Expanding Economic Opportunity for More Americans

Dramatic differences in income, productivity, and housing costs within the United States make geographic mobility important for spreading prosperity. State-level Minimum Zoning Mandates (MZMs) allowing landowners to build at a state-guaranteed minimum density, even in municipalities resistant to development, would be an effective means of encouraging denser housing development.

We propose two alternative policy options for promoting increased earnings and employment of low-income households: expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) among childless workers, and implementing a wage subsidy for low-income workers that would be administered through employers.

This proposal recognizes the simultaneous need for more college educated workers and a higher level of labor market skill among non-college educated individuals. We propose to invest in the upskilling of the American workplace by better leveraging the potential of the community college sector.

Career and technical education (CTE) is widely viewed as an important alternative to traditional four-year colleges, a means of increasing the earnings of U.S. workers, and an effective response to the changing skill requirements of U.S. employers.

The U.S. economy in recent years has been characterized by slow average productivity growth and increasing productivity dispersion within industries. These trends have coincided with analogous changes in wages—slow average wage growth and greater wage inequality between workers.

Based on several leading economic indicators, most notably rates of employment in the labor force among less skilled men, residents of rural America are much further behind their urban counterparts today than they were fifty years ago.

Labor force participation among prime-age workers has been declining for many decades. This memo aims to provide policy makers with a useful framework for thinking about the question: “Why are so many people deciding that seeking work isn’t worth it?”

Contrary to the widely embraced “nothing works” doctrine, we review recent empirical evidence from Norway demonstrating that a well-designed prison system can reduce recidivism and allow for successful re-entry into the labor market.

Economic and technological change has made lifelong learning more important than ever and partly explains the rise of online education, the flexibility of which appeals to mid-career Americans. Most existing online education appears to result, however, in poor learning and labor market outcomes.