Perspectives on Opportunity

AEI’s Perspectives on Opportunity is a policy report series published by the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility (COSM). Contributions to this series include empirical and theoretical analysis of issues related to opportunity in the United States and evidence-based policy proposals to expand opportunity, promote upward mobility, and strengthen social capital. COSM Deputy Director Kevin Corinth is the editor of Perspectives on Opportunity.

Re-Centering Family Structure in Opportunity Insights’ Work on Intergenerational Mobility: How Important Is Single Parenthood?

Over the past decade, Opportunity Insights (OI) has transformed the study of intergenerational mobility through innovative uses of administrative data, reshaping the public and scholarly understanding of the factors that affect children’s life prospects. One consistent finding in this literature is the strong association between family structure, especially single parenthood, and upward mobility, though it has received relatively little sustained attention.

March 20, 2026 | By Scott Winship and Mariana Icaza Díaz

The Middle Class Is Shrinking Because of a Booming Upper-Middle Class

Populists on both the political left and right routinely claim that the middle class has been hollowed out. These claims, to the extent they are based on evidence, rely on a relative definition of the middle class, such that if income doubles for every family, the middle class does not grow. Using an absolute definition of the middle class, we find that the “core” middle class has shrunk, but only because more families have become upper-middle class over time.

January 6, 2026 | By Scott Winship and Stephen J. Rose

Childcare Regulation and Affordability

In recent decades, childcare costs have outpaced family incomes and put pressure on family budgets. Legislators typically consider government subsidies to be the primary solution to rising costs, despite the high cost of broadly subsidizing care and possible adverse effects on families and children. Yet policymakers have paid little attention to how existing regulations limit childcare supply and increase costs, despite research emphasizing this relationship.

October 21, 2025 | By Vanessa Brown Calder

End Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility in SNAP and Address Benefit Cliffs

Broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE) in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is an administrative function with broad implications for SNAP caseloads and expenditures. Though Congress originally established BBCE as a way to lower administrative burden and increase program efficiency, states have used it in recent decades to expand SNAP eligibility beyond statutory income eligibility limits of 130 percent of the federal poverty level and other eligibility conditions.

September 23, 2025 | By Angela Rachidi and Erik Randolph

How Large Would SNAP Be? Simulating the Size of SNAP Based on Changes to the Unemployment Rate

Using a base year of 2000, we find that if SNAP’s caseload had varied based on the unemployment rate and population growth alone, the program would currently serve between 3 and 6 percent of Americans rather than the 13 percent of Americans it now serves. Moreover, we find that the program’s expenditures would range from $18 billion to $34 billion, less than one-third of the $109 billion currently spent on benefits.

July 22, 2025 | By Angela Rachidi and Thomas O'Rourke

An Evaluation of Cost-Saving Reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Congress is considering ways to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $230 billion over 10 years. Reforms will likely include one or more of the following cost-saving elements: reducing the maximum SNAP benefit, reducing deductions, expanding work requirements, and ending broad-based categorical eligibility. I analyze each of these reforms, focusing on the consequences for the SNAP benefit schedule, targeting of benefits to low-income households, and work incentives.

May 14, 2025 | By Kevin Corinth

An Early Look at the Child Tax Credit Changes in the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024

The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 would expand the child tax credit by increasing the refundable credit, indexing the maximum benefit to inflation, raising the phase-in rate for families with multiple children, and allowing a one-year earnings lookback. These changes would increase benefits primarily for lower-earning families, especially those with multiple children or intermittent work. However, the policy would have mixed effects on incentives: The faster phase-in would strengthen incentives to enter work at low earnings levels but discourage some families from increasing their earnings or getting married. In addition, the lookback provision would generally weaken work participation incentives.

March 28, 2024 | By Kevin Corinth and Scott Winship

Economic Characteristics of the Food Insecure

Consistent with intuition, we find that food-insecure households skew toward the bottom of the income distribution. However, after adjusting for household composition and regional variation in cost of living, we find that one-quarter of food-insecure households fall within the top three quintiles of the income distribution and that food-insecure households spend about as much as food-secure households do on food per week.

March 26, 2024 | By Angela Rachidi and Thomas O'Rourke

Why Did Food Insecurity Increase from 2019 to 2022 in the United States?

We find that neither changes in the social safety net nor underlying economic factors, such as unemployment, could explain this trend. Instead, we attribute the increase to a rise in food price inflation during this period, compounded by changes in the survey methodology for food insecurity assessment.

March 12, 2024 | By Angela Rachidi and Craig Gundersen

Small-Dollar Demonstration Projects Can’t Hide That a National Guaranteed Income Program Would Cost Trillions

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 national guaranteed income programs, which stretch into trillions of dollars per year and are generally layered on existing welfare and related programs.

January 12, 2024 | By Matt Weidinger

Comment on Proposed Rule Establishing Flexibility for Implementation of Work Requirements and Term Limits in Federal Housing Assistance Programs

May 1, 2026 | Kevin Corinth

Overview The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) posted a notice of proposed rulemaking on March 2, 2026 (Docket No. FR-6520-P-01), entitled, “Establishing Flexibility for Implementation of Work Requirements and Term Limits,” hereafter the “Proposed Rule.” The Proposed Rule would allow, but not require, eligible Public Housing...

Chicago’s “Disappearing Middle Class” Can Be Found in Its Proliferating Upper Middle-Class Neighborhoods

April 30, 2026 | Scott Winship

In a recent with Stephen Rose, I argued that the narrative of a “shrinking middle class” was based on a kernel of truth, but one that undermines economic pessimism. We showed that while 36 percent of families were part of what we called the “core middle class” in 1979, the share...

How Policy and Demographics Are Reshaping SNAP: From Families with Children to Older Adults

April 29, 2026 | Angela Rachidi

Abstract The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has grown substantially since the turn of the century, providing food assistance to more than 40 million individuals per month in recent years. Using data from the SNAP Quality Control dataset, I analyzed changes in SNAP households and participants from fiscal year (FY)...

Understanding the Recent Declines in SNAP Participation

April 28, 2026 | Angela Rachidi

The number of people receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has declined in recent months, with suggestions that declines are due to the Republican-backed reconciliation bill passed in July 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA or P.L. 119-21) made several changes to SNAP, including...