February 29, 2024
The Age of Uncertainty—and Opportunity: Work in the Age of AI
Abstract The question of how artificial intelligence will affect jobs, skills, and the future of work is open-ended, and answers have been uncertain and contradictory. As AI has advanced, forecasts of labor market impacts have increasingly emphasized AI’s potential to automate tasks that require skills—including creativity, writing, and social and emotional learning—previously believed to be beyond the technology’s reach. In the face…
January 12, 2024
Small-Dollar Demonstration Projects Can’t Hide That a National Guaranteed Income Program Would Cost Trillions
Abstract 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…
January 8, 2024
Dynamics of Families After a Nonmarital Birth
Abstract Despite known links between poverty rates and unmarried parenthood, we know little about how changes in family situations after a nonmarital birth affect poverty. This study explores Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study data to document changes to the relationship status, employment status, and education level of a cohort of unmarried mothers who…
December 15, 2023
Pro-Family Policy Priorities for States
Introduction America’s system of federalism means that the is- sues that most directly impact the lives of parents and families are often most appropriately dealt with at the state level. While many conversations about how to make family life more affordable and achiev- able in the U.S. tend to focus on the federal tax code,…
December 13, 2023
Stronger Families, Safer Streets
The debate about how best to respond to urban crime—a debate that has become more important in light of recent increases in violent crime and homicide in many cities across America—has tended to focus on two perspectives. The first prioritizes tackling the “social structural factors” (unemployment, economic inequality, poverty, etc.) that are thought to be…
December 8, 2023
A Framework for Reforming Federal Graduate Student Aid Policy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Driven by increases in graduate enrollment and the availability of uncapped loans, graduate debt has become a growing share of federal student lending. Most of the growth in the average and overall levels of student indebtedness in the past fifteen years has been driven by graduate student debt. Despite being just 21 percent…
December 1, 2023
The 2023 American Opportunity Index
The 2023 American Opportunity Index, a collaboration between the Burning Glass Institute, Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work, and the Schultz Family Foundation, examines the career paths of 4.72 million employees in 396 major U.S. companies. Unlike traditional job quality metrics, this index directly observes real-world outcomes by analyzing millions of…
December 1, 2023
Unlocking Economic Prosperity: Career Navigation in a Time of Rapid Change
New research from the Project on Workforce and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions sets an evidence-based, field-informed agenda for a 21st century career navigation ecosystem. Pathways to economic opportunity are broken in the United States, disproportionately affecting Black, Latinx, and Indigenous individuals and those from low-income backgrounds. Disrupting long-standing occupational segregation and improving outcomes for…
November 14, 2023
The Comeback City
Introduction “Given New York Today, Could Anyone Lead It?” So bemoaned a 1991 New York Times headline after decades of failure and futility.1 Crime was endemic, schools were failing, poverty was pervasive, and the economy had stagnated. From John Lindsay to David Dinkins, mayor after mayor had tried to tackle these problems. They had all…
November 14, 2023
Forget the Economics of Grievance
Introduction Donald Trump’s ascendancy has inflicted many changes on the right, including substantially altering its posture on economic issues.1 Where this blend of economic nationalism and conservative populism has been tried, it has been found wanting—at least, if you take the goal of working-class populism to be better opportunities and outcomes for the working class. And…