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 11, 2023
How to make smartphones and apps safer for kids
“These are first-of-their-kind bills in the United States,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said in March at the signing of SB152, which required social media companies operating in Utah to age-verify users and obtain explicit parental consent for users under the age of 18 to open an account. “That’s huge that Utah is leading out in this…
December 11, 2023
How Public Housing Encourages Single Parenthood and Penalizes Marriage
The post-pandemic rise in rents has fueled the view that the private housing market inevitably fails those of modest means. The left-leaning Center for Budget Policies and Priorities summarizes the idea that the short-term spike in rents merely dramatizes that essential market failure. It asserts that the “rent burden among families with the lowest incomes is a…
December 5, 2023
The Ninth Annual American Family Survey: Perceptions and Realities of Issues Families Face Today
When it comes to the most important challenges families face today, the public has ideas about how the economy, family structure, health, and other issues rank—but these perceptions don’t always match what the public reports as the biggest issues for their own families. The ninth annual American Family Survey delves into the experiences of American…
November 13, 2023
Family’s Place in America’s Social Fabric
The family is arguably the most basic building block of community life.[i] But even as Americans continue to say their own families are centrally important in their lives[ii], family life in the United States more broadly has changed dramatically in recent decades. At the same time, adults are finding satisfaction in their relationships with friends…
October 27, 2023
What liberals don’t understand about men and marriage
There’s no question the bond between fatherhood and marriage is weaker today than it was 60 years ago. Whereas almost 80% of children were raised in an intact, married home with their father in the early 1960s, today only about 51% have that privilege. In the face of what seems like a fraying father-marriage bond, some left-leaning men’s advocates…
September 18, 2023
No Culture Wars, Please, We’re Academics
A few years ago, Melissa S. Kearney got into a taxi cab and asked the driver about a photo of a young girl on his dashboard. The driver confirmed it was his daughter and then proudly showed her more pictures. The girl lived with her mother, he explained. Kearney, a professor of economics at the…
September 14, 2023
The Privilege Hiding in Plain Sight
The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, by Melissa S. Kearney (University of Chicago Press, 240 pp., $25) Imagine you are twelve years old and your public-school teacher asks you and your seventh-grade classmates to stand side by side in a line. The instructor lists a series of personal attributes and…
September 1, 2023
Paying People to Have Kids Can Only Do So Much When You’re in a Spiraling Baby Bust
“Frankly, whenever elections come up politicians tend to unveil grand measures aimed at resolving the birthrate issue,” Choi Seul-ki, a demographer in South Korea, told the Wall Street Journal. “But cash is a limited incentive in changing people’s outlook on life.” Indeed, South Korea has spent more than $210 billion in the past decade in an effort to…
August 17, 2023
The ‘Utah Family Miracle’ and Why It Matters
Utah ranks at the top of many rankings of state performance across America. But perhaps the Beehive State is best known for its top rankings on the economic front. The “Utah economic miracle” — marked by exceptional economic growth, a favorable business climate and high rates of economic mobility — has garnered attention across the…