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.
151 Results
What can federal data collection tell policymakers and researchers about artificial intelligence in the U.S. labor market? (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Aug 24, 2026
It is impossible to perfectly predict how artificial intelligence will affect the U.S. labor market. Policymakers and researchers are grappling with important questions around this topic, including what new opportunities…
What is the relationship between inflation, interest rates, and economic growth, and what does it mean for the new Federal Reserve chair? (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs May 18, 2026
Since regaining the Oval Office in early 2025, President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for lower interest rates and severely criticized former Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell’s cautious approach…
Federal policymakers can ensure Trump accounts do not exacerbate inequality in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 14, 2026
In July 2025, Congress passed a federal budget bill (Public Law 119-21, also commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) that, among other things, established a new type…
Why federal food assistance became politically polarizing—and what to do about it (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 2, 2026
On January 31, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested that Congress pass federal legislation to make the Food Stamp Program permanent. Up to that point, the program had operated as…
How artificial intelligence uncouples hard work from fair wages through ‘surveillance pay’ practices—and how to fix it (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Aug 21, 2025
Correction: Freddie Mac and Udemy contacted the Washington Center for Equitable Growth on March 18, 2026 and April 2, 2026, respectively, to say they no longer had business relationships with…
Tariffs impact U.S. industries differently, with manufacturing the most exposed (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jul 29, 2025
Estimates in this brief were generated July 21, before the announcement of trade deals with Japan and the European Union. All data and code used in the Equitable Growth tariff…
Slow wage growth is the key to understanding U.S. inequality in the 21st century (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jul 8, 2025
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today launched the U.S. Inequality Tracker, which tracks income and wealth inequality in the United States and highlights how particular components of income and…
Why do some jobs pay better than others? Think about what workers do. (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs May 6, 2025
Most U.S. labor market data characterize jobs by describing the categories of industry and occupation to which the jobs belong. But to understand why some types of jobs tend to…
Advancing economic research on the Inflation Reduction Act: Q&A with Heather Boushey (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 23, 2025
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is the most significant economic and clean energy jobs program the United States has ever initiated. To improve overall understanding of whether the new…
The qualified small business stock exclusion overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy and should be reformed in 2025 (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 1, 2025
This year’s debate over the expiring personal income and estate tax provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provides an opportunity for reforming the qualified small business stock…
Benchmarking the U.S. economy that President Donald Trump is set to inherit (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jan 16, 2025
When President Donald Trump takes the presidential oath of office again on January 20, he will be inheriting a very different economy, with a very different outlook, than the one…
Accelerating research can help fill the AI knowledge gaps for U.S. policymakers (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Dec 17, 2024
It is hard for policymakers to ignore today’s “AI arms race” and the public debate on the economic and social significance of generative artificial intelligence. The discourse is fueled in…
Hospital consolidation and rising health care prices lead to job losses for U.S. workers (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jul 25, 2024
The majority of working-age adults in the United States have health insurance via their employers. Theory and a growing body of research suggest that when the cost of workers’ benefits…
2017 tax cut for pass-through business owners exacerbated inequality and failed to deliver economic benefits (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs May 1, 2024
Among the many regressive and ineffective elements of the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, one provision stands out as the most convoluted, unfair, and ripe for…
Combating market power through a graduated U.S. corporate income tax (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 15, 2024
Editor’s note: This version has been updated from the original publication on April 15, 2024. The update corrects a prior underestimate of the revenue potential from graduated corporate tax rates…
Matching competition policy in the U.S. healthcare industry to address a new generation of challenges in provider markets (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 20, 2024
Antitrust policy in the U.S. healthcare sector is perennially 10 years behind the industry. But at the start of the Biden administration in early 2021, there was hope for a…
Closing the billionaire borrowing loophole would strengthen the progressivity of the U.S. tax code (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 5, 2024
The vast majority of Americans are concerned that some wealthy people don’t pay their “fair share” of federal taxes. They’re right to be bothered: Loopholes in the U.S. tax code…
New research doesn’t overturn consensus on rising U.S. income inequality (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jan 10, 2024
New research from Gerald Auten at the U.S. Treasury Department and David Splinter at the U.S. Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation makes the counter-to-conventional-wisdom claim that U.S. income inequality has…
The role of private equity in the U.S. economy, and whether and how favorable tax policies for the sector need to be reformed (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Sep 14, 2023
The increasing impact of private equity firms upon large swaths of the U.S. economy in recent decades is drawing more attention to the tax treatment of these firms as they…
The economic costs of gun violence in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jul 18, 2023
When it comes to understanding the costs of gun violence in the United States, many people rightfully focus on the human cost. People who are slain or take their own…
Equitable Growth delivers economist sign-on letter and comment letter to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on its Proposed Revisions to Circular A-4, Regulatory Analysis (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jun 20, 2023
This post has been updated to reflect that Equitable Growth’s economist sign-on letter, not our comment letter, was submitted to regulations.gov due to an administrative submission error. The Washington Center…
