Wages for the lowest-paid workers in Wisconsin have risen faster than pay for higher earners in recent years, but workers still face challenges.
That’s according to the new “State of Working Wisconsin” report from the High Road Strategy Center, an economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The report is released annually around Labor Day to provide insights into how workers are doing in the economy.
Whether information on elections and current events comes from a dedicated civics course or another type of social studies class, University of Wisconsin-Madison education researcher Jeremy Stoddard said covering those topics is vital to creating informed, engaged citizens. It can also reduce political polarization.
“Schools might be the only place where they actually get exposed to different views on key issues of the day,” Stoddard told “Wisconsin Today.” “Otherwise, people get their news filtered in through one way … If they’re not doing it in schools, that’s a real problem.”
The building’s homage to Flemish Renaissance Revival architecture − City Hall’s design − resonated with board member Sissel Schroeder.
“I think that’s what made this stand out compared to other Postmodern buildings in Milwaukee,” said Schroeder, a University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropology professor who voted to support 100 East’s nomination.
The area’s labor “shed,” or the areas in which the workforce now lives, “is getting bigger and bigger … and spilling into neighboring communities,” said Steven Deller, distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s department of agricultural and applied economics.
Extended periods of supervision after release from prison do little to improve public safety, according to Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor of criminal law. The long terms “may interfere with the ability of those on supervision to sustain work, family life and other pro-social connections to their communities,” she wrote in a 2019 study examining 200 revocation cases.
“Fewer, more safety-focused conditions will lead to fewer unnecessary revocations and more consistency in revocation for people whose behavior poses a serious threat to public safety,” she added.
UW-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs professor J. Michael Collins discusses low unemployment, higher pay and stock market growth as economic indicators amid experiences of low wage workers.
But the number of diverse children’s books and creators has significantly increased since then, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center found. The CCBC is based in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education and receives funding from the state Department of Public Instruction. It reviews the diversity of both content and creators of about 3,500 children’s and young adult books each year.
“Children are curious learners, and are most naturally interested in themselves and also in understanding the world they live in,” CCBC Director Tessa Schmidt said. “Books should offer children the opportunity to see themselves, as well as people in their local and global communities.”
“It’s a small factor compared to not liking the candidates or not caring about the outcome,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. His university colleagues published a 2017 study on the effect of the law.
While there’s a “much larger body of evidence” suggesting beneficial metabolic effects of akkermansia, the studies pointing to potential downsides should not be ignored, said Federico Rey, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies the relationship between the gut microbiome and cardiometabolic disease. “The overwhelming data suggests that akkermansia is good for your metabolic health, but there’s also data suggesting that it might not be good for other conditions,” he added. “There’s a lot of moving parts we still have to understand before making general recommendations.”
“The distribution of offices does not align with the distribution of voters,” said Barry C. Burden, who heads the Election Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW-Madison labor economist and High Road Strategy Center associate director Laura Dresser discusses the group’s State of Working Wisconsin 2024 report on job numbers, wage growth and gender pay gaps.
Sarah Halpern-Meekin, a sociologist at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me that “the majority” of people with low incomes make cashless transactions — on apps like Cash App, for instance.
“We have little insights and micro-epiphanies all the time, but we usually forget about them a few moments later,” Dahl, who is also a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, told HuffPost. “Taking a few moments to step back and make note of the ways we are learning and growing is a great way to build some muscle memory around self-discovery.”
Tyler Lark, research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the report’s co-authors, said some lands have been restored to natural ecosystems. Others, those perhaps currently populated by invasive species, could be the answer to big questions the country is facing about where to house increasing renewable-energy development.
“We ideally want to avoid our best and most productive ag lands but we also don’t want to encroach on pristine or native ecosystems,” Lark explained. “Formerly cropped lands might hit that sweet spot in the middle.”
These days, she’s (Lynda Barry) been busy teaching. She’s an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She’s written several books on the subject of drawings and comics, and how to do and make them.
“We as humans are very social creatures,” said Kathryn Howell, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So when bad things happen to us, we want to be together and connected to others.”
“One story is that people are short of cash, and they need extra hours and the only way to pick up extra hours is by picking up a short-term job,” said Christopher Taber, chairman of the economics department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Another story is that it’s easier to work two jobs now than it was before.”
Patients have been harassed or mocked for wearing masks in public, Dr. Jeannina Smith noted, despite international and national medical organizations emphasizing the importance of mask wearing as a mitigation tactic for illnesses. Hill has experienced this first hand.”You can’t look at someone and know that they’re receiving immunosuppression for an organ transplant or an autoimmune condition, and they remain at risk,” Smith said.
Do you have any advice for students shopping for a personal loan?
“Be realistic. Make sure you understand the terms of the loan and have calculated your expected loan payment,” says James M. Johannes, a professor emeritus at the Wisconsin School of Business. “Recognize that these scheduled debt payments will in almost all cases severely and adversely impact your ability to borrow to fund a car, house, etc. after you graduate until the loan is repaid. Be patient! Recognize that life is a journey, and you might have to live frugally until the loans are repaid.”
