Recent social distancing guidelines have undoubtedly deepened local appreciation for public spaces as places of respite from otherwise hectic lives. For many, green public spaces (namely parks) have provided a low-risk avenue to connect with nature, meet other... More »
Public bikeshare systems (PBS) have become increasingly popular in cities, prompting studies on their relationship with different forms of transit, including cars, rideshare, walking, and public transit such as buses and rail. Many of these studies have found ... More »
On January 31, the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) released its latest food price index report, showing that food prices have trended upward since July 2020. The primary agricultural commodities — soybeans, wheat, and other cereals, corn, rice, a... More »
Even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, socioeconomic inequality plagued cities across the globe. The pandemic itself has both deepened those existing wounds and ripped open new ones. In the United States, neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by pe... More »
Death may be unavoidable, but taxes? Not so much. An estimated $430 billion per year evades capture from tax collecting regimes worldwide. Developing countries are disproportionately harmed by tax evasion, with individual country losses equal to about half of ... More »
Since the 1970s, the United States has experienced growing inequality as the wealthy increased their total income share while the middle class shrunk. One of the most important explanations of this phenomenon is rising college premiums coupled with stagnant re... More »
The time to pass universal student loan forgiveness is now. To date, more than 45 million current and former students are burdened with student debt, with collective debt exceeding $1.6 trillion. The current global pandemic has only exacerbated this crisis, an... More »
Approximately one in twenty adults in the US suffer from a serious mental illness (SMI) such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder. Yet barriers to accessing behavioral health services, including mental health care and substance use ... More »
Over the past few decades, research has suggested that there exists a gap in access to higher education for low-income populations in the United States. The attention this problem has received has pushed many colleges to develop new programs to improve access.... More »
The current U.S. political system is deeply polarized, defined by partisan animus and infighting. A contentious election cycle culminated in an armed insurrection of the U.S. Capitol and a violent attack on U.S. democratic institutions. The political stakes of... More »
More than a third of incarcerated individuals in the United States today have a diagnosed mental illness. In the 1960s, this population constituted fewer than 5% of all inmates. How did having a mental health condition become criminalized? A well-meaning polic... More »
The afternoon before she was supposed to be deported to Mexico, “Jane Doe” was moved to a dark cell in an unfamiliar part of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Houston she had been detained at for three months. Two other wo... More »