Holding absent fathers financially accountable, while providing a minimum assured benefit for child support, could reduce child poverty significantly and help millions of single mothers move out of dependency.
Article
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Myth of a Savings Shortage
A precipitous decline in saving during the 1980s? A closer look shows it isn’t so.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Social Support for Self-Reliance: The Politics of Making Work Pay
Millions of the working poor earn less than the minimum needed for self-sufficiency. Enabling these families to achieve security is good policy—and smart politics.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Why the States Can’t Solve the Health Care Crisis
One of the enduring metaphors of American federalism is that states serve as laboratories for the federal government. States are the basement tinkerers that generate ideas to solve big national problems. They are the crucibles for testing the safety and efficacy of new ideas before the whole country adopts them. State leaders, the argument goes, […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Rehnquist’s Road to Serfdom: The Ominous Message of -Rust v. Sullivan-
An Orwellian Supreme Court decision creates a false choice between social benefits and individual rights.
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
The Great Environmental Awakening
Conservatives called environmentalism elitist and inconsistent with old American values. But look who’s green now.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
States First: The Other Path to National Health Reform
As a state legislator in Massachusetts since 1985, I have seen the best and worst of state health policy-making. In 1988 the Massachusetts Legislature approved a measure intended to guarantee health insurance to all 600,000 uninsured state residents. The early steps under the law, covering students, the unemployed, and disabled adults and children, were preludes […]
Posted inCivil Rights in America
A Lost Political Generation?
Meet the twenty-something generation: socially idealistic, politically cynical, economically worried, and longing for a leader worthy of respect.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Flexibility Trap: The Proliferation of Marginal Jobs
Temporary and part-time jobs may be penny-wise for employers, but pound-foolish for the economy.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Race, Liberalism, and Affirmative Action
In our Winter issue, Paul Starr argued that because the Supreme Court, with its changed membership, is now likely to overturn earlier decisions upholding affirmative action, liberals need to find “a new road to equal opportunity in America.” He urged a two-pronged approach: policies to expand opportunity and security for low- to middle-income Americans of […]