea.

Policy analysis is inherently interdisciplinary. To see the whole picture on certain issues, analysts need to account for information from multiple perspectives. I enjoyed all the papers I heard about paid family leave at this conference and I feel much better prepared to account for the labor market impacts of paid family leave. Still, my analyst brain was left wanting a much broader discussion about all of the potential impacts.

Ohio economists: mass deportations could undermine economy

In a survey released this morning by Scioto Analysis, 14 of 20 Ohio economists surveyed thought that mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would significantly reduce Ohio’s gross domestic product. President-Elect Donald Trump has stated that he intends to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country soon after taking office. If this policy is carried out, local police will be responsible for detaining and holding immigrants in conjunction with state and federal law enforcement agencies. 

Rachel Wilson from Wittenberg University agreed that Ohio’s economy would shrink, writing “Not only will it be reduced by immigrants production but because of their missing demand. Immigrants do not come and work in a vacuum. They spend the money they make creating additional demand for goods and [services]. They often have a high marginal propensity to consume from each dollar they earn.”

Of the remaining six economists, three were uncertain about the impact on gross state product and three disagreed deportations would significantly reduce gross state product.

“The share of undocumented workers is small in Ohio,” said Bob Gitter of Ohio Wesleyan University, “Deportations would not have a significant impact.”

In addition to significantly reducing Ohio’s economy, 15 out of 20 economists disagreed that mass deportations would ease the burden on Ohio’s safety net. Some policymakers argue that undocumented immigrants take advantage of publicly funded social services while not paying taxes to support those services, but economists in the survey disagreed.

Kathryn Wilson from Kent State says “Estimates are that undocumented immigrants pay more than $250 million in taxes within the state of Ohio per year. There would be some reduction in education expenses within Ohio if there were mass deportation, but most social safety net programs are not available to undocumented immigrants. I expect that the loss in tax revenue would more than offset the reduction in costs within Ohio.”

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel is a panel of over 40 Ohio Economists from over 30 Ohio higher educational institutions conducted by Scioto Analysis. The goal of the Ohio Economic Experts Panel is to promote better policy outcomes by providing policymakers, policy influencers, and the public with the informed opinions of Ohio’s leading economists. Individual responses to all surveys can be found here.

3 recommendations to improve federal policy analysis

Earlier this month, the Office of Management and Budget released its draft report to Congress on the many cost-benefit analyses the federal government performed during fiscal year 2023. The report covers a lot of topics, touching on major regulations federal agencies analyzed over the past year and their impacts at the federal and state levels. 

Later on in the report, there is a chapter that includes recommendations to reform the regulatory process. Below are the three recommendations that we at Scioto Analysis are paying the most attention to in the coming years. 

A Government-Wide Approach to Improve Benefit-Cost Analysis

Currently, government agencies do much of their analytical work independently. However, as our methods for identifying impacts improve, we are seeing that regulations in one agency might impact outcomes in another. Because of this, the authors of this report suggest that federal regulators begin to take a more collaborative approach to analyzing federal regulators. By working across agencies, analysts can overcome common analytical challenges, share valuable insights, and enhance the overall quality of regulatory decisions.

Quantifying the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases Using the Best Available Evidence

In the realm of environmental policy, understanding the true cost of greenhouse gas emissions is crucial. The report advises that agencies should rely on the most up-to-date scientific evidence when estimating the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions. This recommendation is timely, considering the rapid advancements in climate science and the evolving understanding of how these emissions impact the planet.

The 2023 memorandum from the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases serves as a guiding document, encouraging agencies to exercise professional judgment in selecting the most appropriate estimates for their analyses. By grounding regulatory decisions in the best available evidence, we can ensure that policies are both scientifically sound and effective in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change.

We’ve seen with the first Trump administration and the Biden administration how quickly measures like the social cost of carbon can change. We might expect another dramatic change in this value come January. Hopefully agencies can cut through the politics and rely on the best evidence with these measures.

Distributional Analysis Under Incomplete Information

Public policy often involves navigating tradeoffs, particularly when it comes to balancing distributional equity with maximizing net benefits. At Scioto Analysis, we talk about the equity-efficiency tradeoff every time we do an analysis. In such cases, agencies are encouraged to consider statutory provisions, public input, and their own historical practices in making these decisions.

Consistency is key. Maintaining a standardized approach in how distributional concerns are addressed can lead to fairer outcomes. Additionally, the report suggests exploring compensatory measures, such as grants or spending programs, to mitigate undesirable distributional effects. This approach not only promotes equity but also ensures that the benefits of regulation are broadly shared across society.

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These recommendations reflect some of the most important challenges facing policy analysts going forward. Understanding how to collaborate with experts from other fields, using the best available evidence, and developing solid empirical methods to perform distributional analysis are key topics that are going to drive this discipline forward. These conversations are happening at the federal level, and hopefully we can apply these same techniques to state and local policies as well.