Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Noah Dormady, Associate Professor of Public Policy, The Ohio State University

American families are feeling the pinch of rising electricity prices. In the past five years alone, the generation portion of the standard service residential electric bill in Columbus, Ohio, has increased by 110%. This is one data point in a national trend.

Energy affordability is quickly shaping up to be a key election issue at all levels of American politics. And more than half of U.S. adults surveyed in January 2026 reported being very concerned about the price of electricity.

Experts in the energy industry are fiercely conflicted on what, or who, is to blame. People have sought to blame geopolitical events like the war in Ukraine, dramatic changes in U.S. energy policies, power grid operators, regulators and artificial intelligence and data centers.

But new research from The Ohio State University’s Energy Markets and Policy Group, where I serve as principal investigator, provides new insights about another factor you were probably not thinking about – middlemen introduced by deregulation.

How deregulation brought middlemen instead of competition

Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, several state legislatures deregulated their electricity systems. Deregulation was originally sold as a way to replace inefficient regulation and reduce bureaucracy. People were told that competition would deliver lower prices.

Under the old system, a state regulatory commission set prices for all electricity services – generation, transmission and distribution – which were supplied by the same monopoly utility company. Each state commission was required by federal law to ensure that rates were “just and reasonable.” Under deregulation, that same commission rate-setting process still holds for transmission and distribution, but the generation part was split off.

Deregulation created competitive wholesale markets for generation, but price competition did not spread widely at the retail level. In states with active retail deregulation, there are two ways the retail generation price can be set. Consumers get to pick which one – buy from a marketer on the open market, or do nothing. Most people choose to do nothing.

Rather than introducing efficiency, this system of retail deregulation created a new complexity: middlemen marketers. In most cases, no matter which choice people make, it’s hard for them to understand how their electricity rates are set. That’s where our research comes in.

Option A: The open market

Electricity customers in deregulated retail markets can choose a company that buys the electricity on their behalf. People who live in these states may be familiar with energy salespeople who come to their homes, approach them in a convenience store, or use telemarketers.

For example, people who live in the Cincinnati area can contract with one of more than 50 suppliers to buy electricity on their behalf from the wholesale market. Their monthly bill would still come from Duke Energy, a regulated distribution utility, and would still include regulated charges for distribution and transmission set by state and federal officials. But it would also include charges from an unregulated retail supplier, for the generation part of their bill – their electric supply.

Some locations also have community choice aggregation, in which their municipality participates in the open market on their behalf unless they opt out.

Our research has found that these markets are not working as intended.

Option B: Do nothing – default service

For people who choose not to shop on the open market, by doing nothing they remain on what is called the “standard offer” or “default service.” Sometimes it is also called “provider of last resort” service because it is not meant to be the best option.

For these people, state law generally requires each distribution utility to hold auctions or use a procurement process like a request for proposals to determine which middlemen companies get to be their supplier, and of course, at what price.

People in this category still buy from middleman marketers. But rather than choosing their own middleman, they get the middleman the utility company selects for them.

Problems in the open market

People who live in states with deregulated electricity markets know that these open markets have many problems. There have been investigations into unfair trade practices, lawsuits and regulatory penalties for misleading sales practices.

Other problems include deceptive marketing, a process called “slamming” in which companies change customers’ suppliers without their knowledge, contract loopholes that increase prices, and outright fraud.

Help for consumers usually comes after problems have arisen, rather than preventing them in the first place.

Our research team sought to determine whether, and how much, electricity consumers would save money if they used the supposedly competitive open market, rather than going with the default rate. To answer this question, we developed a detailed database of every daily retail choice offer filed by every supplier in all service territories in Ohio for a decade – which meant compiling millions of records.

We found that 72.1% of the open-market offers exceeded the utility’s default rate. In some years, there was not even one single cost-saving offer for the entire year, or longer. The vast majority of these supposedly competitive electricity prices were higher than customers would get by doing nothing. Taking the time to research the market and compare prices was often not worth consumers’ time.

Importantly, the study found that suppliers in the open market were not setting their prices based on market fundamentals – like the underlying wholesale price of electricity. Instead, they were setting prices based on the results of the utility’s default supply selection. In a competitive market, that is not supposed to happen.

Is default service really competitive?

In a separate study, our team evaluated every default service auction in every utility service territory in Ohio since 2011, nearly 15 years. We found that the number of companies competing with one another in these auctions is a key determinant of the retail markup consumers have to pay.

