Strengthening State Financial Aid Policies for Low-Income Working Adults

Explains the need to expand state financial aid programs to help the working poor enroll in college. Recommends funding new aid for working adults as well as strengthening existing aid to meet their needs, and describes recent state initiatives

Improving Student Success by Strengthening Developmental Education in Community Colleges: The Role of State Policy

Outlines the need to strengthen community college students' basic English and math skills as required for college courses in order to meet workforce needs. Describes promising approaches to improving developmental education and recommends state policies

Did Big Government's Largesse Help the Locals? The Implications of WWII Spending for Local Economic Activity, 1939-1958

Studies of the development of local economies often point to large-scale World War II military spending as a source of long-term economic growth, even though the spending declined sharply after the demobilization. We examine the longer term impact of the temporary war spending on county economies using a variety of measures of socioeconomic activity: including per capita retail sales, the extent of manufacturing, population growth, the share of women in the work force, housing values and ownership, and per capita savings over the period 1940-1950. We find that in the longer term counties receiving more war spending per capita during the war experienced extensive growth due to increases in population but not intensive growth, as the war spending had very small impacts on per capita measures of economic activity.

The Future of Private Loans: Who is Borrowing, and Why?

Examines developments in private loans within the student lending industry, characteristics of loan borrowers, and trends that might impact the growth of private loans in the future

Did Workers Pay for the Passage of Workers' Compensation Laws?

Market responses to legislative reforms often mitigate the expected gains that reformers promise in legislation. Contemporaries hailed workers' compensation as a boon to workers because it raised the amount of post-accident compensation paid to injured workers. Despite the large gains to workers, employers often supported the legislation. Analysis of several wage samples from the early 1900s shows that employers were able to pass a significant part of the added costs of higher post-accident compensation onto some workers in the form of reductions in wages. The size of the wage offsets, however, were smaller for union workers.