Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
May 16, 2024
Critiquing Bastian (2022, 2023, 2024, and forthcoming):On Child Tax Credit Reform and the Sensitivity of Single Mothers to Work Incentives
Abstract In 2021, Congress passed and President Biden signed a major, but temporary, reform to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Among other reforms to the credit, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) made it available to non-workers on the same basis as workers. Attempts to make this reform permanent foundered, in part, due to opposition…
April 26, 2024
Human Capital Spillovers and Health: Does Living Around College Graduates Lengthen Life?
Abstract Equally educated people are healthier if they live in more educated places. Every 10 percent point increase in an area’s share of adults with a college degree is associated with a decline in all-cause mortality by 7%, controlling for individual education, demographics, and area characteristics. Area human capital is also associated with lower disease…
April 17, 2024
Homelessness and the Persistence of Deprivation: Income, Employment, and Safety Net Participation
Abstract Homelessness is arguably the most extreme hardship associated with poverty in the United States, yet people experiencing homelessness are excluded from official poverty statistics and much of the extreme poverty literature. This paper provides the most detailed and accurate portrait to date of the level and persistence of material disadvantage faced by this population,…
November 14, 2023
The Impact of Opportunity Zones on Private Investment and Economic Activity
Abstract Place-based policies aim to stimulate economic development in disadvantaged areas with the goal of improving the well-being of residents. A provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act aimed to spur private investment in low-income areas called Opportunity Zones (OZs). We evaluate the impact of OZs on investment using data on the near-universe of…
November 9, 2023
Child Support Policy: Areas of Emerging Agreement and Ongoing Debate
This paper will be delivered at the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management 2023 Fall Research Conference. Abstract The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) system has a broad scope and provides important resources to economically vulnerable children who live apart from one of their parents. Yet, it is subject to critique for intervening too much, too…
October 30, 2023
Does Wage Theft Vary by Demographic Group? Evidence from Minimum Wage Increases
Using Current Population Survey data, we assess whether and to what extent the burden of wage theft — wage payments below the statutory minimum wage — falls disproportionately on various demographic groups following minimum wage increases. For most racial and ethnic groups at most ages we find that underpayment rises similarly as a fraction of…
May 10, 2023
The Effects of Elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure on Government Program Eligibility and Spending
Abstract Without Congressional action, the recently released National Academy of Sciences report, “An Updated Measure of Poverty: (Re)Drawing the Line,” could have substantial effects on government program eligibility and spending—if its recommendation to “redraw the line” is implemented by the Census Bureau, and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is made the official one by the…
April 17, 2023
Data Tools 6: The Geography of Traditional Families in America
The sixth in a series from Charles Murray. “Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians—we call them ‘children.’” These words, often attributed to Hannah Arendt, express a truth that societies have known since societies began: Children must be socialized. Two other truths that societies have instinctively known for millennia are that the birth parents must…
December 1, 2022
Was Rising Inequality Behind Falling Absolute Mobility? Reassessing Chetty et al. (2017)
In 2017, a widely publicized paper by a research team led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that while the vast majority of American kids born in 1940 ended up better off at age 30 than their parents fared at the same age, that was only true of half of kids born in 1980. Moreover,…