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This article addresses current debates about the future of journalism by arguing that efforts to "save" local journalism will not succeed unless they reckon with the historical role that journalism has played in undermining democracy for Black people and Black communities. The authors are cofounders of a project that calls for media reparations to reconcile and repair the history of anti-Black racism in the U.S. media system. We describe the media industry's history of racist harms, the structural racism that enabled those harms, and the role that government policy can play in creating a media ecosystem where Black media outlets and voices control the creation and distribution of their own narratives. We then discuss prospects for a reparative approach to the reform of media practice and media policy that focuses on acknowledging and reconciling the media system's racial harms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article underscores the importance of local investigative journalism and routine coverage for American democracy while acknowledging its current unsustainable financial model. Working from my experience as a newspaper editor and media columnist/public editor, I offer suggestions to improve the quality and content of local news. My suggestions include national legislation to support the sustainability of journalism, media literacy education for adults and youth, and subsidies to newsrooms via state universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, local media in the U.S. have faced increasing economic precarity, and many newspapers have been purchased by hedge funds and private equity firms. How do investment owners shape the newspapers they acquire? We document the shift in ownership and its impact on the number and type of journalists that local newsrooms employ. Using over 13,000 digitized media directory pages, we measure the newsrooms of 211 major newspapers from 2005 to 2022. We estimate that the acquisition of a newspaper by an investment owner reduced the paper's newsroom by nine reporters and editors compared to newspapers that remained under other ownership, a cut equivalent to 14 percent of the average newspaper's staff. These cuts were concentrated among positions focused on general assignment and political reporting. Our findings indicate the rise of investment owners has accelerated the decline of local newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021 suggests it helped to reduce family poverty, lessen food hardship, and increase families' financial expenditures on children across race and ethnicity. We review recent evidence on the impacts of the CTC on differences in well-being across race and ethnicity, including differences in access to the tax credit, how families used the tax credit, and the food insecurity and mental health circumstances of those families. We supplement our review of extant research with an analysis of racial income inequality using nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey: we find that the 2021 CTC expansion is associated with lowered Black–white and Hispanic–white income inequality in the bottom half of the income distribution, particularly at the 10th and 25th percentiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was a noticeable increase in government support to families with children: it provided more cash, it was not tied to work requirements, and the full amount of the potential benefit was paid by families even if the credit exceeded taxes owed (whereas previously, the maximum amount it could cover was less than the full amount if it exceeded taxes and receipt required earnings). I evaluate its effects on poverty, showing that the expansion contributed to a large decline in child poverty in 2021—and a subsequent rise in 2022, when the benefit expired. I also explain why we cannot yet determine a precise causal effect: we cannot yet account for the behavioral changes among beneficiaries that the expanded CTC may have provoked, and annual census poverty measures may not yet fully account for the tax credits that individuals receive. I discuss attendant issues in theoretical and technical detail, arguing that it will take time to establish a full accounting of the program's effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interviews with Congolese in Johannesburg, this research explains some of the impact of the discriminatory immigration laws in South Africa that expose refugees to various forms of precarity. I show that precarity becomes a driving force for these people to engage in illegal or unauthorized activities, and I analyze how Congolese refugees attempt to obtain legal status and adapt to intensified discriminatory immigration policies and practices. I argue that the criminalization of migration creates a paradox: it subjects migrants to increased vulnerability due to restrictive policies, but it also empowers them to assert their agency in response. Yet due to the generally illegal nature of their chosen activities, migrants are exposed to more exploitation, perpetuating their criminalization and vulnerability. I demonstrate the adverse outcomes of government antimigrant policies that push people into precarity without necessarily endorsing the illegal activities migrants may employ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public often turns to science for accurate health information, which, in an ideal world, would be error free. However, limitations of scientific institutions and scientific processes can sometimes amplify misinformation and disinformation. The current review examines four mechanisms through which this occurs: (1) predatory journals that accept publications for monetary gain but do not engage in rigorous peer review; (2) pseudoscientists