Joseph Fuller: It’s no secret that America’s working class has fallen behind in recent decades. The employment and income figures are well known, as are the alarming social statistics. But media and academic accounts tend to be outside-in, dealing more with statistics than people. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast. I’m your host, Harvard Business School Professor and Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. Our guest, Sheryl WuDunn, has addressed that in a recent book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. Co-authored with her husband, New York Times columnist, Nick Kristof, the book describes Nick’s hometown of Yamhill, Oregon. The Pulitzer Prize-winning duo present an extended and poignant case study of a community suffering the effects of economic inequality and substance abuse. Sheryl joins me today to talk about the book, which illustrates how the messy realities of people’s day-to-day lives defy easy solutions. Sheryl, welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast.

Sheryl WuDunn: Thank you very much, Joe.

Fuller: Sheryl, I'm interested how you and your co-author and husband, Nick Kristof, decided to pursue this project that ended up in the book Tightrope.

WuDunn: Well, we actually started out by trying to find out what the Trump voter felt and what their lives were like. The book Tightrope turned out to be far more than that. We started off with talking to people in Nick's hometown, and the reason it happened that way is that, look, Nick and I have been foreign correspondents in Asia. He's traveled around the world as an op-ed columnist, and so we've seen poverty in the developing world in many different places and humanitarian crises around the world. And we've written about many different families in villages—far-flung where there's no transportation at all. And what happened was we would come back home once a year to Yamhill, in Oregon where Nick grew up, and we would speak to these people who partly he grew up with, probably who were working on the family farm, and we started thinking that, "My goodness, their lives are pretty miserable as well." And so, as we started reporting for Tightrope, we realized that their lives were so dysfunctional, so devastating that we thought, "There is a humanitarian crisis going on in our own backyard and we didn't even know about it." There are so many homegrown Americans who don't have hope, and so they are suffering. For them, the American dream is broken.

Fuller: When you started the project, did you have some sense of the magnitude of that? And also, did your views change as you researched the book?

WuDunn: Actually, what changed was the amount of horror and dysfunction and tragedy that we found. We didn't expect it to be this bad. We saw so many afflictions of the human condition, period. And so, as we started talking to a number of the people he's been keeping in touch with—his classmates—he started really thinking about the patterns that he was seeing, which were that the people on his school bus, when he started counting up the people who had started dying over the past few years of a number of different afflictions, there were about one-quarter of the people on his number six school bus who are no longer with us. And they were dying from drug overdoses, alcoholism, alcoholic-related deaths. Drunk driving, suicides, other diseases related to just obesity, diabetes, related to this sense of loneliness and despair. And as we went around other parts of the country as well, we discovered that it was true in both urban and rural areas, and that the numbers across the country were far greater than we had expected. We had very low unemployment until the coronavirus, but we basically have a segment of the population that never experienced that. Compared to our peer countries in Western Europe, in Canada, our life expectancy in the US, actually for the past three out of four years, has been declining. It's been dipping. And a lot of those certainly drug-related and alcoholic-related and suicide-related deaths play a big role, as do things like heart disease and other pathologies that are derived from what is happening in the working class.

Fuller: Sheryl, one of the really powerful things about the book are the personal stories of friends and acquaintances that you introduce. How did you balance telling those stories with offering a commentary on a broader decline in that social class that is represented by the population of Yamhill?

WuDunn: We often use a particular story to highlight what is going on in the rest of the nation. And so, in many ways, Yamhill—and the number six school bus—is a microcosm for what is going on in the rest of the country. Counted up what was happening with the people on his school bus. He knew that some of them were dying, but when we actually added them all up, basically one-quarter of the people on his school bus are no longer with us.

WuDunn: And we have found—maybe not to the same degree around the country—but the life expectancy certainly has fallen over three of the past four years in the US.

Fuller: Right. Leading indicator of our relative social decline and inadequacy of elements of our social safety net. Some observers attribute this kind of cycle of poverty and intergenerational poverty and addiction to cultural dysfunction and breakdowns in traditional families. What did your reporting tell you about that?

