Federal Pension Research Articles

Promoting Return to Work After Vocational Rehabilitation Using a Work-Related Fitness App: Protocol for a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.

Retraining programs in vocational rehabilitation are often characterized by a low level of physical activity, even when targeting jobs with primarily physical demands. They might therefore be accompanied by a decline in functional capacity if the lack of physical activity is not compensated by increased activity during leisure time. The implementation of a work-related exercise app might be a promising approach to promoting a return to work in vocational rehabilitation. We developed the "WORKout-app" which provides exercise plans based on a comparison of the physical demands of the retraining profession and the current functional capacity. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of app-based exercise during vocational rehabilitation on perceived work ability (primary outcome), occupational self-efficacy, days of sick leave, and return to work (secondary outcomes). We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial with 2 arms (intervention: WORKout-app vs control: treatment as usual) in 4 cohorts of 5 vocational rehabilitation centers in Germany. Participants are nested within retraining classes per vocational rehabilitation center and per cohort assigned to either the intervention condition or the control condition. The target sample size at the participant level is 598. Measurement time points include baseline, the end of rehabilitation, 3 months after the end of rehabilitation, and 6 months after the end of rehabilitation. Linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models are performed to test for treatment differences in outcomes. This study is funded by the German Federal Pension Insurance. The trial is registered with the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS00030775) and approved by the Ethics Committee of the German Sport University Cologne (145/2022). The findings of the study will inform researchers and practitioners about the effectiveness of an exercise app developed to counteract the effects of physical inactivity during vocational rehabilitation. DERR1-10.2196/50200.

Retirement pension poverty among injured workers with long-term workers’ compensation claims

AbstractAchieving adequate incomes to sustain people in their retirement years is a challenge. This paper addresses poverty among injured workers of retirement age when they have been receiving workers’ compensation benefits. Guided by governmental management theory, we address procedures that have operated without media or scholarly attention, in order to highlight details in workers’ compensation retirement pension policy that contribute to injured worker poverty in older age in Ontario, Canada. We used a mixed methods approach, applying critical discourse analysis to explain (a) policies related to retirement income; (b) rationales that supported a legislative change that reduced retirement pensions; and (c) workers’ experiences of living with a workers’ compensation pension. Although workers’ compensation board retirement income policy was intended to make up for loss of contributions to the Canadian federal pension fund, the Ontario injured workers’ retirement pension now pays less than half of the amount workers would have received in the federal pension,a trend that is observable across Canadian provincial workers’ compensation boards. Legislative debates about the 1998 bill that halved the Ontario injured workers’ retirement pension centred on neoliberal logic of fiscal responsibility. Injured workers and key informants in this study expressed trepidation about injured workers’ financial futures.

Results of an Inpatient Preventive Health Care Program to Improve Quality of Life, Psychosocial Health, and Work Ability in Austria.

Objective: The Austrian Federal Pension Insurance (PVA) developed a preventive inpatient health program, "Gesundheitsvorsorge-Aktiv (GVA)," for patients with musculoskeletal disorders. Individualized modular interventions and therapeutical measures (movement optimization, movement motivation, and mental health) are designed to improve occupational participation by influencing lifestyle factors and health-related quality of life. The study aimed to evaluate the new prevention-oriented and more personalized inpatient health program GVA. Methods: Patients underwent a standard inpatient health program, with emphasis on exercise management, exercise motivation, or psychological aspects. Submodule-dependent outcomes were assessed in patients (n = 330) at the start, end of treatment, and 6months thereafter. Quality of Life (EQ-5D-5L), psychosocial aspects of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-D), and Work Ability Index (WAI) were queried. Results: The results consistently showed positive short and long-term effects. The subjective assessments of current work ability improved while the impairment of work performance was reduced. Positive changes in the psychosocial sphere were observed, alongside improvements in the health-related quality of life. Patients in the exercise optimization module performed better in all respects. Conclusion: In summary, GVA represents a valuable preventive health measure that leads to a holistic increase in well-being and can also ensure the maintenance of the ability to work.

