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August 3, 2023

Philanthropists Discover the Value of “Sunsetting”

This year, the William E. Simon Foundation is closing its doors, or “sunsetting,” in the parlance of modern philanthropy. Since it was founded in 1967 by former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon and his wife Carol, the foundation has given away almost $300 million to the causes that mattered to them—faith, family and education. It…

August 3, 2023

Another Pandemic Legacy: Removing the EITC’s Work and Earnings Requirement

Since its origin in the 1970s, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been the premier federal program promoting and rewarding work by low-income adults. As displayed below, taxpayers have devoted rapidly growing resources to the EITC since the 1980s. Overall, between 1975 and 2022, the EITC cost taxpayers a total of $1.8 trillion, which…

August 3, 2023

Fight Crime, and Poverty, with Civil Society

Maryland’s new Democratic governor, Wes Moore, has to play to his party’s increasingly left-wing base, but he also knows that problem No. 1 in much of the state is rising crime. Prince George’s County, in particular, has a much higher crime rate than the national average, and crime has been rising since the COVID lockdowns, which were extraordinarily…

August 3, 2023

Does Money (and Economic Growth) Buy Happiness?

Sure, economic growth may allow us to buy more stuff, buy cooler stuff, help us to live longer, and give us the resources to solve big problems such as global poverty and climate change. That’s fine, I guess. But do the higher incomes that come from economic growth make us, you know, happier? Do they,…

August 3, 2023

Expanding Economic Opportunities Through Evidence-Based Sector Training

Read the PDF. Introduction The Workforce Futures Initiative is a research collaboration among the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Project on Workforce at Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. The initiative aims to develop concise and actionable reviews of exist­ing research for federal, state, and local policymakers. Since August…

August 2, 2023

The Best Predictor of Happiness in America? Marriage

Americans who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless. Is that statement surprising? In an age that prizes individualism, workism, and a host of other self-centric “isms” above marriage and family, it may well be. But the reality is that nothing currently predicts…

August 2, 2023

Measuring Social Capital: Can We Tell If Some Places Are Richer in Social Capital Than Others?

The concept of social capital has been inconsistently defined and described.[1]That should not be surprising, given that social capital is intangible and not easily measured. (The same is true of human capital, though researchers have defaulted to measures of educational attainment and test scores, only recently expanding the set of indicators to encompass noncognitive skills.)…

August 1, 2023

Can AI Make People Want to Have Children?

Self-help gurus love to tell people to visualize their goals. Tony Robbins says, “Starting your day without visualizing your goal is like starting your day without breakfast.” In this space, it’s not just about figuring out where you’re going, but actually picturing your future self — how that person will feel, what that person might…

August 1, 2023

How the Middle Class Is Faring: My Long-Read Q&A with Jeremy Horpedahl

Does the typical American family today enjoy better living standards compared to 1985? We may have bigger TVs in our living rooms and smartphones in our pockets, but a recent report from Washington, DC, think tank the American Compass suggests the cost of a thriving, middle-class lifestyle has risen over the past generation. To discuss what that…