All Research
Commentary
Bill Would Require States to Use Future Federal Funds to Repay Unemployment Loans First
…a second time) used $19.2 billion in ARPA funds to do the same, including by paying back federal loans. Exceptions included New York, which received over $30 billion in flexible…
Op-Ed
Dem Policymakers Plan to Exploit AI Job Fears to Push the ‘Perfect Recipe for Fraud’
…We have to do better than that. A New York Times article warning that “the federal safety net isn’t ready” for the potential shock of “widespread job losses” attributable to AI is a good…
Blog Post
Education Scorecard Looks Beyond Recovery
…media. The New York Times, for instance, published an extensive feature alongside an interactive tool where you can look up your own district’s achievement trajectory. I recommend reading the whole report, but I’ll briefly highlight three…
Report
Beyond “Do No Harm”: The Next Era of Value-Based Accountability Policy
…meaningful economic returns to students—reflecting growing evidence that outcomes vary widely. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act marks a turning point by introducing universal, outcomes-based accountability. For the first time,…
Op-Ed
Chicago’s “Disappearing Middle Class” Can Be Found in Its Proliferating Upper Middle-Class Neighborhoods
…movement of families upward into the upper-middle class. That group, with incomes between 5 and 15 times the 2024 federal poverty guidelines, rose from 10 percent of families in 1979…
Report
How Policy and Demographics Are Reshaping SNAP: From Families with Children to Older Adults
…rising from roughly 6 percent of the population in 2000 to about 12 percent in 2025 (ERS 2025). However, SNAP’s growth has not been uniform. Over time, demographic trends and…
Report
Know the Market to Find the Path for the Most Vulnerable
…(~2.7 per 1,000). In other words, since 2000, Texas has built at nearly 4 times California’s per-capita rate. Homelessness rate (January 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) count). California had 187,084 people experiencing…
COSM Commentary
Understanding the Recent Declines in SNAP Participation
…cracking down on improper payments. Although it will take time to fully understand the effects of OBBBA on SNAP, placing caseload trends into context suggests that SNAP participation was due…
Op-Ed
Why First-Time Buyer Age Isn’t Rising—Even as Housing Gets Less Affordable
…timing. As a result, the median age of first-time buyers changes little even as access to homeownership deteriorates. To explore this result further, we construct a person-level measure of homeownership…
Op-Ed
There Are Many Reasons to Cheer Up About the State of the Middle Class
…of economic insecurity, they have likely fallen. One measure of job-to-job flows is the share of workers who hold two or more jobs over a year’s time. That share fell from about…
Report
Senate Investor Ban to Cut Supply & Hurt Low-Income Families
…institutionally owned single-family homes. At the same time, most counties (57%) have no institutional investor presence at all. Even in the counties where LII are active, their share of the…
Report
An Extra Point for Attendance: The Impact of High School Varsity Athletics on Absenteeism
…students scoring in the top quintile in math were nearly three times as likely to participate in a sport compared with students scoring in the bottom quintile. Absence rates mostly…