Research this week published by the University of Toronto’s Jason Choi, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Rishabh Kirpalani and Duong Dang, and New York University’s Diego Perez highlights the extent of America’s ‘exorbitant privilege.’
In their report ‘Exorbitant privilege and the sustainability of U.S. public debt’ they note that this special status “increases the maximal sustainable debt by approximately 22% of GDP.”
In other words, the U.S. government can sustainably borrow as much as 22% of GDP more than it would otherwise be able to if it weren’t the supplier of the global reserve currency.
One of those O.C. activists was Carolina Sarmiento, a community studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who sits on the board of El Centro Cultural de México. The Santa Ana nonprofit uses music and art classes to organize residents around issues such as gentrification and cultural identity, and it also puts together one of the biggest Día de los Muertos commemorations in Southern California.
“There were few foundations that would allow us to do the work we do, the way we do, and the endowment allowed us to do that,” Sarmiento said. She credits Ross with “leading the conversation in philanthropy on how to gift responsibly in a way that they’re not co-opting social movements but letting community-based groups lead.”
Written by Leonard Polzin, dairy markets and policy outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Climate change will increase the risk of foodborne illness from consumption of raw produce,” said study author Professor Jeri Barak, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It’s not surprising that a host is altered by disease,” said Barak. “What’s interesting is how these changes affect other members of the bacteria community, in addition to the pathogen causing the disease.”
Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains what the process of targeted races means.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated loneliness among adolescents, young adults and older people,” said Bradford Brown, UW-Madison professor emeritus of human development.
Bill Banholzer, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a wakesurfing fan, said there is a body of research indicating that waves created by high winds are more powerful than any generated by boats.
Interview about heart health for dogs and cats with Dr. Heidi Kellihan, a UW-Madison veterinarian.
Clare Dahl, a financial and life span educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, supports the change.
“Any time that access to free tax filing is expanded, it’s good news for everyone,” said Dahl, whose division supports the volunteer-run Richard Dilley Tax Center.
“I think all of these non-major party candidates are quickly shrinking away (in voter support),” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He correctly deduced that “favorable conditions of the atmosphere” led to rapid bacterial growth. As a 1927 guide to dairy production from the University of Wisconsin very poetically put it: “A thick, sultry atmosphere usually precedes thunder showers and provides favorable conditions for the growth of milk-souring bacteria.”
Host Karma Chávez returns to chat with Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, a professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, about her new book, The Chosen We: Black Women’s Empowerment in Higher Education. They talk about how, as a white woman, Winkle-Wagner built trust with the Black women she interviewed for the book, and how her relationship to Black feminist theory–especially the idea of collective liberation–developed over the years.
“If we go all the way back to the beginning of COVID, we are now starting to see that every year we’re having two peaks: a big peak in the wintertime and a lesser peak in the summertime,” Dr. Jonathan Temte said in an interview on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “We’re right in the middle of that summer peak right now.”
Temte is associate dean for public health and community engagement at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He also serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 Vaccine Work Group and the Adult RSV Vaccine Work Group.
A Wisconsin doctor explains what you need to know about the next round of COVID vaccines. Then, we explore the effectiveness of warning labels for social media sites. Then, we hear some Wisconsin folks tunes that were recently added to the National Recording Registry.
“I haven’t seen ultrasound technology used in this way, but this type of neuromodulation has significant potential to change how we think about and enhance mindfulness,” says University of Wisconsin–Madison social psychologist Hadley Rahrig, who also studies that state of mind.
Historically, union leaders have been closely aligned with the Democratic Party, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But the modern rank-and-file members, much like those at Local 180 in Racine, are more split, Burden said.
“There’s a little bit of a gap, I would say, between where unions as organizations stand relative to the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris, and where average union voters are,” he said.
What advice do you have for parents who want to open a bank account for their child?
“To put into their children’s minds the importance of compounding of interest and that time is the great help in building wealth. also, to discuss the importance of FDIC insured banks vs. non,” says Phil Greenwood, senior lecturer in the Management and Human Resources Department at the Wisconsin School of Business.
What constitutes “folk music”?
Though musical genres are, by nature, difficult to define, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus Jim Leary gave WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” a fairly succinct answer: “Fundamentally, folk music is the grassroots music; the musical vernacular of distinctive locales and cultural groups.”
In general, people in higher-risk groups such as older patients or people with compromised immune systems should get the new shot as soon as possible, said Ajay Sethi, a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies infectious diseases. He advised those who recently had COVID-19 to wait to get the new shot until three months after infection.
According to Journey North, by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, hummingbirds can find their way back to the area where they bred the year before, sometimes reportedly returning to the same exact site they were before.
Gary Lupyan, a UW-Madison psychology professor, is looking at why some people report high levels of inner speech and others have little or none. In a recent study involving UW students, those with more inner speech did better at two language tests than those with less inner speech, but there was no difference on more visual and math-oriented tasks.
Achieving the designation is only half the battle, said Anthony Hernandez, educational policy studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The other half is competing against a pool of more than 500 other Hispanic-serving institutions for federal funding.