WuDunn: It's very interesting that in the 1990s when we started seeing the kinds of drug-related pathologies and alcoholism in the African American community, people were saying, "Oh, it has to do with their culture. It's the Black culture. It's the deadbeat dads, they don't go to school. It's their culture." And then the scholar, William Julius Wilson at Harvard said, "No, it's not culture. It's the fact that they've lost jobs. It's the lack of jobs." Then now when it's happening in working class white communities, when they've lost jobs, we see the exact same pathologies unfolding. Professor Wilson was absolutely right, because it is the loss of jobs that triggers a lot of these pathologies that lead to cycles of poverty and despair.

Fuller: Let's focus on the role of employers a little bit. We often talk about big governmental institutions, the K-12 system, the education system, as those that are really responsible for implementing big social changes or improving social conditions, but you really focus on the importance of employment and jobs. When you looked at that, what did you take away in terms of working relationships, but also the role of employers in this and how employers should be viewing these developments?

WuDunn: Well, it's certainly very important at the institutional level what actually is being implemented on the ground. So, you can certainly have policies in schools, for instance. It's really important for principals to say, "I'm not just going to kick out a troublemaker because I don't want him in my school. That's just pushing the problem onto society." Similarly, in workplaces, the first reaction is, "Oh, I'm just going to fire someone because they're a troublemaker. I can't deal with them." And that's acceptable in the workplace, but it does create problems with that particular person maybe can't find a job because the employment situation is not very good. In surveys, there is an interesting trend showing that some companies aren't just going to fire these people if it's drug related. They're going to say, "Wait a second, let's refer you to an employee assistance program, or let me give you a second chance. Let me give you a second chance. We talked to a number of people who were very upfront with their bosses and said, "I've had a drug problem", and the bosses were remarkably understanding as long as they were able to perform. But it really comes down to how an employer implements his policies at the ground level.

Fuller: Sheryl, one thing they came across in the book also was how reasonably mundane small events, the loss of a driver's license or transport problems, really had this ripple effect through people's lives and started this cascade of events that led to the type of desperate outcomes you are talking about.

WuDunn: Yes, there are many discrepancies and, actually, many contradictions that occur at the policy level and then at the implementation on the ground level. So, for instance, when people may suspend the driver's license of someone, whether it's that they haven't made good on alimony payments, how is he going to get to work? And if he isn't employed, how is he going to find a job without a driver's license? So, you saw that recently, Illinois, the state of Illinois, the governor recognized this problem and gave an amnesty to people who had these kinds of situations, and their driver's licenses were suspended. That's exactly the foresight you need in leadership.

Fuller: Yes, it is interesting how we have these conflations of events where policies implemented with well-meaning intent and understandable intent have these systems effects that actually exacerbate some of the broader problems that you described so articulately in the book. Let's come back to the school system because that was clearly a path to a great future for Nick. But—any observations about their role and the role they play in trying to help the struggling families get on a better path? I was particularly touched by the story, for example, of the Green brothers.

WuDunn: Yes. The role of education is extremely important to any place, whether it's in the United States or whether it's abroad, to lifting people out of poverty. And a case in point is a family called the Greens. Irene Green is the matriarch of the family and her sons, Kevin, Clayton, and Nathan, just didn't think that high school was for them. Their father, Tom Green, was a really rock-solid man. He was a good guy. He had been in the army and had done very well there, came back and he got a good union job.The Greens didn't have many books in their house. Irene Green didn't have much of an education, so she didn't emphasize education. So, they weren't doing well in high school and they became kind of like troublemakers. Certainly, Clayton Green actually was always getting into fights, so he was kicked out in ninth or tenth grade. But he also didn't really try hard in school because he saw that his father didn't have a high school education. His father had a good job, so he could get one too. Well, obviously you really need a high school degree to get really basically anywhere. But Clayton was quite talented in that he could do anything with a car. He was able to fix tractors, mowers, anything that had wheels on it. And, this is for sure because Nick actually was very bad at that. So, we could see his trajectory versus Nick and his other classmates who were in the National Honor Society. So, you really had a distinct difference between those who did well in school, and everyone who was in the National Honor Society in his class is just fine. And those who didn't make it through high school even, and they are struggling. We in the United States need to emphasize education. Believe it or not. Obviously, here at HBS everybody values education greatly. But, there's a huge segment, especially in the working-class population, of people who don't really value education that highly.

