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650 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 6 (2013)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0650 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION Evaluating the Effects of the Great Recession By SHELDON DANZIGER The Great Recession, as officially dated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, lasted from December 2007 through June 2009.1 It was the most severe recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with both gross domestic product (GDP) and the number of jobs declining by about 6 percent and median family incomes by about 8 percent. It lasted longer (18 months) than any recent recession and was precipitated by a collapse in housing values and stock prices that negatively affected the economic well-being and security of most U.S. families. Although the recession officially ended four years ago, the economy has yet to fully recover. In July 2013, the national unemployment rate was 7.4 percent, below the October 2009 peak rate of 10.0 percent, but well above the prere- cession November 2007 rate of 4.7 percent.2 These monthly, point-in-time unemployment rates understate the percentage of workers who experienced any unemployment during the Great Recession era. That is, in any month, some of the unemployed find new jobs while other workers are laid off, so the number expe- riencing unemployment increases over time even if the flows into and out of jobs leave the unemployment rate unchanged. Farber (2011) documents, that 16 percent of all workers expe- rienced a job loss at some time during the Sheldon Danziger is president of the Russell Sage Foundation. When this volume was prepared, he was H. J. Meyer Dis tinguished University Professor of Public Policy and director of the National Poverty Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. He is a John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. NOTE: Larry Bartels, Alan Blinder, Sarah Burgard, Andrea Campbell, Ariel Kalil, Lucie Kalousova, Lindsay Owens, Robert Moffitt, Fabian Pfeffer, Matthew Rutledge, Michael Sances, Luke Shaefer, and Sarah Turner provided valuable comments on a previous draft. DOI: 10.1177/0002716213500454 ANNALS, AAPSS, 650, November 2013 6