In some of the default-option rate auctions, as few as five suppliers placed bids. In others, there were as many as 15 companies vying to provide default-option electricity. Our analysis found that in situations when the underlying costs of generating electricity were the same, default supply auctions with fewer bidders delivered significantly higher prices for consumers than auctions with more bidders.

The study included numerous statistical controls for other factors that could otherwise help explain the prices, including natural gas prices and market volatility. The number of bidders was the key factor. Having just three additional bidders could reduce consumers’ default-option rates by 18% to 23%. Nine additional bidders, the analysis found, could deliver savings of as much as 60%.

It’s important to note that Ohio’s process for setting default service rates is more robust than many other states. In some states, it is not uncommon for even fewer companies to bid. So Ohio’s situation is not actually a worst-case scenario for consumers. Rather, it’s probably better than many other states with deregulated electricity markets.

Putting it all together

The first study showed that the open market is not setting efficient retail rates and is not working as intended. Most of the offers made available to consumers are not worth their time, and the suppliers in those markets are not setting their prices based upon market fundamentals. Instead, these companies are taking their cues from the local distribution utility’s default supply auctions. That is not how deregulation was envisioned.

The second study showed that the process which sets the default supply rate is also not very competitive. Less competition means the middleman companies bidding in those auctions can bid, and win, higher prices – raising electric bills and increasing their profit margin.

Energy deregulation promised lower prices through competition. But instead, consumers got an army of middleman marketers. And, those middlemen have been taking their cues from a bidding process that often has too few participants to keep prices low.

Noah Dormady receives funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and the US Department of Energy (DOE).

– ref. How deregulation made electricity more expensive, not cheaper – https://theconversation.com/how-deregulation-made-electricity-more-expensive-not-cheaper-272780

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Lee Ann Rawlins Williams, Clinical Assistant Professor of Education, Health and Behavior Studies, University of North Dakota

I spoke in January 2026 with 150 high school students about career options. After explaining my own career as a professor of education, health and behavior, I asked the students a simple question: Would you want to be a teacher?

“Why in the world would I want to be a teacher?” one female student said.

“My aunt is a teacher and she works all the time … no thanks,” a male student added.

Several students said it felt like teachers were doing everything: from teaching lessons and helping students through personal struggles to managing class disruptions and constantly adjusting to whatever else the day brought. Students also mentioned hearing teachers talk openly about low pay or feeling a lack of respect from students and others.

These students’ observations align with national trends. While nearly 20% of college freshmen said in 1970 that they were interested in a teaching career, less than 5% said the same in 2020, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Many teachers report low levels of job satisfaction, and 52% polled by Pew in 2024 said they would not advise young adults to become teachers.

Teacher pay penalty

Education researchers and labor analysts have documented that teachers earn less than other people who also have college degrees.

This difference in pay is sometimes called the teacher pay penalty. This gap has widened over the past few decades.

In 2024 the teacher pay penalty reached its highest recorded level, with teachers earning roughly 73 cents for every dollar earned by other college graduates.

Average annual public teacher salaries recently have ranged from about US$53,507 in Mississippi and $53,098 in Florida to more than $95,160 in California and $95,615 in New York.

Nationwide, teachers on average earn about $72,030 per year.

National analyses show that teaching has steadily lost ground in wage competitiveness compared with other college-educated professionals over the past few decades.

Even as some states have enacted modest teacher salary increases year over year, these wide disparities persist.

Expanding expectations, rising strain

Teaching once centered primarily on academic instruction. Particularly through much of the 20th century, teachers’ roles were largely defined by planning lessons, instructing on different subjects and assessing student learning.

In addition to teaching core subjects, many teachers are now often expected to help support students’ social and emotional development, address complex behavioral challenges, respond to crises that spill into classrooms, such as students physically fighting, and manage substantial paperwork and administrative tasks.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified many of these responsibilities, as teachers navigated remote instruction and students’ heightened mental health needs.

At the same time, concerns about school safety, including the reality of school shootings and other kinds of violence, have added another layer to teachers’ emotional strain and required vigilance.

Teachers are far more likely than other college-educated professionals to report frequent job-related stress and burnout.

Job available

Approximately 50% of all public school leaders reported in October 2024 that they feel their school is understaffed. And 20% of public school leaders reported teacher vacancies during that same time period.

In January 2022, shortly after the pandemic, more than 20% of public schools reported at least 5% of their teaching positions were vacant that month. Approximately 51% of schools reported that resignations were the cause of these vacancies.