Socio-demographic and socio-economic disparities in medical rehabilitation in Germany in 2019

Abstract Medical rehabilitation is a valuable component to restore physical and mental health, to prevent social isolation and to ensure a return to work. Due to the demographic change and the still increasing number of Post-Covid-19 patients, the demand for rehabilitation is still increasing. Latest, the COVID-19 pandemic elucidated that especially people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are disproportionally affected by health crisis. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of socio-demographic and socio-economic factors on quantitative exercise therapy in medical rehabilitation and to clarify the divergence of existing research findings. In our study we used data from 824.606 rehabilitation cases (German Federal Pension Insurance) and investigated the role of age and gender, marital status, social status and location towards inequalities in access to medical rehabilitation. Multiple linear regression and effect size calculation were used to show associations and to discuss the relation to clinical relevance. We were able to show a highly significant difference (P < 0.001) in access to exercise therapy in our study group. Patients aged 65+, women, single or widowed people, rehabilitants of low socioeconomic status or people located in the new federal states in Germany received shorter and less frequent exercise therapy. There are differences of up to 3.5 hours of treatment duration and 4.25 treatments per week, when disadvantaged social factors accumulate. However, despite the presented differences, the received treatments for the disadvantaged groups are still in the range of suggested minimum therapeutic requirements by the German Federal Pension Insurance. We could show a significant difference in rehabilitative therapy, which is solely based on social factors. There is an urgent need to draw special attention to the here discussed inequalities in access to medical rehabilitation for socially disadvantaged population and the overarching impact on society. Key messages • The social inequality in medical rehabilitation to the detriment of the socially disadvantaged population that we have identified must give rise to clear changes in order to establish social justice. • Equal opportunities and health quality assurance that address the individual needs of each patient should be the focus of socio-medical, policy development.

Claiming Union Widowhood: Race, Respectability, and Poverty in the Post-Emancipation South

Brandi Clay Brimmer's Claiming Union Widowhood examines how African American military widows fought to receive federal pensions in the decades after the American Civil War. In her deeply researched and persuasively argued book, Brimmer offers a grassroots view of how Black women asserted their claims to citizenship, civil rights, and “worthy widowhood” in the face of persistent racial and sexual prejudice (1).Brimmer builds on the works of historians who have documented how the Civil War pension system foreshadowed the social welfare programs of the twentieth century. Originating in 1862, with substantial revisions in 1879 and 1890, the pension system commanded up to 45 percent of the federal budget at its apex. Although popular with Union veterans, the pension remained politically contentious throughout the late nineteenth century. As Brimmer notes, though, the federal pension system was not designed with emancipated African Americans in mind. Denied access to legal marriage in slavery, Black widows faced challenges documenting and legitimizing their marital relationships. They also often lacked access to the kind of medical records necessary to document their husband's war wounds. Moreover, Black conceptions of marriage and family did not always fit into the Pension Bureau's narrow definitions. Brimmer argues that African Americans saw marriage as a hallmark of freedom and key component of their claims to citizenship, yet also continued to embrace a malleable understanding of marriage and family, shaped by the brutality of slavery and by the need to mitigate the impact of poverty in freedom. The federal pension provided only very modest payments, but for poor widows, they offered a necessary lifeline.Brimmer's study draws on a close reading of thirteen hundred pension files from Craven County, North Carolina. Occupied by Union forces under Ambrose Burnside in 1862, the city of New Bern and the adjacent community of James City (which grew out of a wartime refugee camp) became sites of intense Black politics and community activism during and after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, it was the epicenter of the “Black Second” congressional district, which elected four African Americans to seven terms until a violent white supremacist campaign in 1898 intimidated and disenfranchised most Black voters. This political and social community provides an important backdrop for the Brimmer's examination of Black military widows.Brimmer's approach allows for the experience of a few individual Black women to come into focus. Using their pension records and other records, Brimmer illuminates the lives of Charlotte Banks, Mary Lee, Louisa Powers, and Fanny Whitney. These women (and dozens others like them) struggled to persuade pension bureaucrats about the legitimacy of their claims and their worthiness to receive modest pension payments. To help them navigate the complex bureaucracy, Black women in New Bern turned to a pair of pension professionals, Edward W. Carpenter and Frederick C. Douglass. Carpenter, a white lawyer, and Douglass, the son of a US Colored Troops widow, helped them craft applications to meet the Pension Bureau's requirements and file appeals when their applicants were denied or their pensions withdrawn. Brimmer emphasizes the role of the broader community in the pension process: friends, neighbors, and veterans provided important testimony to document the widows’ family relationships, their husbands’ military service, and their worthiness for a pension.Black widows faced constant threats that their pensions would be taken away. Fears that the system would be abused dominated the political conversation over the federal pension throughout its history, and Black pensioners faced more than their fair share of fraud accusations. Brimmer documents extensive surveillance of Black women in New Bern by pension agents. If they remarried, had children after the death of their soldier husband, or engaged in behavior that the Pension Bureau officials deemed immoral, they risked losing their pension. Black military widows fought vigorously to preserve their pensions, turning to the broader community to support their claims.In the book's conclusion, Brimmer provocatively draws connections between the struggles of Black women to secure pensions in the late nineteenth century and those faced by military widows and welfare rights activists in the twentieth century. She argues that persistent “racialized gender inequalities and class biases that stigmatized black women” have shaped federal policy and limited Black women's civil rights and citizenship (213).Claiming Union Widowhood is an important contribution that speaks to several significant historiographical conversations. Historians interested in the long history of emancipation, the African American family, the Black military experience, and Civil War veterans would benefit from reading this excellent study. It sheds new light on the relationship between race, gender, and poverty in Reconstruction and afterward that should inspire future research.

Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North

Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North

Work-Related Medical Rehabilitation (WMR) Care in Psychosomatic Medicine in Comparison with Other Indications

So far, there is little data on the quality of work-related medical rehabilitation (WMR)-care in the routine, including from a user perspective. The best data are still available for orthopedic rehabilitation. For psychosomatic rehabilitation, a special need for WMR is known due to the long periods of inability to work and the frequent early retirements. It is unclear how precisely and to what extent WMR services are provided in routine care. In 2019, a representative sample (N=34.887) of employed insured persons up to 65 years old, stratified by indication, was surveyed by the German Pension Insurance fund six months after their rehabilitation with the self-assessment tool MBOR-R. In addition, standard data of the rehabilitation provider (RSD) were collected, from which WMR-related therapeutic offer data (KTL) could be taken. Rehabilitants were asked about their return to work as part of the catamnesis. The participation rate in the survey is 29%, complete survey and RSD data are available after exclusion of addiction rehabilitation and post-operative-procedures from a total of 6.128 rehabilitants, of which N=1.460 after psychosomatic rehabilitation. The comparison of indications shows that 37% of the rehabilitation patients need WMR, which is by far the highest rate. WMR care in psychosomatic rehabilitation is still the best developed and most targeted, but still far from the standards required by the pension insurance. More than 50% of the rehabilitants, even after WMR, rate their employment-related treatment offer as too low. These subjective rehabilitation assessments in the MBOR-R questionnaire prove to be a relevant factor for the prognosis of the return to work quotes, in contrast to the documented KTL services, in addition to the need indicators of WMR and the implementation of WMR. The results suggest that in the field of psychosomatic rehabilitation, too, increased efforts should be made in the future to offer and expand basic WMR services for all rehabilitants and core and special services for rehabilitants with poor work ability and an increased risk of permanent work disability (BBPL) in routine care. The scope and design of MBOR measures should also be quality-optimized from the user's perspective in order to achieve the greatest possible effects.Limitations of the results result from the restriction to rehabilitants of the German Federal Pension Insurance, to limited participation rates, Limitations of the interpretability of the therapy documentations and due to the study design with a one-point measurement and remembered pre-values.

“Justice Has a Compensation”: The Ex-Slave Public and Federal Pensions, 1890–1935

This article examines the grassroots activities of poor, elderly ex-slaves and their descendants for reparative justice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through petitions to government officials and membership in ex-slave organizations, these Black men and women publicly reimagined “ex-slave” as a patriotic, hard-working, and entitled status worthy of government benefits already extended to Civil War veterans and their widows. Their campaign for a federal pension opened a new sphere of African American politics during an era of disenfranchisement that demonstrated how the most vulnerable people in a postslavery society could organize for reparative justice. These unlikely activists faced challenges from government agencies, politicians, and other Black leaders who sought to relegate slavery and the experiences of formerly enslaved people to the margins of a modern US society. Their efforts to cohere an “ex-slave public” has, nevertheless, inspired subsequent generations to seek reparative justice.

