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February 13, 2026
What Harvard’s Raj Chetty Overlooks About Upward Mobility
The Harvard economist Raj Chetty, justly famous for his studies of the factors that enable upward mobility in America, is back with a new analysis that has attracted wide attention. Thanks to access to the individual tax records of a million former public housing residents whom his Opportunity Insights team tracked, he determined that a move from “the projects” to a…
January 22, 2026
Democrats Face Stark Choice on Housing Affordability
Affordability, especially lowering housing costs, enjoys bipartisan political support — at least in theory. But affordability is a goal, not a specific program, and even progressive Democrats can break with each other on how to achieve it. That’s the lesson learned from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent housing proposal, one that sets the relatively moderate Democrat…
November 19, 2025
Real Estate Red Flag: How Hidden Blue-State Policies are Pricing Out Homeowners
A telling new analysis of rising home maintenance costs from the real estate listing service Zillow, in conjunction with Thumbtack, which tracks the cost of local services, should remind those promoting the virtues of homeownership that it’s key for new buyers to be prepared and capable owners. At the same time, the findings tell yet another story…
September 25, 2025
The Golden Age of Public Housing—and Why It Didn’t Last
If Americans have any shared image of public housing, it is one of dilapidated and even dangerous “projects” and locations of concentrated poverty. But there was a time—a brief shining moment—in which public housing was new and attractive and working married couples with children were glad to live in government-owned and -managed apartments. What might…
September 24, 2025
Subsidized Housing and Upward Mobility
In 1983, Harvard scholars Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood sought to determine the length of time participants in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) spent in the program. Their report, titled The Dynamics of Dependence, revealed that the average participant could be expected to remain in AFDC for 10 years — a figure that increased to…