Tryna get on actual Welcome back to my channel back like I never left Yeah Yeah, I'm so excited today coming on to give you guys another she sent a juicy curls demo and review I got her new styling gel So yeah, I'm plus I never tried to leave it So I'm gonna use a deconditioner which we know and love and I'm trying to leave in and the styling gel for the first time So I'm starting off with freshly shampooed hair. I don't think I often come in this particular state But my hair is freshly shampooed and I'm gonna start off with getting my deconditioner on much needed after two weeks as you guys know Why I was come on after two weeks, but here we go. Juicy curls mask. This line is just super fruity and super fun Smells good. It smells like all the kind of she sent it fruity sense. I think I guess it's a slight bit of perfume here But it's still really sweet and fruity rich and creamy, but it still is very smooth Like it's not doesn't feel like super buttery, which I don't like it's still smooth and easy to melt into your hair So I'm just gonna put some on the top This is my hair with the deep conditioner in it. It feels moisturized already But I'm gonna go let it sit for 30 minutes and I'll be back to get to the wash and go with the new new So excited. Stay tuned. Stay locked. I'll be right back So I'm back after letting it sit. My hair is feeling juicy not to be cliche, but yes That plumper moisturized feeling. We're just soaked in all the moisture. That's what I'm getting right now. I love this mask Just makes it have you so moisturized and juicy and then it also smells great and everything So this is a repurchase that I'm almost finished with it already. So yeah, love So now on to the excitement that just a new post that I haven't tried yet On my wash and go. So I'm going to be using the juicy curls leave-in smoothie The juicy curls styling gel. This is my hair after rinsing the deep conditioner Now I'm adding the juicy curls leave-in smoothie a little bit goes a long way. So There's still a lot more left in the bottle and I'm almost done my whole hair or at least More than half. We're done. So that's good Lots of moisture not so slip in this leave-in. So no issue at all Doing what leave-in is supposed to do for me. This is my hair after applying the leave-in Liking it so far. It feels really like to which I like. Which is interesting. So yay I'm just gonna add a bit of my scalp some leaving oil. I'm almost done. Like I'm so sad about this But I'm trying to hold on to it as long as I can I guess So now I'm adding the juicy curls styling gel So it's definitely a gel I can tell that there is I guess some PVP in there But at the same time, it's like super soft. It's soft and juicy and it just kind of reminds me of Like a regular custard I guess Texture but it doesn't feel like eco-styler even though it has like a little bit of PVP nice and moisturizing and great slip So it has a very mild scent. I wouldn't say it has a fruity scent at all I guess I recently said the curls and potions gel smell like water I'll almost say it smells like water like a very mild scent. It's not a typical fruity scent It's not a typical fruity.  I am excited. I'm expecting no crunch. I'm expecting moisture And I'm expecting probably soft and big but we'll see My hair feels super light. So hopefully that means we'll dry fast too. I guess we'll see but My wet result My hair's happened to feel long way Anyways, I'll see you tomorrow Which will be like in two seconds for you. Lucky you Hi, so I'm back with my result. I do love it. I find like my hair is like super light just for luminous I'm moisturized and has movement And has definition So I am enjoying it. I would say it has a lot of glycerin So it's not exactly summer friendly. Like this morning. It was like A bit more defined than it is now after kind of getting out in the heat But yeah, overall, I'm loving it So I would say that I probably prefer the plum that turned out gave anti-hidicuster just because it has more hold Like this Feels like I don't have anything on my hair like in a good way Like my hair feels like soft and moisturizing stuff, but I don't feel that whole or control So I'm a little bit scared, especially with the humidity how long it's gonna last but I guess we'll see, you know So like I said, I always say whole versus definition versus crunch is like three different things So this is like absolutely no crunch super lightweight. It feels like nothing is on there But great movement and definition And I guess we'll see how the whole goes As the week goes on so I'm not not gonna talk too much about this deep conditioner. You guys know, I love it It's a staple multi use multi purchase And I love it and it's definitely something I'm gonna buy whenever the sales hit and everything I mean, it's one of the many she said to deep conditioners. I love but if this is on sale No question. I'll buy it the moisture is there the slip is there The joy is there it smells great great consistency A little goes a long way and everything and they all kind of have similar ingredients in terms of having like all the fruit extracts And then whatever else it has for the actual product But all everything in the line kind of has all those different fruit extracts Of course, the other thing I won't talk too much about is this oil. You guys know, I love it It's just super moisturizing smells great feels great on your hair and your scalp Especially like this nice tingly feeling on your scalp Soft emollient type feeling on your hair gets the job done and great benefits as well So with those out there where we can get to the new new this was my first time trying the leave-in smoothie I definitely loved that it did the job. My hair was moisturized. The slip was there The definition was there again super lightweight, which I love I'm always down to find light product because it gives me so much volume The scent was just kind of extra fruity Juicy kills line scent so think she sent it but like add more fruit. That's how it smells It is but it's definitely flowing So it's like pretty light. Show your ingredients The milkshake just because it has a tad bit more hold and it's a tad bit richer and creamier But none of both things are necessary for a leave-in and this did everything that I love for a leave-in So like I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't be sad. I'd be happy to pick this up again Even though I guess if this I'm the milkshake will next to each other I would just pick up the milkshake for personal preference basically I've just been sitting in my stash waiting to be tried and then this gel is coming out Just kind of gave me that wonderful opportunity to try this so yay I'm talking about the gel We have the Juicy kills styling gel So because I did my whole hair PVP, but it still feels soft and smooth and goes on really easily Great slip has like this mild water scent, but it doesn't smell chemical or anything like that Like I said volume definition movement Perfect summer hair if you like big hair if you don't like glycerin be careful because it has a lot of glycerin These are the ingredients for two of these and I'm gonna happily use them as well In terms of what I'll be putting just from this line I think I would stick to like the mask and the milkshake as my favorite two from the line I do want to do a royal honey and agon kind of demo for you guys because that's one of my favorite lines And I feel like I wouldn't say it's slept up. I don't see where honey and agon talks about enough So I'm just gonna make sure everybody knows about it. So that's pretty much it I'm glad I was able to like react the popularity man and like come on and show you guys This gel because I had a lot of requests for it when you guys saw it in my haul This week like I said, it's just the word of the day is volume and lightness like my hair is super It's just floating in the air right now, which I love so So let me know what you guys think of this line Love she sent it. I know you do if you don't mind. She said if I love she sent it Let me know what you think of juicy coos. I love juicy coos I guess especially the mask and the milkshake, but I just love the scent from the packaging and the branding It just makes me feel so happy every time I use it. But yeah, that's it. I'm glad to be I'm glad to be doing another video for you guys It's been too long. Yes, stay high in the comments. It's been a while I miss talking to each and every one of you. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one