People wondering if their identity may have been stolen can check their credit reports for signs of fraud, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Homeowners, whether they know it or not, definitely are taking on more risks,” says Philip Mulder, an assistant professor of risk and insurance at the University of Wisconsin’s business school. A 2023 paper, for instance, found that U.S. residential properties are overvalued by $121 billion to $237 billion for current flood risks alone.
Direct, free and easy to use online filing was blocked for two decades in a lobbying campaign by the tax preparation industry, ProPublica reported in 2017. Former University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Don Moynihan has also written an account of how the original free-filing program hobbled.
WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” checked in with Christy Remucal, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about whether Madisonians should be concerned, and if so, to what degree.
Katherine J. Cramer, a professor of American Politics at UW-Madison and author of the acclaimed book The Politics of Resentment, notes, “Rural voters in those places… could be the deciding factor.”
In the summer of 2021, a research team led by entomology professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Rick Lindroth, encountered a severe spongy moth infestation in an aspen tree research plot near the university’s agricultural research station.
Extended periods of supervision after release from prison do little to improve public safety, according to Cecelia Klingele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor of criminal law. The long terms “may interfere with the ability of those on supervision to sustain work, family life and other pro-social connections to their communities,” she wrote in a 2019 study examining 200 revocation cases.
“Fewer, more safety-focused conditions will lead to fewer unnecessary revocations and more consistency in revocation for people whose behavior poses a serious threat to public safety,” she added.
The U.S. plans to draw down and store more than a billion tons of CO2 annually by 2050, more than one fifth of what it currently emits. For that to be possible, carbon removal would have to become one of the world’s largest industries in just a few decades, expanding by more than 40 percent each year. That’s far faster than most technologies develop—although it is comparable to the pace of solar panels and electric vehicles. “It’d be one of the biggest things humans have ever done,” says Gregory F. Nemet, a professor of public policy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who wrote a book called How Solar Energy Became Cheap. “One of the hardest things we’ve ever done. But not unprecedented.”
On today’s show host Douglas Haynes sits down with Heather Swan to talk about her new book “Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnections.” Heather Swan is a poet, writer, and lecturer in the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s English Department. Her book tells stories of human-insect connections through the lens of science and art, with a focus on the way we can connect across species.
Photodynamic therapy, used to kill skin cancer cells, may also be effective for healing burn wounds. That’s what our guests, UW-Madison surgeon Angela Gibson and medical physics professor Brian Pogue, hope to confirm through their newly funded research.
Beyond partnerships between the utilities, Alliant is also working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison College, Shell Global Solutions U.S. and the Electric Power Research Institute.
Oliver Schmitz is a professor in nuclear engineering and engineering physics at UW-Madison and director of the university’s Clean Energy Community Initiative. He said the Clean Energy Community Initiative helped Alliant craft its proposal for federal funding, and is providing support to the community benefits portion of the plan.
For those who are able to seize the moment, the attention can serve as a type of political currency to open doors and build credibility within the Democratic Party, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor Michael Wagner.
“Politicians are ambitious. Politicians who are local leaders in places where there’s a national convention have an opportunity to parlay that ambition into some dollars, into some connections. But it’s not a silver bullet to the next step up the political rung,” Wagner said.
Professor Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Centre of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, said such an approach was “ironic” given Trump openly called on Russia to hack Mrs Clinton’s emails in 2016.
“Russia, if you’re listening… I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” Trump said at the time.
Prof Culver said the restraint from the press in 2024 shows lessons have been learned from the “almost breathless coverage” of leaked emails in 2016.
Yi Fuxian, an expert on China’s demographics at the University of Wisconsin, says the country faces three major obstacles to reversing its shrinking population: low fertility desire, high child-raising costs and a climbing infertility rate.
Of these, “the sole challenge Beijing has any capacity to impact is the affordability issue,” Yi said.
At the national Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, which tracks the number of eggs the butterflies are laying, the counts are down, both in the Prairie State and the larger region, according to the project’s founder and coordinator Karen Oberhauser.
“The numbers are low throughout the Upper Midwest,” she said.
In 2003, as Paris sweltered through a heat wave that would go on to kill an estimated 15,000 people across France, one oasis of cooler air remained off limits: the city’s roughly 400 public parks. They were temporarily closed due to the danger of falling tree limbs.
“That basically deprived people of the one small sliver of green space that they might have had in order to find a slightly cooler atmosphere,” says Richard C. Keller a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003.
“People today don’t understand how young and vibrant and athletic and charismatic Jesse Jackson was on the podium,” said Stephen Lucas, professor emeritus of rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and co-author of “Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999.”
Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Fed increased interest rates to slow the economy and bring inflation down — and it looks like it’s working.
“They wanted to put the brakes on the economy,” Deller said. “They didn’t want to slam the brakes. That’s what happened in the early 1980s (when) inflation was so out of control.”
Citizen scientists are hobbyists and passionate amateurs, and data they generate is as valuable as anything produced by professional scientists. UW-Madison Arboretum Citizen Science Coordinator, Annie Isenbarger, described citizen science as a way of “deepening the average person’s connection with the natural world.”
