All Research
Op-Ed
Missing Boy Jacob Pritchett Is a Reminder of Why We Can’t Leave Disabled Kids with Ill-Equipped Parents
…had a child, that she is barren and, also, that she is Jesus Christ. Police found blood in the apartment and on a mattress outside. Jacob’s mother has his name…
Commentary
The More Things Change, Medicaid Edition
…take the matter into their own hands by ordering a staff investigation. Their findings were shocking. As summarized in a story that ran in the New York Times, the investigators…
Op-ed
Compiling My Work on Work Incentives
…Angela Rachidi, Matt Weidinger, and me on the importance of work incentives in evaluating safety net policies, as well as a few multi-authored pieces. Beyond these highlights, on the webpage…
Commentary
Assessing Duplicative Federal Benefit Programs and Preventing Abuse
…program, see Matt Weidinger, “Why Even Permanent Benefit Expansions Are Never Enough,” AEIdeas, September 27, 2022, https://www.aei.org/opportunity-social-mobility/why-even-permanent-benefit-expansions-are-never-enough/. [7] Matt Weidinger, “Automatic Stimulus”: How It Would Have Increased the Record Unemployment Benefits, American Enterprise Institute,…
Op-Ed
Congress Gave Families a Raise. Now Let Parents Decide How to Use It.
…for an infant now exceeds the cost of in-state college tuition in most states. And decades of research confirm a truth parents have long known: a child’s earliest years matter most for…
Commentary
Summary and Analysis of the “Stop Unemployment Fraud Act”
Background This week, senior House and Senate Members are introducing legislation designed to prevent a repeat of runaway fraud and abuse that afflicted unemployment benefit programs during the COVID-19 pandemic….
Commentary
Young Men’s Earnings over the Long Run – An Update
…inaccurately negative as an empirical matter. Fully 70 to 75 percent of Americans near the age of 40 believe that they have higher real income than their parents did at…
Blog Post
States Are Taking the Reins on College Accountability
…approach is necessarily the final blueprint. That is precisely why they matter. For two decades, policymakers have been moving toward outcomes-based accountability. The 2006 Spellings Commission elevated performance and transparency as national…
Op-Ed
On the Federal Deficit, Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit Won’t Be Enough
…in only one corner of the federal budget. But that can’t obscure the bigger picture, which shows how little else matters until Americans and the politicians they elect get serious…
Commentary
Medicaid’s Multiple Roles
Matt Weidinger’s December 2025 commentary argued persuasively that complexity has become an impediment to rational reform of the nation’s safety net. By approving scores of new programs across several decades,…
Op-Ed
Progress on Absenteeism Is Stalling. What Can We Do About It?
…more days following the pandemic compared with before it, and that every day of missed school matters—regardless of whether students reach the chronic absenteeism threshold, which works out to 18…
Op-Ed
AI Changes NOTHING About What Students Need to Learn
…president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, explained in “The Seven Steps to Becoming a 21st Century School or District,” what really matters are “the 4C’s”—“Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration,…