January 30, 2025
Eliminating the Benefit Cliff and Achieving Savings for Taxpayers: A Reform Proposal for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Key Points Read the PDF
January 29, 2025
How State Governments Can Fight Degree Inflation
Key Points Executive Summary State governments have significantly exacerbated the phenomenon of degree inflation, where jobs increasingly require college degrees that were not previously necessary. State hiring practices and stringent occupational licensing laws perpetuate this trend. These policies restrict access to various professions, create labor shortages, and reduce the return to a college education for…
January 24, 2025
Testing Theories of Why: Four Keys to Interpreting US Student Achievement Trends
Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary Although national test scores provide clear evidence on student achievement across time, they do not illuminate what is driving gains or losses. Nonetheless, careful examination of test scores can corroborate some explanations for changes in student achievement and discount others. This report examines recent trends in US student…
January 24, 2025
Testing Theories of Why: Four Keys to Interpreting US Student Achievement Trends
Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary Although national test scores provide clear evidence on student achievement across time, they do not illuminate what is driving gains or losses. Nonetheless, careful examination of test scores can corroborate some explanations for changes in student achievement and discount others. This report examines recent trends in US student…
January 14, 2025
Unprotected From Porn
January 10, 2025
Marriage: America’s Keystone Institution
Marriage is linked to better financial, social, and emotional outcomes for children, men, and women—and many of these effects appear to have a causal dimension. Many social scientists have discovered these basic patterns of findings in their work over the years. But one new development in this research is that we are seeing more evidence…
December 17, 2024
Letter to the Department of Government Efficiency on Possible Reforms to the US Welfare System
December 17, 2024
States Should Drop Accreditation Requirements for New Colleges
Key Points Read the full pdf. Introduction Accreditation is a major barrier to higher education reform. In a bid to reduce the agencies’ power over state universities, Florida and North Carolina have passed laws requiring public colleges to periodically change accreditors.1 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke for many policy-savvy conservative leaders when he declared that you…
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 in reducing poverty in OECD countries. The most credible evidence suggests that raising the minimum wage is an ineffective policy tool for reducing poverty. On net, minimum wage increases tend to redistribute rather than reduce poverty. In contrast, government subsidies…
December 2, 2024
Reforming State Authorization of Colleges to Boost Competition and Lower Tuition
Key Points Executive Summary Higher education suffers from barriers to entry. Though the ranks of students at traditional colleges have grown by 29 percent over the past three decades, the number of active institutions has declined. Four in five students today attend an institution that was founded before 1970, and virtually none attend a school…