Nov. 21, 2025 | This Week in Government: Progress on Education, Growing People’s Income Levels Are Key to Helping Drive Improved Health Outcomes

Policymakers can help improve the health outcomes for Michigan residents by focusing on ways to ensure the state’s population is better educated and has improved financial resources, a new report from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan released Tuesday showed.

The report notes that although Michigan is close to the national average for some health care metrics, it lags behind other states in the Midwest and across the country in others.

The report also highlights a long-cited theory that a person’s financial resources have a significant effect on their overall health. Having more financial resources due to education, employment, and income levels can determine overall health and access to health care.

Financial resources is one of two key features highlighted in the report, the other being that there are many complex social factors that shape individual health that should be considered in policy making decisions.

“While health policy is very necessary for better health outcomes, health outcomes are largely driven by other things, and it’s very important that we be focusing on those things,” Karley Abramson, a research associate on health policy with the CRC, told reporters Tuesday during a virtual press event. “Essentially, the biggest drivers of poor health outcomes appear to be more education, employment, and income, particularly for low-income communities and those with lower educational attainment.”

Michigan’s average income is lower than the national average, the report states, and the state has larger income disparities based on race and gender.

Further, Michigan is below the national average in educational attainment, including college degrees, while also having wider disparities in educational attainment among low-income and Black students.

For employment, Michigan has long had a lower labor force participation rate than the national average, especially among those without a high school diploma. Racial disparities in employment are also an issue in Michigan.

Despite these disparities, the report found that Michigan performs well relative to the national average in terms of health care coverage, somewhat above the national average in available services, and slightly better than the national average on the cost of care.

Increasing the number of physicians and nurses in the state would help health outcomes, the report said, as would policy changes on the state level to rein in costs.

The state is largely in line with the national average in other areas including cost of food, access to food, and workplace and transportation safety, according to the report. Michigan has air quality that is worse than the national average and has an above average rate of community-level violence.

The report concluded that there is no silver bullet to address the state’s level of health outcomes.

“Any sustained progress on this front will be the product of tradeoffs and deliberation from many stakeholders who recognize the connection between improving financial resources and health outcomes in the state,” the report states. “The key to making the population healthier is a better education system and a more robust, fairer economy. The precise policies that take the state from here to there are up for debate, but the pathways it needs to follow to connect public policy to health outcomes are clear.”

The Michigan Association of State Universities has received a $255,000 grant to help the state’s universities and community colleges work together more efficiently.

The Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential announced the grant on Monday. The funding will support an automated system for sharing course and grade data, allowing students who transfer from a community college to a university to receive an associate degree once credit requirements are met, a process known as “reverse transfer.”

“This grant builds upon the progress MiLEAP has fostered to achieve a more seamless student transfer experience throughout Michigan,” MiLEAP Director Beverly Walker-Griffea said in a statement. “When fully implemented among the state’s community colleges and public universities, reverse transfer will create a more comprehensive statewide framework that will lead to more individuals being rightly recognized for their postsecondary educational achievement and greater progress toward Michigan’s goal of having 60% of residents possess a credential of value.”

The “reverse transfer” process allows students who transfer between the state’s universities and community colleges to receive their associate degrees while simultaneously completing their bachelor’s degrees.

Michigan Community College Association Brandy Johnson in a statement said community colleges and universities are working to build out an automated system “that will recognize a milestone achievement for thousands of Michiganders, qualifying them for better paying jobs as they pursue a bachelor’s degree as part of their educational and occupational journeys.”

“Michigan’s community and tribal colleges have energized recent efforts to implement reverse transfer capabilities at these institutions,” Johnson said.

An automated system from the National Student Clearinghouse streamlines the exchange of course and grade data, strengthens collaboration across postsecondary institutions, and ensures more students are recognized for their academic achievements.

“Making transfer more seamless, transparent, and effective for students is a priority of all 15 public universities in Michigan. Students will be able to transfer when they are ready, knowing that their work on the way to a bachelor’s degree will be rewarded with an associate degree, providing them with an important credential for the talent marketplace,” MASU Chief Executive Officer Daniel Hurley said. “This grant will facilitate an even higher level of collaboration among our state’s public universities and community colleges. Students, employers, and taxpayers will all benefit from this initiative.”