Harper and Its Aftermath

In Davis v. Michigan Department of Treasury, the Supreme Court ruled that states may not tax the pensions of former federal workers without imposing a like tax on the retirement income of former state employees. Noting that Michigan had agreed to refund the state income taxes Paul Davis had paid on his federal pension over the years in controversy, the Court stated that he was entitled to a refund. It then remanded the case to allow the Michigan courts and state lawmakers to determine how state and federal retirees were to be treated equally in the future-both taxed according to the same schedule or exempted from tax-and to resolve the thousands of refund claims by federal pensioners that had been or might be filed.Davis provoked a whirlwind of activity in state courts and legislatures across the country, because two dozen states taxed state retirement income more lightly than federal pensions, contrary to the Supreme Court's understanding of the doctrine of intergovernmental tax immunity. Davis left no doubt that states must equalize the taxation of federal and state retirees following the issuance of the Court's opinion. But the Court's bare mention of Michigan's concession to refund Davis's taxes failed to answer clearly the question of whether states owed some form of retroactive relief to all similarly situated federal retirees who had paid higher taxes than had state pensioners. Not surprisingly, in view of the number of courts that issued rulings, the enormous sums at stake, and the confusion swirling around the Supreme Court's recent retroactivity rulings, state courts disagreed over whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause mandates a remedy for past wrongs. Many, including Virginia's Supreme Court, concluded that Davis established a requirement of equal treatment solely for the future. Accordingly, they refused to order refunds to federal retirees or to impose a retroactive tax on state pensions to secure equality after the fact.

Predictors of the Use of Different Occupational Rehabilitation Measures: A Comparison of Integration Measures, Partial Qualifications and Full Training

Occupational rehabilitation is an essential part of supporting return to work by the statutory pension insurance institutes. It is useful if health-related restrictions threaten the ability to work. There are various forms of occupational rehabilitation which differ considerably in terms of content, structure, duration, intensity of care and costs. The aim of the study was to identify personal characteristics that can influence the use of three different occupational rehabilitation measures. All rehabilitants who underwent an occupational rehabilitation in the cooperating occupational rehabilitation centre (Berufsförderungswerk) from 2009 to 2014 under the funding of the German Federal Pension Fund were included in the analysis. A multinomial logistic regression was calculated in order to obtain information on the predictors of utilization of three occupational rehabilitation measures (integration measure, partial qualification, full training). As potential influencing factors, various sociodemographic characteristics as well as various parameters that reflect the employment status of rehabilitants in the previous year were included in the model. The analyses included a total of 934 rehabilitants who had completed an integration measure (n=443), partial qualification (n=315) or full training (n=176). In the final logistic regression model, gender (p<0.0001), age (p<0.0001), education level (p=0.0033), driving license (p<0.0001), willingness to move (p=0.0012), recognized disability (p=0.0404) and the employment status in the third month before the start of the measure (p=0.0020) proved to be significant predictors of utilization. The utilization of the different occupational rehabilitation measures is determined by various influencing factors. In particular, the more extensive and cost-intensive full training are more likely to be taken up by younger, male and more highly qualified rehabilitants.

How do Persons Perceive Rehabilitation Counseling? A Qualitative Study on Experienced Rehabilitation Counseling Implemented by the Federal German Pension Insurance among Persons with Approved Vocational Rehabilitation

Persons with approved vocational rehabilitation participate in a conversation with a rehabilitation consultant shortly after approval. The aim of the consultation is to select individually suitable services from the available range of services, based on the illness and employment biography of persons with approved vocational rehabilitation. The initial consultation is thus of essential importance for the further rehabilitation process. To date, there has been little research about what characterizes successful counseling from the point of view of persons with approved vocational rehabilitation. The aim of the qualitative study was to examine the perspective on counseling for persons with approved vocational rehabilitation financed by the German Federal Pension Insurance. Telephone interviews based on guidelines were conducted with 16 persons. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The data was analyzed with MAXQDA using qualitative content analysis and the technique of inductive category development. Three perceived forms of counseling could be distinguished: a supportive counseling, a passive counseling and an inhibitory counseling. Persons with experienced passive and inhibitory counseling reported uncertainty and withdrawal in the further rehabilitation process. There is an individual perception of the counseling and support provided by the rehabilitation consultant, which can have an impact on the attitude and behaviour of persons in the further course of vocational rehabilitation. The challenge is to enable supportive experiences within the time-limited framework of the initial consultation.

