Urban across the Country

Urban’s researchers partner with state and local leaders to provide the evidence, tools, and support they need to improve lives and strengthen communities. This work includes strategic advising to translate research into action, program evaluations to measure effectiveness, and research and data analysis to inform decisionmaking. Our experts develop custom data tools and modeling to support equitable resource allocation and lead community-engaged research and convenings to ensure policies reflect local priorities.

Use this page to explore Urban’s work. Search by region to see examples of our research, and filter by evidence and products to narrow results by topic or type of work.

Dive deeper into your state and community with our data tools. View highlighted tools below, select “Data tools” under “Filter by Product Types,” or head directly to our data tools page.

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State and community data tools
Explore our work by state
Research Report Stories: Using Information in Community Building and Local Policy
This monograph presents brief descriptions of 28 of these cases. Most are drawn from experiences where citywide data intermediaries or universities worked with individual community groups to accomplish some practical purpose. The intermediaries include the partners in the National Neighborhood
Brief Families Who Left Welfare
This report offers the first national picture of what happened to welfare leavers during the early stages of welfare reform. Among many conclusions, the report finds that sixty-one percent of former welfare recipients are working, mostly in service and clerical occupations, with a median salary is
Brief Can Spending on the Elderly Always Grow Faster than the Economy? Should It?
No government program, no matter how important, can always grow faster than the economy and absorb an ever-increasing share of the nation's output. For example, when spending on retirees grows faster than the economy, the share of output available for everyone else combined must decline. But the
Research Report On and Off Medicaid
The study suggests that declines in welfare caseloads lead to declines in Medicaid enrollment. The authors find that in both California and Florida, about half the children leaving AFDC left Medicaid as well. They found the same pattern among adults in California, while in Florida, two-thirds of the
Brief Effects of Demographic Trends on Labor Supply and Living Standards
Demographic projections suggest that the percentage of the total population in the workforce will decline as the baby boomer birth cohorts (1946-1964) reach retirement age and will continue to decline thereafter. The main factors in this decline are reduced fertility rates since 1964 and increased