So we're on to our last module of the day before the Q&A session. Mike Piper earlier covered investing in tax-advantaged accounts. In this session he'll talk about how to invest tax-efficiently in non-tax-advantaged accounts like taxable brokerage accounts. We'll bring Mike up here and then we'll do a Q&A after that. If you do have a question you'd like to submit, it looks like we've been getting a ton. Harry is collecting them and you can just drop off your question with him. Thank you. Alright, so last time we talked about the different types of tax-advantaged accounts and Alan and Rick both talked with you about minimizing your investment costs and in that case they were talking about the expense ratios that you pay on your mutual funds. But one of the biggest expenses that most investors pay on their investments are the taxes. So what we're going to talk about here are the three most impactful things that you can do to minimize that investment cost, to minimize the investment taxes that you're going to be paying. The first one is pretty straightforward. Max out your retirement accounts if you have enough cash flow to do that. Second one is fill your Roth accounts with the assets that have the highest expected returns. And finally, when you're investing in taxable accounts, try to fill them with things that are tax-efficient. So let's go through these one by one. Max out your retirement accounts. The idea here, generally speaking, is to make the maximum contribution every year to a Roth IRA or if your income is too high, then we're looking at maximum backdoor Roth IRA contribution if that's available to you. And if you have access to a plan at work and you have enough cash flow to max out that contribution as well, do that. And the idea here, the reason for this, is exactly what I was talking about last time I was standing here, which is that taxable accounts incur tax drag, meaning there's taxes that are dragging down the returns that you earn every year. Because you're paying tax on the interest, you're paying tax on the dividends, and you're paying tax on the capital gains every single year with the net result being that taxable accounts, they literally earn a lower rate of return than retirement accounts. And just like Rick was showing you, even a relatively small difference in the annual return has a huge impact when we compound it over an entire investing career. And so we max out retirement accounts simply because retirement accounts don't have tax drag. You get to keep the full rate of return every year, and that's a really big deal. Now one thing that somebody will always ask if you tell a roomful of people to max out their retirement accounts is, what if I'm planning to retire early? Because there's the age 59 and a half rule. So there might be a 10% penalty. So what if I'm planning to retire at age 50? Should I still max out my retirement accounts? And the answer, in almost every case where I've done a serious analysis, the answer is yes. It still makes sense to make the maximum contributions if you can if you're planning to retire early. And there's a few reasons for that, so let's go through them. Reason number one is that in order to retire early, you have to save and invest a whole lot of money every year. That's how early retirement happens. You have fewer years to accumulate, so fewer years to save, and fewer years to earn investment returns, and more years of retirement to pay for. So the only way to make that happen is by saving a whole darn lot every year. And usually what that looks like is maxing out your IRA, maxing out your 401k, and saving more than that. And so in that scenario, the more than that pile, the pile number three, that's in a taxable account. So you'll have some assets that you can tap into that aren't in retirement accounts in the first place. The second reason that it still makes sense to max out retirement accounts, even if you plan to retire before 59 and a half, is this thing that I keep saying, because it's important, is that Roth IRAs, you can take your contribution back out, tax-free, penalty-free at any age. You just don't have to be 59 and a half. That's not a rule. And so you'll have access to this money early. And then similarly, a lot of people don't realize this, but with Roth 401k and Roth 403b plans, after you separate from service, so after you've left the employer with whom you had that Roth 401k, you can roll that Roth 401k or Roth 403b. You can roll it over to a Roth IRA. And then from that point going forward, all the money that had been Roth 401k contributions or Roth 403b contributions, now it counts as if it had been Roth IRA contributions the whole time. So again, tax-free, penalty-free access, regardless of your age. And so you're going to be accumulating a significant amount of money where there's just no 10% penalty to begin with. And then there's also the age 55 rule, the way this works. So it's specifically for traditional 401k and traditional 403b plans. And this rule basically says that if you separate from service in a year that you turn 55 or older, then from that point forward, you can take money out of that 401k or that 403b without a 10% penalty. So it's another way to get money out before 59.5 without a penalty. And then we're not going to go through all of them because there's just a really long list of all of the exceptions. And Congress adds more and more and more things to this list every couple of years. So the reality is that most of the time, you're going to have access to money penalty-free even if you retire before 59.5. You just have a whole lot of options. So that's it for our first item, max out your retirement accounts. Items two and three, fill your Roth accounts with the highest returning assets. And when you're investing in a taxable account, fill those accounts with tax-efficient stuff. I highlighted them both together because together they have a name. And that name is asset location. And the idea of asset location is basically after you've decided your asset allocation, so what Christine Jim were just talking about, so it's this much in US stocks and that much in international stocks and that much in bonds, then take some time to think about what goes where, which thing and which account. And so we call that asset location as opposed to asset allocation. And the two most important points here are fill your Roth accounts with the stuff you expect to grow the fastest and try not to own anything in a taxable account that's tax inefficient or try to stick with things that are tax-efficient. So to go through those one by one, highest returning assets in Roth. The idea here, there's two reasons we want to do this. Reason number one, Roth accounts grow tax-free. We don't have to pay tax on it every year. And if you meet the appropriate requirements, you never have to pay tax on all of the growth. So that's a good thing. Reason number two is that unlike tax deferred accounts, Roth accounts don't have RMDs at all. You're never forced to take the money out during your lifetime. And so with those two points combined, the takeaway is that if you could choose one type of account that you would want to grow the fastest, you would want your Roth accounts to grow the fastest. Like if you could have a pile of money in one type of account, Roth account, that's the answer. And so really all this means is that you want to fill your Roth accounts with stocks because that's what grows the fastest. So the reasoning might be complicated, but the to-do list item is really easy.  That's basically the gist of it. The third item, when investing in taxable accounts, use tax-efficient funds. There's a little more going on here, so we have to dig into this one. Basically, there's a few characteristics that are good and a few characteristics that are bad for a taxable account. One thing that's good is low turnover in the portfolio of the mutual fund. So portfolio turnover is just what it sounds like. It's when the fund sells something to buy something else, that's turnover. And the reason that that's so important in a taxable account is that if you own a mutual fund in a taxable account, if the fund sells something for a gain, so the fund sells an investment for more than what the fund paid for it, if you're a shareholder of that fund, you have to pay tax on your share of the gain. So even though you didn't sell anything at all, the fund sold something and now you have a tax cost. So the more often the fund is selling stuff, the more often you'll have those tax costs. And we call those capital gain distributions. That's just the tax term for the capital gains that you have to pay tax on even though you didn't sell anything. And the other important point here is that the higher the rate of the turnover within the portfolio of the mutual fund, the more likely it is that the capital gains will be short term capital gains. So that remember that's when an investment is sold after being owned for one year or less. That's a short term gain. And those are taxed at higher tax rates than long term gains. So the more frequently the fund is selling stuff, the more often, that's the way the math works, the more often the capital gains will be short term and you're gonna have to pay a higher tax rate. And so two examples here at the very tax efficient end of the spectrum, we have total stock market funds, index funds and ETFs because they've got a super low rate of turnover. And that's simply just because if you think about the investment strategy of a total stock market fund, right? It's just buy all of the stocks and that's it. That's the whole strategy. And that requires very little selling every year, almost none in fact. And so total stock market funds have very low turnover and they're very tax efficient. They're a good fit for a taxable account. And then at the other end of the spectrum, something that's really bad for a taxable account is an actively managed fund with a really high rate of turnover. So the classic example there, if you imagine, it's a mutual fund and the fund manager is just trying to own the stocks that he or she thinks are the very best ones right at this minute. And so they're just constantly buying and selling and buying and selling and buying and selling. There's gonna be a ton of capital gains every year. A bunch of them are gonna be short term and it's gonna create a ton of costs if you own it in the taxable account. And moving on to the bond side of the portfolio. The general rule is that safer bonds have lower yields because riskier bonds have to pay a higher interest rate to get people to buy them. So safer bonds have lower yields, which means less taxable income, which means less tax, which means they're more tax efficient. So safer bonds tend to be more tax efficient than riskier bonds. And so short term bonds tend to be more tax efficient than long term bonds because short term bonds usually pay a lower rate of interest. There are exceptions