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March 18, 2025

Poorly Defined: Reforming the Poverty Line | POLICY LENS

Ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in 1964, the US Safety Net has been remarkably effective in reducing the number of Americans living in poverty; but measuring the magnitude of that success is not so straight forward. AEI’s Kevin Corinth explains that defining poverty is largely a decision of society,…

March 13, 2025

Two Charts Show Why a Trade War Over Fentanyl Doesn’t Make Sense

Following a month-long pause, President Trump last week reimposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, only to pause many of them again two days later. Different reasons have been offered by the Trump Administration for the tariffs, but in recent days the President’s advisers have honed in on one reason in particular: Fentanyl is being shipped across our borders with…

March 11, 2025

An Evaluation of Cost Saving Reforms of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

AbstractCongress is considering ways to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $230 billion over ten years. Reforms are likely to include one or more of the following cost-saving elements: reducing the maximum SNAP benefit, reducing deductions, expanding work requirements, and ending broad based categorical eligibility. In this paper I analyze each…

February 28, 2025

Less Than Half of Medicaid Recipients Work Enough to Comply With a Work Requirement

Congress is considering implementing work requirements for Medicaid. This reform could help Congress achieve its goal of reducing federal expenditures and simultaneously strengthen the incentive for Medicaid recipients to work. At the same time, individuals who do not comply with the work requirement may lose health insurance coverage. Underlying the policy debate is the extent…

February 18, 2025

Family-Friendly Policies for the 119th Congress

Key Points Read the PDF. Introduction America is in a baby bust, with birth rates hitting record lows and still falling. Young Americans are getting married later and less. Meanwhile, parents face rising stress, and children suffer an epidemic of anxiety. The family is the fundamental building block of a society, as the cell is…

February 4, 2025

The Family First Act Would Expand Net Income Tax Refunds to Higher Income Families

Some pro-family conservatives are rallying around Rep. Blake Moore’s (R-UT) Family First Act. Relative to a clean extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the bill would cost an additional $575 billion over the next decade in order to increase the generosity of tax breaks targeted at families with children. The bill would lead over half of tax filers…

January 24, 2025

The Targeting of Place-Based Policies: The New Markets Tax Credit Versus Opportunity Zones

Abstract For a place-based policy to succeed, it must target the right areas—typically those with lower economic development and resident well-being. The U.S. has two major place-based tax policies: the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC), where government-approved entities select investments, and Opportunity Zones (OZs), where private investors choose projects. Despite underlying design differences, both target…

December 30, 2024

What’s behind the unprecedented rise in homelessness, and how can we reverse it?

The annual United States homeless population estimates for 2024 were released last week. Homelessness grew by a record 18% annually in 2024, following a then record 12% increase in 2023. As shown in the figure below, the recent spike in homelessness is unprecedented. Going back 17 years since national homeless counts began, homelessness never before…

December 13, 2024

Economics & Data-Driven Inquiry

At the behest of New College Florida and the Global Freedom Initiative, AEI scholar Kevin Corinth joined a distinguished group of scholars and practitioners for the Symposium on Ideological Capture of Universities and Institutions to discuss the ideological capture—or politicization—of America’s educational, professional, and political institutions. Dr. Corinth, along with co-panelists Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus…

December 10, 2024

Fighting in-work poverty: the minimum wage versus in-work benefits

Abstract We review evidence on the effectiveness of the minimum wage versus in-work benefit policies in reducing poverty in OECD countries. The most credible evidence suggests that raising the minimum wage is an ineffective policy tool for reducing poverty. On net, minimum wage increases tend to redistribute rather than reduce poverty. In contrast, government subsidies…