September 11, 2024

In this edition:

• Check out our new work on whether college endowments should be taxed, immigration and employment growth, and the Trump administration's proposals for those with limited means.
• What we’re reading: The potential long-run implications of a permanently-expanded child tax credit, the impact of Community Health Centers on newborn health, and measuring teacher shortages.
• This month’s top chart shows how much college costs and how it relates to student borrowing.
• Worth a click: The political battle over free school lunch, time use across the world, and budgetary impacts of an immigration surge.
• For your calendar: The financial health and economic mobility of public housing residents, reducing administrative burden of government agency and public program access, and lessons from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

This edition was written by Tara Watson and Jonathon Zars.

💡 New from us: College endowment taxation, immigration and employment growth, and the Trump administration's budget proposals

Many elite private colleges in the U.S. have multi-billion dollar endowments, sparking debate about how they should be taxed. Phillip Levine provides commentary on how these institutions balance academic excellence and improved accessibility. While elite colleges offer significant financial aid to some students, questions remain: Are they doing enough to increase access for lower- and middle-income students? Should their endowments face additional taxes?

Our work also shows that recent job growth may be understated. Surges in immigration aren’t fully captured in population estimates, affecting estimates of real growth in employment for U.S.-born and foreign-born groups. Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson offer revised U.S.-born and foreign-born employment growth numbers to explain recent labor market trends.

How do the former Trump administration's budget proposals compare to earlier administrations? Robert Greenstein shows that the administration sought savings in benefits and services for people of low or modest income.

📖 What we're reading

The permanently expanded Child Tax Credit would help income, health, and social outcomes. Despite being short-lived, the temporarily expanded Child Tax Credit in the 2021 American Rescue Plan is informative for a future permanent child allowance. Elizabeth Ananat and Irwin Garfinkel find that the likely long-run impact of a permanent child allowance would lead to increased future earnings and tax payments as well as other social and health benefits that would greatly outweigh the costs.

Community Health Centers (CHCs) improve birth outcomes. Esra Kose, Siobhan O’Keefe, and Maria Rosales-Rueda analyze how the rollout of targeted CHCs that provide primary care to underserved populations affects birth weight. They show there is a 9% to 16% lower likelihood of low birth weight for those treated by CHCs. They attribute these health improvements to increased access to early prenatal care and reductions in maternal smoking.

Counting teachers isn’t enough. Dan Goldhaber, Grace T. Falken, Roddy Theobald, and Maia Goodman Young use web-scraping-based tools to provide better insight into the teacher labor market. The challenges to staff school positions vary greatly by subject area and school type. Their analysis shows how special education and English language learner (ELL) teacher postings stay open for weeks to months longer than elementary school teachers. This suggests that children with special education and ELL needs go for longer periods of time without instruction by a teacher credentialed to accommodate their needs.

📊 Top chart: Student borrowing has tripled in the last 2 decades, but attendance costs may not be to blame

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center shows while the "sticker price" of college has more than doubled in the last two decades, after financial aid and tax benefits, net tuition prices have remained at a similar level. Over this same time period, student borrowing has tripled. Adam Looney discusses how to understand this rise in student loan debt and where it is coming from. The implications may show that recent loan forgiveness policies and income-driven repayment will disproportionately benefit higher-income undergraduates and graduate students.

➡️ Worth a click

• Listen to this podcast exploring the landscape, politics, and economics behind free school lunch.
• Explore interactive charts showcasing time use trends across the world.
• Check out the Bipartisan Policy Center’s investigation of the budgetary impacts of the recent immigration surge through interviews with the Pew Research Center and the Congressional Budget Office.

📅 For your calendar

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017: Lessons learned and the debate ahead

Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

Thursday, September 12, 2024, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. EDT

The Brookings Institution

Attend in person or watch online

Financial health and the economic mobility of public housing residents

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Tuesday, September 24, 2024, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. EDT

Watch online

Approaches to reducing administrative burdens in accessing and maintaining services from government agencies and public programs

Institute for Research on Poverty, UW-Madison

Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EDT

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.