Fuller: Sheryl, another story that really caught my attention was that of Amber Knapp, someone who got on a path to success, but then ran into some difficulties. Could you share her story with our listeners and how indicative is her story of others you saw around the country?

WuDunn: Well, let me tell you first of all about the Knapp family because it explains the intergenerational issues that the country faces. So, the Knapp family, they lived very close to Nick, just a stone's throw away. And there were five kids in the Knapp family: Dee and Gary were the parents. These Knapp kids were quite talented and funny and playful kids. There was Farlan, there was Nathan, there was Keelan, there was Nealon, and there was Regina. Farlan was the oldest one and he had two kids, one of them who was Amber, who was his daughter. Farlan was a very intelligent kid who actually did not graduate high school, unfortunately. He got a job for a while, but then he lost his job and got very depressed, couldn't find other work. He ended up going into drug-making. He started making meth. So, he had talent for chemistry, but not in the right places. And he ended up—because of his drug use over the years—ended up dying. Now, his other brothers, Zealan and Nathan— Zealan died when there was a house fire and he was passed out drunk. Nathan died when he was trying to make meth and it blew up. Regina died from needle use, from liver disease related to needle use. And Keelan had survived for the longest time partly because he spent 13 years in the Oregon State Penitentiary. Unfortunately, just last week we heard that Keelan also died from an overdose. So, the family was unfortunately very unlucky. Amber, the daughter of Farlan, was the first person in the family to graduate from high school. So, she was... She made a real mark. She did very well. She got a job at a small company in the area near Yamhill, but in a different town. And she was doing PowerPoint presentations. I mean, this was a smart girl. She was doing analytics. It was when her father, Farlan, died. She loved her father, and he died, and his two daughters, Amber and Amber's sister... In fact, Amber's sister started drinking really heavily after their father's death, and she died of alcoholism, basically, at the age of 29. Amber still seemed to be going okay. She had a job. She had a husband and three kids. We thought she was going to make it. But then, as she told us, she was so upset about both her father and her sister's deaths that she—for the first time¬—at the age of 32, started using drugs. She had sworn herself against drugs. She hated it because she saw what it did to her father and all of her other uncles and aunt. And yet, at 32 she started using drugs and that was a downward spiral for her. She lost her husband. She lost her kids. We ended up talking to her for a long time when she was out on parole and in a rehabilitation home. We thought she was going to make it, and we then started texting her and didn't hear back, texted her again, didn't hear back. Finally, we got a note from her daughter that she was back in jail. So, we were very disheartened to hear this because here, we thought that she was going to break out of the mold. It is really hard and part of it has to do with your upbringing. Even though she, against all odds, graduated from high school, it just still wasn't enough. So, you can see the challenges that people face when they're brought up in an environment that is extremely adverse to the nurturing environment that many of us in the educated world are used to. I mean, it's the adverse childhood experiences—what we call ACEs—that really are hard to overcome.

Fuller: Sheryl, lest our listeners think that every vignette from Yamhill is discouraging, there are some interesting stories about things the school system is trying to do to get people more prepared for employment and trying to give them a sense of having a future. Could you talk a little bit about that and what you took away from it? Are you optimistic?

