March 20, 2026
Re-Centering Family Structure in Opportunity Insights’ Work on Intergenerational Mobility: How Important Is Single Parenthood?
Over the past decade, Opportunity Insights (OI) has transformed the study of intergenerational mobility through innovative uses of administrative data, reshaping the public and scholarly understanding of the factors that affect children’s life prospects. One consistent finding in this literature is the strong association between family structure, especially single parenthood, and upward mobility, though it has received relatively little sustained attention.
January 6, 2026
The Middle Class Is Shrinking Because of a Booming Upper-Middle Class
Populists on both the political left and right routinely claim that the middle class has been hollowed out. These claims, to the extent they are based on evidence, rely on a relative definition of the middle class, such that if income doubles for every family, the middle class does not grow. Using an absolute definition of the middle class, we find that the “core” middle class has shrunk, but only because more families have become upper-middle class over time.
October 21, 2025
Childcare Regulation and Affordability
In recent decades, childcare costs have outpaced family incomes and put pressure on family
budgets. Legislators typically consider government subsidies to be the primary solution to rising
costs, despite the high cost of broadly subsidizing care and possible adverse effects on families
and children. Yet policymakers have paid little attention to how existing regulations limit childcare
supply and increase costs, despite research emphasizing this relationship.
September 23, 2025
End Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility in SNAP and Address Benefit Cliffs
Broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is an administrative function with broad implications for SNAP caseloads and expenditures. Though Congress originally established BBCE as a way to lower administrative burden and increase program efficiency, states have used it in recent decades to expand SNAP eligibility beyond statutory income eligibility limits of 130 percent of the federal poverty level and other eligibility conditions.
July 22, 2025
How Large Would SNAP Be? Simulating the Size of SNAP Based on Changes to the Unemployment Rate
Using a base year of 2000, we find that if SNAP’s caseload had varied based on the unemployment rate and population growth alone, the program would currently serve between 3 and 6 percent of Americans rather than the 13 percent of Americans it now serves. Moreover, we find that the program’s expenditures would range from $18 billion to $34 billion, less than one-third of the $109 billion currently spent on benefits.
May 14, 2025
An Evaluation of Cost-Saving Reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Congress is considering ways to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $230 billion over 10 years. Reforms will likely include one or more of the following cost-saving elements: reducing the maximum SNAP benefit, reducing deductions, expanding work requirements, and ending broad-based categorical eligibility. I analyze each of these reforms, focusing on the consequences for the SNAP benefit schedule, targeting of benefits to low-income households, and work incentives.
March 28, 2024
An Early Look at the Child Tax Credit Changes in the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024
The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 would expand the child tax credit by increasing the refundable credit, indexing the maximum benefit to inflation, raising the phase-in rate for families with multiple children, and allowing a one-year earnings lookback. These changes would increase benefits primarily for lower-earning families, especially those with multiple children or intermittent work. However, the policy would have mixed effects on incentives: The faster phase-in would strengthen incentives to enter work at low earnings levels but discourage some families from increasing their earnings or getting married. In addition, the lookback provision would generally weaken work participation incentives.
March 26, 2024
Economic Characteristics of the Food Insecure
Consistent with intuition, we find that food-insecure households skew toward the bottom of
the income distribution. However, after adjusting for household composition and regional variation in
cost of living, we find that one-quarter of food-insecure households fall within the top three quintiles
of the income distribution and that food-insecure households spend about as much as food-secure
households do on food per week.
March 12, 2024
Why Did Food Insecurity Increase from 2019 to 2022 in the United States?
We find that neither changes in the social safety net nor underlying economic factors, such as unemployment, could explain this trend. Instead, we attribute the increase to a rise in food price inflation during this period, compounded by changes in the survey methodology for food insecurity assessment.
January 12, 2024
Small-Dollar Demonstration Projects Can’t Hide That a National Guaranteed Income Program Would Cost Trillions
While some have declared that short-term guaranteed income demonstrations (patterned on universal basic income schemes) are working almost universally, such cheerleading misses a major drawback: the enormous costs that would arise if such programs operated at a national level, as proponents intend. This report reviews the costs of some recent proposals to operate such national guaranteed income programs, which stretch into trillions of dollars per year and are generally layered on existing welfare and related programs.
October 12, 2023
Blue-State Benefits: How Federal Grants Fail to Consider Population Shift
The federal government annually awards hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to states. In this report, I examine funding for the largest federal grant programs for 2020–22, focusing on grants-in-aid that do not fully adjust for population change. For states losing population, I calculate “avoided reductions,” the difference between the grants a state received in 2022 and what it would have received had grant funding been reduced proportionate to population loss. I find that the sums of avoided reductions differ greatly among states, with California, Illinois, and New York spared the most.
June 22, 2023
The Cost of Thriving Has Fallen: Correcting and Rejecting the American Compass Cost-of-Thriving Index
Our improvements to Cass’s estimates indicate the cost of thriving rose by 10 weeks rather than 22. After accounting for the better quality of the goods and services he tracks, the increase was four weeks. The cost of thriving declines when we account for falling federal taxes or include all full-time workers. The after-tax cost of thriving for this broader group fell by 7.5 weeks. These improvements aside, we reject the COTI approach as inadequate for assessing changes in living standards.