Knowledge of our changing demography can serve as both foundation and frame for how to achieve greater social, economic, environmental, and health equity in North Carolina. After describing how disruptive demographics are transforming the our state, this essay highlights a set of equity issues undergirding our shifting demography and concludes with a set of tools and strategies to make North Carolina a place where equity, inclusion, and belonging is the new normal.
In a recent episode of his award-winning show, “United Shades of America,” W. Kamau Bell interviews a Black man about systemic racism in America who said, “This country is not designed for us and, in fact, is designed against us.” As an African American, this observation triggered three critical questions.
With COVID-19 cases on the rise, much uncertainty remains about how much more damage the pandemic will inflict on the U.S. economy, particularly on certain sectors and small businesses. What is clear, however, is that many businesses will continue to require infusions of capital to stay afloat, and that private sector capital providers will need to play a role in long-term recovery efforts. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how those providers will need to shift their approach to risk assessment in the post-COVID world, and what opportunities might be created for investors who can solve two outstanding issues.
Cities increasingly will have to demonstrate a strong commitment to reputational equity to remain attractive places to live, work, play, and do business given the racially and ethnically disparate impacts of Covid-19 pandemic and recent senseless killings of unarmed African Americans that spawned a nationwide protest movement. We leverage evidence-based best practices of inclusive and equitable development from the research literature to devise a reputational equity checklist—a portfolio of strategies, policies, tactics, procedures and practices cities will need to embrace to dismantle all forms of “Isms” and “Phobias” that are principally responsible for the major divisions that exist in American society today.
Public opinion polls reveal Americans are turning to companies with purpose and ethics to lead us through the profound anxiety and crises we are currently experiencing as a nation. We developed a corporate reputational equity checklist that will enable firms to brand or rebrand themselves as inclusive and equitable places to work, as well as position their companies as a collective of civically engaged corporate citizens poised and willing to address society’s most pressing ills, including systemic racism.
Cryptocurrency has its critics, but it’s becoming an increasingly mainstream option for retail and institutional investors alike. In this Kenan Insight, we share some thoughts from former Co-president of Morgan Stanley Zoe Cruz and Rethinc. Labs Faculty Director Eric Ghysels on whether crypto has reached a tipping point for adoption by individual investors.
Workplaces are under pressure to be more inclusive due to public demands and rapidly changing demographics in the U.S. workforce. These commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) aren't just moral, they're crucial to business prosperity. In this Kenan Insight, we explore strategies for startups to employ and explain why starting early is key to success.
The nursing profession in the United States was experiencing a labor shortage and facing diversity and inclusion challenges prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Magnifying these problems was a shift in the nation’s population, both geographically and demographically. The result was changes in both where nurses are needed in the healthcare system and the nursing skill set required to address healthcare needs of a far more diverse clientele of patients—in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, age, living arrangements, socioeconomic status and primary language.
On January 20, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will become the 46th president of the United States. In this Kenan Insight, we look at what the Biden administration might mean for the economy and business activity in 2021, including what Biden's highest priorities are, what we can expect in both his and Congress's first 100 days and what we can learn from the divisiveness of the elections and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Considerable scholarly analysis and media attention has documented the racially disparate impact of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Constituting 13 percent of the general population, Blacks reportedly account for 25 percent of those that have tested positive and 39 percent of the COVID-related deaths in the United States.
People of color are overrepresented relative to their shares of the total population in coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. The same is true for people living in over-crowded multigenerational households. Because people of color are more likely to live in multigenerational households than are Whites, the pandemic is having a double whammy effect in communities of color throughout the U.S.
Despite advocacy from governmental officials and parents alike, we urge caution in the reopening of public schools before the coronavirus pandemic is fully under control. We are especially concerned about the premature re-opening of schools in impoverished and flood-prone urban and rural environments.
During the past 40 years, the income gap between top and bottom earners has expanded exponentially, with the top 1% controlling about 20% of national income and the bottom 50% holding less than 13%. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the role of two factors contributing to regional inequalities in the U.S and Europe: job automation and telecommuting.
Seven powerful demographic trends—analogous to gale force wind gusts in an adverse weather event—constitute potentially powerful disruptors of business and commerce in the years ahead. Four of the gale force demographic disruptors—slowing total and foreign-born population growth, white population loss, and declining fertility— have evolved over the past several decades.
Financial hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are hitting low-income families in North Carolina especially hard, according to a new report released by the North Carolina Community Action Association (NCCAA). The study was commissioned by NCCAA to gauge how the pandemic was affecting its efforts to combat poverty and facilitate self-sufficiency in low-income communities.
As we return to a new normal post-pandemic, organizational and individual work arrangements will have to be designed to take into account that employees will range from not wanting to give up their autonomy of working from home to those who will want to come rushing back to the physical office. However, a large swath of the workforce will be somewhere in the middle. They would like to mix and match the benefits of working remotely and the advantages of coming to physical offices.
This report catalogs work by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, in conjunction with the North Carolina CEO Leadership Forum, to distill insights from top academic researchers, business leaders and policy experts on how the economy is changing and what this means for the future of North Carolina. We describe seven forces currently reshaping the U.S. (and in some cases, global) economy.
In May 2020, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise established the North Carolina CEO Leadership Forum to provide private sector leaders with a venue to comment on the opportunities and challenges facing the North Carolina economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic has distorted business activity in the short term, it has also created new long-term growth opportunities for North Carolina. Next week, the Kenan Institute and the forum will publish the research white paper Seven Forces Reshaping the Economy. The full paper details seven major economic and business trends, or forces, the COVID-19 pandemic has produced that will permanently alter both the U.S. and North Carolina economies. This summary outlines those forces, the opportunities available to North Carolina and policy recommendations the state should consider to capitalize on a rapidly changing economy.