Publications

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has become one of the United States’ most effective programs for combatting poverty experienced by low-income working families. This brief highlights how the EITC helps counteract institutionalized inequalities by lifting people out of poverty, improving educational and health outcomes, and driving economic growth in local communities.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) plays a critical role in lifting children and families out of poverty, ameliorating the harmful effects of food insecurity. Among children in the United States already living in low-income households, budget cuts to SNAP place nearly half at risk of malnutrition and food insecurity. This brief highlights how food insecurity undermines learning outcomes and academic success.

Excessive residential mobility or housing “churn” experienced by families in precarious socioeconomic circumstances is called hypermobility, and it has far-reaching effects on children, their parents, schools, and communities. This brief highlights the problems that result from hypermobility including those related to health and educational outcomes for individual children, the schools they attend, and communities at large.

In Uganda, children make up about half (56%) of the total population, and they often present with multiple physical, mental health, and educational challenges. Each of the three policy briefs in this series highlights an innovate policy solution to improve the mental health of children and adolescents in Uganda.

The Affordable Care Act is credited with expanding healthcare coverage to more than 20 million previously-uninsured Americans – a significant achievement for the United States as access to healthcare is a major driver of health outcomes. Still, access alone will not eliminate racial health disparities, ranging from increased infant mortality rates to decreased life expectancy.

In 2017, legislation passed in Missouri that weakened the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA), making it more difficult to prove discrimination. The modification to the MHRA by Senate Bill 43 formed the basis of the NAACP’s first ever statewide travel advisory against Missouri, and was cited as a key reason why the state is on Fodor’s Travel Guide’s 2018 “No List” of places not to visit.

In October 2017, the Center for Health Economics & Policy at the Institute for Public Health and the Clark-Fox Policy Institute at the Brown School at Washington University hosted Transforming Healthcare in Missouri: Ideas for Innovation and Investment to generate ideas for improving healthcare in Missouri.

President Trump’s 2019 budget proposes significant alterations to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which could result in an estimated eligibility cut for at least 4 million people, and reduce program funding by $213 billion over the next ten years.

Since Fall 2017 the Clark-Fox Policy Institute has been raising awareness on the importance of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides federal matching funds to states to provide health coverage to children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid, but who can’t afford private coverage.

In the months since taking office President Trump has acted decisively to undermine the health security of Americans that was established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA, also commonly referred to as ObamaCare, currently provides health insurance to nearly 12 million Americans.