Research Archive

January 1, 2023

Perspective: Is your boss on your DOS? How remote work monitoring can work

The challenge is to develop and use tools that reinforce trust rather than weaken it As COVID-19 recedes, American workers are filtering, slowly and fitfully, back to the office. In the past few years, remote work has gone from rarity to commonplace to an ongoing, contentious renegotiation between workers and employers. One front in this…

By Brent Orrell | Matthew Leger

December 15, 2022

The Myth of Income Stagnation

According to the conventional wisdom, income stagnation and inequality are large and growing threats to broad-based prosperity in the United States. Many economists, journalists, business leaders, and elected leaders (from both parties) believe that for a large share of households, real (inflation-adjusted) income has not increased for decades, and that income inequality – the gap between higher- and lower-income households –…

By Michael R. Strain

December 14, 2022

Bringing Home the Bacon: Have Trends in Men’s Pay Weakened the Traditional Family?

Key Points

By Scott Winship

December 9, 2022

“Automatic Stimulus”: How It Would Have Increased the Record Unemployment Benefits Paid During the Great Recession and Pandemic

Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary The COVID-19 pandemic saw unemployment claims reach a high of over 33 million in June 2020—over two and a half times the prior record set during the Great Recession. From March 2020 until temporary federal programs expired in September 2021, nearly 1.6 billion weeks of benefit checks were…

By Matt Weidinger

December 6, 2022

Fixing Our Child Welfare System to Help America’s Most Vulnerable Kids

Every day, more and more children in America lack a safe, permanent, and loving home. Evidence increasingly shows that child welfare agencies and family courts aremuch more concerned with adults’ needs and sensibilities than with children’s safety.While reform must come from many different corners of this field, Congress should committo creating a stronger and smarter…

By Naomi Schaefer Riley

December 1, 2022

Was Rising Inequality Behind Falling Absolute Mobility? Reassessing Chetty et al. (2017)

In 2017, a widely publicized paper by a research team led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that while the vast majority of American kids born in 1940 ended up better off at age 30 than their parents fared at the same age, that was only true of half of kids born in 1980. Moreover,…

By Scott Winship

November 28, 2022

Public School Instructional Offerings and Enrollment Changes: Evidence from Two Years After the Pandemic

Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary We examine how COVID-related reopening policies during the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years affected enrollment in public school districts. We use difference-in-differences and event study designs to estimate plausibly causal effects of different reopening policies on public school enrollment. Consistent with prior research, we find that public school…

By Nat Malkus | Cody Christensen

November 17, 2022

American Renewal: Launching a New Conservative Policy Book with Paul Ryan and Angela Rachidi

Event Summary On November 17, AEI’s Paul Ryan and Angela Rachidi launched their new volume, American Renewal: A Conservative Plan to Strengthen the Social Contract and Save the Country’s Finances (AEI, 2022). In his opening remarks, Speaker Ryan noted our unique social and political moment, contending that many Americans are suffering at the hands of…

By Paul Ryan | Robert Doar | Angela Rachidi | Ryan Streeter

November 3, 2022

Child Poverty: Trends and Outlook

Spotlight hosted an engaging and substantive discussion on recent trends in childhood poverty. The event, held with the support of the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, was moderated by Aparna Mathur, Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center. The panelists were Dana Thomson of Child Trends, Samuel…

September 30, 2022

Off Track: An Assessment of Wisconsin’s Early Care and Learning System for Young Children

Preface Raising children, as can be fully appreciated only after you’ve done it, takes place in realtime. They eat, sleep and grow whether you’re ready or not. So as parents supply childrenwith the most crucial material treasure they ever will receive — a stable, loving home — manyrely on some outside help in caring for…

By Angela Rachidi