and we are currently living in one of those exceptions, but typically short term bonds have a lower interest rate than long term bonds, which usually makes them a better fit for a taxable account. And then with regard to credit quality, so the credit rating of the bond, the higher the credit rating, the lower the interest rate, and therefore the lower the taxable income that it creates and the lower the tax cost. So bonds with better credit ratings are more tax efficient than bonds with worse credit ratings. And so treasury bonds, there's other bonds that have the very highest credit rating of all, they tend to be really tax efficient relative to other bonds. In addition, treasury bonds are exempt from state income tax, or specifically the interest that you get on treasury bonds is exempt from state income tax. So if you live in a state where you're paying a significant income tax rate, that's another point in favor of treasury bonds being a good fit for a taxable account. And then lastly, we have municipal bonds, AKA muni bonds. And those are bonds that are issued by state and local government entities. And the interest on them is exempt from federal income tax. And in many cases, if you buy muni bonds from within your own state, then that interest is going to be exempt from your state income tax also. Now granted, there's some risk involved, because muni bonds have some credit risk, much more than treasury bonds. And if you're specifically limiting it to only ones in your state, you're kind of compounding that risk because there's a little bit less diversification going on there. But they can be a very tax efficient choice. Now one thing you'll have to decide if you have taxable assets is do you want stocks or bonds in the taxable account? And one very important factor here is that the returns you get from stocks are dividends and capital gains. Those are the two ways that stocks provide returns. And both of those things have tax-advantaged treatment. There's lower tax rates for dividends and long-term capital gains than there are for most other types of income. And so in general, stocks tend to be a better fit than bonds for a taxable account, although there are some exceptions. Now moving on to things that we specifically want to avoid in a taxable account. One of them, Jim talked about this, all-in-one funds. So that's anything that owns stocks and bonds altogether. They're not, so a target date fund, balance fund, that sort of thing. They generally aren't a good fit for a taxable account, although there are some exceptions, just like most of the stuff I'm saying. And the reason for that, number one, is that the bond side of the portfolio is going to include some corporate bonds, which have a higher rate of interest, more taxable income, more tax. And so basically the idea here is that they own some stuff that you'd rather not own in a taxable account, so it's not a great fit. The other point, and Jim also mentioned this, is that sometimes the outer layer of fund, the all-in-one fund itself, creates another level of turnover. So if you think about, for instance, a Vanguard target date fund, most of them own four underlying mutual funds.  And so each of those four funds will have its own level of turnover, whatever it happens to be, and you'll have whatever tax cost you have from that. But then the target date fund itself is going to have some turnover, because sometimes it sells one of those four funds. And that could be just the little rebalancing from day to day, but the bigger issue is what we saw from Vanguard a couple of years ago, where they just changed their mind. They decided, all right, we're kicking out this fund and adding this other one instead, and people weren't expecting that.  There were lawsuits about it. And that's not only Vanguard, by the way. Any fund company could do that and sometimes does do that. So if you have a fund like a target date fund, you're exposing yourself to that risk that they're just going to change their mind and then you've got some taxes to pay. So all-in-one funds are not usually a great fit for a taxable account. Real estate and investment trusts, REITs, Jim talked about those. They're just stocks in the real estate industry. They typically aren't a good fit for a taxable account because they generally pay a higher level of dividends than most stocks. So more taxable income. And those dividends are taxed at higher tax rate than other dividends. So more income, higher tax rate, not a great fit. They are a perfectly fine thing to own. It's just if you own them, you want them in a retirement account and not in a taxable account. So just to summarize here, things that are tax efficient. We've got total stock market funds. They have a very low rate of turnover, because the fund hardly ever has to sell anything. So that low rate of turnover makes them very tax efficient. Treasury bonds are typically tax efficient as bonds go because their high credit rating makes for relatively less taxable income and because their interest is exempt from state income tax. Municipal bonds are a good fit for a taxable account because their interest is exempt from federal income tax and potentially state income tax if you buy bonds from within your own state. And shorter term bonds tend to be more tax efficient than longer term bonds because they typically pay a lower rate of interest. And then stuff you want to avoid in a taxable account, things that are taxed inefficient. Number one, actively managed stock funds with high turnover, all of that buying and selling creates costs to you as the investor because you have to pay tax every time they sell something for a gain and you've got no control over it. High yield bonds, junk bonds, they pay a lot of interest. That's a lot of taxable income. That's not good. All in one funds, again, not a great fit because they own some bonds with higher yields which you'd rather not own in a taxable account and because you don't have control over the turnover. The fund can sell something, can sell one of the underlying funds and then you've got a big tax cost to pay. And real estate investment trusts just because relative to other stocks they pay more dividends and those dividends are taxed at a higher tax rate.  And again, that doesn't have to be complicated.  And then the tax deferred account usually owns a mix of stocks and bonds. And the reason for that is that remember our rules are highest returning assets in Roth, tax efficient stuff and taxable. There's no rules about tax deferred. Anything is a fine fit for tax deferred. So the job of the tax deferred accounts is basically just to own whatever else we need to own to get the overall asset allocation for the portfolio to be what we want it to be. So because we filled up the Roth account with stocks so there's no bonds there and we probably want some bonds in the portfolio we put bonds in the tax deferred account and then if there's also more space we put some more stocks in there. That's basically the idea. And then in the taxable account we wanna stick with things that are tax efficient. So low turnover funds like total stock market funds and with regard to bonds, treasury bonds because of their lower rate of interest and their exemption from state income tax and muni bonds because of their exemption from federal income tax and potentially state income tax. So that's it.


Welcome, folks. We had the Dow Industries finish down 97, NASDAQ off 26, S&Ps off 14.5. If you look at any of the indices, folks, what we did out here today is this. And this is a classic, too, by the way, on a bounce. Friday, S&Ps go up 57 points, bottom line went up with light volume. You know, we got higher high today, gave it up on price. So on Friday, what you had out here in the futures market did 1.5 million contracts. You got to a price point of 29.53. Today, we go to 29.59, you get over those highs, you have volume of 1.1 million contracts, you had a contraction of over 300,000 contracts, and you gave it up on price. But as that set up, folks, would likely have a B to C of an ABC structure down that will bring us all the way back down to that August 5th and August 6th level, which is about the 2775 to 2800 level, which is 137 points down from where we are. If we go take a look at the NQs, same type of setup inside the NQs, what we have at the NQs out here is that they also had a heck of a day on Friday, no doubt, light volume, but bottom line, they had the price spread going. In the NQs, we did 421,000 contracts. We did 371 today, also gave it up on price. That's saying the NQs can now make a rundown of 7244. Small caps bottom line, they still are the weakest end to see, and more than likely, it looks to me like the small caps are going to break, the first one to break the consolidation that's been in place since last May. The IWM got to a high of 150 today, closed at 148, also had lighter volume. Last week what we did is that last Friday you got to 149.25, you got to 150 today, gave it up on spades, 14 million versus 18 million, so big setup. Gold contract bottom line, building cause for higher price. What Gold had done last week is that it went down to a breakout area, rejected lower price, had lighter volume, took off top side once again, Gold's in the higher range, we pulled back today, you did have lighter volume, 251,000 contracts in the Gold market, bottom line wants higher price. And most of this I say is predicated on the note and bond market folks. The note and bond market was screaming on Friday, it would not back down, that's saying both notes as well as bonds want higher price, lower yield. Have a great night folks, have a safe night and we look forward to speaking right back here, tomorrow morning 9 o'clock.