who provide scientific- sounding information but whose advice is inaccurate, unfalsifiable, or inconsistent with the scientific method; (3) occasions when legitimate scientists spread misinformation or disinformation; and (4) miscommunication of science by the media and other communicators. We characterize this article as a "call to arms," given the urgent need for the scientific information ecosystem to improve. Improvements are necessary to maintain the public's trust in science, foster robust discourse, and encourage a well-educated citizenry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 temporarily transformed the Child Tax Credit (CTC) into a more generous cash benefit that was more frequently distributed to families with children in the U.S. From July to December 2021, the families of more than 90 percent of U.S. children received monthly cash payments of up to $250 per child (or $300 per young child under six); and at tax time in 2022, families received lump-sum tax refunds of up to $1,500 per child (or $1,800 per young child). Many of these families had not previously had access to the full credit because their incomes were too low. The temporary expansion was not made permanent, and the CTC returned to its pre-expansion structure in 2022. This volume evaluates the effects of the 2021 CTC expansion, and this introduction provides broad context around the expansion, elaborates on the goals for the volume, and previews the volume's subsequent contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) delivers more economic benefits to children than any other federal program. Under its current design, the CTC provides a benefit of up to $2,000 per child under age 17: almost 90 percent of families with children receive at least some benefits, and families with the lowest incomes receive the least. In 2021, a temporary expansion of the program increased the maximum benefit, delivered up to half the credit as a monthly payment, and allowed families with the lowest incomes to receive the full benefit: millions of families that typically received a partial benefit saw greater economic returns, and the nation saw substantial drops in poverty and hardship. Even in a highly polarized political climate, policymakers continue to consider changes to the CTC that could reclaim some of the benefits that were observed in 2021. This article describes reform options and who would benefit most from various reform approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) greatly increased the amount of financial support that families received from the credit and guaranteed the fully refundable benefit to all lower-income families with children, while continuing to pay half of the annual benefits monthly. Child poverty fell to its lowest level ever (5.2 percent) after the expansion but returned to its pre-pandemic level (12.4 percent) in 2022 upon the expansion's elimination. Notwithstanding the fact that a number of research questions about the exact effects of the 2021 expansion are yet to be answered, the articles in this volume present a strong case for a continued economic and social investment in the form of a longer-term child allowance. This summary discusses a number of key design issues for policies that aim to reduce child poverty, and I argue for research that can further substantiate the effects of a fully refundable CTC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusion of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) in the 2021 American Rescue Plan was, for many, a feasibility test of the impact of a permanent child allowance in the U.S. The CTC expansion was short-lived, however, so evaluations of its effects cannot provide complete evidence on the long-run impacts of a permanent expansion of the benefit. Here, we predict the long-term effects of a permanently expanded, refundable CTC. We use theory from standard economic models, frameworks from behavioral science and child development, and empirical evidence from literature that has evaluated previous long-term cash and quasi-cash transfers to families with children. We find that provision of the benefit would lead to increased future adult earnings and tax payments; improved child health and longevity; and reduced costs in health care, crime, and child protection. We predict that benefits to society would outweigh costs nearly 10 to 1, with most benefits due to the tax credit's refundability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving the psychological well-being of parents who received the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) was not an explicit focus of that benefit program, but psychological effects may have been felt, given the positive income shocks generated by the credit. This article reviews academic research that is available on the CTC's effect on parents' psychological well-being. Some studies have found that the CTC led to reductions in reported levels of clinical depression and anxiety among parents and in their subclinical depressive and anxiety symptoms. Other studies that have used similar methods find no effects on those outcomes. Importantly, the evidence does not point to the CTC worsening psychological well-being. Overall, evidence on this topic is thin and mixed, even when comparable studies on the impact of income support are also included in the review. We argue that building a more conclusive evidence base would require tighter alignment of policy objectives to measurement approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child poverty fell to historic lows in 2021, in large part due to the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). We consider the possible implications of this expansion on children's short- and long-term development. To do so, we review the available short-run evidence from