May 23, 2025
How AI Will Harm Working-Class Families
Donald Trump rose to power in large part by appealing to working-class men. He was able to channel their frustration with trade deals and automation that destroyed working-class jobs, helped fuel thousands of deaths of despair, and powered a wave of anger in working-class communities across America. These economic shocks also proved devastating for all too many families in working-class communities across America. Job…
May 18, 2025
Saved by Medicaid: New Evidence on Health Insurance and Mortality from the Universe of Low-Income Adults
Abstract We examine the causal effect of health insurance on mortality using the universe of low-income adults, a dataset of 37 million individuals identified by linking the 2010 Census to administrative tax data. Our methodology leverages state-level variation in the timing and adoption of Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and earlier waivers…
May 13, 2025
Out of Work and On the Dole — Is Uncle Sam Contributing to Young Men’s Malaise?
American men are in trouble. From Richard Reeves’ “Of Boys and Men” to Nicholas Eberstadt’s “Men Without Work,” we have learned that men are opting out of our most important institutions — work, education and family — in record numbers. But what or who is to blame for this male malaise? Uncle Sam. This was Allysia Finley’s…
May 13, 2025
Common-Sense SNAP Reforms Included in House Agriculture Reconciliation Proposal
The House Agriculture committee released budget reconciliation text this week and scheduled a full committee markup. As part of the budget framework passed earlier this year, the Agriculture Committee was tasked with identifying cuts of $230 billion over 10 years. Nutrition programs account for the bulk of spending under the committee’s jurisdiction, with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)…
May 10, 2025
How Single Room Occupancies Could Be the Answer to NYC’s Housing Crisis
It was another local tragedy attracting passing notice before being overtaken for our attention by the latest stray bullet homicides and subway assaults. But those concerned with “affordable housing” have much to learn from the Easter morning deaths of three Queens residents and the displacement of perhaps a dozen others in a fire in an…
May 2, 2025
SNAP is About Nutrition: My Response to Zycher
In a recent blog post, my AEI colleague Benjamin Zycher took issue with a letter to the editor I published in the Wall Street Journal, in which I agreed with columnist Allysia Finley’s argument to place further restrictions on what Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars can be used to purchase. My point was simple:…
April 30, 2025
Is The Collapse of Blue-Collar Marriage a Foregone Conclusion?
It’s been just over 40 years since Springsteen’s bestselling Born in the USA came out in 1984 — an album with “a rowdy indomitable spirit,” as Debby Miller wrote in Rolling Stone at the time. The melodies suggested a deep optimism but the lyrics were primarily concerned with “people … getting left behind” full of foreboding of the fate of small-town…
April 29, 2025
Good Jobs, Strong Families: How the Character of Men’s Work Is Linked to Their Family Status
Introduction Over the last half century, the U.S. economy has shifted, moving away from manufacturing and towards being an information and service economy. The mid-1980s, for instance, were punctuated by news of the closures of major steel manufacturers, including Homestead Works, Aliquippa Works, and Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, PA, and Republic Works in Youngstown, OH….
April 28, 2025
Letter to the Editor: Sugary Treats Shouldn’t Be on the SNAP Menu
Allysia Finley is right to question the logic of allowing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, beneficiaries to spend billions of government dollars earmarked for nutrition on sugary beverages and candy (“Do Food Stamps Make People Fat?,” Life Science, April 21). Critics maintain that government-mandated SNAP restrictions would threaten personal freedom. But SNAP is an…
April 28, 2025
You Autor Know
Along with many other controversial issues in 2025, Americans are at odds over the merits of tariffs. Underlying this debate is a more specific one—the impact of increased trade with China over the past 25 years on American manufacturing employment. Advocates of tariffs hope they will bring back blue-collar jobs, to which they ascribe special…