By the year 2000, the United States will have its first laboratory in space. With the design made of modular sections, the Space Station will be a work center in orbit and will offer many benefits to our world. Utilizing the scientific analogy of the Space Station in educational settings can pave the way to ensure that our nation will have a qualified pool of scientists, engineers, computer specialists, researchers, and technicians who will lead us into the 21st century as the space explorers of the future. Using the Space Station as a way to enhance instruction is exemplified at the Anton Gridina Primary Achievement Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio. Students, teachers, parents, and the entire community have come together with the help of the NASA Lewis Research Center, the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, CMHA, and the Cleveland City School District to form the Educational Empowerment Project, a project that entices students to imagine themselves as future astronauts on a mission into space. But for the students at Anton, the future starts today. Anton Gridina is located near a CMHA public housing development. The poverty rate for this area is extremely high. The Anton Project represents a partnership between CMHA, NASA Lewis, and the Cleveland Public Schools. The intent of the project is to empower parents to better work with their children in science activities. A lot of other organizations and individuals have joined us in the endeavor. In fact, the project demonstrates what we can accomplish when we work together as a team. In addition, the project has attracted a lot of national attention, including visits to Anton Gridina by Congressman Louis Stokes, NASA Administrator Dan Golden, and astronaut Charles Bolden. The 1991-92 school year marked the beginning of a full-scale aerospace program. The ultimate goal was to build the Space Station Habitat Module. The students named their space station Space Station Harmony. Their space station would serve as the site for many space-related activities. In order to build a habitat, it was important for the students, teachers, and parents to learn more about space. For the students, monthly assemblies and small classroom sessions were held to explore scientific concepts as they relate to humankind on Earth and in space. Food and nutrition were studied to show the importance of having a good diet that includes the four major food groups. Other examples of food and nutrition demonstrated to the students how food is packaged for space and how the astronauts eat in space. Another activity explained to students how to say no to drugs and how to stay in good health by doing daily exercises. The students underwent some pretty vigorous exercise routines to show what astronauts must do to help stay physically fit in space. Scientific concepts introduced to the students about Newton's laws of motion, including action-reaction activities, held the students' interest as they were amused and enthused with this unique experiment. Some of the small classroom sessions demonstrated magnetism, aeronautics, and how humankind has changed their mode of transportation from horse and buggy all the way up to the high-tech way of life we have today, traveling in space with the help of today's space transportation system. The students at Anton Gurdina were having so much fun learning how to do experiments, learning how to grow things, learning how to measure things, and learning about comets that they didn't realize they were learning at all. Claire Friedman, Executive Director of the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority, CMAJ, shares her thoughts about the program and what she calls an integrated approach to teaching. I just think it's fantastic. I'm so pleased to be involved in this with the parents of our housing project that this school serves, and everyone's very excited about it. The other popular word that's used these days is holistic, and we do buy into that and believe that there should be more of this kind of effort, more of a holistic delivery of services to our families. And it's absolutely critical that the Housing Authority gets more involved in programs such as this that opens the world for the children so that they know there's something beyond this small little neighborhood here. Parents attended numerous workshops throughout the school year to learn about the space project so they could share in their child's academic progress. Parents enjoyed an exciting field trip to NASA Lewis Research Center for first-hand aerospace experience. Plans were drawn up and purchases made of materials creatively developed to make practically everything needed for the habitat modules. With the help of community organizations and NASA representatives, parents worked hard to construct the Foundation for Space Station Harmony. Male Jacobs has been a third-grade teacher at Anton Guadena for 24 years and is impressed with the results of the aerospace project. It's hands-on, it's not something they have to read in the book, they have to just work with it, and this way they're able to work with it as a hands-on experience. Depending on the program, this type of program absolutely, and if it's a beneficial program, no question about it. Sometimes programs have to be looked into more in depth, but this one worked out perfectly for the students, the teachers and the community with CMHA and NASA and Anton Guadena working together. Staff at Anton Guadena incorporated the space theme across the curriculum, utilizing science and math concepts through the aerospace mission. The teachers also involved themselves with numerous space and technological experiences and training to assist them with their classroom teaching. Teachers and support staff developed lesson plans, bulletin boards, classroom and hall displays around the space theme to provide the students with the space-related learning environment. Teachers also developed contests for the students to design a school logo for the space project and a contest to name the space station habitat. The time has finally come for the liftoff of space station harmony. Everyone is so excited, especially the students. And this is going to be a fantastic day. Okay, Mrs. Coleman, do they know where their positions are? They did. Ines Powell, principal of Anton Guadena, is the guiding force behind the school's participation in the Educational Empowerment Project. Her dedication and commitment to educational excellence has been an inspiration to everyone who took part in the program. It's been a year-long project. They have been studying space activities and as they relate in space and on earth. Example food, the importance of a basic diet and how does that translate for a diet for astronauts in space? General health, physical fitness and in doing various studies of the vehicles that are used in space, they've had monthly in-services by NASA engineers where we've had school-wide assemblies and small group sessions and they've studied such things, advanced things as Newton's laws, propulsion, etc. It's been incorporated throughout the curriculum since day one and that means that we do not only what the district asks of us but we also incorporate the space and science theme in reading and they have daily journal writing. I think the interest in learning, the fun that they're having is very infectious. They're transmitting that home and the parents are very excited about it because the children come home excited and as a result, an offshoot of that, we're having a high level of parent participation which turns into a lesson of support, assistance with the parents, assisting the staff at the school with our whole purpose. The whole reason this is about is so that the students will be acclimated at a very young age in the math and sciences and hopefully continue on as they grow older and go through their education and not have that dreaded fear of the science in the math because they have enjoyed it at an early age and they've developed a sincere interest. Hopefully we may have an astronaut in the future from Anton from this very project that has generated so much interest. Students have taken it so far where they have done experiments at home on their own. Parents have become involved. We have in the corridor that directly precedes entry into the decontamination chamber where students and families together have built space stations. They have done all types of journal writing on it and you know the more you write, the more you read, the more you learn. The better your handwriting, the better your spelling, the better your creative thinking. It's just enhanced everything across the curriculum and just recently in the last few days you may have heard a loud noise. We saw our test results this year and we were ecstatic and we have to attribute much of what we've done this year to that. We have been watching our test scores for the fourth four years and this being the next year we've watched them for four years there has been increase each year and there have been a few decreases because we're in the middle of implementing a new magnet school program, non-graded primary achievement and we're also using school-wide service so we're in the process of implementing two major programs and we were watching very carefully to see how all the effects of those programs, the benefits of those programs were affecting test scores. We saw increases, but this year we saw significant increases and the staff let out cheers like you wouldn't believe and it made them feel great because they knew that all the efforts and the enjoyment that has been generated this year with this project has taken on such excitement for everyone that it actually was working and other things were happening. The fun of learning translated into real hard core education. We have shown increases where we have met or surpassed the cluster and we are in Cleveland we're divided into six clusters of schools, six areas and we have surpassed the other schools in our cluster in math and reading, vocabulary and comprehension we have met or surpassed the districts in areas of reading and math with our three grade levels. So you're leading the way. We're leading the way. What we thought was a minor project has turned into something very major and becoming very major a lot of excitement has been generated and the benefits are many. We've seen a very, a tripling of parent participation tripling where before the project began we had some parent participation. It has at least tripled. We have had an increase of staff support as far as staying after school. We worked on weekends. We've worked after school. We've worked late evenings. I understand staff who worked at homes. We have had our organizations that are our adoptive school partners have come in, they've pitched in so we've got non-type of community support for this project. That has, our volunteer records are soaring. The staff, I would say the benefits for them in addition to myself. I'm not excluding myself. We have learned so much about space and even know about before and it has also served as a vehicle to bring cohesion to the staff. Every student at Anton has experienced many joys and wonders of excitement from this program. An excitement that can be instilled in every child's learning experience with the help of hands-on aerospace activities developed by NASA to enhance science and math teaching in a way that makes learning easy, enjoyable, interesting, compelling and fun. The Educational Empowerment Project is indeed an experience that children at Anton will never forget. I'm David Fletcher. David Fletcher and what grade are you in? Kindergarten. What have you learned from this project? Do our homework in our math. We're gonna play nicely and talk nicely. And speak up nicely. Speak up nicely? Did you, what do you want to be when you grow up? Yeah, bus driver. Alright, now I wanted to ask you do you know the planets yet? How about telling me what the planets are that you know? Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Pluto, Mars. What's your favorite planet? Pluto. How come? Because it's nice in there and cold. You don't like hot weather? I don't like hot weather. I learned how to grow some plants and what would happen to things if you like put them in something. Like if you would put germs in a little case and tape it up, they would start growing. Because in my class they started growing germs. And they had them in these little cases and the next day they had water on top of them. Parents of the children at Anton were active participants in the program. They are thrilled with the effects of the program which promises their children enthusiasm for learning. They are also delightfully pleased to have been given the opportunity to share their child's learning experience by working together for such a meaningful effort. Kim Chandler. And you have a kid in the school? Yeah, I have a preschooler. Shade Chandler. And the preschoolers, they made little astronauts out of paper and life size. And they have their name on it. They drew the faces. And they have them outside the classroom door for so many months until the other students get their space outfits. And they make those and they put them inside the door. So she brought her home and he's hanging on the door. And it's so nice. And they teach them about the planets. You know, taught them about the moon and the stars and night so at night time she looks up well. So my teacher told me that miss and is that the big dipper? You know, and it's good to see them with their minds on something so should I say children are interested in science that much at four and five years old. But when it's introduced to them in such young ages in preschool and whatnot they have a chance to have the interest of science and space and things. So when they get older they won't be so immune to these things. When they get in fourth and third grade when they have science they say well I learnt this in preschool. My teacher told me this and I heard of this so they won't have to just hear from their parents all the time they can come to school and get it. Are you learning anything? Well, yeah. I've learned quite a bit. I learned that Jupiter was the biggest planet in space and I didn't know that. So it's a lot of things I'm understanding that I didn't understand because when I was young stars and whatnot. So I think it's real good. I think this is really good. We were going over the he's over with the signs of the astrology and I wasn't familiar with all the stars that were supposedly in the skies and he was showing me some of the things that kind of, it was pretty interesting. This has been very interesting morning for me, you know it's re-stimulated me because my grandson and myself have a globe at home that we go over and I see that he's learned more than I gave him credit for when he answered your questions. Right. My son studied at home with his mother and I the planets and so forth he probably doesn't remember that but I've never seen a school participate in the manner that this one has a project from NASA has really stimulated the community. Leonard Cobbs is a NASA pilot but devotes much of his time assisting, coordinating and or conducting educational programs and learning activities for Lewis Research Center. He's impressed with the magnitude of student interest in technological subjects and with the continuous cooperation and support shown by Pewds. They ask very technical questions because they're interested and they want to know and the challenge to me is to try to distill the science down to the say at first grade level, kindergarten level and still keep it accurate. They want to know how airplanes are going to learn or questions of all the lift and something that you just can't paraphrase you just have to just try to distill it down so that's the challenge to me. What made it work was just a combination of everybody coming together. The kids were easy because they're young and they're curious but we had to overcome the initial resistance of the parents like they were suspicious is this going to work but adults tend to be suspicious of something new and we had to convince and CMHA and a lot of other people that this really would work. This is now the second year and as we see here it's starting to snowball and we don't have the problem now convincing people this will work. We brought them out to NASA because this is a we don't just work the children, the parents have to be involved so when the children came out to NASA for a tour the parents had to come along and they got the tour, they got to ask questions and we're not trying to teach the parents or say but we want them to know enough about what's going on so if they get a follow on question when they go home that they can reinforce what we're doing. John Herston is the director of external programs at NASA Lewis. He has played a major role in ensuring support of educational empowerment effort. The most important aspect of the program is the partnership that has been developed between CMHA between the Cleveland Public Schools and Tigardina in particular and most of all the partnership that NASA Lewis Research Center has with these two entities. It goes to show that when we begin to focus and work together and let that focus be on children that we can succeed I will say to you that we have a commitment at NASA Lewis Research Center we will be following these children to the next level and hopefully down the road we will be able to provide a national model just by using the Tigardina model to service children and acquaint them with the sciences and some of the other technical kinds of skills that we want them to have. Director of NASA Lewis Research Center Larry Ross took time out of his busy schedule to visit Tigardina on launch day. He had been briefed on the project and was given numerous details about the outstanding results of the program. However Mr. Ross's visit turned out to be one of amazement as he was overcome by the glowing results from space station harmony. After having just walked through the culmination of a whole school year's worth of activity where people from NASA both the federal workforce and our contractor workforce and the wonderful beautiful, vibrant young people here at Anton Cardina School have been learning and playing and having a grand time for all this period of the school and today is the end of that activity. It just shows it's almost indescribable to get the spirit into words. The spirit I just saw on the part of the teachers and the young people into words but it shows the impact of our program and the impact of our people can have on kids making the learning experience be the kind of fun event the interest in space these kids have allows it to be and it's just been a wonderful day and wonderful experience and I think we can share some lessons we've learned and we have learned a lot over the past period of time with these young people but it's been just great and I thank everybody who took part in it. Sandy Walters is an educational specialist for the office of educational programs at NASA Lewis. She serves as the program manager for the Anton project. She oversaw the design of the modules for space station harmony and work to ensure that all aspects of the empowerment project function smoothly. In addition, Miss Walters is instrumental in providing NASA's educational resources, aerospace activities and technical assistance needed from NASA staff to make the program a success. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the partners in this educational endeavor and especially with Anton Gradina. Throughout my career while working with students, I have never experienced such enthusiasm for learning as I have with the children of Anton and I am intensely moved by the cooperation and support received from the parents and the staff. The positive results from this program have stimulated all of us with excitement and encouragement to reach the next level. This project is just the beginning as we look to move this program forward. The experience the children have had and working with hands-on aerospace activities has helped to prove that school-aged children can achieve an interest in science and math and thereby excel to new heights. Shining stars and become our space explorers of the future.


What's up everyone it's your girl Kenzie here from Layton sports cards and I'm ripping a case here for Harry V We've got a case which is four boxes of twenty one twenty two Panini national treasures basketball hobby All right, Harry best of luck. Thanks as always for hopping in we do appreciate you. We got your sealed case right here As you can see good luck Wow, I mean I knew that was a it's definitely a nice card. I didn't know Zach Wilson You know, there's no patch. It was just just an auto. I think those would go for that much, but hey There you go All right box one paid logo man All right, no pressure here. Let's do something. I'm going something we on a streak here. We are hot We are hot first up. We've got out of seventy five job Jamaran 75 We've got one of one printing plate rookie. That is a Killian Hayes Killian Hayes printing place We've got triple patch rookie to 99 bones Highlands.  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We've got Alfred shingoon We've got lasting legacies out of 25 three-color patch auto T wolves Jamal Crawford That's a cool one nine of 25 On the Crawford like that and Last but not least out of the first box signature is on card 20 of 25 Rui Hachimura Well Rui action, all right solid first box there No more room FSU for the daytime Sunday daytime Sam will be doing personals all night tomorrow night Sticker kind of caught on there No group breaks tomorrow Sam will be doing personals Monday night personals instead. So anything that's ordered now We'll rip with him tomorrow. What's up, Mike? I try my best to get to everything that is in queue We have about another hour of 45 minutes. I think I should be able to get through everything Again, I will try my best All right up first. We've got out of 75 city thing distance City thing We've got one-of-one printing plate here Gordon Hayward aka forest Horse with a fade and maybe another six inches Gordon Hayward We've got patch the 99 biography materials Zach Levine Yalla being there three color patch to 25 and other biography materials as Sean Marion 19 out of 25 definitive ink to 99 Kings little De'errin Fox The Fox there for the Kings and we've got rookie patch autographs MBA 75th anniversary Those are low-numbered What are those I Want to say like 15 or less maybe even five just check here Rookie patch auto it's not the logo man Not seeing it because it says plus parallels Yeah, not seeing it, but I know this is pretty darn low-numbered again RPA MBA 75th anniversary Scotty Lewis There you go Hornets hit there On the RPA nice. We'll make that redemption We've got one of ten definitive ink a Bob Dandridge Milwaukee Bucks throwback there two of ten colossal Jumbo patch auto Devin Harris Mavs Devin Harris Got materials to 99 Hawks Deandre Hunter Deandre Hunter that is 45 of 99 Is it out of 75? Oh, I was thinking it was lower number than 75 Maybe I'm thinking of the night you swish that I've been seeing and out of 99 Al Harrington patch for the Knicks Alright, that was box two box three here for you Harry. Let's heat up. Let's see big auto Awesome, Brian. I'm glad you found it man Glad we could help you What did you find? I think it was a soccer relic. He was looking for a game-worn I can't remember the name of the player We've got out of 99 Siddiq Bay distance One-of-one printing plate Siddiq Bay. Yeah back-to-back base. Hey, baby Out of 99 century patch Jason Tatum Tatum Another nice one here patch to 99 little Steph Curry timeless materials splash bro Chef Curry That's a um What's it called? We've got colossal materials autographs prime car number 19 a little Demontus subbonus redemption Consignment that's the word I was looking for. Yeah, they do a lot of assignment nice Subbonus redemption. We've got sick patch here RPA to 25 Alvin shingoon for the Rockets 15 of 25 Nice shingoon. We'll mag that out of 99 biography materials. Mr. Harris here For the clips got game gears to 99 Stephen Adams for the Grizzlies game gear Signatures five of ten throwback for the Mavs and mark a guire Cabs five of ten and patch auto to 25 nicks on the second-year clutch factor obi top-end Nice obi as I call them obi one Kenobi go mag that will be for you Harry All right last box. Here we go Harry. Good luck. Thanks again for always hopping in we do appreciate it Definitely a fun rip here for you Come on big RPA here. Let's see it Right, we've got six of ten Norman Powell Norman Powell out of ten One-of-one printing plate here Puckoo, and that is actually Puckoo. We pulled one last night that had Denny of Dia on the front But on the back it was a it's a Pokemon Weird Caleb's like wait a second at a 99 patch for the Knicks Julius Randall Knicks Two-colored patch jersey treasures to 25 Tyler hero Hero there rookie Otto out of 25 for the Hornets James book night. Oh, wow Speaking of we're just talking about him Nice book night We've got to 49 patch auto clutch factors Kevin Durant boom This KD there you go Harry Nasty Heck yeah And we've got to 99 biography materials Toronto Kyle Lowry Lowry patch to 99 patch to 99 Adrian Dantley systems Then we've got game gear autos to 49 a deadlift shrunk One there super sonics Throwback the last one here five of ten Definitive ink gold Chauncey billups Oh billups out of ten All righty, Harry that will do it for your case of anti basketball congrats on all the hits Thanks again for hopping in we do appreciate your support and we'll get these cards right out to you


So, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to this parallel session on the impact of COVID-19 and mitigation measures on poverty and inequality in the developing world. I am Matteo Ricchiardi. I'm the director of a center for micro simulation and policy analysis at the University of Essex and I will chair the session. This session is actually based on the work done for the SouthMod project for which Union Wider with a number of partner institutions developed micro-simulation, tax benefit micro-simulation models for a number of African and Latin American and also some Asian countries. So, today we have two presentations followed by discussion and then general, even if short Q&A session with the audience. So, the first presentation is on African countries and it is presented by Yesela Stunen, who's a research associate at Union Wider. The paper has a long list of co-authors and so, yes, I leave the stage to you and that will be followed by a five-minute discussion by Miraco and then we will have a few minutes for comments from the audience. Yes, the floor is yours. All right, thanks Matteo and thank you everyone in the audience for joining the presentation and coming to the session. So, I'll be talking about our paper to the rescue and as Matteo mentioned, I want to emphasize that this work comes from a collaboration of more than 30 people both in Africa and also here in Finland and in the UK. So, we have a really, really large group. So, our work on Africa is part of a larger research project focusing on the distributional effects of the pandemic, which we study using tax-benefit micro-simulation models. This presentation concerns our work on the five African countries listed here. However, we also have already published two country-specific studies on South Africa and Ecuador, which I believe Javier will be talking about in the next presentation and we're also doing similar research in Vietnam. We have two main objectives or research questions in the study. First, we look at the effects of the pandemic and related lockdown measures on poverty and inequality and second, we look at the contribution of the both the general tax and benefit system or automatic stabilizers and any new tax and benefit policies that were adopted during the crisis and we're specifically looking at the distributional effects of the crisis and these policies. Here are the different steps in our analysis. Our starting point is developing kind of a counterfactual data set for 2020 for each of these countries. This is a data set with information on the population in this hypothetical scenario where COVID-19 did not happen last year and things went on as normal. In the second step, we developed so-called crisis data sets that actually do account for the effects of COVID last year. I'll talk more about the specific methodology later. The third step is about gathering information on any discretionary tax-benefit policies adopted last year in response to the pandemic and also incorporating those policies into the micro simulation models and finally we use the models and the data sets I mentioned to estimate the effects of COVID and also the effects of policy changes made in response to the pandemic. I'll start with the creation of these crisis data sets I mentioned. The first step here is estimating GDP shocks for different industries in each of the five countries in the study. These shocks are relatively simple so we estimate the deviation of each sector's GDP from what it would have been based on its growth trend over the past three years before the pandemic. Next, we allocate these macro-level shocks to the individual level data that's actually used in the micro simulation models. Our basic approach is a random allocation methods where randomly selected workers in each sector are assigned to unemployment with zero income so that the total labor income in that sector is reduced in proportion to the GDP shock in the same sector and again the GDP shock comes from the deviation of 2020 GDP from its past trend growth. Also currently for Uganda and hopefully also soon for some other countries we also have access to World Bank phone surveys from last year which we used to kind of improve the accuracy of the estimates so this is kind of a robustness check or an alternative method to allocate the shocks to the micro level data. Here the losses for individual workers within industries are imputed from the World Bank data. Basically individuals are more likely to lose some of their income if they have characteristics that correspond to a higher probability of actually losing income based on the survey and these characteristics can involve for instance age, gender, education, formality status of the work and so on. The next step in the analysis is modeling tax benefit policies or policy changes made in response to the pandemic. Here maybe the first thing to note is that these types of policies have been quite limited especially in Africa. There are however some measures that have been adopted and we've been able to model with information on eligibility and different conditions so just a few examples from the five countries in our study. So in Mozambique and Ghana utility fees were reduced or waged for consumers after the pandemic hit. Zambia enacted an emergency social cash transfer that was provided to specific poor households for a period of six months in 2020 and Ghana actually had a quite large number of different measures enacted overall which we have modeled but the overall impact of these policies was actually negative on incomes and this was fully because of this large school feeding program in the country was stopped for nine months during the pandemic. So yeah it was kind of an unintentional COVID 19 policy which we've also modeled. The final step in the analysis is actually running these micro simulation models with different data sets and policy systems in place. In terms of the outcomes we focus on disposable income and income-based poverty and inequality. We also assess the extent to which any shocks were mitigated by both automatic stabilizers basically the general tax benefit system and any new policies that were adopted in response to the pandemic. And finally we also look at so-called income stabilization coefficients which I'll be excluding from this presentation due to the strict time limits we have here. And before actually showing the results here's a quick summary of the data sets and also policy systems that we use in the study. So as I mentioned for each country we have a so-called pre-crisis data sets that represents our counterfactual what would have happened without the pandemic and we have a crisis data sets that also includes the income shocks from COVID. We also have two policy systems for most countries those countries that actually implemented any COVID related policies. The first one uses policies in place up to March 2020 which means that basically no COVID related measures are included in this policy system. The second one does include policies that are COVID related basically any policies that were in place in the countries throughout 2020. And this gives us three modeling scenarios for each country. The first one is our counterfactual scenario with no COVID shocks in the data and also no COVID related policies enacted. The second one is our full crisis scenario which does include income shocks from COVID in the data and also policies adopted in response to the pandemic. So basically this is what actually happened last year. We also have this third hypothetical scenario where we do include the shocks from COVID so we use the crisis data set but we also use a policy system without any COVID related policies. And by comparing the outcomes from these three scenarios we can derive not only the overall impact of the crisis but also the independent effects of COVID related policies and also automatic stabilizers. So finally some results which I'll try to run over quickly. So these are the changes in mean incomes in each country which we attribute to the pandemic. You can see that in Tanzania we estimate that the pandemic reduced mean incomes by nearly 10% while countries like Ghana and Tanzania were much less affected. Here in turn the total effect is decomposed into different components basically income changes resulting from COVID related policies automatic stabilizers and then the actual shock to earnings. And the main takeaway is that COVID related policies and automatic stabilizers only slightly mitigated the income shocks overall really not that much. And as I will show later automatic stabilizers namely alleviated income losses for households at the top of the income distribution while the policies affected poorer households as well. Here are the effects on poverty and inequality. The green and red numbers show the share of population earning less than 1.9 dollars per day with and without the COVID shock. Overall the total effects in black are not huge. They range from 0.5 increase in Tanzania to a 3.4% increase in Zambia. Here's also some decomposition estimates so you can see that poverty actually went up in Ghana because of the policies adopted and again this mainly comes from the stoppage of the school feeding program I mentioned. Here you can also see the changes in poverty gaps which actually increased a little bit more in relative terms than the poverty rates and basically this tells you that even if fewer people actually dropped below the poverty line those that were actually already below the poverty line drifted further below it. So this is kind of an alternative measure to look at income changes at the very bottom of the income distribution.  