For the past several decades, private schools have steadily served about one in ten students in the United States. However, the student population enrolled in private schools has changed. Thousands of Catholic schools, which often serve less affluent urban communities, have closed; meanwhile, tuition increases in independent schools have outpaced…

In 2016, the federal government provided students pursuing higher education with about $91 billion in direct financial support through a wide variety of spending programs and income and payroll tax preferences, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. The largest programs and preferences give financial assistance to students to offset the cost…

Is income during children's earliest years a key determinant of long-term child and adult success in the longer run? The research to date, Christopher Wimer and Sharon Wolf write, suggests that it is. Wimer and Wolf review substantial descriptive evidence that income can enhance child development and later adult outcomes, and that it does so most…

In this article, Ajay Chaudry and Heather Sandstrom review research on child care and early education for children under age three. They describe the array of early care and education arrangements families use for infants and toddlers; how these patterns have changed in recent decades; and differences by family socioeconomic status, race, and…

In the United States, public policy and expenditure intended to improve the prospects of children from low-income families have focused on better preparing children for school through Head Start and universal pre-K. This school readiness approach differs from the dominant model of public support for early care and learning in Northern Europe,…

The United States tax code is full of provisions designed to encourage or reward specific behaviors, such as owning a home or saving for retirement. Tax benefits for higher education are no exception: Contributions to some college savings accounts grow tax-free, college tuition is often tax deductible, and some student-loan borrowers are able to…

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are long-standing policies that link cash assistance to low-income families to work effort. A new policy being tested in New York City adopts this "conditional cash transfer" principle and extends it to a broader set of family efforts to build their…

Any reform of federal student aid must address the twin challenges of college affordability and completion, which are inextricably linked. Here, CLASP has proposed ways to redirect existing federal student aid spending toward the low- and modest income families who need it most. These are the students for whom federal aid makes a difference in…

In 2009, the "East Valley Tribune and the Arizona Republic" alleged that Arizona's individual income tax-credit scholarship program disproportionately serves privileged students from higher-income families over those from lower-income backgrounds. Yet neither paper collected the student-level, scholarship recipient family income data…

Concerns about rising tuition and how students can afford to finance their major investments in postsecondary education are widespread. Solid insights into these questions require accurate and up-to-date information about prices. "Trends in College Pricing, 2013" reports on the prices charged by colleges and universities in 2013-14, how…

Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by endogeneity and measurement error. In this paper, we use two simulated instrumental variables strategies to estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives from the large, non-linear changes in…

A vast literature has examined the impact of family income on the health and development outcomes of children. One channel through which increased income may operate is an improvement in a family's ability to provide food, shelter, clothing, books, and other expenditure-related inputs to a child's development. In addition to this channel, many…

This study seeks to inform the debate over a proposal in Maryland to give tax credits to businesses for contributions to organizations that provide scholarships to K-12 private schools or which contribute to innovative educational programs in the public schools. The study constructs a model to determine the fiscal impact of a tax-credit…

Analyzes the defeat of the California child care tax credit bill and suggests avenues for parents, child care groups, and professionals to use in future advocation efforts. (BJD)

Understanding the consequences of growing up poor for a child's well-being is an important research question, but one that is difficult to answer due to the potential endogeneity of family income. Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by omitted variable bias and measurement error. In this…