Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
- ✕ Clear Filter
- Artificial Intelligence (33)
- Automation (1)
- book review (2)
- Charitable giving (3)
- Child Tax Credit (39)
- Child Welfare (31)
- Childcare (4)
- cities (1)
- Civil Society (13)
- commentary (3)
- Conservatism (1)
- Cost of Living (5)
- crime (2)
- criminal justice reform (3)
- Deaths of Despair (1)
- drug crisis (1)
- Early Childhood (12)
- Earned Income Tax Credit (7)
- Economic Development (1)
- Economic Opportunity (9)
- Economic Opportunity and Mobility (170)
- Economic Well-Being (140)
- Economy (4)
- Education (140)
- Election (4)
- Employment (5)
- energy (1)
- Entrepreneurship (1)
- Family (76)
- Family affordability (4)
- family policy (3)
- Family Structure (16)
- Farm Bill (2)
- Fatherhood (1)
- Feature (1)
- Featured (377)
- federal budget (3)
- fentanyl (1)
- Fertility (2)
- foster care (4)
- Fraud (2)
- Gender Gap (3)
- government spending (1)
- happiness (1)
- higher education (44)
- History (3)
- Homelessness (8)
- Housing (86)
- Housing Supply (3)
- Immigration (2)
- Income (8)
- Innovation (2)
- Intergenerational Mobility (3)
- Joe Biden (3)
- journalism (1)
- Kevin Corinth (2)
- Labor Market (6)
- Living Standards (2)
- Marriage (53)
- marriage penalties (3)
- Masculinity (1)
- medicaid (2)
- mental health (1)
- middle class (2)
- millennials (1)
- Minimum Wage (3)
- National debt (1)
- New York (10)
- opportunity (13)
- opportunity and social mobility (4)
- opportunity zones (1)
- Parenthood (4)
- parents (3)
- place-based policy (1)
- poverty (49)
- poverty line (1)
- poverty measurement (1)
- Presidential Election (6)
- Race (1)
- Regulation (4)
- Religion (6)
- Remote Work (5)
- Safety Net (19)
- Science (1)
- SNAP (16)
- Social Capital (45)
- Social Media (2)
- Society and (1)
- Society and Culture (66)
- State Policy (2)
- substance abuse (1)
- substance use (2)
- Success Sequence (4)
- suicide (1)
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (1)
- tariffs (1)
- Tax & Transfer Policies (17)
- tax credit (1)
- technology (6)
- Technology and Innovation (6)
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (2)
- trade war (1)
- Trends and Measurement (7)
- Unemployment (5)
- Unemployment Insurance (18)
- Urban policy (7)
- Utah (4)
- wages (1)
- Welfare (32)
- work requirements (1)
- Workforce (30)
- Workforce Development (45)
- workrequirements (1)
- Zoning (4)
March 24, 2025
The Student Loan Payment Pause Was a Catastrophic Mistake
In March 2020, as America shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed a law suspending federal student loan payments for six months. The payment pause ended up lasting, in effect, for four and a half years. Though well-intentioned, the pause and its repeated extensions may go down as one of the worst mistakes in…
March 21, 2025
Increasing Financial Aid Isn’t the Solution to High College Costs
Harvard University recently announced it would make tuition free for students from families earning below $200,000—but for middle-class students not lucky enough to receive a Harvard acceptance letter, college tuition is still far too expensive. As a solution, many have proposed significant increases in taxpayer-funded financial aid to reduce or even eliminate tuition for many students. This…
March 18, 2025
Rebuilding Higher Education Finance: Reform Through Reconciliation
Event Summary On March 18, AEI’s Beth Akers and Preston Cooper spoke with Alex Ricci of the Education Finance Council and Lindsey M. Burke of the Heritage Foundation to discuss what it would look like to pass meaningful higher education finance reform through the budget reconciliation process. First, Dr. Akers introduced the speakers and encouraged…
March 13, 2025
The Return To Student Loan Repayment, In Four Charts
In March 2020, the federal government enacted a “temporary” pause on student loan repayment, which the Trump and Biden administrations extended a grand total of eight times. But as of October 2024, loan repayment has officially resumed—meaning borrowers who miss payments will face consequences such as negative credit reports. As of September 2024—the latest month…
March 13, 2025
Trends in Net College Tuition and Financial Aid, 1990–2020
Key Points Introduction College costs are out of control—or so the narrative goes. In recent years, a counternarrative has emerged that argues, correctly, that the meteoric rise in the sticker price of college is misleading. Net college tuition, or tuition after financial aid is applied, has risen far less quickly than sticker price tuition and…
February 6, 2025
High Costs, Uneven Value: Repairing The Federal Role in Postsecondary Education
The higher education system suffers from many problems, including excessive costs,low completion rates, uneven financial value for students, and high rates of student loannonpayment. Federal government policies unintentionally exacerbate many of these issues,as taxpayers’ considerable investment in higher education comes with few quality controlsor accountability to ensure that colleges and universities are delivering on their…
January 23, 2025
Four College Enrollment Trends to Watch
The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) published its biannual report on college enrollment trends this morning, providing a comprehensive look at how student numbers totaled up in fall 2024. NSC’s preliminary figures, released in October, initially reported a significant drop in college freshman enrollment. That finding, however, was the result of a data error; this morning’s release of the…
December 3, 2024
How States Can Shake Up the Stagnant Higher Education Market
Artificial barriers to entry have been a feature of markets for millennia, from medieval guilds to modern occupational licenses. Though often defended on the basis of consumer protection, barriers which keep new providers of a good or service out of the market also serve to protect incumbent businesses, hamstring innovation, and increase prices. Such barriers…
November 20, 2024
End Federal Loans for Graduate School
President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisors have announced plans to create a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a commission tasked with slashing wasteful spending throughout the federal budget. One place they could start is the federal student loan program. The federal government loses tens of billions of dollars per year on lending to graduate students, a…
November 20, 2024
Eliminate Federal Lending to Graduate and Professional Students; Revenue to Fund Block Grants to States
Graduate student lending is out of control. Students are effectively borrowing without limit to pay for graduate and professional schools, many of which offer little or no return on their investment. The status quo is untenable for both students, who bear the risk of taking on unaffordable debts amid uncertainty about the future of forgiveness…