Press Releases

Why have middle-income blacks and Hispanics seen little, if any, improvement in their economic status relative to whites? New research from the Urban Institute's Opportunity and Ownership Project points to an ever-widening wealth chasm.

Politically diverse state governments can find common ground in a commitment to improving access to work support programs for eligible low-income families, a new Urban Institute report demonstrates.

The Urban Institute is adding to its leadership team: Donald Marron, the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, will become the Institute's first director of economic policy initiatives in June. Len Burman, former director of the Tax Policy Center and currently a professor at Syracuse University, will return to lead the center he co-founded in 2002. Erika Poethig, most recently the acting assistant secretary for policy development and research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will fill the newly created position of director of urban policy initiatives.

When it comes to saving, owning a home, paring down debt, and growing a retirement nest egg, those under age 40 have stagnated as their parents' generation accumulated, new research from the Urban Institute's Opportunity and Ownership Project demonstrates. Average household net worth, even with the fallout from the Great Recession, nearly doubled from 1983 to 2010, but not for those born after 1970. Their average inflation-adjusted wealth in 2010 was 7 percent below similarly aged individuals in 1983.

After more than a decade of physical and social transformation and $1 billion, the Chicago Housing Authority's singular Plan for Transformation offers valuable lessons for federal policymakers and local housing authorities trying to improve their most troubled neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for public housing residents, an Urban Institute research and policy synthesis explains.

Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR, by historian Joseph Thorndike, explores the emergence of the modern tax regime, focusing especially on 1934 to 1943. It follows the evolution of the excess profits tax (enacted to fund World War I), the estate tax, excise taxes, the sales tax, and the income tax from the 1920s through the Great Depression, until after World War II.

The Urban Institute appointed Genevieve Kenney and Stephen Zuckerman, two of its senior fellows, to serve together in the top leadership post of its Health Policy Center. Kenney and Zuckerman are economists with decades of combined experience and deep expertise in both public health programs and private health insurance markets. They will succeed John Holahan, who helped establish the Health Policy Center and has led it for more than 30 years.

A new report by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center highlights the increasing size of the federal prison system, leading to unsustainable cost growth and more dangerous conditions inside prison walls. The increased costs of incarceration also run the risk of edging out support for other important public safety priorities.

The Price Family Charitable Trust has awarded the Urban Institute a seven-year, $5 million grant to support the Tax Policy Center. The Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, will use the grant to expand its independent, objective research on taxes and equity and to enhance its sharing of timely, reliable information with policymakers, journalists, advocates, educators, and citizens.

Even during and after the recession, from 2007 to 2010, nonprofit employment grew 4 percent and wages increased 6.5 percent, while they decreased in the business sector by 8.4 percent and 8 percent, respectively, and increased only 1 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, for government. However, in 8 of the past 10 years, the nonprofit sector spent more than it earned. The gap between revenues and outlays was $65 billion in 2008, 2009, and 2010.