Research Archive

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

September 21, 2022

Lessons from the Unprecedented Fraud and Abuse of the Unemployment Benefits System During the Pandemic

Chairman DeSaulnier, Ranking Member Allen, and other members of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, thank you for inviting me to testify at this morning’s hearing examining the administration of the Unemployment Insurance system. My name is Matt Weidinger, and I am a senior fellow and Rowe Scholar in poverty studies at the…

By Matt Weidinger

September 19, 2022

Men Without Work in the Post-Pandemic Era

Event Summary On September 19, Harvard University’s Lawrence Summers and AEI’s Michael Strain joined AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt to discuss the new edition of Mr. Eberstadt’s book, Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (Templeton Press, 2022). Mr. Eberstadt began by describing the decades-long flight from work by prime-age (25–54) men and the broadening of that trend to other demographics…

By Nicholas Eberstadt | Michael R. Strain

September 12, 2022

Section 199A and “Tax Parity”

Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included a new deduction for business income: Section 199A. This provision allows taxpayers to deduct up to 20 percent of qualifying business income against their taxable income and provides a special tax benefit for “pass-through” businesses—those not subject to the…

By Kyle Pomerleau

August 30, 2022

Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan is Driven by Politics, Not Economics

On Wednesday, President Biden announced his long-awaited plan to cancel student loans — effectively wiping away up to $10,000 for borrowers with individual income below $125,000 (and couples with joint income below $250,000). The administration’s plan forgives up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients under the same income limits. The move, which will cost taxpayers…

By Beth Akers