Social problems continuing despite improved economy

In the United States in the years after the Great Recession, pessimists had a lot of material to work with. Economic doomsayers looked at the stubbornly elevated unemployment rate and discerned a depressing new normal, in which technological and social change had rendered many Americans simply unemployable, and stagnation loomed ahead. Social pessimists looked at the disarray in working-class culture, the retreat from marriage and child rearing and civic and religious life, the spread of loneliness and depression and addiction, and saw a society where ordinary forms of flourishing were slipping out of reach.

Five years ago it was easy to tell a story where these two problems were straightforwardly conjoined, with economic disappointment driving social dysfunction and vice versa.

More recently, though, the problems have partially decoupled. The deepest economic pessimists have turned out to be wrong, for now at least, about how fast the 21st-century U.S. economy can grow and how many jobs it can create. But as the economic picture has improved, the social picture hasn’t. The birthrate keeps declining, the opioid epidemic is dragging down American life expectancy, young people’s mental health seems to be worsening, and new data showing a rising suicide rate offered a grim accompaniment last week to the tragedies of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain.

Since this column sometimes inclines to grim readings of our situation, it’s important to stress how genuinely good recent economic trends have been. Yes, structural problems are still present — wage growth should be faster, workforce participation should be higher. But a lot of commentary circa 2012 seemed to assume that unemployment might never get down below 4 percent, either because Obamacare was killing jobs and a debt crisis was looming, or because Republican obstruction was sabotaging the economy, or because technological change was automating too many jobs and dooming the lessskilled to the dole.

And yet: The hope that material growth would heal our social problems hasn’t been vindicated so far. And as long as that’s the case, the improved economy shouldn’t be treated just as an end unto itself, but as an opportunity to look for social cures as well.

For policymakers, that quest for healing starts with not doing any harm. If the economy is really cooking for the first time in almost 20 years, well, then let it cook. Don’t freak out about deficits in the absence of inflation; don’t draw up plans to nationalize the labor force; don’t start an ill-conceived trade war.

Instead, see how far this expansion can go and how high it can lift people before making any sweeping, ideologically driven moves. And to the extent that you do make moves, design them for the social crisis — whether that means wage subsidies or a larger child tax credit or opioid-related interventions or something else that might shore up Middle America’s crumbling foundations.

Of course, the wall-towall frenzy of the Trump era, in which everyone is constantly being asked to take sides in a battle to the death, makes these kinds of cultural efforts harder to formulate and pursue. But they’re what our moment, with its partially regained prosperity and ongoing cultural crisis, may be asking of us — because this welcome growth won’t last forever, and social problems unsolved now will be that much worse when it is gone.