the 2021 expansion and the existing research evidence on the longer-run effects of similar income transfers in childhood on child health and human capital. We conclude that the CTC likely improved child health and well-being in the short and long run, with greater impacts for poor children and modest or nonexistent effects for nonpoor children. Moreover, the effects might be more substantial for younger children and for those in places with weaker safety nets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion increased government benefits to families, and especially to families with the lowest incomes. Economic theory predicts that this policy intervention would have led to a reduction in labor supply among adults in those families. Our review of available research suggests that employment within broadly defined demographic groups was not reduced by the 2021 CTC changes. However, we see some evidence that employment was reduced among unmarried mothers with relatively low levels of education and young children—the demographic group that was most affected by the CTC expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes research literature that has studied how people used the advance Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments that were disbursed by the IRS in 2021. Four primary findings emerge. The ways in which families used the advance CTC payments varied: during the first few months the payments were being distributed, families reported paying down debt more frequently; and in the final months of the payments, families reported more frequent spending. Families primarily used the monthly CTC on household necessities and child-related spending. There was heterogeneity in the spending response across income and race. Lastly, the CTC helped families deal with rising inflation. We discuss these four findings from the extant research in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the literature on the expansion of the Child Tax Credit in 2021, as it relates to food and financial hardship among households with children in the U.S. Extant scholarship consistently finds that receipt of the expanded tax credit is associated with an increase in food purchases and declines in food insufficiency and food insecurity. The effects of the tax credit expansion also vary by the socioeconomic characteristics of families. There are important differences, though, in effect sizes across studies, indicating that data sources, timeframe of analysis, and the way in which food hardship is measured all matter to the accurate estimation of effects. The effect of the credit on financial hardship is less conclusive, with the literature finding generally insignificant effects on measures such as difficulty paying rent or bills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion was an extraordinary experiment not just in policy design but also in policy implementation. As such, it cast light on the possibilities and blind spots of using the tax system to deliver safety-net benefits. The rapid and widespread take-up of the benefit reflected the use of a specific implementation tool that reduced administrative burden for the public: auto-enrollment via the tax system. But use of this tool also excluded families who could benefit from the program but were disconnected from the tax system. These tended to be families with the lowest incomes. Thus, while the CTC expansion offered a classic example of "targeting within universalism" by broadening a policy's beneficiaries while making it more redistributive, its implementation revealed that a different sort of targeting is needed to reach those with the lowest incomes and to achieve the hoped-for redistributive impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was created in 1997, its financial benefits were unavailable to families that did not earn enough to owe federal income tax. It has since evolved into a measure that provides partial benefits to millions of children in low-income working families but still leaves out children in families with extremely low or no earnings. In 2021, the credit was enlarged for one year, with full benefits provided to the poorest children. Ten states have also recently instituted state CTCs that provide full benefits to the poorest children. This history of CTC expansion contrasts with the erosion of cash assistance "spending programs"—including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), unemployment insurance, and state general assistance—while being consistent with a larger pattern of tax-credit expansions. Both the CTC and Earned Income Tax Credit have repeatedly been expanded, and various other new benefits have been created as tax credits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide an overview of child benefit programs in high-income countries, particularly in comparison to the 2019 and expanded 2021 U.S. Child Tax Credit (CTC). Most countries included in our review provide child benefits that are more generous than the 2019 (and current) U.S. CTC, aligning more closely to the parameters of the now-expired 2021 expanded CTC. We show that while the expanded U.S. CTC was in effect, the U.S. significantly improved its ranking within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in terms of lowering child poverty rates and the effectiveness of its redistribution system on poverty alleviation. Our cross-country analysis further reveals that the refundable and monthly payment structure of the expanded 2021 CTC was in keeping with prevailing models of child benefits internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review quasi-experimental studies that examine the relationship of opioids to health, healthcare, and crime in the U.S. Our findings align with the general perception that the opioid crisis has negatively