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Perspectives on Opportunity

About

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

Latest Updates

There Are Many Reasons to Cheer Up About the State of the Middle Class

April 11, 2026 | Scott Winship

This piece originally appeared at National Review Online and is reprinted here with permission. Statistics show that the middle class is healthier and more secure than ever before. This week, Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote that he doesn’t think he’s “ever been so depressed” as when he read my recent report with Steve Rose, “The Middle Class is...

Missing Boy Jacob Pritchett Is a Reminder of Why We Can’t Leave Disabled Kids with Ill-Equipped Parents

March 29, 2026 | Naomi Schaefer Riley

It has been a year since anyone saw Jacob Pritchett. The 11-year-old boy, who is autistic and nonverbal, was reported missing in October. But, as far as anyone can tell, he was last seen through his window on April 2, 2025, by a property manager at his NYCHA apartment in Brownsville, Brooklyn....

Refocusing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation on Achieving Deep Cost Reductions

March 26, 2026 | James C. Capretta

Spending on Medicare and Medicaid is pushing the federal budget to the breaking point, but, in the aftermath of the cuts enacted in the 2025 reconciliation bill, Congress might have difficulty producing another round of necessary savings in the near term. To make continued progress on health care spending restraint while...

The More Things Change, Medicaid Edition

March 25, 2026 | James C. Capretta

“Clinics” with suspect professional credentials running up bills for publicly-insured low-income patients. Outlandish claim volumes for questionable services, including unneeded tests and consultations. Harmful and abusive treatment of patients in some cases. And then the understandable outrage in Washington, DC that no one at the state level seems to notice...