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January 8, 2024

Dynamics of Families After a Nonmarital Birth

Abstract Despite known links between poverty rates and unmarried parenthood, we know little about how changes in family situations after a nonmarital birth affect poverty. This study explores Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study data to document changes to the relationship status, employment status, and education level of a cohort of unmarried mothers who…

December 15, 2023

Pro-Family Policy Priorities for States

Introduction America’s system of federalism means that the is- sues that most directly impact the lives of parents and families are often most appropriately dealt with at the state level. While many conversations about how to make family life more affordable and achiev- able in the U.S. tend to focus on the federal tax code,…

December 13, 2023

Stronger Families, Safer Streets

The debate about how best to respond to urban crime—a debate that has become more important in light of recent increases in violent crime and homicide in many cities across America—has tended to focus on two perspectives. The first prioritizes tackling the “social structural factors” (unemployment, economic inequality, poverty, etc.) that are thought to be…

December 8, 2023

A Framework for Reforming Federal Graduate Student Aid Policy

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Driven by increases in graduate enrollment and the availability of uncapped loans, graduate debt has become a growing share of federal student lending. Most of the growth in the average and overall levels of student indebtedness in the past fifteen years has been driven by graduate student debt. Despite being just 21 percent…

December 1, 2023

The 2023 American Opportunity Index

The 2023 American Opportunity Index, a collaboration between the Burning Glass Institute, Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work, and the Schultz Family Foundation, examines the career paths of 4.72 million employees in 396 major U.S. companies. Unlike traditional job quality metrics, this index directly observes real-world outcomes by analyzing millions of…

December 1, 2023

Unlocking Economic Prosperity: Career Navigation in a Time of Rapid Change

New research from the Project on Workforce and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions sets an evidence-based, field-informed agenda for a 21st century career navigation ecosystem. Pathways to economic opportunity are broken in the United States, disproportionately affecting Black, Latinx, and Indigenous individuals and those from low-income backgrounds. Disrupting long-standing occupational segregation and improving outcomes for…

November 14, 2023

The Comeback City

Introduction “Given New York Today, Could Anyone Lead It?” So bemoaned a 1991 New York Times headline after decades of failure and futility.1 Crime was endemic, schools were failing, poverty was pervasive, and the economy had stagnated. From John Lindsay to David Dinkins, mayor after mayor had tried to tackle these problems. They had all…

November 14, 2023

Forget the Economics of Grievance

Introduction Donald Trump’s ascendancy has inflicted many changes on the right, including substantially altering its posture on economic issues.1 Where this blend of economic nationalism and conservative populism has been tried, it has been found wanting—at least, if you take the goal of working-class populism to be better opportunities and outcomes for the working class. And…

November 13, 2023

Family’s Place in America’s Social Fabric

The family is arguably the most basic building block of community life.[i] But even as Americans continue to say their own families are centrally important in their lives[ii], family life in the United States more broadly has changed dramatically in recent decades. At the same time, adults are finding satisfaction in their relationships with friends…

November 8, 2023

Measuring the Geography of Social Networks

Social interactions shape social and economic activity across a range of domains, from migration and trade flows to job search and investment behaviors. However, quantifying the effects of social interactions has traditionally been complicated by the absence of large-scale representative data on social networks. Over the past years, we have worked with deidentified data on…