A year after Hurricane Maria took an extraordinary human and economic toll on Puerto Rico, the island faces immediate recovery tasks as well as longer-term challenges that predated the storm, including a decade-long recession and an...

September 18, 2018: We’ve updated this post to note that the National Bureau of Economic Research published Thomas DeLeire’s study as a working paper.

Tennessee’s decision of 2005 to end Medicaid for nearly 200,000 low-income adults raised the number without health insurance, reduced the likelihood that they would visit a doctor or dentist, and did not increase...

After several years of lower poverty rates, higher income, and broader health coverage, gains slowed — and in some cases stalled — in the states in 2017, new Census data show. For example, fewer states reduced their share of people below the federal poverty line (about $25,000 for a family of four), according to...

Renters’ incomes still lag far behind housing costs, the latest Census data show. In 2017, the typical renter household earned $38,900, the same as 16 years ago after adjusting for inflation. Median housing costs rose 10.7 percent in inflation-adjusted terms over that period. (See graph.)...