Barriers in the Application Process for Oncological Rehabilitation: Results of a Qualitative Expert Survey

In this study, which was funded by the German Federal Pension Fund (DRV), barriers in the application process for oncological rehabilitation services were examined from the perspective of various expert groups. In an exploratory multicentre qualitative cross-sectional study 61 semi-structured interviews with experts working in oncological care were conducted: Physicians (n=26), social workers (n=22), psychologists/psycho-oncologists (n=6), nurses/medical assistants (n=5), administrative staff of the DRV (n=2). In guided interviews the participants were asked about their experiences with rehabilitation applications as well as their estimations and evaluations regarding possible reasons for non-utilisation. The evaluation of the interviews was computerized and based on the qualitative content analysis by Mayring. The respondents had an average age of 52.51 years (SD=10.06; min=25, max=71) and were working in the consultation or treatment of oncological patients for an average of 19.26 years (SD=10.15; min=1, max=42). In total, 854 statements were coded and assigned to the following three main categories: expert-related, system-related and patient-related barriers. In the first main category, scepticism about the benefits of rehabilitation services and an insufficiently met need for information on the part of experts became the focus of attention. In the main category of system-related barriers, aspects were mentioned that addressed the application procedure, the low availability of, for example, outpatient rehabilitation services and the absence of a functioning referral system. The main category of patient-related barriers included psychosocial factors such as subcategories on the topic of coping with the disease which include the patient's desire to come home, experience everyday life again and the fear of being confronted with the disease. The exploratory study revealed potential barriers in the application process for oncological rehabilitation services from an expert perspective. In particular, the findings form the basis for a multi-dimensional assessment instrument that can be used to analyze the barriers in a standardised way and to derive individual recommendations for action.

The End of Leisure and Retirement, Covid-19: Innovations, Jobs, pensions, and Keynes: Guaranteed Income or Future Poverty and Redundancy?

The history of the support by society of the aged is discussed in cross cultural and historical context. Various cultural traditions are compared with the forms developed in complex societies from ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome, to China, the Aztec, Inca and Maya, to those of religious organizations, or those developed under different modern ideological systems like capitalism and communism as well as social democratic nations. It is found that the way a society values the aged and views their contribution to society determines largely their willingness to provide for their support. An increasing number of companies have gone bankrupt in recent years following the 2007 credit crisis and stock market collapse. More have raided their pension funds to stay afloat or have closed them and transferred liability to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Major changes to federal law concerning pensions and the responsibility of corporations to fund them has made under the Pension Protection Act of 2006. World wide workers’ retirement payments are under assault as are investments by pension funds due to laws governing priority of payment in different countries concerning stock holders vs bondholders and liability for pension funds. The need for retirement of some kind in the post-Covid-19 world will require new forms as well as recovery of pre-Covid-19 savings and investments. Changes in the law are proposed to increase the stability of pensions and reliability to workers of pension payments.

The Nigerian Contributory Pension Market: A Review of Compliance Status across the Federation

The paper reviews the compliance status of the Federal, State and private sector pension systems in Nigeria after the reform in 2004 that changed the funding strategy from pay-as-you-go to the contributory modality. It first spotlighted the grim factors of the old pension system that made reform inevitable. The paper in the main argues that compliance with the provisions of the law remains the only guarantee of workers’ retirement future. It further points out the specific role labour leadership must play in this regard. The paper disclosed that the observed failure to implement the provisions of the law across the tiers, especially the federal and state government segments, arose in part due to a conspiracy of factors, including, recession, legislative loopholes, supervisory negligence, and absence of sustained engagement of labour leadership with employers across the tiers. The paper therefore concludes by recommending a more focused engagement strategy by labour leadership and a stricter penalty that makes default in making contributions less attractive.

Non-contributory pension programs and frailty of older adults: Evidence from Mexico.

Non-contributory pension programs in the developing world seek to provide older adults with an income that may improve their health and wellbeing in old age by enabling access to health care and better nutrition. There is no previous evidence of the effects of non-contributory pensions on frailty, a comprehensive measure of health and well-being of the oldest old. We aimed to estimate the effects of non-contributory pension programs on frailty of older adults in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. We use rich panel data, including objective markers and self-reported assessments of health and well-being, for 944 adults at least 70 years of age in two communities of Yucatan, Mexico. The first wave was collected in 2008; the second wave was collected in 2010, 18 months after implementation of a monthly state pension in one community and 12 months after a federal pension paid every two months in the other. We found the state pension led to a statistically significant decrease in the severity of frailty for women, but the federal pension was associated with an increase. We found no statistically significant change in the frailty index for men in either community. Among explanations for these findings are monthly payments being more likely to be spent on health care, medicines, and more regular food expenditures, enabling women who previously lacked independent means of support to increase their longer-term health. The federal program paid every two months led to irregular patterns of food expenditure and increased ownership of durable goods but had no effects on health care utilization, subsequently leading to deterioration in longer-term health for women.