The $255,000 award is part of MiLEAP’s $45 million Student Success Grant program, the state’s largest-ever initiative aimed at improving student outcomes at Michigan’s higher education institutions. In this cycle, 11 institutions received nearly $5 million in College Success Grant funding to implement and support campus reforms that increase retention, improve completion rates, and expand pathways to credentials.

Michigan’s business leaders have a new blueprint for the next decade of economic growth in the state, underscored at all levels by the need for consistency through political changes – and in education, their first goal area for improvement, they believe it’s time for the state’s governor to become the driving force behind reform that can weather purple-state storms.

Business Leaders for Michigan released its latest strategic plan, titled “Michigan in a New Era” on Monday. The organization which began issuing reports in 2009 with the recession recovery Michigan Turnaround Plan is now looking ahead to 2035, and finding that the core challenges the state faces in 2025 could very well be just as pressing in 10 years if policymakers don’t shift focus away from partisan victories and towards longer-term efforts that can thrive under officials of different views beyond their term limits.

In an interview with Gongwer News Service, BLM President and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Donofrio discussed the new strategic plan and how the organization identified not only areas for growth, but the methods it believes will be best suited to sustain that growth so 2035 looks different than 2025.

“What do we need to do over the next decade to make sure that Michigan is in a different place? In 2035, we want faster growth. We want higher wages. And there’s data here around how we’ve struggled in both of those areas,” Donofrio said. “For us, it’s been a yearslong process of updating that data, updating benchmarking, talking to dozens of organizations, hundreds of people from every walk of life, to try to understand what is the most challenging in Michigan and where the most potential is.”

“Michigan in a New Era” identifies three principal areas of focus to meet the goals of faster growth and higher wages: turning education into Michigan’s “defining mission,” making it “the easiest state to build and grow” and activating economic potential under a new approach to economic development at the state level.

The throughline in all three areas, and economic success writ large, Donofrio said, is consistency.

“When we look at top 10 states, those that are really succeeding, they’re consistent, they’re competitive and they’re comprehensive, so they’re very deliberate in how they try to enhance and build growth within their state,” he said. “Michigan has been a purple state … for a long time, which means that a lot of times, strategies don’t outlast a term of office. There’s political fights every year around funding, and even before something is enacted and able to show results, we may change directions.”

Perhaps no greater example of that seesaw exists than in education, where policymakers, who are often detached from schools and students, have a hard time waiting patiently for the reforms they pass to come to fruition. Metrics like state and national standardized test scores, and the rankings they come with, have become a cudgel in political debates to slam opponents and are frequently used as rationale for wholesale change that, in Donofrio’s words, rarely outlasts a term limit.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though, Donofrio said. The education policy space is ripe with experts who’ve identified reforms that work in getting students more engaged, better prepared for the workforce and shaped as healthy young people ready to enter society. The tricky part is getting lawmakers to agree on any of them – and making them stick for longer than two or four or six years.

The first step, Donofrio said, is to move out of a crisis mindset when seeking solutions.

“We are very highly exposed to economic disruption, just from our industry mix and the state that we are,” he said. “When we see crisis and we’re more crisis-driven in our solutions, and we have that fragmented governance and kind of dispersed accountability, especially in the education system, it’s hard sometimes to get reform to actually stick, to be implemented, because of the way we’re structured.”

Michigan’s education system is a mix of local control policies, which originated from early-1800s territorial law, predating statehood itself, and post-Proposal A efforts to institute reform statewide.

Donofrio described it as “a system designed in the 19th century that worked pretty well in the 20th century, but that’s not the case anymore.”

With the decade ahead likely to stick with the current pattern of divided government and partisan back-and-forth, BLM’s recommended approach to pursuing those reforms is to do so under a unifying figure: the state’s governor.

“We think there needs to be changes so that the governor can lead this transformation. But even without the structural changes, we need a governor to step into this for the next decade to make sure that we can see the outcomes change,” Donofrio said. “They can build the coalitions. They can focus us. They can make sure the funding is there, the shared accountability is there to engender the change.”

The overarching goals BLM outlined within its education plan generally mirror those of politicians on either side of the aisle: ensuring every student is proficient in reading by third grade, tackling chronic absenteeism, setting a high standard for earning high school diplomas, and connecting students with post-secondary opportunities much easier than is currently available.