A 2025 national teacher shortage overview estimates that roughly 1 in 8 teaching positions nationwide are either unfilled or staffed by someone not fully certified for the assignment, meaning a teacher working outside their licensed subject area or grade level, for example.

When positions are filled this way, the classroom will still have a teacher present, but not necessarily one formally prepared to teach a specific subject or group of students. This can result in greater reliance on substitutes or increased class sizes for remaining staff.

When teaching became women’s work

History helps explain why teaching looks – and pays – the way it does today.

In the early 1800s, teaching was a predominantly male profession.

But as the U.S. industrialized in the late 1800s and early 1900s, higher-paying jobs in business and manufacturing drew many men away from classrooms.

For many women at the time, teaching offered one of the few respectable professional careers available. It provided steady income and a measure of independence when many other professions were closed to them.

Labor force participation for women expanded significantly during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, as legal and social barriers began to fall. Yet the pay and public standing of teaching does not seem to have risen at the same pace.

By the early 1900s, women made up about 70% of teachers. In 2024, 77% of teachers were women.

Nationwide, the gender wage gap has narrowed in the past few decades. Still, women in the U.S. earn an average 85% of what men make.

Who will teach the next generation?

Each year, more than 80,000 new teachers step into classrooms. But the overall pipeline has narrowed since the early 2010s, with enrollment at teacher preparation programs declining sharply and only partially rebounding in recent years.

Today’s students are coming of age in a landscape where teaching competes with many other college-degree professions that may offer higher pay, more predictable hours or clearer career advancement.

College students are often weighing financial security, mental health and long-term sustainability as they imagine their future.

Research consistently shows that compensation, working conditions and professional support play a central role in job retention. When those elements erode, so too does workforce stability.

Stability is the key as students are evaluating teaching – not as a calling, but as a potential career within a competitive labor market.

Lee Ann Rawlins Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. I asked students whether they’d want to be teachers? They quickly responded, ‘Why would I?’ – https://theconversation.com/i-asked-students-whether-theyd-want-to-be-teachers-they-quickly-responded-why-would-i-275904

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Paula de la Cruz-Fernández, Cultural Digital Collections Manager, University of Florida

Immigration to the U.S. is often framed as a problem to be managed, controlled or punished. Immigrants are often derided for crossing the border without authorization or “taking jobs” from U.S. citizens.

This rhetoric has intensified when Donald Trump has been in the White House. Trump and officials in his administrations have repeatedly characterized immigrants as a drain on national resources.

But research on immigrants tells a different story.

I’m a historian of business and culture who examines how enterprises shape and are shaped by the societies and historical contexts in which they operate. Since 2021 I have led the Gainesville Business History Project, a research initiative at the University of Florida that studies the long-term patterns of the town’s business history.

Nearby history

Our project takes a nearby history approach that recognizes that businesses around us, even small ones, are part of the historical record that we consumers also actively shape. Our team of 10 researchers has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 40 business owners and entrepreneurs in Florida.

About 22% to 23% of the state’s residents – roughly 5 million people – are foreign born. This is much higher than the nationwide average of 14%.

In 2023, foreign-born Florida residents made up almost 50% of the workforce employed in pillars of the state’s economy, including agriculture, tourism and construction.

In 2025, one study found that 267,700 of these Florida immigrants – about 5% – were entrepreneurs.

Our interviews uncovered many stories that show how immigrant-founded businesses can grow into familiar institutions that define a place’s identity. These stories illustrate some of the ways immigrants contribute to their communities.

La Aurora Latin Market

The story of La Aurora, a Latin grocery store that has operated for nearly 25 years in Gainesville, demonstrates how businesses are culturally embedded within the community and how immigrant-owned businesses often are tied to long-term local networks.

Aurora Ynigo crossed the Mexico-U.S. border in the early 1990s. She went straight to Miami, where she met her husband, Peter. In the late 1990s they moved from Miami to Gainesville for Peter’s job. At the time there was limited access to Hispanic products in the university town with about 180,000 residents. So in 1999 the family decided to open a Latin store that Aurora would manage.

For years the couple and their parents would create a weekly shopping list, which included many items requested by clients and friends who had immigrated to Gainesville from Peru, Cuba or Colombia. Then they would drive 400 miles to Miami, where they would look for the items all over the city, especially in supermarkets there such as Sedano’s and Presidente. They would then drive back to Gainesville with fresh food in big coolers to fill the racks at their location on University Avenue.

