Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
- ✕ Clear Filter
- Artificial Intelligence (10)
- Automation (1)
- book review (2)
- Child Tax Credit (11)
- Child Welfare (19)
- Childcare (1)
- Civil Society (3)
- Conservatism (1)
- Cost of Living (3)
- crime (1)
- criminal justice reform (1)
- Early Childhood (8)
- Earned Income Tax Credit (5)
- Economic Development (1)
- Economic Opportunity (4)
- Economic Opportunity and Mobility (29)
- Economic Well-Being (22)
- Economy (1)
- Education (54)
- Employment (2)
- Entrepreneurship (1)
- Family (32)
- family policy (1)
- Family Structure (15)
- Farm Bill (2)
- Fatherhood (1)
- Featured (90)
- foster care (3)
- higher education (5)
- Homelessness (4)
- Housing (32)
- Income (3)
- Living Standards (2)
- Marriage (24)
- marriage penalties (1)
- Masculinity (1)
- millennials (1)
- New York (1)
- opportunity (2)
- Parenthood (4)
- parents (3)
- poverty (11)
- Religion (3)
- Safety Net (5)
- SNAP (4)
- Social Capital (14)
- Social Media (2)
- Society and (1)
- Society and Culture (32)
- State Policy (1)
- Success Sequence (4)
- Tax & Transfer Policies (5)
- technology (2)
- Technology and Innovation (1)
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (1)
- Trends and Measurement (3)
- Unemployment (1)
- Unemployment Insurance (1)
- Urban policy (2)
- Utah (3)
- Welfare (11)
- Workforce (7)
- Workforce Development (12)
June 26, 2024
American Workers Are Doing Great. They Could Be Doing Even Better.
Editor’s note: This is one of a pair of essays responding to the Economic Innovation Group’s report, “The American Worker: Toward a New Consensus”, by Adam Ozimek, John Lettieri, and Benjamin Glasner. The other is by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. To the Economic Innovation Group’s attempt to articulate a “new consensus” about the American…
June 18, 2024
Economic Opportunity and Social Mobility
Years ago, I worked at the Pew Charitable Trusts on something called the Economic Mobility Project. In 2009, we commissioned a survey covering opportunity, mobility, and the American Dream. One revealing question we asked was the following: The term American Dream means different things to different people. Here are some ways some people have described…
May 24, 2024
The First National Calculation of Mortality of the US Homeless Population
It is well established that those with lower incomes tend to have worse health outcomes. But whether this relationship extends to the most disadvantaged in society – people experiencing homelessness – has rarely been examined. This column explores the relationship between homelessness and health outcomes in the US. It finds that after accounting for demographic…
May 6, 2024
Generation Z Has Problems Compared to Past Generations, but Money Isn’t One
If you ask why these privileged college students are bringing their campuses to a halt over an issue that has almost nothing to do with their universities, the answer is likely to expand beyond Gaza into a story of a broader struggle and trauma this generation has endured. This contention, that Generation Z has grown up in a uniquely…
April 23, 2024
Awkward Truth: Subsidizing Women’s Work Drives Down Birthrates
Birthrates are low and falling in the United States, and commentators and policymakers are starting to realize this is a problem. It’s tempting to assume that this is about affordability: People aren’t getting married and having children because they can’t afford it! This is partly true, and so it’s partly true that we can drive up birthrates by giving money…
April 18, 2024
The Real Story Behind Food Insecurity in the US
Hunger in the US is rising at an alarming pace – or is it? Last year’s annual report on food insecurity in the US led lawmakers to believe hunger is on the rise, and, unsurprisingly, federal lawmakers are using rising levels of food insecurity to advocate for expansions to federal government programs. Unfortunately, policymakers are conflating hunger and…
January 12, 2024
Congress Shouldn’t Expand Welfare in Return for Corporate Tax Cuts
Bipartisan negotiations to revive the Democrat-favored 2021 Child Tax Credit in return for Republican-favored business-tax cuts are heating up. The business-tax cuts could be helpful in principle — if they focus on encouraging future investment and don’t add to the deficit. But under no circumstance should Republicans agree to turn the Child Tax Credit into a welfare…
January 10, 2024
By the Numbers: Here’s How the New Federal Financial Aid Formula Harms Families with More Than One Child
The old federal formula for higher education financial aid is dead. The new formula creates winners and losers. Specifically, the new formula harms middle-class families with more than one child in college at a time. It’s not that the new formula doesn’t take family size into account at all—it does, barely. The issue is that the new formula calculates the total…
January 9, 2024
Let’s Expand the Child Tax Credit a Little Bit
A bipartisan group of senators is trying to hash out a deal on extending some of the Republican tax cuts from 2017. If Congress does nothing, the child tax credit will drop down to $1,000 per child from its current level of $2,000. Some lawmakers want to expand the child tax credit massively. Others don’t. There’s a middle course that involves moderately growing…
January 9, 2024
The Success Sequence for Unmarried Mothers
As covered on these pages before, the success sequence—graduating high school, working full-time, and marrying before having children—has been proven to be an effective way for young people to avoid poverty. Research consistently finds that young people who follow these life steps have poverty rates dramatically below those who do not follow these steps. In a new study, I show that…