Retiring Employees, Unretired Debt: The Surprising Hidden Cost of Federal Employee Pensions

Ottawa provides its employees with defined-benefit pensions that promise relatively generous benefits to a large current and former workforce. Being largely unfunded, these plans require future taxpayer support. They also create taxpayer risk because the economic value of the benefits they will provide can fluctuate by tens of billions of dollars annually. Current accounting practices understate this burden and the risks these plans create for taxpayers and, potentially, for the employees themselves. Official figures on the current cost of these plans and their accumulated obligations are based on notional interest rates that are too high for this kind of commitment. Since pension promises are guaranteed by taxpayers and indexed to inflation, the appropriate rate for discounting the value of future payments should be the yield on federal-government real-return bonds (RRB), which for years has been much lower than the assumed rate in official figures. Correcting this distortion would produce a fair-value estimate of $245.9 billion for Ottawa's unfunded pension liability at the end of 2016/17 – around $27,000 per family of four and $96 billion higher than the reported number. Because the unfunded pension liability is part of Ottawa’s debt, applying this fair-value adjustment raises the net public debt from the $631.9 billion reported at the end 2016/17 to an adjusted $727.9 billion. Recent federal pension reforms raised participants’ share of the funding costs for these plans: for the main Public Service Plan, the reforms aimed at a 50:50 split between contributions from participants and contributions from the government as employer. Still, using notional interest rates that are higher than the appropriate ones means that the reported costs of these plans – and, therefore, the contribution rates that determine participants’ shares – are too low. Even the higher employee contributions anticipated by the reforms would leave the taxpayers’ true share far above 50 percent. A fair-value approach to the current service cost would ensure that participants and taxpayers share equally the actual cost of accruing benefits. Even 50:50 sharing of federal pensions’ actual costs as they accrue would leave taxpayers exposed to fluctuations in the value of previously earned benefits. Ottawa could protect taxpayers from this risk by capping employer contributions at a fixed share of pensionable pay. To relieve taxpayers of their current sole responsibility for risks in the federal plans, Ottawa would need to switch to a different type of plan with benefits based not only on salary and years of service but also on the plans’ funded status. Such plans, already common in much of the provincial public sector, have a variety of labels – shared-risk and target-benefit are two common ones. Their common feature is that when things do not go as expected, the plan sponsor and the employees share the costs and benefits of the new reality. More economically meaningful reporting of the plans’ benefit values and their cost to taxpayers would foster improvements in Canada’s retirement saving and income system generally. And it would foster reforms that would provide federal employees with better-funded pensions and taxpayers with protection against risks too few know they face.

Black Chicago's First Century: 1833–1900 by Christopher Robert Reed

Reviewed by: Black Chicago's First Century: 1833–1900 by Christopher Robert Reed Brian McCammack Christopher Robert Reed, Black Chicago's First Century: 1833–1900. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017. 600 pp. $45.00. Originally published in 2005, the first paperback printing of Christopher Robert Reed's Black Chicago's First Century: 1833–1900 in 2017 aims to establish "a long-term, comprehensive saga of continuous African American community life, including both setbacks and accomplishments" (3). The monograph begins with a historiographical introduction that discusses the dearth of scholarship on nineteenth-century black Chicago, examines at length the source material Reed uses to tell his story, and ventures some overarching arguments about black Chicago's class structure that borrows from St. Clair Drake's sociological research. A prologue examining the area's first permanent settler, black trader Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, precedes five chronologically-organized chapters, each of which begins with a brief section on the city's black demographics before examining various aspects of the community including labor, politics, intra-and interracial relations, and associational culture (religion, club life, leisure, and the like). Composing a history of nineteenth-century Chicago—particularly of the antebellum decades when black Chicagoans numbered fewer than one thousand (always around 1 percent of the city's total population during the nineteenth century, even with the influx of black southerners after the Civil War)—poses some methodological problems because the source material is somewhat scant. Reed's narrative relies heavily on a handful of published reminiscences of early settlers (sometimes at a distance of half a century or more) as well as the federal pension records of black Civil War veterans (which provided accounts of as many as two hundred black Chicagoans' lives); as he puts it, "First-person accounts based on memory are herein accorded special treatment as representative of particularized, valued experience" (25). This methodology has its benefits and drawbacks. The first-hand accounts Reed highlights help offer unparalleled insights into the lived experiences of notable black Chicagoans like abolitionist and businessman John Jones and the activist and clubwoman Fannie Barrier Williams. But memories are malleable and experiences vary widely; here they tend toward what is perhaps an overly optimistic account of inter- and intra-racial harmony—a saga that emphasizes accomplishments over setbacks—crafted largely by the comparatively small black middle- and upper-classes. That is not to say that Black Chicago's First Century sanitizes or ignores intra- and especially interracial conflict. Indeed, one the book's strengths [End Page 56] is the glimpse it offers of emerging class stratification and respectability politics in the black community. Even stronger are accounts of the Illinois Black Laws, the rise of anti-black sentiment during the Civil War, the painful struggles of black working-class Civil War veterans, the exploitation and subjugation of those who held service jobs in the restaurant industry or for the Pullman Company, and the emergent pattern of residential race segregation dating to the city's founding. All of this points to the myriad ways in which the race discrimination that would plague black Chicagoans in the Great Migration era actually originated decades earlier, somewhat paradoxically in a city that also had been a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. But the dissonance between those struggles and rosier first-hand accounts are not entirely resolved and leave the reader wondering how to square these seemingly disparate histories. Contentions that "a cultural like-mindedness among African Americans provided the group with a cohesive base for unified action against external constraints" (59) and, later, that "Impoverishment produced interracial commiseration" (391), for instance, are thinly supported—even contradicted elsewhere—and risk casting this pre-Great Migration era as an idyllic period of intra- and interracial harmony before the flow of black Southerners further exacerbated tensions. Representative of this central narrative tension is Reed's account of black Chicagoans' involvement in the 1893 World's Fair (for Reed's more extensive treatment of the Fair, see All the World is Here! The Black Presence at the White City). Consistent with the monograph's more general tone of optimism, Reed argues that "African Americans claimed and won a meaningful role as workers, patrons, lecturers...

