Drawing from focus groups and in-depth interviews with Americans across the country, the Voices of the Middle Class research project explores the hopes and anxieties of the middle class, both prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stuart M. Butler and Jonathan Grabinsky explain how being born and raised in persistent poverty—a problem that disproportionately affects Black Americans—damages both economic and health outcomes.
Debate has grown in recent years over the role and power of agency judges, prompting proposals to change how some are selected and supervised. Todd Phillips and Connor Raso propose reforming the standards for these judges in four areas: judicial qualifications, hiring procedures, impartiality requirements, and removal protections.
Assessing the Medicare Shared Savings Program. The Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) is being touted by officials as a success that generated $1.2 billion in net savings in 2019. However, in this two-part series J. Michael McWilliams and Alice Chen provide a more rigorous interpretation of MSSP performance data to highlight significant problems with the program's design.
Paid leave for caregiving. A new report created jointly with the American Enterprise Institute and co-edited by Isabel Sawhill considers questions such as why firms choose to offer employees paid caregiving leave benefits, how much a national caregiving leave policy would cost, and what the broader economic implications of such a policy would be.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brookings Institution campus in Washington, D.C. is currently closed and all events are virtual only. For more information on the Institution's response, read our full guidance.
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