The fiscal year 2022 budget resolution proposes to expand Medicare coverage to include dental, vision, and hearing services. To better understand the context around a new proposed dental benefit, we examine dental care utilization and spending overall and for the Medicare population using two national databases. We first show that the highest total and out of pocket spending levels, aside from those in teenage
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic recession have underscored that job quality varies across workers, resulting in uneven impacts on worker health, wealth, and stability. Black and Latine workers, who disproportionately hold low-paying and “essential” jobs, were more likely to feel these negative impacts. Racial disparities in job quality are not new but are long-standing fixtures of the US labor market
As part of the budget process for fiscal year 2022, Congress is considering a package of two reforms to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Under the package, the enhanced premium subsidies included in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) would become permanent. Additionally, the so-called Medicaid coverage gap would be filled by extending eligibility for marketplace subsidies to people earning below 100 percent of
The authors describe the nation's deepening rental crisis and the struggle by policymakers to get ahead of it. After getting off to a slow start, policymakers finally appear to be succeeding, though how many renters they can save from eviction will come down to how comfortable states and localities will be with the risks that come with getting the money out the door as quickly as needed. The views included are
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic recession have underscored that job quality varies across workers, resulting in uneven impacts on worker health, wealth, and stability. Black and Latine workers, who disproportionately hold low-paying and “essential” jobs, were more likely to feel these negative impacts. Racial disparities in job quality are not new but are long-standing fixtures of the US labor market
A key question in child care policy is whether quality improvement is in tension with maintaining a diverse supply of care that meets working families’ needs. The District of Columbia provides an ideal context to study this question with its launch (in 2016) and full implementation (in 2018) of Capital Quality, a redesigned quality rating and improvement system (QRIS). Capital Quality brought new ways to measure
States reported strong revenue growth in the first quarter of 2021, but there is still large variation in revenue performance across states. Over a 12-month period (April 2020 through March 2021), state total tax revenues increased 0.6 percent compared to the same period one year earlier. Preliminary figures for the second quarter of 2021 indicate nearly 65 percent growth in total state tax revenues but this
The American Rescue Plan Act expanded the child tax credit (CTC) to include 17-year-olds, increased the benefit from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under age 6 and to $3,000 for children between ages 6 and 17, and made the credit fully refundable so even very low-income families could claim the full value. Making these changes permanent would decrease child poverty (as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure
The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program assists people who have a disability or who are over age 65 and have low incomes and few assets. But SSI benefits are limited, and the base federal benefit has not been increased since the program began. This fact sheet estimates the antipoverty impacts of four SSI program changes proposed in the Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act of 2021. We find that,
In 2020, the Urban Institute conducted a midterm evaluation of the Wells Fargo’s Diverse Community Capital (DCC) program, which has distributed $175 million in capital from 2016 to 2021 to CDFIs that serve small businesses. Our evaluation focuses on seven grantee CDFIs selected during the seventh round of the program in 2018. In this brief, we provide preliminary findings from our assessments of the progress
This report examines the potential impact on retirement savings of allowing 401(k)-plan participants to invest in private equity (PE). Under most reasonable assumptions, we find that average retirement savings would increase when 401(k) plans include PE investments because PE funds earn higher returns, on average, than public stocks and PE provides diversification opportunities. Under the most optimistic
The August edition of At a Glance, the Housing Finance Policy Center’s reference guide for mortgage and housing market data, includes updated figures describing housing credit availability, serious delinquency rates, and mortgage insurance activity.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund, which pays for hospital and most institutional services under Medicare Part A, will be depleted in 2027. If this occurs, full payments to providers for services covered under Part A would be delayed, which could ultimately harm the level of care patients receive. From 2022 to 2031, HI Trust Fund revenues are projected to fall
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are a contracting model that can help governments leverage the financial and technical capabilities of private sector partners to address urgent service and infrastructure needs, including health and health-affecting services such as water and sanitation. This brief provides guidance for local leaders exploring potential PPP projects for urban health and reviews the PPP
The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides critical financial support to people with low income and few assets, including children and working-age adults with severe disabilities as well as adults ages 65 and older. In 2019, about 2.4 percent of people in the United States received SSI, up from about 1.6 percent in 1974. This brief describes how the program works, and the demographic and economic
Public transportation offers residents of cities, towns, and villages throughout the United States access to jobs, schools, and other essential resources at an affordable cost and with low impacts on the environment. In this report, I examine the current allocation of public funds for transit operations—the money required to pay for the energy and labor needed to run services. I find that higher-income towns and
The Census Bureau greatly delayed the release of 2020 census data products because of the COVID-19 pandemic and related stay-at-home orders. The 2020 Census was also affected by natural disasters, new household dynamics, eviction freezes, displacement of college students, and national social upheaval. Further, the Census Bureau implemented for the first time a new privacy definition, called differential privacy
Over the past 30 years, women have made tremendous gains in closing both the income and the education gaps between them and men, and growth in their homeownership rates has become an important manifestation of these trends. In this report, we examine homeownership by the gender of the household head and how it has narrowed over the past three decades. This narrowing can be attributed mostly to gains in household
During the COVID-19 pandemic, philanthropic entities across the US embraced giving directly—transferring cash to people—as an effective and efficient means of providing relief to those hit hard by the sudden economic and health emergency. Since the onset of the pandemic and in partnership with donors, nonprofit organizations, and local government agencies, the Greater Washington Community Foundation has
Rapid job losses in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic raised fears that millions of people would lose their employer-based health insurance and become uninsured. But laid-off workers and their families, regardless of whether they previously had employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), had more options for health insurance than in previous recessions because of the safety net established by the Affordable Care
Many adults have gone without needed health care during the COVID-19 pandemic over concerns about being exposed to the novel coronavirus in hospitals, doctor’s and dentist’s offices, and other health care settings. Data from the Urban Institute’s April 2021 Health Reform Monitoring Survey show that 1 in 4 nonelderly adults (24.9 percent) reported delaying or forgoing care for this reason in the past 12 months.
Though children face a lower risk of getting severely ill from COVID-19 than adults, many families have avoided getting health care for their children during the pandemic for fear that their children could be exposed to the coronavirus. Data from the Urban Institute’s April 2021 Health Reform Monitoring Survey indicate parents’ worries about exposure to the virus continued affecting children’s receipt of care in
Throughout history, the US has created laws that have discriminated against people of color, and as a result, examples of differential treatment on the basis of race can be found throughout the criminal legal system. This brief aims to provide a comprehensive overview of racial disparities at each level of the criminal legal system and highlight how each decision point of the system impacts the next, resulting
The student loan pause and the pandemic-induced recession will have repercussions for metrics that inform federal higher education accountability. Although there are other forms of accountability within higher education, the federal role generally focuses on regulating the provision of federal financial aid. Institutions with poor outcomes risk losing eligibility to provide Title IV grants and loans to their
Apprenticeship is an important workforce development strategy in Germany and is growing in prominence in the United States. Intermediaries, or organizations that facilitate the successful implementation of apprenticeship with employers and apprentices, help ensure a successful and high-quality experience in both countries’ systems. In this brief, we compare the German and US apprenticeship systems and discuss
