Much of America's promise is predicated on economic mobility — the possibility that people can move up and down the economic ladder during their lifetimes. Mobility is of particular consequence when economic disparities are increasing. Using panel data and mobility concepts and measures...

Family economic mobility has been a policy concern for decades, with interest heating up further since the 1990s. Using data that tracks individual families' incomes during overlapping 10-year periods from 1978 through 2014, this paper investigates the relationships of factors -- family...

State and local governments, with revenues reduced sharply by the recession, are responding by cutting services, increasing tax rates, and drawing down reserves; they are also receiving some relief in the form of stimulus funds provided by the federal government. The stimulus funds legislated in...

Much of America's promise is predicated on the existence of economic mobility - the idea that people are not limited or defined by where they start, but can move up the economic ladder based on their efforts and accomplishments. Family income mobility - changes in individual families' real...

Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states’ elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. While different levels of scholastic achievement depend on a host of influences, such...

Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or...

Working with a unique dataset that matches individual student records from Boston Public Schools with real estate records that indicate whether the student lived at an address involved in foreclosure, the authors investigate the degree to which the test scores of students attending...

This paper examines the impact of a specific local tax limit, Proposition 2* in Massachusetts, on the fiscal behavior of cities and towns in Massachusetts and the capitalization of that behavior into property values. Proposition 2* places a cap on the effective property tax rate at 2.5 percent...

This public policy brief examines labor force participation rates in this recession and recovery and compares them with the cyclical patterns in earlier business cycles. Measured relative to the business cycle peak in March 2001, labor force participation rates almost four years later have not...

Married women in the United States are increasingly integral to their families' economic well-being. With two-earner families becoming the norm, little research investigates the role of wives in family income mobility. How much does a wife's labor market activity matter in her family's ability...