Reform like good news takes time to break out

In several of this writings, Morgan Housel has brilliantly described how in contrast to bad news which is felt instantaneously with all its negative force, good news takes an inordinate amount of time to create impact so much so that it imperceptibly diffuses into the background. Much the same applies to most policy reforms. Their outcomes take a long time to be felt. 

Housel writes, 

The age-adjusted death rate per capita from heart disease has declined more than 70% since the 1950s, according to the National Institute of Health... Had the rate had not declined over the last 65 years – if we hadn’t become better at treating heart disease and the mortality rate plateaued since the 1950s – 25 million more Americans would have died from heart disease over the last 65 years than actually did.

25 million!

Even in a single year the improvement is incredible: more than half a million fewer Americans now die of heart disease each year than would have if we hadn’t made any improvements since the 1950s. Picture the population of Atlanta saved every year. Or a full football stadium saved every month. How is this not a bigger story? Why are we not shouting in the streets about how incredible this is and building statues for cardiologists? I’ll tell you why: because the improvement happened too slowly for anyone to notice.

In contrast, bad news washes up with all its force in a few seconds or hours, or at most months.  

So how does this relate to public policy?

There are perhaps three kinds of changes - physical, individual behavioural, and collective institutional. The first belongs to the category of buildings, new technologies, and other types of things which manifest physically. The second relates to the category of changes to individual behaviours. The final category concerns changes to social norms and trends, emergence of new practices, adoption of new institutional forms (or rules), even new livelihoods and lifestyles. 

Our cognitive selves easily identify with the first and associate the attributes of the first to the other two. But both the latter two emerge over time and are too diffuse to be perceived.

When we talk of policy reforms, we are largely interested in the third category. These are all mostly about gradual accumulation of change elements, till the pile grows big enough to start making significant impacts. 

Whether it is metaphorically about compounding or completing a long race, the fact remains that the true impacts of these reforms get realised after a long time. So much time later that everyone would have stopped talking about the reform and very few would even notice the realised impact.