November 30, 2025
Our Economy Is Not Stagnant
Both sides of the political aisle are misleadingly bleak about the state of the American worker. A national Pew survey conducted in April of this year found that 56 percent of Americans believe that “life in America today” is worse than it was “50 years ago for people like you.” In a separate April survey, the exact same…
November 26, 2025
How Not to Redefine Poverty
I tried to let it go. Someone mentioned the essay to me on Monday, when it was a Substack post. I tweeted out some quick thoughts as to why no one should take it seriously, pointing out the glaring problem that I’ll walk through below. I tried to get back to my other work (a…
November 20, 2025
When help holds families back
One of the central contradictions in American politics today is that, despite decades of measurable progress for low-income families – marked by declining poverty rates, rising household incomes, and greater levels of consumption – many families continue to feel as though they are falling behind. Child poverty rates have dropped to near historic lows, and…
November 19, 2025
Real Estate Red Flag: How Hidden Blue-State Policies are Pricing Out Homeowners
A telling new analysis of rising home maintenance costs from the real estate listing service Zillow, in conjunction with Thumbtack, which tracks the cost of local services, should remind those promoting the virtues of homeownership that it’s key for new buyers to be prepared and capable owners. At the same time, the findings tell yet another story…
October 23, 2025
Childcare Regulation Limits Choice and Opportunity
Regulation limits many aspects of opportunity and upward mobility. While analysts have highlighted the adverse impact of specific regulations — such as zoning, rent control, and occupational licensing — public discourse has given less attention to the costs and consequences of childcare regulations for families and care providers. Yet past and current research underscores these…
October 21, 2025
Reliability of Government Data Often Requires Asterisks, a Hazard That Predates Liberal Gripes About Trump Manipulating Statistics
Seattle slugger Cal Raleigh this year matched what once stood as a signature baseball record: Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs for the 1927 Yankees. Roger Maris first surpassed Ruth’s record, hitting 61 homers in 1961, but for decades his achievement was accompanied in record books by the most famous asterisk in history. Maris played a 162-game season, the asterisk…
October 15, 2025
Don’t Choose Your Own Adventure: Understanding Middle-Class Earnings Trends
What should we make of earnings trends in the United States? People can differ in their opinions about whether some reported trend is impressive or cause for concern, of course. However, you might think that it’s at least straightforward to determine what the relevant trend is and how to measure it. But that turns out…
October 3, 2025
The Link Between Maternal Drug Use and Rising Infant Mortality
Mississippi has just declared a public health emergency involving an alarming rise in infant mortality rates. Between 2023 and 2024, deaths of children under age one rose to 9.7 per 1,000 live births from 8.9 per 1,000 in 2023. “Every single infant loss represents a family devastated, a community impacted and a future cut short,”…
September 25, 2025
The Golden Age of Public Housing—and Why It Didn’t Last
If Americans have any shared image of public housing, it is one of dilapidated and even dangerous “projects” and locations of concentrated poverty. But there was a time—a brief shining moment—in which public housing was new and attractive and working married couples with children were glad to live in government-owned and -managed apartments. What might…
September 24, 2025
Subsidized Housing and Upward Mobility
In 1983, Harvard scholars Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood sought to determine the length of time participants in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) spent in the program. Their report, titled The Dynamics of Dependence, revealed that the average participant could be expected to remain in AFDC for 10 years — a figure that increased to…