All Research
Op-Ed
Congress Shouldn’t Create Another Newborn Benefit
A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently introduced the Supporting Newborn Parents Act of 2026, which would provide parents up to $2,000 when a child is born. The impulse is understandable. Babies…
Commentary
Zoning Creates Not Just a Housing Affordability Problem, but a Childcare Affordability Problem Too
…commercial for residential areas and too residential for commercial areas. Policymakers overestimate the externalities of childcare, such as noise, and subject childcare to heightened regulatory scrutiny due to the presence…
Op-Ed
When Washington Picks Up the States’ Tab, Waste and Fraud Follow
…a greater appetite to spend — and sometimes waste — federal tax dollars than their own funds. But it’s all the same taxpayers paying in the end. If federal lawmakers…
Op-Ed
Dem Policymakers Plan to Exploit AI Job Fears to Push the ‘Perfect Recipe for Fraud’
Behind the scenes in Washington, many policymakers are planning for an economic disruption: potential job displacement caused by AI. Yet some act like today’s safety net doesn’t exist, despite the…
Blog Post
Education Scorecard Looks Beyond Recovery
…well before the pandemic, and it is both deep and widespread. This is the central problem in American education. Schools, families, and policymakers ought to pay it far more attention….
Report
Beyond “Do No Harm”: The Next Era of Value-Based Accountability Policy
Key Points Higher education policy has shifted toward “value” as the central organizing principle. After decades focused on access, affordability, and completion, policymakers are now asking whether college actually delivers…
Report
How Policy and Demographics Are Reshaping SNAP: From Families with Children to Older Adults
…have grown substantially per capita, with some variation over the business cycle (Figure 1). This trend has raised some policymakers’ concerns about the growth of federal programs and rising expenditures…
Report
Senate Investor Ban to Cut Supply & Hurt Low-Income Families
…in the housing market is a persistent shortage of supply, and restricting investors does not address this core issue. Instead, policymakers should focus on enabling more housing production, especially at…
Op-Ed
How Much AI-Driven Productivity Growth Do We Want?
…the right balance between the damage from economic and social disruption and the benefits of rapidly rising productivity and living standards requires considering three key questions. First, citizens and policymakers…
Commentary
Opportunity Book: A New Tool for Connecting Policymakers with Innovative Ideas
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…
Commentary
Assessing Duplicative Federal Benefit Programs and Preventing Abuse
…from multiple sources, and provided additional benefit supplements. Some lawmakers have introduced legislation to make permanent some of those now-expired pandemic programs.[7] How Much Do Means-Tested and Related Benefit Programs…
Op-Ed
Congress Gave Families a Raise. Now Let Parents Decide How to Use It.
Congress delivered a big win for families in last year’s reconciliation law. By raising the Child Tax Credit to $2,200 per child and indexing it to inflation, lawmakers committed up to $37,400 in…