May 4, 2026
The Value of Reliable Statistics
AbstractOn August 1, 2025, President Trump fired the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor…
March 26, 2026
How Much AI-Driven Productivity Growth Do We Want?
As AI advances, societies must consider how to strike a balance between the disruption caused…
December 10, 2024
Fighting in-work poverty: the minimum wage versus in-work benefits
Abstract We review evidence on the effectiveness of the minimum wage versus in-work benefit policies…
November 21, 2024
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work
Summary Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) promise to improve productivity significantly, but there are many…
October 3, 2024
Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy
Abstract The Trump–Pence and Biden–Harris administrations enthusiastically embraced protectionism. Each administration explicitly argued for a…
September 17, 2024
Doing Right by Kids: Leveraging Social Capital and Innovation to Increase Opportunity
Material hardship among American children has never been lower. This seeming victory in the War…
December 19, 2023
How to Better Measure Poverty
June 13, 2023
The Great School Rethink
In The Great School Rethink, education policy sentinel Frederick M. Hess offers a pithy and perceptive…
December 31, 2022
A Safety Net for the Future: Overcoming the Root Causes of Poverty
The 1996 welfare reform law replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, shifting the safety net toward work requirements, time limits, and greater state flexibility and accountability. Following these reforms, welfare caseloads fell sharply, employment among single mothers increased, and child poverty declined. However, many other programs subsequently expanded due in part to their lack of similar pro-work features, contributing to a complex system of rising spending on over 80 federal means-tested programs. Federal reforms should refocus the broader safety net on promoting work and marriage, strengthen state incentives to move recipients into employment, and reform refundable tax credits to better reward work while encouraging state innovation and accountability.
November 17, 2022
American Renewal: A Conservative Plan to Strengthen the Social Contract and Save the Country’s Finances
The purpose of American Renewal: A Conservative Plan to Strengthen the Social Contract and Save the…
May 4, 2020
How To Educate an American
In the years after A Nation at Risk, conservatives’ ideas to reform America’s lagging education system…
January 17, 2020
Rethinking Reentry
Summary Policymakers and researchers have been searching for a solution to persistently high rates of recidivism for…