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August 26, 2024

Vouching for Self-Sufficiency

It’s hard to sympathize with the Parkoff Organization, the New York real estate firm that owns some 4,000 apartments across the city. According to a new lawsuit, housing “testers” caught the group discriminating against potential tenants whose rent would have been subsidized by housing vouchers. The Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC), which brought the suit, claims that Parkoff…

August 22, 2024

Active Fathers Are Exacerbating the Two-Parent Privilege

Fathers today are doing more than ever. Not only are they taking on more housework—doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning—but they are more involved with child care as well. They help with homework and serve as chauffeurs, coaches and role models. Fathers with young kids spend, on average, nearly two hours a day caring for their kids.  The division…

August 1, 2024

Two Outrageous Bills Kamala Harris Sponsored Would Crush Taxpayers

As a U.S. senator, Vice President Kamala Harris had a remarkably slim record of accomplishments, shepherding only a handful of minor resolutions across the finish line. But that’s far from the last word on her legislative record. In fact, two bills she introduced (that went nowhere) may best define her past, and potential future, priorities…

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…