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October 11, 2024
It’s time to face up to our social poverty problem
…on the incomes and employment of individuals, families, groups and regions — and can therefore say a lot about changes in income, inequality and material living standards. In contrast, we…
October 9, 2024
Kamala Harris’s Main Priority Is Expanding Welfare, Not Strengthening the Middle Class
…it’s fair to ask exactly how middle-class Harris’s childhood was, given that her mother was a prominent biomedical scientist and her father was a tenured professor of economics at Stanford….
October 7, 2024
Presidential Candidates’ Dueling Child Credit Expansions Explained
The Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz presidential campaigns have each recently proposed large expansions to the child tax credit (CTC). Both proposals might be intended to appeal to similar voters, but they…
October 2, 2024
AOC’s “Social Housing” Dead End
…is not to get government to replace the private housing market—which has enabled 65 percent of Americans to become homeowners—but for government to stand aside and let the private market work….
September 24, 2024
Household Food Insecurity Rises Again – Inflation, especially for households ineligible for safety net programs, to blame
…by historic standards, suggesting inflation remained an important factor to consider when trying to understand food insecurity rates for 2023. This can be seen in Figure 2 where we display…
September 23, 2024
Toward a Potential Grand Bargain for the Nation
…strengthening the link between pay and performance; maintaining educational standards and accountability while narrowing gaps by race and class; expanding school choice; and recognizing the role that parents and families…
September 19, 2024
Government benefit programs already do a lot to help low income families
…the standard deduction and earned income deduction. The excess shelter cost deduction does not apply given their rental payment after housing assistance is less than half of adjusted income. Medicaid…
September 16, 2024
A Pyrrhic Victory Against Student Loan Default
…Congress created income-driven repayment (IDR) plans in the 1990s, though they only entered widespread use in the early 2010s. Unlike the standard “mortgage-style” fixed repayment plan, in which students pay…
September 10, 2024
America is Still Working
…use and zoning regulation would help people afford to move to opportunity. Productivity growth—the engine for raising living standards—has been stuck at too-low levels for too long. Shifting government spending…
August 29, 2024
The Distribution of Social Capital across Individuals and its Relationship to Income
…with a 0.23 standard deviation increase in social capital for those with the lowest levels of market income, while an extra $10,000 in government transfer income is associated with a…