WuDunn: One of the most enlivening and encouraging things I've seen is in the Yamhill school system. So, for a couple of decades, Yamhill's high school graduation rate dipped to like in the 70-plus percent [range], which is really low. It's lower than the average, but now they have a superintendent of schools who is a really competent, very able leader. His background is really helpful. So, he grew up in what he calls a dysfunctional household because his father was an alcoholic, and he went into the military and he says the military saved him. It taught him discipline. It taught him skills. It taught him teamwork, collaboration, leadership—all of the things that he is using now as the superintendent of schools in Yamhill. So, what he has done is, look, he recognizes that not everyone is going to graduate from high school. He just says, "Look, there are some people who just aren't. They're not made for school and that's okay," he says. So, what he's done is, he has created this sort of modern version of a sort of vocational training program in the high school. He's raised money for it. It's like a workshop that not just ... It doesn't just teach you like woodworking, but it teaches you the skills that local employers require in their workers for low tech jobs. So, he's worked with local employers to ask them, "Okay. What kind of skills do you want in your low-tech jobs?" Then he creates a little workshop that mimics or teaches the students some of those skills so that when they leave high school, whether it's they don't graduate or they graduate, they will have some skill sets. It seems to be working. The graduation rate—he's nudged it up a little bit now.

Fuller: Certainly, one of the things we've found in our research here in our Managing the Future of Work project is when you can build closer ties between the education community and employers and give students a sense that there actually is a future, and if they continue to apply themselves and finish high school, they actually have the prospect of a future and some independence. That's something that is applicable across industries and, really, across the country. Now, you look more broadly at the country. What were some other things you picked up, particularly as it related to innovations in schooling or in criminal justice?

WuDunn: I think schools around the country are also trying to partner with or collaborate with other agencies so that they can catch some of these students who are struggling. So, for instance, now even in Yamhill and we saw this also in other school systems. They are bringing in a health official, for instance, to help them spot students in the classroom who might be troubled, or who they think may need access to healthcare, or to psychological services, or to therapy. That's actually a new phenomenon to bring someone into the classroom to spot some of the students, to actually be sort of spotting, evaluating the students as they are in the classroom. So that's very helpful. They also work with the local police authorities because there are going to be kids that are going to be troublemakers. So, they need to work with the local police authorities so that those policemen are not just going to throw them in jail, but are going to work with them so that they can try and integrate them back into the school system without too much damage to the average school day.

Fuller: Another thing we hear a lot about is the difficulty of getting people with a background of substance abuse, or involvement with the criminal justice system, over substance abuse and back into the workforce. What did your reporting tell you about that?

WuDunn: So, substance abuse is a national phenomenon. It's a national problem. The amount of overdose deaths has really skyrocketed. About 68,000 people per year die from drug overdoses. So, we have a problem that we have to deal with, and everybody knows about the opioid crisis. So, how do we deal with it? I mean part of it is that we have had a history in the past couple of decades of just locking people up. Well, the problem with that is that when you put someone in jail for five to 10 years, it's not going to solve their problem when they come out, right? What some innovative programs are doing now, and there's one in Oklahoma called Women in Recovery. They work with the local district attorney and the local jails and they evaluate women who are thrown in jail and before they are sent to prison. They evaluate, if this woman, the reason for her criminality is that she has a drug addiction—well let's actually treat the drug addiction. We have 16, 18-month program that will put her through therapy, drug treatment, first of all, so you can get her off the drugs, and all sorts of therapies and trainings so that she stays off the drugs. They also give her business training skills, life training skills, household management training skills, and then apprenticeships, so that they then can learn some on-the-job skills. They work with the local employers who are willing to take ex-convicts and then a lot of these women—almost all of them—end of graduating with a job from this program. So, after 18 months to two years, these women come out of the program as productive members of society rather than sitting in a jail for five to 10 years and coming out with no skills. It's saved so much money for the city of Tulsa. In fact, I think since the program has been around for a number of years, they've saved about $70 million for the city, which is a real achievement. It creates productive women and saves money.

Fuller: Certainly, the re-visitation of the consequences of substance abuse including employers revisiting barriers they've historically employed to exclude people with a criminal record from even consideration for employment are small glimmers of hope. Sheryl, we're recording this as the Coronavirus epidemic is beginning to gain momentum. Many of our listeners will have concerns about how that's going to affect people at all levels of society, but including those that don't have economic independence, steady jobs, or work-at-home type jobs. You've been at the coalface. You know these people. You know what their lives are like. What do you think the consequences are going to be for them and what the aftermath's going to be?

