Financial Times Op-Ed: America’s slowing population growth is here to stay
The US faces a demographic challenge that many other high-income countries have been facing for decades: below replacement level fertility. As American adults are choosing to have fewer children than previous generations did, the nation faces the prospect of slower population growth. Though some celebrate a decline in births as good news for the planet, ...
Introduction: Economic Policy in a More Uncertain World
Economic policymakers are confronting the highest inflation in a generation, energy supply shortages, and shifting geopolitical alliances. These challenges rightfully occupy news headlines and policy debates, but longer-run headwinds in the American economy also warrant focused attention. This volume aims to highlight three such challenges and provide constructive policy options for addressing them: the need ...
Seven Recent Developments in US Science Funding
Over the past century, scientific research and development (R&D) has fueled US economic and military might and propelled the country’s status as a global superpower. These investments have helped to launch not only the technologies that define modern life, including the internet, mobile and personal computing, and artificial intelligence, but also the healthcare advances that ...
A Proposal for an Enhanced Partially Refundable Child Tax Credit
This proposal was produced in collaboration with The Hamilton Project. The proposal will be presented by Wendy Edelberg at a Hamilton Project event on March 1st and can be viewed here. INTRODUCTION The economic case for expanded income assistance to low-income families with children in this country is exceptionally strong. We have ample evidence showing ...
The Hill Op-Ed: How to fight poverty and boost work with an enhanced Child Tax Credit
The president’s 2024 budget, released today, calls for reinstating the 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit, which dramatically reduced child poverty. The temporary effect of that one-year expansion on poverty rates was a remarkable feat — instead of what surely would have been an increase in child poverty while the economy was still weak, we saw a reduction ...
Book: Building a More Resilient US Economy
The Aspen Economic Strategy Group’s sixth annual policy volume, Building a More Resilient US Economy, considers some of the most pressing economic challenges facing the United States. The book’s publication comes as the US faces historically high levels of debt that threaten the resiliency of the nation’s economy, including the ability to invest in key ...
Foreword: Building a More Resilient US Economy
The Aspen Economic Strategy Group’s sixth annual policy volume focuses on building a more resilient US economy. Several major economic and geopolitical disruptions and developments in recent years—including the global COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and growing tensions with China—have heightened the need to get our domestic finances in order, strengthen supply chains, and ...
Introduction: Building a More Resilient US Economy
The post-pandemic US economy features a strong labor market but also persistent inflation, rising levels of debt, and acute educational challenges. These issues are compounded by ongoing, systemic difficulties: domestic and global, economic and political. This policy volume considers these topics and others, with a thematic focus on building a more resilient US economy. The ...
Reforming Social Security for the Long Haul
Social Security is arguably America’s most important government program, as it is the main source of income for most elderly Americans and represents the primary tax paid by most workers as well. Forty years after Congress made its last significant changes to the program, Social Security again faces severe funding challenges, primarily due to a ...