They were relatively small ranging from no change in Uganda to a 1.7 increase in Mozambique. Then quickly some decomposition results. This graph shows changes in disposable income in Zambia they're composed into different sources of these changes. The white dots show the net effect on disposable income for different income quartiles and the black bars for instance show the earning shock from covid. And here you can clearly see that higher income households in Zambia lost more earnings and income in relative terms compared to poorer households. Also the emergency gas transfer in Zambia the policies like these are in the dark gray bars they actually overcompensated for the income losses among the poorer poorest households. Yes you should go towards the conclusion. All right I'll be quick. Finally automatic stabilizers had a very limited effect on cautioning income losses in Zambia. Basically only households in the top quartile benefited from paying less taxes and social insurance contributions because of the reduced earnings. Then just a few more countries here. Here's the same graph of Ghana. If you look at the black bars the households in all income quartiles lost some income. But interestingly again you can see that the posing of the school feeding program actually reduced income substantially for the for the poorest households. Yes I suggest that perhaps we look at the individual countries in the Q&A time if you don't mind. So if you just want to have your like final slide and then give the page to Miracle for her discussion. Thanks very much. Sounds good sounds good. Okay I saw really quickly these comparisons between the earning shock across different employment types using the random allocation method and imputation method for Uganda. And this is a pretty interesting finding because when you actually input losses using the World Bank data this suggests that informal workers lost quite a bit more income compared to the random allocation method. So this is just a way of showing that there are ways to improve our random estimates using micro level data which we currently have for Uganda. But yeah the main findings we found modest increases in inequality and poverty across the different countries studied. The effects vary across countries interestingly higher income households also experienced relatively large income shocks. One of the reasons for the small GDP for the small effects on poverty and inequality was that agriculture was actually not very affected in terms of the GDP shock and that worked as a buffer against income losses at the bottom of the distribution. Automatic stabilizers had a very limited effect in mitigating income losses. Of course one reason is high informality. Many people work in the informal sector and are not eligible for any income mistested benefits. And finally I'll say that the emergency social cast transfer in Zampia was likely quite effective in reducing income losses at the bottom of the income distribution while in other countries policies were very limited with exception of Ghana. So yeah I'll stop here and happy to take any questions. Thanks. Thanks very much. Yes thanks very much. I hope we'll have time to perhaps look into more details into these country results after the discussion. Miracle Ben Hurra the stage is now yours. Thanks very much. Thank you. I would like to compliment the presenters for an interesting paper and good work given data limitations in Africa. So the paper is timely and well motivated but as I was reading it there's been a lot of reference to existing papers in the methodology section which is a bit kind of a detour for the reader. So I would like to recommend maybe foreign annex to the paper. Then coming back to the generation of the crisis data sets you mentioned that there's been a random assignment of the labor income shock but when we are looking at literature it tells us that some demographic groups were more affected than others. For instance women and young people could have been more affected than men and also as you have highlighted from the Ugandan data that informal sector was more affected than the formal sector. So I just want to ask that even though you don't have that data for the other countries is it possible to kind of just try to have an understanding of how the random assignment is capturing informal workers since they form a large segment of the African labor force. Then still on informal workers when it comes to the simulations I just want to have an idea of how the simulations were adjusted to cater for the large informality in Africa. So when it comes to results I'm interested in the result for Ghana where you are saying that the feeding scheme was a big shocker to the incomes. So my question is what exactly about the feeding scheme could have propelled this result is it about the share of children who are covered and also how much more could have also spent on their children in order to generate such kind of result. Now another point is related to policies so you've highlighted that the automatic stabilizers and the COVID policies had a negligible effect. So my question is given Africa's structural configuration of large informal sector and also fiscal constraints what would your paper recommend African governments are understanding to do in order to harness their fiscal systems the size that they'll be in position to minimize the impact of future shocks on the economy. Then I also want to highlight the comparison made in the paper between the results for Africa and results for Europe. So I'm not really convinced that those two sets of results are comparable given the different structural configurations of the economies as well as what has been captured in the simulations. So I would like some bit of clarity on that from the authors. So that's what I have at this point. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks very much Miracle. I think you posed a lot of very interesting questions. Most of them are methodological so I think we don't have time unfortunately to discuss them here. Perhaps I hope you will continue this discussion with Yesa and the co-authors later but I will give you, I give Yesa the opportunity perhaps to elaborate for one minute on the policy implications of the study. Just one minute please. That was the hardest question of course of all of them so that's really difficult. So yeah you mentioned very correctly that as as I brought up in the study of automatic stabilizers had a really really small impact in mitigating any income losses. Of course one reason for that was the small informal sector in this country. So many people are simply not eligible for income listed benefits and at the same time there simply are not many very much you know automatic stabilizing policies for instance tax revenues or sorry taxes going down when the crisis hits or automatic social protection measures that would that would be helpful. So as you mentioned there should be some way of actually getting that revenue to fund automatic stabilizers and overall public spending programs and that's of course really really hard. So I don't think I have any any particular solutions other than that should be a priority in the future for basically any of the countries in our study and probably for most of Africa as well. So not a very clear answer but the questions are great. If a study like that could provide very strong and clear policy conclusions it would be fantastic but perhaps it would be asking a little bit too much. Anyway thanks very much both to Yeser for the presentation and to Mira for the discussion. I will postpone the Q&A session to the end of this parallel session if we have time and then go straight into the second part of a session which is focused on an application of this tax benefit micro simulation modeling to Latin American countries and here we have a presentation by Javier and Lourdes and followed by a discussion by Veronica Amarante. Javier and Lourdes the Javier is a research fellow at the University of Essex. Lourdes is an economist from the Central University of Ecuador and the floor is yours. Thanks very much. Good afternoon everybody. Javier is going to share a presentation. While for me it's a great honor to present together with Javier the results of two studies carried out with other authors as well and we are going to present it about assessing the question in effect of tax benefit policies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America. Our motivation is that the evidence of these issues in Latin America remains scarce up to now and those few studies have focused on the effect expanded on social assistance programs in mitigating the distributional effects. Those studies are similar to the findings we found here in our studies as well. First a large increase in poverty and inequality measured by income and there is a limited effect of expanded social assistance except for the largest countries like Brazil and Argentina. Our studies are different from those because we not only evaluate the programs but also we evaluate the tax policies and also the social security contributions. Those two components we called automatic stabilizers so we have a more general view about the impact of those policies together. The aim to carry those studies was to assess the role of tax benefit policies in mitigating the impact of their drop in earnings during the COVID crisis. First we evaluate it in Ecuador and then we also expand the analysis to Colombia and Peru. We evaluate it in two main points. The first the main point of the when the crisis was the hardest was in the second quarter of 2020 and also we evaluated it at the end of the last year in 2020 as well. While we use a different from what made about Africa, we use only micro data simulations and we use directly the representative household survey data. Covering the pre pandemic period we use like the baseline the four quarter of 2019. Then we now cast the earning distribution during the pandemic based again on the official survey collecting data during two periods the second quarter and the fourth quarter of 2020. We use micro simulation models to simulate tax benefit policies and household responsible income before and during the crisis for this pandemic crisis in general. We simulate three income distributions. The first one is about the policies simulated during the pre-COVID data it means at the end of 2019. Second we simulate the COVID data based on the baseline of 2019 and finally we simulate the policies of COVID data as well during the crisis in those two main points. Also well these are the main results about the first study about Ecuador. As we can see in the figure one the white points are the mean of disposable income. The overall drop in the income was 41% on average but as we can see in this figure we have a UU shape impact in general. It comes from two main sources. First of all the automatic stabilizers have a had a large effect compared with the grant of the family protection which is the main policy in Ecuador. We have here in light blue the automatic stabilizers we can see that it only affects mainly the top of the income distribution while the grant or the family protection grant only affects to the poorest families in Ecuador. So at the end we have a more affected in the middle of the income distributions. The grant the policy implemented in Ecuador contributes to an increase in the mean disposable income of 30%. This is my part about Ecuador. I'm going to let Javier to present the rest of the results for Ecuador and the other countries. Thank you. Thanks a lot Lourdes. I hope you can hear me. I'm going now to share again my screen. Okay so as Lourdes said we started this study looking at Ecuador and we noticed the dramatic decrease in household disposable income so we wanted to extend the analysis and see what happened in other countries with similar economic characteristics so we expanded the analysis well in two terms. First because here we were looking at the second quarter we were wondering to which extent the economy recovered or not by the end of 2020. So this is the graph that we have here figure two compares at the left the same graph that Lourdes already discussed Q2 in 2020 for Ecuador whereas the graph at the right presents the result for Q4 2020. So as we see in the last column the decrease in household disposable income is much lower so now we have a decrease of around 20% on average but it remains a decrease so although the economy recovers by the end of 2020 we still see that household disposable income has decreased compared to the pre-pandemic scenario. Something else that we noticed that now we do not see the impact of COVID related policies so the blue dark bars that we saw for the low income desires this is because the COVID protection grants that were implemented in Ecuador were implemented only during two months during the second quarter of 2020 therefore by the end of the year although earnings drop and we still see a drop in household disposable income there were no policies to mitigate this shock. We see a small effect