A Time to Build: Unleashing the Construction Industry to Support American Families
The construction industry in the United States plays a critical role for workers, consumers, and savers. It is a robust source of well-paying jobs, especially for workers who otherwise might struggle for opportunity.
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...
Cars, Kids, and Unintended Costs
Policy analysts on both the left and right are increasingly giving attention to the implications of falling birth rates and considering policies to reverse them.
Saving and COVID-19
One unusual feature of the U.S. economy during the COVID-19 pandemic is a massive increase in saving. Saving nearly tripled over the first two quarters of 2020.
An Update on Charitable Giving
The good news is that charitable giving last year rose overall, making 2019 giving the second highest to date in real terms (after 2017)
Stable Monetary Policy to Connect More Americans to Work
A well-chosen and consistent monetary policy anchor will not solve every problem—and certainly not ones directly related to public health—but it can facilitate the execution of financial and business contracts and shore up the social contract by lowering uncertainty about the future.
Saving for Social Capital
While there are good reasons not to rely on the tax code to promote social goals, its imbalanced treatment of spending and saving actually discourages savings and thereby poses a barrier to social capital investment. Universal savings accounts would help rectify this bias.
Priced Out: Why Federal Tax Deductions Miss the Mark on Family Affordability
There is a strong family affordability case for avoiding policies that increase home prices. The current slate of itemized deductions is ineffective in achieving the goal of family affordability, and the system is therefore ripe for reform.
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...
The Wealth of Strong Families, Communities, and Congregations: Utah as a Case Study in Social Capital
Last year, the Social Capital Project released its Social Capital Index, a tool that measures the health of associational life across the United States. As explained in our earlier report, What We Do Together: The State of Associational Life in America, we define associational life as the “web...
