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July 10, 2024
A defining aspect of the American dream is that the economic well-being of each generation surpasses that of the previous one. However, commentators have questioned whether this holds true for the most recent generations. A 2022 Gallup poll found that only 42 percent of Americans expect today’s young people to have a better life than…
June 26, 2024
To what lengths should we go to reduce racial disparities in the child welfare system? In 2021 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to require the Department of Children and Family Services to pilot a program of “blind removals.” The program, which had been tried to great fanfare in a couple of other jurisdictions, essentially…
June 26, 2024
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 23, 2024
How is it that in the richest country on Earth, life expectancy has been falling? This is the question that many policymakers and consumers of news have been asking themselves of late. Between COVID-19, drugs and the consequences of obesity (including high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems), we are digging ourselves an early grave. Still,…
June 20, 2024
Event Summary On June 20, AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility convened two panels to discuss the 60th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. The first panel examined poverty measurement. Panelists agreed that the official poverty measure is outdated and should no longer be used by government agencies. David Johnson from…
June 18, 2024
When it comes to education, these have been the best of times and the worst of times. In 2021, Arizona adopted the nation’s first universal education-savings-account (ESA) program. In 2022, West Virginia adopted the second. That trickle became a flood in 2023, with states from Arkansas to Utah to Ohio adopting their own programs. Around…
June 18, 2024
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…
June 17, 2024
The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) system is important in providing resources to children who live apart from one of their parents. This is especially true in poor households. In this paper, we summarize the case in favor of the current CSE system, and address some key critiques. We then consider some long-term issues of concern,…
June 15, 2024
For years, conservatives have dropped the ball on early childhood education policy, almost entirely ceding the playing field to the left. This has led to programs that lack guidance from some important conservative intuitions, like fiscal restraint, the centrality of family and the power of markets. Early childhood education is a crucial kitchen-table issue for…
June 13, 2024
A growing minority of young men are floundering. “Failure to launch” is a description that’s all too common. Consider working a stable job—a decent proxy for whether someone has their life together. For young men (ages 16-24), labor force participation rates are dropping. In 1980, the share of young men who were looking for or had a…