After 27 years in business, La Aurora Latin Market on University Avenue has its own butcher counter, fresh produce and other items from across Latin America and the Caribbean. It also makes fresh-baked Latin American breads, pastries and cakes. And it has become a place where the Spanish-speaking community – a demographic that has grown considerably in the past 10 years – can reliably find familiar products.

Mary’s Cafe & Coin Laundry

For more than four decades, Mary’s Café and Laundry has operated along Miami’s now-central and busy 27th Avenue.

The business has remained in the same family across three generations. It traces back to Eumelia Morales Fernández, who immigrated to Miami from the town of Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1970. Like many immigrant women, she first worked as a seamstress. She then got a job in a shoe factory before buying a small supermarket with her husband on 32nd Avenue in Miami in 1988.

After purchasing the building where the cafe and laundromat still stand, they installed washing machines and dryers and opened a small cafeteria alongside the laundromat. They named the business Mary’s Cafe, after Eumelia’s daughter, who later ran the business before passing it on to her own daughter, Vicky, who currently manages it.

Mary created the menu, which has changed little since the cafe first opened. The cafe has its own kitchen for tostadas and pastelitos, serving coladas and cortaditos daily at this central Miami location. Everything continues to be made in-house.

The building also houses another small retail space, which is currently a watch repair business run by another member of the family. Before that, the space was home to a Chinese takeout owned by another Cuban family.

I was able to interview both Eumelia and Vicky. Vicky told me she has not changed much in the way she coordinates work and supplies at Mary’s. The biggest change she’s had to make is learning to use social media to promote the business.

16th Avenue Diner

Gilberto Argoytia Miranda owns the 16th Avenue Diner. The diner is an icon of Gainesville’s southern cuisine and has been in operation for more than 50 years.

Argoytia Miranda is the diner’s eighth owner – he purchased it in 2021. He had experience in the sector from when he lived in Mexico City, where he had operated food trucks since 2010.

He knew he wanted to be in the restaurant industry, but he didn’t immediately open a Mexican restaurant, despite the limited number of them in Gainesville. Instead, he studied the local market by working for various restaurants, including delivering food via DoorDash. This experience allowed him and his family to gain a deeper understanding of the Gainesville food scene.

The diner had to maintain its soul, as Argoytia Miranda calls it, for the regular clientele to keep coming. He and his family didn’t want to replace an eatery that carried local meaning and tradition. In fact, he recognizes this continuity as an asset, because the place remains recognizable.

Argoytia Miranda rarely changes the menu, because he understands that’s what people have liked for years. He does not see the need to reinvent the core of the restaurant, its Southern-style cooking and the Americana atmosphere.

Little by little, he told me in 2025, he intends to experiment with adding more Latino flavor to the menu. But new dishes will become part of the official offering only if customers enjoy them.

Paula de la Cruz-Fernández does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Florida’s immigrant entrepreneurs are creating jobs and prosperity in their communities – https://theconversation.com/floridas-immigrant-entrepreneurs-are-creating-jobs-and-prosperity-in-their-communities-273183

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Nicole L. Novak, Research Assistant Professor of Community and Behavioral Health, University of Iowa

The Trump administration announced on Feb. 12, 2026, that it is ending Operation Metro Surge, its deployment of more than 3,000 federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding metro area. Federal officials say some agents will remain in the area and have vowed that similar immigration sweeps are coming soon to other U.S. cities.

As public health researchers who have been documenting the health impacts of immigration enforcement for over 10 years, we see these immigration sweeps as public health emergencies.

Even before the Trump administration’s recent expansion of immigration enforcement, research has long shown that intensive immigration enforcement operations affect people’s use of health care, ability to access resources to stay healthy, and their mental health and social relationships. Notably, these findings all come from before the Trump administration’s most recent expansion of immigration enforcement. It is fair to assume that the impacts of these current operations will be even greater.

To some extent – particularly in Minneapolis, where mutual aid networks are especially strong – community response can mitigate some of these impacts. One of us (Nicole), as a resident of Minneapolis, witnessed both the unfolding crisis and a powerful community-driven public health response.

But these public health harms will take months or years to reverse, and they provide a troubling preview of what could happen in other cities.

