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January 16, 2025

Should We Believe the Economic Data or Americans’ “Lyin’” Eyes? The Answer Is Yes.

Many Americans are convinced the economy is ailing and that life is financially tougher today than a decade—or a generation—ago. Social media posts wax nostalgic for a long-lost era when…

January 7, 2025

Tax Policy Should Prioritize Shoring Up the Family

During the Biden years, tax policy related to the family revolved around the child tax credit (CTC). Attempts to expand the credit to make it easier for two-parent families to…

December 20, 2024

Fixing Inflation, Right-Sizing the Federal Government

Thirty years ago next month, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before a joint session of the House and Senate Budget Committees with talk of deficit reduction in the…

October 11, 2024

It’s time to face up to our social poverty problem

Over the past half-century, virtually all aspects of social life have deteriorated in America. We spend less time with fewer friends, form fewer families and have turned away from organized civic life and religious institutions. We trust…

June 18, 2024

Economic Opportunity and Social Mobility

Years ago, I worked at the Pew Charitable Trusts on something called the Economic Mobility Project. In 2009, we commissioned a survey covering opportunity, mobility, and the American Dream. One…

March 12, 2024

Family Dinners Offer a Silver Lining in a Bleak Social Capital Landscape

Across a variety of indicators, social capital in America is deteriorating. But one trend appears to be cutting across conventional wisdom—gathering the family around the dinner table. Dinners offer an…

November 14, 2023

Did Child Poverty Really Increase Last Year?

In 2021, Democrats succeeded in temporarily expanding the child tax credit (CTC) as part of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Previously, the maximum CTC of $2,000 per child was available only…

October 31, 2023

It Takes Two

It is indisputable that children are better off living with two nurturing parents who are in a stable, loving relationship compared to any other living situation. But it gets more…

July 10, 2023

Reforming the EITC to Reduce Single Parenthood and Ease Work-Family Balance

Sixty years ago, in 1963, 94% of American children were born to married mothers. Today, the figure is only 60 percent. This decline signals a fundamental disruption in the long-standing stability of…

June 21, 2023

The Bad Math Behind Economic Doomerism

It’s a big week for American Compass, a think tank founded in 2020 that fancies itself as the “pre-eminent alternative to the Old Right’s market fundamentalism.” On the heels of its new…