All Research
Op-Ed
The Ongoing Battle to Defend Welfare Reform
…debunked, first by one of us (Winship) and then by Bruce Meyer and his colleagues. Winship found that essentially no children resided in families that lived on $2 a day per person…
Blog
The Misleading Narrative About the ‘Hollowing Out’ of the Middle Class
The prevailing media narrative after years of mounting economic inequality is that the middle class is being hollowed out. But Scott Winship, a senior fellow and the director of the…
Commentary
Lessons from the 1996 Welfare Reform Law Approaching Its 30th Anniversary
…Welfare Reform Angela Rachidi, Matt Weidinger, and Scott Winship, A Safety Net for the Future: Overcoming the Root Causes of Poverty, October 2022 Matt Weidinger, Missing the Big Picture on…
Mulitmedia
Scott Winship Discusses American Wealth Growth and the Discrepancy Between Gloomy Consumer Sentiment and Actual Financial Growth.
Scott Winship discusses American wealth growth, exemplified by the SpaceX IPO making thousands of employees millionaires. He argues the middle class is not “hollowing out” negatively; rather, it is shrinking because more families…
Op-Ed
The Shrinking Middle Class and Booming Upper-Middle Class: The Plot Thickens
Earlier this year, our report, “The Middle Class Is Shrinking Because of a Booming Upper-Middle Class,” argued that the narrative of a “hollowed-out middle class” rests on counterintuitive class definitions…
Op-ed
New York Families Are Doing Better Than You’ve Heard
Is the middle class in danger? On social media and in the news, Americans regularly hear that the middle class has shrunk, been hollowed out, or is disappearing. These claims…
Op-ed
What Liberals Get Wrong About the Middle Class
It’s a common refrain: The middle class is hollowing out; Americans overall are increasingly falling short financially while a few are getting exceedingly rich. There’s even a scoreboard of inequality. We’ve…
Op-Ed
Chicago’s “Disappearing Middle Class” Can Be Found in Its Proliferating Upper Middle-Class Neighborhoods
In a recent report 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….
Op-Ed
There Are Many Reasons to Cheer Up About the State of the Middle Class
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…
Article
Compiling My Work on Work Incentives
…(May, 2014) https://web.archive.org/web/20160911165338/http://conservativereform.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Room-To-Grow.pdf “Would a Block-Granted Safety Net Mean Less Aid to Families?” Forbes.com (July 31, 2014) https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottwinship/2014/07/31/would-a-block-granted-safety-net-mean-less-aid-to-families/ “Will Welfare Reform Increase Upward Mobility?” Forbes.com (March 26, 2015) https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottwinship/2015/03/26/will-welfare-reform-increase-upward-mobility/ “Welfare…
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…
