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July 13, 2023

Republicans Step Up to Lead on Higher Education Reform

For decades, the political debate on higher education reform could largely be understood in simple terms. Democrats wanted to spend more money on higher education, and Republicans wanted to spend less—mostly within the nation’s preexisting policy infrastructure. In recent years, however, this familiar paradigm has been upended. As Democrats lurch leftward, Republican leaders in both…

By Beth Akers

July 13, 2023

The Test Isn’t the Problem

Now that the Supreme Court has disallowed overtly race-conscious university admissions policies, we can expect colleges to try to find other ways to pursue their version of diversity. In New York, we’ve already seen one likely workaround: the lingering idea of ditching entrance-exam requirements for admission to the city’s elite public schools. Thanks to a…

By Howard Husock

July 12, 2023

Employment in SNAP: Setting the Record Straight

Skeptics of work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) often argue that most families receiving SNAP benefits are already working. A recent NBCNews article, for example, claimed that four out of five SNAP households have at least one working person in the household, and that 10 percent had three or more workers in 2021,…

By Angela Rachidi | Thomas O'Rourke

July 12, 2023

Rethinking the Impact of the Lockdowns

We are only beginning to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications of the lockdowns that forced people to stay home. It is an endeavor that will take years to flesh out.  Eszter Hargittai’s Connected in Isolation  is one of the first large-scale attempts to do just that and looks at how the United States…

By Samuel J. Abrams

July 12, 2023

Could News Bloom in News Deserts?

Key Points Read the PDF.

By Howard Husock

July 12, 2023

Local News and Social Capital

Joseph Schumpeter famously observed that capitalism unleashed “creative destruction.”[i] If that is so for American journalism, just such a wave has, without doubt, been destroying local newspapers. What’s not yet clear is whether such destruction will be complemented by creation. The result matters not just as it affects a select group of business enterprises. Arguably, local…

By Howard Husock

July 12, 2023

New York Rent Control: Could the End be Near?

Those who care about housing policy and the future of New York City will be paying close attention this fall to see if the Supreme Court decides to take up a serious challenge by apartment owners to the Big Apple’s big blunder: rent regulation. At stake is a law which regulates rent prices and tenant rights for…

By Howard Husock

July 10, 2023

Reforming the EITC to Reduce Single Parenthood and Ease Work-Family Balance

Sixty years ago, in 1963, 94% of American children were born to married mothers. Today, the figure is only 60 percent. This decline signals a fundamental disruption in the long-standing stability of the traditional family, the foremost institution shaping each generation of children. Using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, I find that in 2021, 40% of…

By Scott Winship

July 8, 2023

Why the End of Affirmative Action Is Good for Black Science Students

“Corporate diversity in the crosshairs.” That was a typical headline after last week’s Supreme Court decision declaring the use of racial preferences in college admissions unconstitutional. Panic has set in among the chattering classes about what will happen to “workplace diversity” as a result of the ruling.  Not only do observers fear that the court — whose majority…

By Naomi Schaefer Riley

July 7, 2023

The 21st Century Decline of Economic Freedom

From 1850 to 2020, industrialized economies went from roughly $3,000 per capita to $40,000 per capita, inflation adjusted. This was also a period of expanding economic freedom, as documented in the new analysis, “Economic freedom, 1850–2020: New evidence” by economic historian Leandro Prados de la Escosura. There are two important things to note about that…

By James Pethokoukis