New and Improved: How Institutional Investment in Public Infrastructure can Benefit Taxpayers and Consumers

Canadian governments are on the verge of the largest infrastructure spending increases in decades. The challenge for policymakers at all levels of governments is to decide whether they should seek more private funding. Canadian institutional investors – notably the seven largest Canadian public pension plans as well as global investors – are looking to participate in new user-fee-supported infrastructure: both in existing assets and in new projects. To provide Canadian retirees with the best possible returns, Canada’s largest pension plans have invested $87 billion of their $1 trillion-plus in assets in infrastructure, but mostly abroad. Meanwhile, Canadian and foreign institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies would likely place a high value on Canadian user-fee financed infrastructure, but Canadian governments have opened few opportunities for such investment. Indeed, this Commentary argues that government ownership of infrastructure has led to inefficient management, poor project selection, and higher risks on taxpayers disguised by low government borrowing costs. To provide opportunities for investors to meet beneficiaries’ needs through financing infrastructure, Canadian governments should create policies that support institutional investment in both existing assets and for new infrastructure. Existing government-owned, user-fee-financed assets offer the greatest potential for government revenue from asset sales, including partial sales in which governments retain economic control. Governments could use the proceeds from such institutional investment to fund new infrastructure – particularly social-service infrastructure like schools and hospitals and other non-fully-self-financing infrastructure – alongside institutional investors. Taxpayers would benefit from better use of existing assets, as would users of more efficient infrastructure. The federal government recently announced plans to create an infrastructure bank that it would initially bankroll, but with a mandate to foster institutional investment capital for new public infrastructure. It is critical that Ottawa get right the design details of such a bank as well as other related institutions. There are differences between private investment in new versus existing infrastructure. But many policy issues are the same. In addition to an infrastructure bank, Canadian governments should take the following steps to encourage more institutional infrastructure investment: • where necessary, create independent regulatory bodies to oversee infrastructure assets that ensure their owners, either government-owned corporations or institutional investors, act in the public interest ahead of private profit and for long-term sustainability; • open infrastructure investment opportunities to the highest bidder among domestic or foreign investors and do not require any provincial or federal pension funds to invest. This requires the federal government to have expertise it can lend to smaller communities on business cases for institutional investors; • seek out opportunities to “recycle” user-fee financed assets at their maximum value to taxpayers or allocate contracts to operate new non-full-user fee assets that provide the highest savings or cost-avoidance; and • provide financial encouragement to provincial and municipal governments to work with the federal infrastructure bank since they own the vast majority of existing and potential user-fee financed infrastructure of interest to institutional investors.

