All Research
Article
When help holds families back
…in SNAP – for example, by excluding only those parents with caretaking responsibilities for children under 6. Not only will these efforts encourage employment, they will also constrain federal costs…
Op-Ed
The New Era for Nonprofits: America’s Old System of Federally Funded Nonprofits is Gone. What Comes Next?
…value as an independent force.” In Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting, an important 1993 scholarly study, political scientists Stephen Rathgeb Smith and Michael Lipsky validated…
Op-Ed
A win for Wisconsin families: Childcare in the 2025-2027 biennial state budget
…involvement drive up childcare costs, reduce quality, and constrain flexibility for both families and providers.1 As I argued in a 2023 Badger Institute report titled Overregulated Childcare: Some level of…
Commentary
Perspective on the OBBBA’s SNAP Cuts
…rate strains credibility. More likely, states may choose to end their use of eligibility expansions, known as broad-based categorical eligibility that they have increasingly used in recent years. Broad-based categorical eligibility allows…
Commentary
The Case for Shifting More Welfare Costs to States
…hit state budgets hard at a time when state finances are already highly strained.” That view ignores the findings of a recent fiscal survey of states conducted by the National…
Blog Post
Pro-Marriage Conservatives Should Reject a Per-Child Phase-In of the Child Tax Credit
…reason to restrain a boost in the maximum credit amount. These three reforms are productive ways to increase the generosity of the credit, including for families with lower incomes. The…
Blog Post
Democrats’ Automatic Stimulus Proposals Undermine the Administration’s “Strongest Economy” Claims
…all governed by the Sahm rule. And last fall Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR), accompanied by Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Sherrod Brown…
Blog Post
Key Takeaways from a New Report on Potential Unemployment Insurance Reforms
…huge new programs strained UI systems to the point of breaking. While the economy is currently healthy, it is critical that policymakers and states take steps to prepare for the…
Working Paper
Employment and Labor Supply Responses to the Child Tax Credit Expansion: Theory and Evidence
Abstract The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion increased government benefits to families, and especially to families with the lowest incomes. Economic theory predicts that this policy intervention would have…
Commentary
CTC Expansion Rooted in Desire to Roll Back Work-based Welfare
…benefits. Specific efforts to achieve full refundability, and thereby eliminate the CTC’s work requirement, soon followed. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) proposed eliminating the CTC’s work requirement in 2015, and several…
Commentary
Research by a Top Biden Administration Economist Reinforces the Importance of Work Incentives in the Child Tax Credit and the Safety Net
…since 1950.” (p. 4) Bastian cites the research of Schanzenbach and Strain (2020) to argue that a reasonable guess for the true employment effect of eliminating just the EITC would…
Commentary
How Sensitive Are Single Mothers’ Work Decisions to a Change in Incentives? Correcting Misperceptions of the Evidence
…p. 2715-2717; EITC-eligible families w/ children (incl. married) Lippold (2019) 0.4-1.0 — Y p. 43-45 (lower-income parents, not just single mothers); unpublished Schanzenbach and Strain (2020) 0.9-1.5 — Y Corinth…