December 11, 2024

In this edition:

• Check out our new work on supporting students to and through college, what will happen with immigration after 2024, and how to measure a housing shortage.
  
  
• What we’re reading: Lower- and middle-income representation at elite colleges in the wake of the G.I. Bill and standardized testing, immigration patterns and the 2024 election, and improving Medicare through in-home care coverage.
  
  
• This month’s top chart suggests we should rethink how we measure family economic security.
  
  
• Worth a click: Sitters and standers, working from home and the return to office, and quality jobs for the working class.
  
  
• For your calendar: Supporting students to and through college and the long-term impacts of cash transfer programs.

This edition was written by Tara Watson and Jonathon Zars.

💡New from us: Supporting students to and through college, what will happen with immigration after 2024, and how to measure a housing shortage

Attending and completing college remains one of the most reliable ways to secure economic mobility. However, many students struggle to make the transition to college and finish their degrees, especially students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Sarah Reber digs into evidence on dozens of college access and completion programs that have been tested in the past two decades. This report shows what practices are most promising, where additional research is needed, and broader lessons for improvement.

President-elect Trump is likely to restrict existing immigration pathways and ramp up deportation efforts. Wendy Edelberg, Cecilia Esterline, Stan Veuger, and Tara Watson provide estimates of these effects on immigration inflows and outflows, and the overall impact on the macroeconomy. They predict that reduced immigration will cost between 0.1 and 0.4 percentage points of GDP growth ($30 – $110 billion) in 2025.

The U.S. housing supply has struggled to keep up with demand for the past two decades, leading to affordability challenges. So how does one measure a housing shortage? Elena Spatel, Aastha Rajan, and Natalie Tomeh explain existing methods used to estimate the magnitude of a housing shortage and propose their own method. Using information on household size and prices, the authors estimate there was a 4.9-million-unit shortage in 2023. Measuring the magnitude of the problem helps policymakers and key stakeholders effectively address the issue.

📖 What we're reading

The G.I. Bill, standardized testing, and the student body at elite colleges. Ran Abramitzky, Jennifer K. Kowalski, Santiago Pérez, and Joseph Price created the largest dataset on the socioeconomic backgrounds of students at 65 highly selective private and public colleges across the last century. They find that despite improvements in overall college attendance for lower-income groups, their share of the student body at elite universities has not significantly changed. The G.I. Bill and the introduction of standardized tests did not improve access to elite colleges for those from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. However, they find that elite colleges have become more racially and geographically diverse.

Local immigration patterns don’t explain the election results. Jed Kolko analyzes the localized surges of immigrants and their relationship with changes in voting behavior. He finds no significant relationship between immigration rates and voting patterns. In this brief, Kolko explores the data sources for measuring local immigration inflows and trends. Places with recently higher immigration rates showed no greater swing toward Trump than otherwise similar areas. To the extent that the recent immigration surge mattered for the election, it was a national level story rather than a local one.

In-home care may be a path forward for Medicare. Gopi Shah Goda and Courtney Harold Van Houtven note the considerable financial risks facing older Americans when they are in need of long-term care. This affects the savings needed for retirement and family members often share the burden by stepping up as unpaid caregivers. The authors estimate that expanding Medicare coverage to home care would help 15 million beneficiaries and cost $40 billion, or 4% of the total Medicare program budget. Expanding home care benefits would increase labor force participation, offsetting some of the cost. Expansion would also reduce financial risk in retirement.

📊 Top chart: How the federal budget’s spending on children changes over time 

Family budgets differ across stages in life, so what it takes to be economically secure changes as well. The Urban Institute has developed a measure known as the true cost of economic security (TCES) which attempts to capture costs families face in order to fully participate in society. Their measure shows that 58% of non-elderly families with children are below the TCES threshold. Understanding how costs vary by family type is crucial in determining policy that best promotes economic security and mobility, the TCES provides insights that help to guide future policy discussions.

➡️ Worth a click

• Find out with this interactive how sitting and standing requirements at work vary across occupations.

• Listen to this podcast to understand the future balance between working from home and return to the office efforts.

• Check out this brief on the need for quality jobs for the working class.

📅 For your calendar

Supporting students to and through college: What does the evidence say? 

The Brookings Institution 

Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 10:30 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. EST 

Watch online or attend in person 

Examining the long-term impacts of cash transfer programs on low-income households 

Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison 

Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. CST 

Watch online

About the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings

The Center for Economic Security and Opportunity (CESO) produces data-driven, nonpartisan analysis to address the United States’ most challenging social policy questions. In a noisy and polarized world, the Center is a trustworthy source for the information and tools policymakers need to build an economy that works for everyone.