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- Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (1)
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January 22, 2026
The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit Should Not Subsidize Stay-at-Home Parents
Last week, the Republican Study Committee released a legislative framework intended to make the American Dream more affordable. The goal is laudable, and many of the ideas are sound. But among the ideas that should be sent to the chopping block is a proposal to allow stay-at-home parents to claim the Child and Dependent Care…
January 13, 2026
Major Changes Coming to SNAP in 2026
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called food stamps) is an important safety-net program that helps reduce hunger and decrease poverty among US households. At the same time, SNAP has significant flaws that make it inefficient, less effective than it could be, and in some cases harmful to upward mobility. However, recent actions by…
December 23, 2025
If you care about poverty, ditch the ACA expanded subsidies
My AEI colleague Mark Warshawsky recently wrote an excellent summary of policy reasons not to extend the COVID-era enhanced ACA subsidies. His explainer adds to a substantial body of work (examples here, here, and here) describing the policy problems with the enhanced subsidies, notwithstanding their largely positive treatment in the popular media. Another important reason…
December 23, 2025
The Policy Lessons from Minnesota’s Massive Welfare Fraud
Numerous reviewers have spotlighted shocking welfare fraud perpetrated by members of the Somali community in Minnesota. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel (“The Lesson of Minnesota’s Fraud”) recently described how “Somali fraudsters bilked taxpayers out of more than $1 billion” while arguing the policy lessons extend well beyond Minnesota’s border. She’s right about…
December 11, 2025
Trump Family Policy Fails to Deliver at the One-Year Mark
When President Trump tapped J.D. Vance as his pick for Vice President, it seemed likely that the second Trump administration would place special emphasis on family policy. Prior to his political career, Vance highlighted fertility decline as a core issue. As a politician, Vance continued to emphasize fertility and family policy, suggesting it’s necessary to…
December 2, 2025
What To Do About Benefit Cliffs?
Everyone wants poor families to work their way off welfare and ascend the income ladder. Yet an increasing number remain trapped on government benefits, struggling to support themselves. Some blame the recipients, politicians, the economy, racism, or even capitalism. But few focus on perhaps the most obvious factor – government programs themselves, which actively discourage…
November 25, 2025
Congress should restore local autonomy over homeless aid
The Trump administration recently announced a major shift to the scoring rubric for the federal government’s main source of homeless aid—the Continuum of Care program—which annually distributes $3.9 billion in competitive funding to local communities. The new rubric will target funds to recovery-oriented, time-limited housing programs, a reversal of a decades-long emphasis on no-strings-attached permanent…
November 13, 2025
Is the US Really an Outlier on Pregnancy Deaths, and Have Such Deaths Spiked?
US pregnancy and postpartum deaths receive substantial news coverage, and reporting is frequently alarmist. This summer, a LiveScience article claimed that “pregnancy is deadlier in the US than in other wealthy countries.” The article stated that there were 19 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in the US, or more than twice as many…
November 10, 2025
The Welfare Program You Never Heard About During the Shutdown
Americans have heard plenty about how, effective November 1, the federal government shutdown suspended regular food stamp payments to 42 million individuals. Food stamps are important welfare benefits paid to low-income families—or in recent weeks not paid. For all that attention on food stamps, however, almost no one has mentioned what once was the nation’s…
September 23, 2025
Why the USDA Is Justified in Ending the Food Security Survey
The USDA announced plans to discontinue future Household Food Security reports, ending the annual supplemental survey that, among other things, was used as the government’s official statistic on “food insecurity”. The supplemental survey had been attached to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey each December since the late 1990s, asking households a battery of questions…