Research Archive

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…

By Kim Parker

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…

By Johannes Stroebel | Theresa Kuchler

November 1, 2023

The Ultimate Social Capital: A Story to Save the Union

The American Republic is on the brink; a revived civic national story can help us all come together to pull ourselves back from the abyss That the bonds holding the United States have been weakening has been obvious for more than a decade now, a phenomenon this research series has been probing in regards to…

By Colin Woodard

October 26, 2023

Working from Density

Is the COVID-19-driven surge in remote work temporary or permanent? To assess how the geography of work may evolve, we analyze the pre-pandemic status quo. Casual theorizing might suggest that workers with teleworkable jobs in the pre-pandemic era were more likely to live in the less dense, peripheral neighborhoods in their metropolitan area. Instead, we…

By Stan Veuger | Leah Brooks | Phillip G. Hoxie

October 12, 2023

Blue-State Benefits: How Federal Grants Fail to Consider Population Shift

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…

By Howard Husock

October 11, 2023

The Social Workplace: Social Capital, Human Dignity, and Work in America, Volume II

By Brent Orrell | Daniel A. Cox | Kyle Gray | Jessie Wall

September 21, 2023

National Home Price Appreciation (HPA) Index—August 2023

PDF to full report  Key takeaways: To view more data on HPA and months supply, please visit our interactive.

By Tobias Peter | Edward J. Pinto

September 18, 2023

Overregulated Childcare: Wisconsin’s 2023-’25 Biennial Budget and the Path Ahead

Wisconsin’s legislative budget session ended in July 2023 with an increase in childcare funding in the 2023-’25 biennial budget. However, the final budget did not include $340 million requested by Gov. Tony Evers to continue a pandemic-era program offering direct operating assistance to Wisconsin childcare providers. Instead, Republican lawmakers added $42 million in childcare funding…

By Angela Rachidi

September 12, 2023

Housing Finance Watch (Week 35 & 36, 2023)

PDF to full report  Key takeaways:

By Edward J. Pinto | Tobias Peter

August 8, 2023

Bad Hoosiers

A new book tells a strange tale of political extremism in the Midwest. “Why Hitler?” has probably absorbed more research energy, by an exponential factor, than any other historical question of the last 100 years. The immense, totalizing, and catastrophic evil of Germany’s National Socialist Workers Party easily justifies the investment. In most analyses, Hitler’s…

By Brent Orrell