WuDunn: So, I think that many of the people we write about in Tightrope, they are the very people who are going to be the most vulnerable to a recession that is stemming from the coronavirus. So, for instance, it's interesting that the Federal Reserve did a survey and discovered that 40 percent of the people they surveyed would have difficulty paying for a $400 car repair job. They would have to borrow. They'd put it on the credit card. There are a lot of people who are just barely making ends meet. So, these are the people in the working class, and they form the backbone of our economy. So, if we're talking about, "Okay. Let's go work from home," well if we want to order takeout, who's going to be delivering that takeout? That's going to be someone who is the working class who's going to be earning minimum wage to drive that bicycle or drive the car to give you your food. Who's going to be cooking that food? It's going to be a cook who's in a restaurant kitchen, who is earning minimum wage, again—slaving away to cook your food. All of the stuff that we use just to live depends upon the working class. You're still going to see many people in the industries who are basically servicing us. You're hearing about all the layoffs in the factories, in the auto factories, and in other factories, that are being laid off. Some of them don't have healthcare. They're contract workers, and so they're not going to have access to healthcare. And here we are with the coronavirus. They may get free testing. Are they going to get free treatment? There are a lot of questions about this group of people.

Fuller: If you go to facilities that are now closed or restricted to essential personnel only, it's largely filled with people like that because what's essential to keep the building open are the operations people, the catering staff, the cleaning staff to keep surfaces clean and try to stay ahead of the spread of the virus. So, maybe this crisis will cause us to start rethinking the definition of what type of work is important and essential. Sheryl, one last question.

WuDunn: I really do hope that it makes us think more carefully about this group of people, about this class of people, because that's what we write about in Tightrope. We're writing about the people who really have no voice at this moment, the working class.

Fuller: Certainly, the stories you and Nick tell so pointedly in Tightrope help bring home the type of challenges that have to be overcome to get people on the path to independence economically, and stable households, and reigniting the American dream. Sheryl, would you tell stories of some people that would seem to be on the path to one of these apocryphal deaths of despair, but did manage to forge a path forward and make a life for themselves?

WuDunn: Drew Goff is the son of a family friend. His father, Rick Goff, worked on the family farm for years. He was an intelligent, real intelligent man who loved artwork. But Rick Goff actually used drugs and then his son, Drew Goff, started using drugs at 12, at the age of 12 and we thought, "Oh boy." We saw Drew and wondered what was going to happen to him. And then Rick died, and Drew was in jail, the son was in jail, and we wrote to him and he was still in jail. And then about a year and a half ago, we ran into Drew at a drug treatment program called Provoking Hope in McMinnville. He was really articulate. It was a group session with other men talking about just the challenges that they face, and they were all trying to encourage each other. And Drew was a real leader in that group. And he had a son with him, Ashton. Ashton was born with drugs in his system. And actually, a baby in the US is born every 15 minutes with exposure to opioids. So, it's not unusual. And we thought, "Oh, no. Well, this cycle is going to pass on to the next generation." Drew went to parent training classes and he basically had custody of his little baby, Ashton. He was reading to Ashton. He was talking, he was hugging, he was carrying Ashton around, which is all the kinds of things that you really would tell an educated mom to do. And we thought, "Wow, maybe this is really going to work." Drew got a job at a hotel as a hotel clerk. And then just about a month ago, we saw him. And we asked him, "So are you still at that hotel?" And he goes, "Oh, no. I left that hotel," and we thought, "Oh, no. He lost his job." But then he said, "But I'm a manager at a moving company and I have 10 people working for me." We thought, "Oh my goodness, this is terrific. He's now a manager." What a turn around that was. And he's not married. We just thought, "Okay, he's going to do okay and he's going to raise Ashton to be the strong American kid that we need in this country." We need an America full of strong American kids.

Fuller: Well, thanks for giving us that uplifting story in what's a bit of a dark time in the country—and a very, very difficult and challenging topic that you've brought to the fore with this book.

WuDunn: Thank you, Joe.

Fuller: Sheryl, thanks for joining us on the Managing the Future of Work podcast.

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