Issue Areas
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is engaged in an array of issues to advance evidence-based ideas and policies that promote strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth.
63 Results
The deeper argument at the heart of the federal budget debate (opens in a new tab)
Reports Oct 5, 2026
Interest rates on the national debt have recently crept up to levels that the U.S. government and the American people haven’t experienced in several decades. This is a potentially concerning…
The debt-to-wealth ratio: A missing lens on the U.S. government’s fiscal capacity (opens in a new tab)
Reports Jul 30, 2026
Few statistics shape the fiscal debate in the United States as powerfully as the ratio of federal debt-to-Gross Domestic Product. Debt held by the public recently surpassed 100 percent of…
Defining top wealth and income thresholds for U.S. tax policy design and analysis (opens in a new tab)
Reports May 27, 2026
Wealth and income inequality are an ongoing area of interest for policymakers. In particular, the rise of the richest of the rich—not just the top 1 percent, but also the…
How does early childhood care and education affect U.S. families and workers, and which policies support child participation and boost the quality of care? (opens in a new tab)
Reports Apr 16, 2026
As states consider policy action in early childhood care and education, there is an existing—and growing—evidence base from which to draw lessons. This report summarizes the rigorous evidence on program…
A review of the state of child care in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Reports Apr 9, 2026
Affordable, available, high-quality child care is essential for sustained, broadly shared economic growth and equitable access to workforce opportunities. In most of the United States, however, child care fails this…
How union contracts are protecting U.S. workers from automated management and surveillance in the workplace (opens in a new tab)
Reports Mar 12, 2026
Employers are increasingly using electronic and automated tools to collect data on their workers on and off the job and then using that data to inform decisions about workers’ pay,…
Lessons from past trade adjustment policies to support displaced workers in the era of artificial intelligence (opens in a new tab)
Reports Mar 11, 2026
More than 60 years ago, U.S. policymakers, economists, and labor leaders alike agreed that the potential for new economic forces to strengthen U.S. prosperity and security was just over the…
Distributional weighting in benefit-cost analysis is practical and effective at assessing government rulemaking without bias against low-income individuals (opens in a new tab)
Reports Nov 13, 2025
Distributional weighting in benefit-cost analysis is a tool for overcoming bias against lower-income individuals in economists’ measurements of the net benefit of government policies that affect populations at different levels…
States can support children and their economies using direct cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant program (opens in a new tab)
Reports Aug 28, 2025
Efficient, effective, and responsive income support programs can reduce economic inequality and support economic mobility. If targeted effectively, these programs can help children, families, and workers meet their needs and…
What is austerity, and how does it affect the broader U.S. economy? (opens in a new tab)
Reports Aug 12, 2025
With the passage into law of the Republican budget reconciliation bill last month and the recent work of the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk, austerity is once again…
Tax avoidance among large, complex partnerships in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Reports Feb 12, 2025
Decades-old conventional wisdom held that businesses organized as partnerships in the United States were mostly small enterprises with a handful of active individuals sharing personal liability for the businesses they…
The promise of equitable and pro-growth tax reform (opens in a new tab)
Reports Oct 16, 2024
The impending expiration of large portions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2025 presents federal policymakers with a significant opportunity to reform the federal…
Allowing the 2017 estate tax changes to expire will reduce U.S. inequality and promote economic growth and opportunity (opens in a new tab)
Reports Oct 9, 2024
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made deep cuts to the personal income, estate, and corporate income taxes that were costly and heavily skewed toward the very wealthy. The…
Estimating the prevalence of automated management and surveillance technologies at work and their impact on workers’ well-being (opens in a new tab)
Reports Oct 1, 2024
Evidence from a new national survey and implications for U.S. federal policy U.S. employers are deploying artificial-intelligence-powered and automated tools to monitor and manage workers, including tracking workers’ locations, activities,…
Measuring psychological burdens in access to U.S. social programs (opens in a new tab)
Reports May 6, 2024
Lessons from new research on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Policymakers are increasingly paying attention to administrative burdens—those “frictions that people face in their encounters with public services.” In 2022,…
Hospital consolidation matters (opens in a new tab)
Reports Apr 4, 2024
The U.S. policy landscape is replete with reports from organizations across the political spectrum decrying the lack of competition in hospital markets around the nation and the resulting high prices,…
U.S. economic mobility trends and outcomes (opens in a new tab)
Reports Mar 29, 2024
A research update Fast facts Critical to the promise of the American dream is the expectation of intergenerational mobility. Invoked in ubiquitous phrases such as “pulling oneself up by the…
The consequences of U.S. hospital consolidation on local economies, healthcare providers, and patients (opens in a new tab)