Achieving those goals under a figurehead like a governor, though, may be more controversial. Across all of education’s governing bodies, stakeholder groups and individuals who have hands on the decision-making process for Michigan’s students, the state’s governor may be the most overtly political among them, and in a state where local control still very literally rules the school, putting governors in charge of education reform could be at best a lightning rod for criticism, and at worst, a magnet for lawsuits.

Donofrio said the idea of having the governor behind the wheel on education reform is strategic in that it can take many forms, whether via the direct powers of the executive or the intangible influence wielded by the state’s top official.

It’s less about each individual governor getting the power to institute sweeping reforms in their party’s image upon taking office, he said, and more about governors acting as unifiers of the whole system to get things done, with an understanding that their power is temporary.

“You have to recognize that you are a short-term holder of the reins of government, no matter who you are. Eight years is not a ton of time, so you will always have to plan for the person that comes next, whether that’s the next leader in the Legislature or the next governor, you’re going to need that person to be aligned and ready to continue to implement,” Donofrio said. “So how, if you knew that, from the very beginning, how do we make sure we put in place the tools and the steps that that assure that can happen? And that means it’s got to be a broad coalition. We’ve got to bring in people to be part of this, so they feel ownership over it, so that the next governor and the next Legislature doesn’t feel like they have to pursue a different path because they haven’t been a part of the one that’s currently underway.”

If the involved parties came to that understanding and governors became both chief executive oficers and goodwill ambassadors for education, without stepping too much on the toes of the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, it could become easier to see policy changes through their implementation and into the stages of data collection and accountability seeking to find out what works and what doesn’t.

“Aligning even the state level governance under the governor, (because) we have local control at the 800 school districts, 56 ISDs, so the transformation itself is going to take, I think, a clear focus that we can all buy into,” Donofrio said. “Again, there’s a kind of theme here, right in our report, on setting the goal and then building the system towards it. And you don’t need to have full control of this to try to set the goal for the state to align people around the goal.”

Starting next year, House and Senate members will be required by law to submit earmark requests 45 days prior to the budget passing.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed SB 596, now PA 33, which sets requirements for Michigan lawmakers to follow when directing state money to specific local projects or organizations. The bill requires the Legislature to post the request online, post updates on how the money is being used, and adds oversight for the funding.

She also signed HB 4420, now PA 32, which requires earmarks to include who sponsored the request, the intended grant recipient, the amount requested and the public purpose.

“Since I took office, I’ve been committed to increasing transparency in our government, so Michiganders know exactly where their hard-earned dollars are going,” Whitmer said in a statement. “That’s why I made a promise to increase transparency on legislative earmarks in my most recent State of the State. Less than a year later, I’m proud to sign these two bills that require lawmakers to put their names on any projects they propose.”

Bill sponsors Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, and Rep. Tom Kunse, R-Clare, celebrated the signing in statements Tuesday afternoon.

“Budgets are moral documents – a clear statement of our values and priorities,” Anthony said. “In my first budget as Appropriations chair, we require every lawmaker to clearly put their name behind the investments they championed for their communities. Now, with this legislation, we’re taking another important step in ensuring government officials remain accountable to the people they serve.”

Kunse called the legislation an example of good governance.

“Good governance begins with honesty, and honesty begins with transparency – no matter which party holds the gavel,” he said.

The earmark transparency legislation was part of the deal negotiated by the House and the Senate during this year’s prolonged budget process.

“For far too long, politicians and Lansing insiders have abused the system to stuff the budget full of anonymous pork projects they can’t defend. That abuse ends today,” House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, said in a statement. “When negotiating this budget, it was very clear what the priorities were of everyone at the table. House Republicans and I fought for ethics, accountability and transparency in the budget process.”

Whitmer also signed HB 5055, now PA 35, which expands the jurisdiction of House and Senate sergeants at arms to locations outside the Capitol and legislative buildings when legislators are present. It also allows sergeants to investigate credible threats against the safety of lawmakers. She also signed HB 5092, now PA 34, which amends the state’s rules for breeding large carnivores to be more consistent with federal standards, ensuring zoos can continue conservation work without unnecessary red tape.

The national economic outlook for the next year isn’t bad, but it’s not good either, economists at the University of Michigan’s Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics said during its annual conference Thursday.

