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October 23, 2023
Abstract We analyse whether US federal aid to state and local governments impacted economic activity through either direct or cross-state spillover effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deploying an instrumental-variables framework rooted in the funding advantage of states that are over-represented in Congress, we find that federal assistance had significantly less impact on state and local…
October 23, 2023
A carbon tax is considered by most economists to be the most efficient and effective way to reduce carbon emissions. However, a long-standing political challenge to a carbon tax is the perception that it would disproportionately burden low- and middle-income households relative to high-income households. Many analysts and lawmakers have proposed using carbon tax revenues…
October 20, 2023
For a long time, advocates and policymakers in the higher education space were fixated on improving “access” to higher education. As a society, we recognized that higher education was a powerful tool for promoting social mobility, and helping people born into lower-income households advance financially and pursue fulfilling careers. We also realized that higher education…
October 20, 2023
In the Fortune article below Shawn Tully discusses the resurgence of the Midwest’s housing market with Ed Pinto, the Director of AEI’s Housing Center. According to American Enterprise Institute data, eight of the nine cities achieving the highest appreciation in housing prices for the 12 months ended Aug. 31 hail from the Midwest. In the pandemic-driven housing…
October 17, 2023
COSM scholars and AEI affiliates include some of the nation’s foremost experts on poverty measurement. On October 17, COSM gathered several of these scholars to provide a primer on opportunity in the United States. Angela Rachidi began by exploring the meaning of poverty, outlining the most fundamental decisions in measuring it and describing how different…
October 17, 2023
When it comes to helping poor children in America grow up to enjoy successful adult lives, progressives and conservatives each have half the truth on their side. There is strong evidence to support both broad public spending programs and policies designed to encourage personal responsibility and stable households. What is the best way to help…
October 12, 2023
Republicans looking to expand their party’s coalition have a problem. The public identifies them above all with Donald Trump, who is decidedly unpopular. Voters who can possibly stand Trump (and even some who can’t) are already Republicans. And when Republicans talk about something other than Trump, it is generally the Democrats. So swing voters know that the…
October 12, 2023
The late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan long complained — and commissioned data — about New York’s status as a “donor state,” for sending more in tax dollars to Washington than it received in return in the form of grants. This was always a misunderstanding of the virtues of the U.S. being a vast free-trade…
October 12, 2023
Abstract The federal government annually awards hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to states. In this report, I examine funding for the largest federal grant programs for 2020–22, focusing on grants-in-aid that do not fully adjust for population change. For states losing population, I calculate “avoided reductions,” the difference between the grants a state…
October 11, 2023
Earlier this year, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report recommended elevating the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to the “nation’s headline poverty statistic,” and noted that the Office of Management and Budget could christen the SPM as the new official poverty measure. This action would require no Congressional input. The two interactive maps below report…