When disposable-income inequality is measured across 20–35 years of survey data, the consistent result is that the U.S. has the highest level of disposable-income inequality among rich countries. Some countries have experienced periods of falling, as well as rising, inequality over the last three decades. The simple, but important, conclusion to draw is that rising income inequality is not inevitable. Policy and markets can both make a difference.

From 1991 to 2009, the fraction of Medicaid recipients enrolled in HMOs and other forms of Medicaid managed care (MMC) increased from 11 percent to 71 percent. This increase was largely driven by state and local mandates that required most Medicaid recipients to enroll in an MMC plan. Theoretically, it is ambiguous whether the shift from fee-for-service into managed care would lead to an increase or a reduction in Medicaid spending. This paper investigates this effect using a data set on state and local level MMC mandates and detailed data from CMS on state Medicaid expenditures.

The country’s capacity to monitor trends in social mobility has languished since the last major survey on U.S. social mobility was fielded in 1973. It is accordingly difficult to evaluate recent concerns that social mobility may be declining or to develop mobility policy that is adequately informed by evidence. This article presents a new initiative, dubbed the American Opportunity Study (AOS), that would allow the country to monitor social mobility efficiently and with great accuracy.

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families living in high-poverty housing projects housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We present new evidence on the impacts of MTO on children's long-term outcomes using administrative data from tax returns. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood signicantly improves college attendance rates and earnings for children who were young (below age 13) when their families moved. These children also live in better neighborhoods themselves as adults and are less likely to become single parents.