The economy faces continued uncertainty because of tariffs, a softening labor market, and an overall negative sentiment from consumers shaping the projections.

“The labor market probably continued softening, marginally. Inflation is still elevated. Housing is pretty weak, but interest rates are coming down, and consumer financial shape is stable,” said Daniil Manaenkov, an economist with RSQE.

Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, emphasized consumer sentiment is not being driven by partisan politics.

“Pocketbook issues are at the root of the concern,” she said. “This is the case, despite the various signals of strength that we see in the economy.”

A lack of data complicated economist’s projections, with the government shutdown creating a data hole during much of the third quarter.

Labor demand has softened, Manaenkov said, but the unemployment rate has not risen much. That’s likely due to immigration and deportation policies, he said.

Stagnant job counts, slowing real hourly wage growth and muted average weekly hours mean slow real wage and salary growth, which is taking a toll on consumption in less well-off households.

Still, economists project the economy to grow around 2% by mid-2026, Manaenkov said.

“That growth will be achieved in part by the nation’s fiscal trajectory remaining on an unsustainable path,” a report from RSQE said.

One of the factors economists reviewed was vehicle sales.

In the spring, auto purchases increased ahead of tariff announcements, and they increased again during the summer heading of the expiring electric vehicle tax credit and ahead of price increases for 2026 model vehicles.

“Vehicle sales were really, really volatile this year,” Manaenkov said.

Delinquency rates for auto and credit card loans were down, which indicates that the consumer financial health is reasonably stable, he said.

“Which should help lower some of the risk premium previously embedded, and some of the rates that consumers are facing,” Manaenkov said.

Economists also reviewed the housing market.

“The overall state of the housing market is not particularly happy,” Manaenkov said. “We are hopeful that home building will start improving sometime in 2026.”

Although existing home sales stayed soft, new home sales offered a glimpse of recovery, the report said.

Home prices held flat with low demand, but mortgage rates declined to 6.2%- 6.3% in mid-September. The multi-family market has remained strong, the report found, as elevated homeownership costs may be helping sustain demand for rentals.

Interest rates and mortgage rates are expected to decline slightly, but affordability for housing will remain a concern, Manaenkov said.

Manaenkov said the unemployment rate was expected to rise to 4.5% this quarter.

“We think that sustained economic growth is going to drive labor demand, while labor supply is going to be constrained by immigration,” he said. “So, participation rate is going to define the downward pull from retirement.”

Tariffs are expected to continue to drive inflation through 2026, but spending among consumers has continued this year.

“Spending momentum was pretty good through August, and some supporting data through October,” he said. “We think year-over-year, inflation will rise early in 2026, reaching 3.4%, but then start declining and decline to 2.8% by the end of ’27.”

The amount of uncertainty makes all predictions difficult, though.

“The major risk is given that we didn’t have new data, the delays in noise, we may be misreading the strength of the economy,” Manaenkov said. “Further releases may actually shift it substantially.”

The noise in the data makes monetary policy missteps more likely, Manaenkov said.

Hsu discussed consumer sentiment in greater detail, saying that research has shown that positive sentiment is a good predictor of future economic growth.

Sentiment has stayed stronger than expected because consumers have been bracing for a worst-case scenario that hasn’t arrived yet, Hsu said.

“However, in that last couple of months, including the early weeks of November, we have seen it moving downward again,” she said. “This is primarily because consumers are quite frustrated by stubborn inflations during the weakening labor market.

The gap between the wealthy and those who have less economic stability is growing.

“The wealthiest consumers have started to feel a little bit better, supported by continued strength, powered by the stock market,” Hsu said.

Persistently high prices and the effect of prices on personal finances are the chief concerns among consumers.

“There’s a rising share of consumers citing weakening incomes,” Hsu said. “This is still a smaller share of consumers than those who are complaining about prices, but it’s growing and it’s growing fast.”

Tariffs play a large role in those concerns, Hsu said, and they’re creating a lot of uncertainty.

“Many consumers are still waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Hsu said. “They’re not convinced that we are out of the woods.”

People are looking for relief, both in terms of income and costs.

“Consumers are worried about both inflation as well as unemployment,” Hsu said. “This puts policymakers in a very challenging position because policies that are going to address inflation will exacerbate unemployment and vice versa.”