Money for nothing: The Qualified Small Business Stock capital gains exclusion is a giveaway to wealthy investors, startup founders, and their employees (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jun 8, 2023
The Qualified Small Business Stock exclusion, enshrined in Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code, permits early-stage venture capital firms and angel investors in high-tech startups, those startups’ founders, and…
New IRS report examines free tax filing option to reduce the cost and complexity for U.S. taxpayers (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jun 1, 2023
Filing a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service is one of the most common interactions Americans have with the federal government. Unfortunately, this process is often time-consuming and complex.…
Proposed update to federal cost-benefit analysis guidelines correctly focuses on accounting for inequality in regulations (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs May 23, 2023
The White House last month unveiled a proposed update to an obscure but highly influential government document called the Circular A-4, which governs how the federal government conducts regulatory cost-benefit…
Maybe some Earth Day soon, we’ll know what nature is worth (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 24, 2023
This past January, the Biden administration unveiled its “National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions,” an effort to bring the health and sustainability of natural resources in the United…
Ahead of new U.S. jobs data releases, here’s what employment growth and job switching mean for wage disparities in the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 7, 2023
Later this week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release data on February 2023 job growth through its Employment Situation Summary. It will also release information on job openings,…
Data infrastructure and tribal sovereignty can help break down barriers for Native Americans to build wealth (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 2, 2023
For centuries, Indigenous communities in the United States have faced devastating poverty. American Indians and Alaska Natives today experience the highest rate of poverty, at 25 percent, of any major…
How the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 is promoting sustainable U.S. economic growth and mitigating climate change (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Nov 18, 2022
In an issue brief earlier this year, Equitable Growth discussed how the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 rests on sound economic principles and analyzed the ways that its…
Latino workers are often segregated into bad jobs, but a strong U.S. labor movement can boost job quality and U.S. economic growth (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Oct 13, 2022
Latino workers represent a large and growing share of the U.S. workforce. But even with the highest employment rates in the United States, Latinos face a number of barriers to…
How corporate governance strategies hurt worker power in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Sep 6, 2022
Researchers studying the decades-long rise in earnings inequality and wage stagnation in the United States point to a number of reasons why the country’s income divide grew over the past…
Why the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is good economics (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jun 30, 2022
President Joe Biden, in November 2021, signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law, providing $1.2 trillion in new government investments to create millions of jobs, increase U.S. economic…
New U.S. Census Bureau data show significant economic disparities among the LGBTQ+ community (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jun 29, 2022
The evidence across academic and research disciplines overwhelmingly indicates that disaggregated data help build a more detailed narrative about the varying economic experiences of the U.S. population. While great strides…
Mitigating the impact of wildfires on homes is critical to improving U.S. economic outcomes (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs May 10, 2022
The harmful consequences of climate change are broad, from extreme weather events making locations uninhabitable to increased temperatures delivering larger and more frequent downstream damages, such as drought and increased…
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will bring new perspectives on mass incarceration to U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 7, 2022
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made history today after the U.S. Senate confirmed her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 53 to 47. The Senate vote sealed…
Walmart is a monopsonist that depresses earnings and employment beyond its own walls, but U.S. policymakers can do something about it (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 29, 2022
Labor income inequality is a major cause for concern in the U.S. economy. For 35 years beginning around 1980 the wages of workers steadily grew more and more unequal. This…
Retirement tax incentives supercharge the fortunes of wealthy Americans (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 17, 2022
The conventional wisdom is that the nation’s system of retirement tax incentives, built around 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts, is geared at helping the middle class build a small nest…
Revisiting timely research that explores U.S. intersectional wage gaps amid Women’s History Month (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 8, 2022
The U.S. labor market faced one of the most severe challenges in recent history with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. In the 2 years since then,…
Stratification economics: What it is and how it advances our understanding of inequality (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 28, 2022
Different manifestations of inequality are among the most persistent features of the U.S. economy, yet mainstream economics traditionally explains disparities between groups solely as they relate to differences in either…
More frequent disaggregated data on U.S. income inequality would improve economic research and inform policymaking (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 24, 2022
Once a year, since March 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its data series on the distribution of growth in personal income with updated annual…
Getting cash transfer payments to recipients faster boosts household spending and stimulates the economy (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 9, 2022
Cash transfer programs are a widespread economic policy tool often used to stimulate spending or encourage savings among consumers. The United States most notably uses direct cash payments as part…
Consumption volatility across the U.S. income distribution is highest among low-income workers and their families (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 3, 2022
Rising income inequality and more unstable earnings in the United States today results in more precarious lives for low-income U.S. workers and their families. This earnings and income instability leads…
How new job search technologies are affecting the U.S. labor market (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Feb 2, 2022
As more and more job-seekers in the United States went online to look for work in the late 1990s and early 2000s, several scholars wrote about the potential of the…
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