Роль пенсионных фондов в финансировании государственного долга США

The article examines main trends in financing the federal debt, pointing out its structure, with focus on the role of pension funds as a source of financing; because the surplus of Social Security funds is loaned to the rest of the government; interlinks concerning this process and possible problems; the peculiarities of the federal government pension system’s investment in the government bonds. The US public debt as a share of GDP is much less than in many countries, but its volume is near 20 trln. doll. It may be classified by marketable and non-marketable securities, which are mainly owed to certain government trust funds such as the Social Security trust fund. So the Social Security trust fund, in effect is exchanging one type of debt for the other, taking into consideration that the non-marketable securities represent amounts owed to the beneficiaries. The reserves are in effect borrowed for a time by the rest of the government, and then repaid with interest when the trust funds need them back. Looking ahead Social Security will continue to be financed through its own receipts, mainly payroll tax; and Social Security Trust Fund surplus will become diminishing, with less possibilities to finance federal debt.

True for the Cause of Liberty: The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution by Oscar E. Gilbert and Catherine R. Gilbert

Reviewed by: True for the Cause of Liberty: The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution by Oscar E. Gilbert and Catherine R. Gilbert Robert F. Smith True for the Cause of Liberty: The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution. By Oscar E. Gilbert and Catherine R. Gilbert. ( Philadelphia and Oxford, Eng.: Casemate, 2015. Pp 328. $32.95, ISBN 978-1-61200-327-6.) The Revolutionary South was a chaotic and unforgiving battleground during the American War for Independence. Loyalists, Patriots, frontiersmen, Native Americans, Continental regulars, and British redcoats were all eager to punish others for their own sufferings. Personal animosity during the war meant that, in battle, quarter was rarely given. Oscar E. Gilbert and Catherine R. Gilbert turn the war's confusion into an understandable and personal story of "brutal partisan warfare as seen. … by the common people" (p. 16). True for the Cause of Liberty: The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution begins its story in colonial America, where Scotch-Irish colonists battled Baptists, Anglicans, and Cherokees for land in South Carolina's backcountry. The authors show that the South was already mired in conflict when the Revolution added a new dimension to the melee. As Carolinians chose sides for and against the British, old animosities were reborn. The conflicts that ensued, according to Gilbert and Gilbert, were a series of unstoppable raids and counterraids, skirmishes, and battles, as bands of Patriots and Loyalists crisscrossed the region. Farms were burned, traitors were executed, and revenge became strategic. Gilbert and Gilbert tie daily militia struggles into the larger war by discussing such major battles as Charleston, Camden, Cowpens, and Ninety-Six, but their focus remains the individual experiences lived by the militiamen. So while the authors acknowledge the strategic relevance of the battle of Kings Mountain, they end the story by noting the perhaps apocryphal story that British colonel Patrick Ferguson's "body was plundered for souvenirs. … [and] some of the 'mountaineers' defiled the corpse, urinating on it" (p. 169). The authors use South Carolina's Second Spartan Regiment as a [End Page 398] unifying theme for this story because elements of the unit participated in some of the major southern battles of the Revolution. Members of the regiment also engaged in prewar struggles with Native Americans and colonial authorities, allowing the authors to place Revolutionary militia warfare within the context of colonial expansion, imperial conflict, religious disagreements, and class struggles. The authors base their work on testimonies from the federal pension application records of Revolutionary War veterans, filling the book with the raw emotions still carried by soldiers years after the war. Often, however, the book provides too many particulars and includes more characters than can be easily followed by the reader. As the text seeks context, it descends into details that obscure meanings Gilbert and Gilbert have tried hard to build. For instance, British general Edward Braddock's 1755 campaign and the typical diet of a southern family are mentioned on the same page. Such incongruities disrupt the book, and context is lost in loose ends. The book ends abruptly, failing to adequately explore how the war impacted soldiers' postwar lives. While following the postwar lives of these militiamen was not a goal for the authors, in a work searching for context, its absence is evident. Similarly missing are references to race, which is notable because of this topic's modern relevance and the fact that the authors spend so much time trying to understand the South's social conflicts. Indeed, free and enslaved African Americans did create armed bands supporting the British, a fact that added a perceived need for social control to the militia's duties. But this topic is not explored in the book. The authors' oversight is likely due to the sources used and the focus on the Second Spartan Regiment, which did not apparently participate in slave policing actions. Despite these shortcomings, Gilbert and Gilbert have created a well-researched and poetic account of the South's militia war that offers readers illustrations of events as documented by the soldiers themselves. Robert F. Smith Northampton Community College Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association