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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Explore our work by state
Research Report Policy Challenges Posed by the Aging of America
As the nation faces the growing aging population, the authors discuss numerous Social Security reform proposals that would scale back benefits, or use individual savings accounts or increased government and Social Security surpluses to try to increase national saving and, eventually, to replace lost
Research Report Medicaid Managed Care In Thirteen States
This study examines the recent expansion of Medicaid managed care from the perspective of the thirteen states in the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project. States are moving to managed care for Medicaid both to improve beneficiaries' access and to control the growth in program costs
Brief Health Care Quality: At What Cost?
The author examines the issues surrounding the challenges inherent in maintaining a high level of quality in health care while containing costs in public programs and trying to strike the right balance in monitoring and regulating the quality of health care in the private sector. He reviews the
Brief Effects of Welfare Reform on Unemployment Insurance
Welfare reform will hardly make a ripple in unemployment insurance because less than 20 percent of welfare recipients who become unemployed will be eligible for benefits. Those that do qualify for unemployment insurance will receive benefits 40 to 50 percent lower than the average recipient. This
Research Report Simple Arithmetic Driving Social Security Reform, The
The debate over Social Security reform is awash with numbers on changes in tax rates, benefit reductions, and saving patterns required to bring the system into balance for the long run. In this article, Senior Fellow Eugene Steuerle skips around the more elaborate calculations and presents the
Brief Health Policy for Low-Income People in Florida
This brief captures the Florida policies in place and planned in 1996 and early 1997. It highlights Medicaid, other public insurance programs, the health care marketplace, and the role of public providers.
Research Report Immigrants in New York
This report provides essential demographic and economic information on legal immigrants residing in New York State. It addresses significant shortcomings in the existing data from immigrants and in analyses of fiscal impacts of legal immigrants. It focuses on four major issues: the size of the legal