Supporting Families, Rewarding Work: A Proposal to Reform and Enhance the EITC and the CTC
The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) are important sources of income support to workers with low earnings and to low-income families with children. In this policy brief, the authors propose incremental reforms to both credits that would streamline the dual goals of rewarding work and supporting children, while ...
Beyond the Myths: A Clearer Path to Poverty Alleviation in America
In “Beyond the Myths: A Clearer Path to Poverty Alleviation in America,” Melissa S. Kearney and James Sullivan reassess poverty trends and policy responses in the United States. They document that, contrary to common perceptions, poverty has declined substantially over the past four decades and that anti-poverty programs have played a central role in this ...
Aligning High-Skilled Immigration Policy with National Strategy
The United States’ innovative edge depends on its ability to draw on the best talent from around the world. However, the laws that govern high-skilled immigration are outdated and misaligned with the needs of today’s economy. Only a small share of green cards, which provide immigrants permanent resident status in the United States, are allocated ...
Advancing America’s Prosperity
The United States stands at a pivotal moment in economic policymaking. Sweeping domestic legislation changes, rising geopolitical tensions, and rapid advances in artificial intelligence have fueled a high degree of uncertainty about economic conditions, for both households and businesses. These developments also raise urgent questions about how best to safeguard and advance America’s prosperity and ...
Current Evidence on Household Financial Well-Being
Despite strong economic conditions, survey data reveal substantial economic worry and discontent among Americans. Pew survey data from 2024 indicated that “strengthening the economy” was Americans’ top policy priority, above “defending against terrorism,” “reducing crime,” and “dealing with immigration” (Pew 2024). A separate Pew survey from that same year found that only 53 percent of ...
Improving Housing Affordability
Housing affordability in the United States has become a major challenge for Americans and a key policy priority for US policymakers. In this paper, Benjamin Keys and Vincent Reina assess the drivers of the housing affordability challenge, concluding that inadequate supply, barriers to homeownership such as tight credit standards, and the lack of a meaningful ...
Coverage Isn’t Care: An Abundance Agenda for Medicaid
Originally a small, inexpensive safety-net program, Medicaid has grown into a major national health-insurance provider, covering nearly one in four Americans and more people than the public health insurance programs of the United Kingdom, Germany, or France. In Coverage Isn’t Care: An Abundance Agenda for Medicaid, Craig Garthwaite and Timothy Layton provide an overview of ...
Three Takeaways from the Census Bureau’s New Population Estimates
Last week, the US Census Bureau released new estimates of the US population over the past five years. Overall, the US population rose by 0.5 percent (by 1.8 million) from mid-2024 to mid-2025, a sharp slowdown from the prior 12 months, when the population grew at double that rate at 1.0 percent. Below, I highlight ...
Implications of Low Fertility and Declining Populations for the Operations of US State and Local Governments
Roughly half of US counties lost population between 2010 and 2020, a trend driven overwhelmingly by declining fertility rather than changes in migration. Looking ahead, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the number of births will first exceed the number of deaths nationwide in 2033. Even under optimistic immigration assumptions, U.S. population growth will stagnate ...