Heather Boushey Quotations

We have just gone through a number of years of incredible policy changes. If we stop collecting data now, how will know what the effects of recent policy changes are?

So far, the debt payment ratio (of loan payments to income) hasn't been higher this decade than during the 1990s, but it's been partly held in check by lower interest rates. In some sense, we haven't seen the whole burden bearing down yet.

One of the most provocative things we found was the share of student costs covered by loans has fallen even as the amount of loans has increased.

Given that the Census doesn't seem to have a clear plan, and given that it's taken about seven years to develop a new survey historically, I don't see that it will take only two years to develop something better than we have now.

Statistically speaking, the chances of moving up (the) income distribution (curve) is less than it was a decade ago. Students with debt face real concerns with the shrinking middle marketplace.

We need to know what the effects of these programs are on American families.

We saw this in manufacturing -- firms started off slow and stayed close to home,

There is no trend of mothers dropping out of the labor force. It just looks like they are because the economy has been so hard on working moms.

The number of job losses in the retail and service sector as well as the hotel industry is very distressing and really does demonstrate the role that Sept. 11 played in increasing unemployment.

The numbers that we are seeing today are consistent with those we saw in the last recession,

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of women are working and they're going to be part of the labor force for a long time. While they may choose to take time off, they're doing things that women in '60s weren't doing.

The main reason for women's declining labor-force participation rates over the last four years was the weakness of the labor market. Women did not opt out of the labor force because of the kids.