Reports Nov 15, 2023
Policymakers, regulators, stakeholders, and academics have yet to grapple with the full cross-sectional impacts of hospital mergers. While the evidence is clear that consolidation leads to higher prices in concentrated…
Industrial policies will be more effective at supporting good jobs and a stronger U.S. economy where there is institutional support for worker power (opens in a new tab)
Reports Jul 6, 2023
Fast facts Interest in industrial policies as tools to address the climate crisis, reach national security goals, and boost domestic economic growth and innovation is surging, with more and more…
U.S. inflationary trends amid the COVID-19 pandemic (opens in a new tab)
Reports Dec 13, 2022
Fast facts The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, and other members of the U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policies, are keenly aware of…
A review of federal lending to small business owners of color during the COVID-19 pandemic (opens in a new tab)
Reports Dec 13, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 hammered small businesses across the globe. The number of active businesses declined precipitously, supply chain interruptions reduced business operations, and global trade…
Unions in the United States improve worker safety and lower health inequality (opens in a new tab)
Reports Dec 13, 2022
Ros Reggans was overjoyed when she learned that her employer, a Chicago-area nursing home chain, had received more than $12 million in COVID-19 relief funds through the 2020 Coronavirus Aid,…
Early evidence on federal government income supports for U.S. individuals, workers, and families during the COVID-19 pandemic (opens in a new tab)
Reports Dec 13, 2022
This report focuses on preliminary research surrounding the three largest income support programs totaling $1.6 trillion that were paid directly to U.S. individuals, workers, and families amid the first two…
Making Short-Time Compensation work for the low-wage service sector (opens in a new tab)
Reports May 11, 2022
A first step to making Short-Time Compensation work for the broader U.S. economy Fast facts Short-Time Compensation—a social insurance program also known as worksharing that is part of the larger…
Protecting livestock producers and chicken growers (opens in a new tab)
Reports May 5, 2022
For more than a decade, ranchers, contract chicken growers, and other livestock producers have expressed concerns about the actions of the meatpackers who buy the livestock and slaughter it, and…
Implications of allowing U.S. employers to opt out of a payroll-tax-financed paid leave program (opens in a new tab)
Reports Dec 23, 2021
In recent years, policymakers have become increasingly focused on creating a national program of paid family and medical leave. The current patchwork arrangement of federal legislation, state initiatives, and employer-provided…
The child care economy (opens in a new tab)
Reports Sep 15, 2021
Fact Sheet: What the research says about the economics of early care and educationDownload Report: The child care economyDownload U.S. workers and their families are largely on their own when…
Workplace surveillance is becoming the new normal for U.S. workers (opens in a new tab)
Reports Aug 18, 2021
In the first weeks of the pandemic back in the spring of 2020, as many as half of U.S. workers who remained employed were suddenly working from home. Managers scrambled…
The consequences of political inequality and voter suppression for U.S. economic inequality and growth (opens in a new tab)
Reports Feb 3, 2021
Economic analysis that does not account for political power—who has it and how it is wielded—will inevitably fail to fully capture what keeps the United States from achieving equitable economic…
Restoring competition in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Reports Nov 19, 2020
Excessive market power plagues the U.S. economy. Market power increases the cost of goods and services for consumers, depresses prices and wages for those who supply dominant firms, and retards…
Public investments in education can spur equitable growth, pay for themselves, and create jobs for a stronger economic recovery (opens in a new tab)
Reports Oct 27, 2020
Public investments in education, in both physical structures and in services, are key to long-run economic growth and human well-being. Some of these investments are especially effective in promoting more…
Cost-benefit analysis of U.S. tax regulations has failed. What should come next? (opens in a new tab)
Reports Sep 30, 2020
In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the most significant tax legislation in 30 years. The rushed passage of the law meant…
Wage discrimination and the exploitation of workers in the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Reports Sep 15, 2020
The U.S. labor market can be daunting to navigate, and especially so in recent months, as the coronavirus pandemic and recession have created a public health crisis and fueled business…
Maintaining effective U.S. labor standards enforcement through the coronavirus recession (opens in a new tab)
Reports Sep 3, 2020
Workers in the United States are experiencing record unemployment at the same time that governments across the country are facing extraordinary budget deficits. Evidence from the Great Recession of 2007—2009…
Women and the future of work in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Reports Aug 28, 2020
The story of the past several months is a fast-moving tragedy in a long moment of crisis for working people. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting recession,…
Unboxing scheduling practices for U.S. warehouse workers (opens in a new tab)
Reports May 28, 2020
Workers in the United States struggle with low-quality work schedules. The Fair Labor Standards Act is the main piece of labor legislation regulating work hours. The law, passed in 1938,…
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