Burkhauser was panelist at Bush economic forum

By Nancy Chan '05

Richard Burkhauser, professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell, was one of 240 guests invited to President George Bush's economic forum at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, Aug. 13.

The three-hour forum was attended by government policy-makers, small investors, business owners, industry experts, workers, business ethicists, union members, corporate executives, economists and business students.

The forum, said Burkhauser, "gave the president a chance to listen to people he normally would not hear from."

Burkhauser spoke at the session on small investors and retirement security because of his expertise in the areas of Social Security, disability, retirement and pension policies. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, chaired this discussion session, which was the first of four sessions that Bush attended.

During the sessions, the president and participants discussed the decline in the stock market and the concerns small investors have for the economy in general and their retirement savings in particular. The consensus, said Burkhauser, was that, while the United States economy is going through a difficult time, the long-term prospects are strong and that this is not a time to give up on stocks as a long-term investment. Several panelists, he said, urged better education for workers on how to invest for the long term.

Burkhauser noted that it is not only important to educate workers but also the spouses of workers. "Cornell University is, in fact, doing just that," he said. "We are educating people, including traditional homemakers, who for the most part will outlive their husbands and be forced to make important decision on how to manage their life savings. That's part of our land-grant mission."

Summing up his comments at the forum, Burkhauser said: "The economy is fundamentally sound and if the current economic downturn is similar to those in the 1980s and 1990s, and I believe it is, we will soon be back on the path of economic growth."

Burkhauser, who received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and joined the Cornell faculty in 1998, is chairman of the Department of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology. For more than two decades, his research has focused on the impact of government policy on the behavior and income distribution of Americans. He currently is co-principal investigator of a Cornell center studying the impact of government policies on the employment of working-age people with disabilities.