Today the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is releasing Opportunity Book, a new online tool that connects policymakers, journalists, and researchers with innovative federal policy ideas. Opportunity Book is a publicly available database that launches with 38 individual policies related to opportunity from 13 AEI scholars. The initial policies relate to child support enforcement, the child tax credit, early childhood education, the earned income tax credit, and higher education. In the coming weeks, dozens of additional policies covering another nine issue areas will be added. The database is customizable to each user, allowing policymakers and their advisers to quickly access the ideas most relevant to their goals, along with additional resources including policy details and supporting research.
Good ideas for expanding opportunity are needed now more than ever. Growing ranks of working age Americans have become dependent on government aid, providing important assistance but often at the cost of stunting upward mobility. Social capital—through declining marriage, community ties, and civic engagement—has dwindled, doing lasting harm to lower-income individuals who most need it to thrive. The rising cost of housing is walling off areas of opportunity and making it harder to achieve the American Dream. Inequality of opportunity has contributed to rates of intergenerational poverty that are many times higher for black kids than white kids.
Policymakers require serious solutions to tackle these challenges. However, it can be difficult to sift through the political noise and identify the substantive, evidence-based reforms that are most likely to work.
Opportunity Book offers policymakers and other interested users a go-to source for opportunity-related policy ideas. This new tool leverages the expansive set of policy ideas proposed and designed by AEI scholars, whose commitment to rigorous research and detailed policy analysis ensures that their proposals are backed by robust evidence and thus have the strongest prospects for success. Opportunity Book’s streamlined interface and customizable features make it as easy as possible for policymakers to quickly find the policy ideas most relevant to their own goals, as well as the research and related resources that support a given policy.
When accessing Opportunity Book, a user, at their own discretion, can create a personalized account, allowing them to save a personalized package of policy ideas. Then they can begin browsing the policy areas in which they are most interested, or alternatively search the database for relevant keywords. Upon identifying a specific policy idea, the user can view a short summary of the problem being addressed and the key features of the policy solution. Further information including supporting research and other relevant materials is always provided, as is the identity of the scholar who authored the idea.
Opportunity Book is a simple tool. Its power lies in the plethora of policy ideas and supporting research from AEI scholars, who for decades have been developing evidence-based approaches for expanding opportunity for all Americans. We hope that by more seamlessly connecting policymakers, journalists, and researchers to this extensive database of ideas, we can make more progress expanding opportunity and strengthening the American Dream.
