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Research Archive

March 26, 2024

Reading Scores Have Plunged Since the Pandemic. What This Senator Wants to Do About That

The ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Bill Cassidy has represented Louisiana in the upper chamber since 2015. Cassidy recently released a much-discussed report, “Preventing a Lost Generation: Facing a Critical Moment for Students’ Literacy.” As schools struggle to address learning loss, and at a time when “the nation’s report…

March 26, 2024

Economic Characteristics of the Food Insecure

Abstract The United States Department of Agriculture annually measures food insecurity among US householdsto assess whether Americans have access to adequate food. Intuition suggests that food insecurityrates should correlate to household resources, offering policymakers an important metric to guidegovernment assistance efforts. In this report, we examine the effectiveness of the food insecurity ratein identifying financially…

March 25, 2024

Families Slip Back Into Poverty After Pandemic-Era Child Tax Credit Expires

Watch the full video here. During the pandemic, lawmakers dramatically, but temporarily, expanded the social safety net, including more money for families with children. The impacts of those changes are still being felt and debated to this day. Amna Nawaz and producer Sam Lane report on that for our series, America’s Safety Net. Read the…

March 21, 2024

Sugary Beverage Consumption Among SNAP Recipients

The House Agriculture Committee recently failed to pass an appropriations bill that would have authorized a pilot program to test whether nutrition-based restrictions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could improve health outcomes for low-income households. This is just the latest rejection by Washington policymakers of proposals designed to improve nutritional outcomes for SNAP…

March 21, 2024

It’s Not Just Minority Neighborhoods—NYC’s Entire Property-Tax System Needs Reform

There is good reason to conclude, as the state Court of Appeals did Tuesday, that New York City’s property-tax system leads to disproportionately high tax bills for minority homeowners. But those high taxes aren’t the result of discrimination; they’re just one example of a dysfunctional tax-assessment system that burdens homeowners and discourages new housing construction —…

March 21, 2024

Why Foster Kids Aren’t Getting the Mental Health Care They need

Last fall, a 15-year-old foster child in Kansas took his own life. According to a local news report, the boy’s foster family “immediately called for help when they discovered the teenager, but paramedics couldn’t save him.” The Kansas City Beacon reported that the agency that was overseeing the placement, KVC Kansas, did not meet the state’s guidelines for…

March 20, 2024

When Workers Say They Value Flexibility, They Mean It

FlexJobs, a career services firm specializing in remote and hybrid jobs, is out with another of its regular surveys on American attitudes towards job flexibility. Consistent with our own surveys, which found Americans valued flexibility on the job above all other factors, including pay, the new FlexJobs data takes the analysis a step or two further. It appears that…