Examining the Relationship Between Higher Education and Family Formation
As educational attainment continues rising, the presumed price of admission to the middle class increasingly seems to require a college degree. In the United States, more young adults than ever attend college, and more young adults than ever rely on student loans.
Expanding Child Care Choices: Reforming the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to Improve Family Affordability
The issue of child care touches a bundle of related issues that reflect how we value family life and work. All parents face different trade-offs in making decisions that intersect with this Project’s goals of making it more affordable to raise a family, connecting people to work, and investing in yo...
What’s Next for Schools: Balancing the Costs of School Closures Against COVID-19 Health Risks
The COVID-19 pandemic altered the lives of every family in America and particularly affected American families with school-aged children. In March 2020, every school district in the country closed and transitioned to remote learning, and this posed new challenges for parents, teachers, and students....
COVID-19, School Closures, and School Choice
The pandemic need not have the final word; it can be an opportunity to ensure more parents have more opportunity to seek out an education that is not only high-quality, but one that is provided in the context they deem best for their individual needs.
A Place to Call Home: Improving Foster Care and Adoption Policy to Give More Children a Stable Family
The need for foster and adoptive families is great. In 2018, more than 400,000 children were in foster care, and 18,000 youth left foster care without a permanent home.
Multiple Choice: Increasing Pluralism in the American Education System
The American education system makes it difficult for parents to individually tailor their children’s educational experience. Most families are defaulted into a one-size-fits-all model, designed in the age of assembly lines, and no longer fit for era of technological disruption.
The Wealth of Relations: Expanding Opportunity by Strengthening Families, Communities, and Civil Society
For two years, the Social Capital Project has documented trends in associational life—what we do together—and its distribution across the country. With this evidentiary base established, the Project turns to the development of a policy agenda rooted in social capital. Specifically, the focus will be...
Inactive, Disconnected, and Ailing: A Portrait of Prime-Age Men Out of the Labor Force
The share of prime-age men—between the ages of 25 and 54—that is neither working nor looking for work has been rising for decades. This rise has left an increasing number of men outside the world of work, historically an important source of social capital. Research suggests that these me...
The Geography of Social Capital in America
Social capital is almost surely an important factor driving many of our nation’s greatest successes and most serious challenges. Indeed, the withering of associational life is itself one of those challenges. Public policy solutions to such challenges are inherently elusive. But at present, policymak...