Accessing health care

One of the most immediate public health impacts of intensive immigration enforcement is that it makes people hesitant to seek health care, especially if they belong to a nationality or racial group that is being targeted for immigration arrests. For example, studies of Hispanic adults have shown that they are less likely to get an annual checkup or visit their doctor – even if they are U.S. citizens – if they live in a region with more intensive immigration enforcement.

Research has also shown that Medicaid enrollment declines when federal immigration enforcement rises, even among qualifying U.S. citizens.

There is no question that Operation Metro Surge has deterred immigrant patients and their families in Minnesota from seeking medical care. According to one family medicine doctor, primary care visits are down more than 50%. Doctors and health care workers are reporting that patients are delaying needed care, potentially worsening chronic conditions, such as diabetes. Others report that pregnant women are missing prenatal visits and are requesting home births, even in cases where their health conditions would typically require a hospital birth.

Accessing food and housing

Immigration crackdowns also affect public health by restricting people’s access to the resources they need to stay healthy.

For example, income and employment are major predictors of health. But research suggests that overall employment and hourly wages fall in counties that begin collaborating with federal immigration enforcement – partly because people spend less money at stores, restaurants and other local businesses.

This phenomenon is playing out in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where thousands of immigrant families are staying home to avoid encounters with immigration enforcement. In January 2026, immigrant-owned businesses reported reduced traffic, with as many as 80% temporarily closing in some neighborhoods.

Many of public health’s most cost-effective, hard-won programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, are designed to preserve people’s health even in times of economic scarcity. But enrollment in these programs drops when fear of immigration enforcement intensifies. The same is true for housing, another foundation of public health. Research shows that evictions, missed rent or mortgage payments, and foreclosure rates increase when immigration crackdowns expand.

It is too soon to know the impact on evictions in Minneapolis, but early reports from tenant advocacy organizations indicate that they have seen an 82% increase in requests for help compared to early 2025.

Stress, hypervigilance and mental health

Among the most harmful and enduring impacts of immigration enforcement are the effects on mental health. Our research and that of others shows that people who encounter or have to protect themselves from immigration officials – staying inside to avoid immigration officials, seeing immigration officials in their neighborhood, knowing someone who was deported or being deported themselves – are at higher risk of psychological distress or poor overall health.

Especially for children who witnessed or experienced the arrest, detention or deportation of a family member, these effects can be severe, including separation anxiety and behavioral issues in the short term, as well as long-term risks of anxiety and depression.

Perhaps most painfully, experiencing family separations, missing work or avoiding public space leaves people socially isolated, resulting in fewer emotional resources to cope with these stresses as well as risks to health.

In Minnesota, many immigrant families are not only experiencing the social isolation of staying home from school and work but are also avoiding spaces that may have provided solace and support, such as places of worship. Church attendance has reportedly dropped by half in some congregations, and mosque attendance may be down too.

How communities are responding

Amid these challenges, everyday Minnesotans – health care workers, neighbors, faith communities – have taken steps to bridge these gaps.

Trusted neighbors and community organizations ensure that people have rides to doctor visits. Some health care providers are expanding telehealth and home visits to make sure patients receive necessary care. Health care staff and unions are putting pressure on hospitals and health systems to implement policies that limit ICE’s access to patient areas.

Meanwhile, community members are delivering food and necessities to those who are sheltering in place or have lost income. Mutual aid campaigns are raising money to help with rent, organizers successfully campaigned for the city of Minneapolis to expand rental assistance, and more than 60 local organizations are petitioning the governor to enact a statewide eviction moratorium.

Mental health stressors and social isolation are more challenging to address, but some local mental health providers are expanding their reach, while teachers, neighbors and people of faith try to maintain connections with those who are sheltering at home.

This far-reaching response echoes what we have observed in our own research with other communities that have experienced immigration raids: ordinary people, with immigrant families at the forefront, essentially launching an informal disaster response, providing sanctuary and resources.

Public health research has long shown that connected communities are healthy communities, and these ties play a critical role in long-term recovery from public health crises.

But immigration court cases drag on for months and years, as do long-term mental health impacts. Ruptured trust with government takes time to rebuild. That means that as ICE expands its presence across the U.S., the fallout may last for a long time to come.

Nicole L. Novak has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Mid-Iowa Health Foundation. She is a volunteer with the Prairielands Freedom Fund and UNIDOS MN.

William D. Lopez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. When ICE sweeps a community, public health pays a price – and recovery will likely take years – https://theconversation.com/when-ice-sweeps-a-community-public-health-pays-a-price-and-recovery-will-likely-take-years-274810