Dec 22, 2021
Head Start was launched nearly sixty years ago as part of the United States’ War on Poverty. Since then, it has helped prepare millions of kids for first grade.
The architects of the program hoped that putting disadvantaged children on more equal footing with their better-off peers would set them up for future...
Dec 8, 2021
The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a national conversation around police reform, with proposals ranging from reallocating resources to outright abolition of local departments.
Economists could help inform these discussions. But critics say existing economic research falls short of understanding the true...
Nov 24, 2021
With advances in modern medicine, US life expectancy steadily improved over the second half of the 20th century. But that progress masked a growing gap in mortality between poorer and richer states that started in the 1980s.
The exact reasons for this divergence are still unknown, but a paper in the Journal of...
Nov 10, 2021
The American Civil War and emancipation ended chattel slavery, and as a result, substantially reduced the fortunes of slaveholding households in the years immediately following the war.
In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson find that many White former...
Oct 27, 2021
DNA databases have become essential for solving crimes with few to no leads. But their benefits extend beyond finding suspects.
They provide a powerful tool for preventing crimes from happening in the first place, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
Authors Anne Sofie...