Category Social Policy
Notes from the Policy Field: Expanding Opportunity Through Evidence-Based Transportation Policy
Event: Expanding Opportunity at State and Local Levels through Evidence-Based Policymaking Date: January 31, 2019 Notes from the Policy Field provides write-ups of policy-oriented events in Washington, D.C. Written by Reeve Jacobus, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives America’s transportation infrastructure is often discussed at length during elections, but the country’s roads and bridges have […]
Not-So-Affordable Housing: Addressing Impacts on Low-Income Renters
Maya Pendleton, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives A growing body of research suggests that increasing housing costs uniquely impact renters, particularly low-income renters. Researchers have linked eviction to a lack of affordable housing; over one million renters are evicted each year. For comparison, over one million homes were foreclosed during the peak of America’s financial […]
Understanding Linguistic Discrimination: Consequences and Policy Responses
Lena Nour, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives Could the sound of your voice be subject to discrimination? This year marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), a landmark Supreme Court case which declared racial discrimination in public schools unconstitutional. However, many forms of racial discrimination remain prevalent today and some […]
Safeguarding Voting Rights: Learning From the Past and Looking to the Future
Maya Pendleton, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives While the right to vote is fundamental to American democracy, it has needed the protection of the Constitution as well as legislation to be fully realized. The 15th and 19th Amendments extended voting rights to Black Americans and women, but organized violence and policies such as literacy tests […]
Protecting Bald Eagles from Lead Poisoning: State-Level Policy Solutions
Reeve Jacobus, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives Although the bald eagle was removed from the federal endangered species list in 2007, it is nevertheless illegal to hunt the national bird of the United States. Bald eagles are protected under the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which imposes a $5,000 fine or one-year prison sentence for killing […]
Measuring Migrant Happiness: The 2018 World Happiness Report and Implications for Public Policy
Lena Nour, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives Many Americans consider the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right and one of our nation’s founding freedoms. In 2012, the United Nations Sustainable Development Program developed the World Happiness Report (WHR), an annual report examining overall happiness and social well-being in 156 countries around the world. This […]
Modernizing America’s Voting System to Improve Voter Turnout
Reeve Jacobus, MPP Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives Preliminary analyses suggest that young adults voted at a historically high rate in the 2018 midterm elections. A report by The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) estimates that 31 percent of young people aged 18 to 29 turned out to vote […]
