Research Analysis
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Do the Ends of Nudge Policy Justify the Means?
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What difference can a suggested contribution make for your retirement? In 2016, the United States’ “Thrift Savings Plan” included a recommended contribution rate, or ‘anchor rate,’ in its email messaging to the plan’s participants. This relatively low-cost nudge policy led to more than $1 million in new contributions in one…
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The Dubious Nature of “Race Blind” Predictive Algorithms in the Courtroom
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The United States currently ranks first in the world for the rate of incarcerated individuals with an estimated 2.1 million people currently in prisons and jails across the nation. For reference, the Census Bureau estimates the U.S. population as third in the world at just under 333 million people. Home…
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Who Benefits From Student Debt Cancellation?
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As of August 2021, roughly 44 million Americans held a cumulative $1.57 trillion in student debt. Student debt held by Americans has doubled since 2008 and is growing faster than any other form of household debt. In fact, the average household today has nearly four times as much student debt…
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A Quick-Reference Guide to Climate Change Terminology
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In November the United Nations held the 26th global climate summit, the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, or COP26. Delegates from almost 200 countries discussed items ranging from membership in the UNFCCC and compliance with the Paris Agreement to Green Finance. If you have difficulty keeping the terminology straight, check out…
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Participatory Budgeting for a Stronger City
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Budgets are the new battlegrounds. While cities debate how to spend unprecedented amounts of federal relief funds and activists demand reallocation of police budgets to social services, decisions about how to allocate public dollars are drawing increased public scrutiny. It’s often said that budgets are moral documents that display a…
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Green Technology Might Just Be Enough to Save Us
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Plenty of reasons for optimism emerged from this year’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. The United States is back in the Paris Agreement, both China and the US have pledged to reduce carbon emissions (Friedman 2021), and many other countries have made additional pledges, including cutting methane emissions and phasing…
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How the Top 1% Evade Taxes – and Get Away With It
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It is no secret that the rich hate paying taxes. A recent ProPublica investigation of tax returns revealed that the 25 richest Americans paid a true tax rate of 3.4% on the wealth they accumulated from 2014 to 2018 through entirely legal means. At the same time, there are troves…
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Gender Based Violence — Can Self-Help Groups be Effective?
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Vivek Kumar is a 2021 Graduate student from the Harris School of Public Policy. His policy interests lie around gender based empowerment in South Asia. “Even if I work outside as a laborer and bring home 200 rupees every day, I will still get a beating from my husband in…
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Resuscitation Rates Lower Everywhere During COVID-19
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Covid-19 shocked the US health system when it first arrived in 2020. The immediate direct consequences were obvious, but with such a dramatic event there will inevitably be many more delayed or indirect consequences of the pandemic and lockdown. Researchers are now studying some of these consequences. In June 2020,…
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How Same-Race Teaching Could Change Our Education System
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Deciphering the causal effects, or “treatment effects”, of different educational designs on student outcomes is an increasingly difficult task in the United States. Understanding these effects is vitally important in order to provide students with the best opportunity for positive educational outcomes. This difficulty in parsing out design outcomes is…
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Why Black Americans Don’t Trust the COVID-19 Vaccine, and How We Can Do Better
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Sarthak Aggarwal is an MS1 at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He can be reached at [email protected]. The COVID-19 pandemic remains at the forefront of public life, claiming the lives of countless Americans and leaving many more worried, scared, and isolated. Recently, promising news about the Moderna,…