In this brief, authors Michael Ettlinger, Jordan Hensley, and Julia Vieira analyze how much the governments of different countries spend, and on what, to illuminate the range of fiscal policy options available and provide a basis for determining which approaches work best. They report that the United States ranks twenty-fourth in government…

At the heart of progressivism is the belief that government--not big government, or small government, but effective government--has a critical role to play in ensuring the well being of its citizens. Public spending serves an important function in pursuing economic growth objectives while ensuring that gains are widely distributed to promote…

Background: Statistics are critical in holding governments accountable for the well-being of citizens with disability. International initiatives are underway to improve the quality of disability statistics, but meaningful ID data is exceptionally rare. Method: The status of ID data was evaluated in a review of 12 national statistical systems.…

Though the impact of the cold war on the civil rights movement continued long after the desegregation crisis in Little Rock, the timing of the events in Arkansas, particularly the events at Central High School, constituted a unique moment in the history of the cold war. Up until the fall of 1957, the Soviet Union had been perceived as less…

Whether to adopt national standards and tests has long been a subject of lively debate in the United States. With 47 states now participating in the Common Core State Standards Initiative, and a commitment from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to allocate hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to the development of common tests, the country is…