The Urban Institute is engaged in research on many pressing issues of the day. Issues in Focus provides facts and findings on a sampling of programs and topics of particular relevance to policymakers, researchers, and other interested parties. Current issues include:
After Katrina
When the storms of September 2005 compounded New Orleans' old problems and swept in some new, Urban Institute researchers—who have studied urban blights for nearly 40 years—began charting paths out of devastation to rebuild a social infrastructure and a model for other cities.
Budget Crisis 2007
Urban Institute's budget experts follow the trends orchestrating the largest deficits in our nation's history and dissect the tough choices that lay ahead.
Changing Domestic Priorities
In 1981, the Urban Institute initiated a major research project, Changing Domestic Priorities. This project examined the shifts in the nation's economic and social policies under the Reagan administration and analyzed the effects of these changes on people, places, and institutions.
Child Welfare
Our experts identify important emerging issues and conduct timely, rigorous, and practical studies to inform public policies serving vulnerable families.
Disability and Employment
Work is one key to a fuller life for people with disabilities, which is why we probe this tangled web of policies and programs.
The District of Columbia
Because the Washington, D.C., region faces many of the same challenges as other urban areas across the country, researchers at the Institute are working close to home, and in partnership with local groups, to understand and address these pressing concerns.
Education in the Age of Accountability
Even before the No Child Left Behind Act raised the stakes in 2002, Urban Institute's education experts were exploring how schools and teachers would measure up.
Gay and Lesbian Demographics
Family structure, both conventional and unconventional, is one of the many issues explored by the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population. Researchers delve into issues on same-sex marriage, Census 2000's method of counting gay men and lesbians, the link between social tolerance and a city's high-tech industry success, and more.
Health Insurance Trends
Broader access to public health insurance programs has kept the number of Americans without coverage from skyrocketing, but uninsurance rates are rising. Urban Institute health experts explain why.
Housing America's Low-Income Families
Urban Institute research on the design, implementation, and impacts of federal housing policy contributes to the ongoing debate about how best to serve low-income families and the communities in which they live.
Immigration Studies
For more than 20 years, the Urban Institute has studied immigrants' settlement patterns and the response of U.S. policies and programs to immigration and the demographic changes it brings.
Jobs in an Uncertain Economy
The economy is growing but many workers don't see this in higher wages. Explaining this contradiction are the nonpartisan analyses provided for decades by Urban Institute researchers.
Making Marriage Work
A committed legal union between two people offers many benefits, especially to children, which is why UI researchers examine this social structure in its conventional and unconventional forms.
Opportunity and Ownership Project
Given the chance, many low-income families can acquire assets and become more financially secure.
Recession Rewind
As economists, policymakers, pundits, and the public debate whether we're in a recession, UI researchers review the lessons from the 2001 recession and its aftermath. Have we learned from our past?
Retirement Policy
Retirement Policy research draws on the work of a crosscutting team of Urban Institute experts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, tax and budget policy, and microsimulation modeling.
Social Security Reform
Most agree that something must be done to restrain future costs or raise additional revenues, but few agree on what should be done or when. Our research shows what is likely to happen to future benefits and poverty under different policies.
Tax Reform
The Urban–Brookings Tax Policy Center works on the belief that better information and analysis delivered early in debates can forestall bad policies and reinforce good ones.
Welfare Reform: Ten Years Later
Ending welfare as we knew it has required ever-more-diligent research on policies to reduce poverty and on outcomes for children.