of automatic stabilizers in the last this side of the Q4 for Ecuador this is because as earnings drops tax and social insurance payments decrease automatically so we see lower reduction in disposable income compared to the reduction in earnings however it's very limited. So this is what happened in Q4 for Ecuador compared to Q2 but now what happened in other countries. Here figure three presents the results for Peru something interesting that we notice for Peru is that the size of the shock is somewhat similar a bit larger than in Ecuador for Q2 we have a drop in household disposable income those are the circles the white circles that you see of around 43-44% on average and something interesting as well is that as it was the case in Ecuador we see also a U shaped pattern of the decrease of the impact of the COVID pandemic on household disposable income across the income distribution contrary to Ecuador we see that Peru implemented a very generous social protection also protection policies during a Q2 in 2020 so we see that the fall in earnings in Q2 was more than compensated for the first income beside a group representing an increase in household disposable income around 40%. However now if we turn to Q4 at the right we see that as it was the case for Ecuador Peru did not maintain these social the expanded social protection programs until the end of 2020 therefore we still observe a decrease in household disposable income due to the shock in earnings by the end of 2020 Peru and there are no policies to mitigate this shock. What about Colombia this is our next graph we see that in Colombia first if we look at Q2 the decreasing household disposable income was much lower than in Ecuador in Peru because the decreasing earnings that the black bars that you see in the graphs was much smaller we see that COVID related policies in Q2 were more generous than in Ecuador but not as generous as in Peru however now if we turn to Q4 we see that there is still a decrease in household disposable income but out of these three countries Colombia was the country that decided to maintain this social protection until the end of the year so we still see an impact of COVID related policies to mitigate the negative shock in earnings and we see that this more than compensates the losing earnings for the first decide group I'll be very quick now in terms of income inequality and poverty as we see also in the previous graph there's a huge shock in household disposable income in Q2 so we expect income inequality and income poverty to increase this is exactly what we see here we figure five for the genetic coefficient so for the three countries Colombia Ecuador and Peru we see a big increase in the genetic coefficient in Q2 then we see a decrease in Q4 for 2020 but the levels do not return to the pre-pandemic levels the light blue bar in the bars represent the increase in income inequality that we would have observed if COVID related policies were not introduced by these countries so we see that although small the programs did help mitigate the impact of the crisis in income inequality and finally for poverty we see a very similar picture again a dramatic increase in poverty in Q2 2020 for all three countries levels decrease in Q4 but they do not return to the levels of the pre-pandemic and we see an impact an important impact of COVID related policies managing to mitigate the impact of the shock by around three percentage points in Colombia and Peru much less in Ecuador in Q2 so just to conclude and sum up what we have observed is a dramatic increase in income poverty inequality between December 2020 in the second quarter of sorry December 2019 in the second quarter of 2020 in all three countries COVID related benefits have a limited effect but even more so in Ecuador by the end of 2020 the economy recovers however household disposable income remains on average lower than the pre-pandemic levels around 20% lower in Ecuador and Peru around 12% lower in Colombia in terms of policy we see that Colombia is the only country that maintains COVID emergency policies in place until the end of 2020 that this helps mitigate the impact of the crisis until the end of the year and finally something interesting from this presentation on the other is that if you notice the effect of automatic stabilizers was always concentrated at the top of the income distribution and this is not only because of the design of taxes and social insurance this is also because of the design of benefits which are designed as proximists benefits because they are proximists that they are not they are unable to automatically react to income shocks to mitigate the impact of the crisis thank you very much thank you thank you Javier and and Lourdes in the interest of time can go straight to the conclusion uh sorry to the conclusion to the discussion by Veronica Amarante Veronica as a professor at the Institute the economia from the economics department at the university of the republic in Uruguay Veronica the floor is yours okay well thank you very much for for allowing me to participate in this in this session uh first of all i would like to congratulate the authors for the article and for the presentation the paper provides a detailed analysis of the impact of covid 19 on household income and and it shows the the effects of the policies i think it's it's a very relevant contribution to solve the puzzle about what happened in the region so there are other other papers who focus on other countries and it's interesting to notice that the results are very similar what what what they are finding for the Andean countries is similar to what has been found for other for other countries in the region i have some specific questions or suggestions for the paper the first one is if if i understood way some policy responses such as the employment insurance or the possibility to withdraw part of the of the private pension funds in Peru were not simulated i imagine that probably this is because of of data availability but i also think that there may be other policies that are not incorporated because of these same problems so in that sense i think it would be interesting to provide the reader the information about how much of the total package of policies are being simulated in this exercise just to give a glance of of of the of the of the size of the response that you are considering if it is almost everything or what kind of things that could not be included i assume that it is almost everything but then i also apart from suggesting adding information i would like to ask about that and i also thought that i also think that this analysis based on no casting it's it's very interesting but some the the results you're presenting are presented as deterministic in the sense that we do not have different scenarios or or some or we do not see any introduction of some randomness as for example in the first paper that we saw in this same parallel session so that was something that may help also to check how robust these conclusions that which are based on migrosmolation are so that was a second suggestion the the third one was that in each of this country a certain amount of money is is is assigned to to the pandemic so i depending on the type of policy that money may help households in the in the in different parts of the distribution so i think it may be interesting to calculate kind of effectiveness indicators of something like that of the policies in terms of the reduction of poverty or the reduction in inequality by dollar by some monetary measure and to compare the countries and also to see the different the the different location and effectiveness of the of the money and then i have a question about the the the conclusions i think it's interesting what you are what you are saying about the fact that there are no benefit acting as automatic stabilizers because cash transfers are designed in other ways so they do not act like that but then i i need the paper you also go ahead and and you said something like that the the social protection system in the in the region should be we should rethink about the social protections in the in the region thinking about those the space or the potential space for for automatic stabilizers for this kind of situation so i was wondering if you have some kind of policy if you are thinking about some kind of policy intervention in particular just associated to this idea that that cash transfers may not be the the more the best solution so if it's kind of a ready sign of cash transfers to be able to cope with with these situations or or what kind of policies may may help in these situations yeah thanks a lot lots of very interesting questions and suggestions i will allow Javier or Douglas to take one and respond for just one minute thank you very much Verónica i've come to the policy question as i think again is is relevant for the whole discussion yes perhaps there's two different things to say the first thing is that social cash transfers in latin america and in general in african countries are do reduce poverty and inequality so if you compare the the levels of poverty with and without the cash transfers we do see an effect in reducing poverty and inequality however what they don't they fail to do is to react to economic shocks so if you see you have an economic shock and people enter to unemployment they do not they cannot claim they can they are not allowed to claim these type of benefits why because eligibility is assessed in terms of the characteristics of the dwelling of the household of the household heads and this means that because they do not they do not depend directly on households income people cannot claim a benefit when the household income drops as a result of however i think it's interesting to think about why social protection is designed in this way and i think because they have they have a different role as in developed countries i think the role of social protection social assistance programs in the developing countries is to to fight structural poverty and that's why they are designed in terms of characteristics broader characteristics and income whereas social assistance programs in developed countries usually also target transitory poverty and so i think and that's when we discuss about rethinking these programs in the paper i think we are thinking about how to make these two things converge so should we should would it be able to keep certain social assistance programs in developing countries fighting structural poverty with a design eligibility that takes into account a large number of dimensions of well-being or say characteristics of households whereas could we think also about complementing this with social assistance that depends directly in household earnings so that then when there is an economic shock people or households would receive an automatic protection rather than depending on the willingness and the revenues of the countries when we face an economic shock and i think from the coverage the geographic coverage of countries that we have seen here South Africa is one of the countries which stands out from from other low and middle income countries in the sense that they do have means tested benefits so i think there is a context and an opportunity to discuss how we could achieve or combine these these things in the context of Latin America and later on of african countries as well thanks Javier that was perhaps a little bit longer than one minute but also provided some nice reflections on on this general type of analysis with respect to other countries as well so we had two big papers today and lots of very interesting insights and comments and feedback from from the discussions so unfortunately we don't really have time to take questions from the audience but i would invite the more than 40 participants to the session to contact the authors directly if they have feedback if they wish to discuss anything and with that i really thank all the participants and the authors and presenters and the discussant and i will now close the session thanks a lot to everybody bye bye thank you thank you thank you so much bye bye