All Research
Testimony
Lessons from the Unprecedented Fraud and Abuse of the Unemployment Benefits System During the Pandemic
…administration of the Unemployment Insurance system. My name is Matt Weidinger, and I am a senior fellow and Rowe Scholar in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute. I previously…
Op--Ed
Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan is Driven by Politics, Not Economics
…the potential to make matters much worse. If future students anticipate this is just the first of many loan-cancellation events, they may be willing to pay and borrow more to…
Blog Post
Turning Back the Clock on Welfare Reform
This week marks the 25th anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform law. Crafted by Congressional Republicans, that legislation was approved by large bipartisan majorities before being signed into law by President Bill…
Report
Addressing the Shortcomings of the Supplemental Poverty Measure
Addressing-the-Shortcomings-of-the-Supplemental-Poverty-MeasureDownload…
Op-Ed
Democrats’ Stealth Plan to Enact Universal Basic Income
Universal basic income is about to arrive in America. Congressional Democrats’ $1.9 trillion stimulus bill provides for no-strings attached checks, limited only to parents of children under 18. This UBI…
Blog Post
‘Child Allowances’ Revive Welfare as We Knew It
Bill Clinton campaigned for president in 1992 on a pledge to “end welfare as we know it,” arguing that a system of government checks for low-income adults with children had become “a…
Blog Post
SNAP Changes Promote Work
Today the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released final rules that strengthen work requirements for non-disabled people without dependents who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as…
Blog Post
The Latest Report on Child Poverty Gets It Wrong on Welfare-to-work Requirements
Yesterday the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty.” The basic purposes of the…
Op-Ed
Policies Favoring Welfare over Work Are Not Answers for Ending Poverty
…work will not liberate anyone. It will only harm the very people policymakers are claiming to help by making it harder for them to escape poverty for good. Matt Weidinger…
Blog Post
Work Puts Food on the Table
…homes with a married couple at the helm. Family structure clearly matters in making sure that children do not go hungry, and poverty fighters would be wise to acknowledge that….
Op-Ed
Will Trump Choose Work over Welfare?
…matter as much as presidential pronouncements. If the President and his team are serious about promoting work, they should look no further for guidance than one of the swing states…