impacted health and increased healthcare costs; we find limited evidence that appropriate opioid use enhances work capacity or carries other benefits. Extant studies suggest that opioids also increase crime, although the link is not as strong as has been observed in previous drug epidemics. This finding is consistent with the fact that opioids are pharmacologically different than stimulant substances like cocaine that have dominated earlier drug epidemic periods. We argue that the healthcare system has a potentially important role to play in combatting the opioid crisis, largely through the provision of treatments that address underlying addiction, and through the development of strategies to effectively curtail access to the drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bogged down in exploitative jobs or unemployment, some migrants mitigate their precarious condition and forced idleness through involvement in petty crime, including low-level drug distribution. This article explores the daily lives of migrants who navigate asymmetrical interactions and relationships with police in ways that avoid detection of their illicit activities. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and 18 biographical interviews with sub-Saharan male migrants active in low-level drug retail, I scrutinize how migrants negotiate the rules that are supposed to govern them. I am particularly interested in the ways in which migrants negotiate their legal status with the police, whose view of them is often heavily influenced by race. I demonstrate that relationships between police officers and migrants can be influenced by migrants' deliberate mimicry of local norms, calculated conformity with informal policing practices, and influence over police officers' moral judgment of whether they are deserving of police's discretionary power to look the other way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze how the criminalization of migration has taken hold in the borderlands of Ecuador and Colombia from 2000 to 2022, despite the existence of progressive legal frameworks in those two countries that have historically allowed for relatively open borders and recognition of migrants' rights. We use a historical and ethnographic approach to explore how criminalizing mechanisms have been implemented, showing that the criminalization of migration happened episodically. The criminalization of migration has been justified under the legal regime of migrant-smuggling statutes, and mechanisms of criminalization have been activated only at specific junctures to halt the growth of irregularized migrations from the Global South to the U.S. We go on to argue that border crossings por trocha, as unlawful river and land pathways are locally known, have served as a strategy for resistance to criminalization and have enhanced the expansion and refinement of illegal border economies and local livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has worked with non-EU countries, including Afghanistan, to manage migration from that country since 2015. EU policies regarding Afghan migration aim, in part, to change a migration dynamic in which smugglers have played a key role. This approach was maintained even in the immediate aftermath of the return of the Taliban in 2021 and was mainstreamed into EU humanitarian efforts. Here, we argue that current efforts at so-called border externalization have contributed to a moral rift between the EU and Afghan smugglers, one in which the smugglers develop moral justifications for their work. We show that the EU's short-term gains with regard to lower arrival numbers have come at the expense of developing a sense of legitimacy for their migration principles, governance, and infrastructure among the Afghan people over the long term. The widening moral rift between Afghan smugglers and EU policymakers is likely to bolster an existing migration infrastructure that provides a logic for grassroots resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border corruption can help facilitate the smuggling of people and irregular migration, but it receives limited attention in academic research. In this article, I explore how smugglers use corruption and bribery to circumvent border restrictions. I focus on the role of bribery in the survival economy of border communities, including migrants, smugglers, and border authorities, and on its role in facilitating cross-border movement. This study draws on extensive ethnographic research conducted on land routes between West Asia and Europe, interviewing smugglers specifically on the Syrian–Turkish border and the Evros border between Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria. My findings indicate that on both borders, smugglers and border guards accommodate each other's interests in creative collaborative processes. As such, corruption and bribery are not merely illegal practices but rather strategic adaptations in response to harsher border enforcement policies, stemming from specific needs of local border realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present is not the only time in American history that American democracy has been at serious risk of backsliding. When we place recent developments in a broader historical and comparative context, we discover that any of four known threats to democracy can weaken it and lead to backsliding. These include political polarization, conflict over who belongs in the political community, high and rising economic inequality, and executive aggrandizement. American democracy has often been fragile, and each past episode of democratic fragility was characterized by some configuration of these four. Now, for the first time in our nation's history, we face the confluence of all four threats at once. Analyzed through this framework, the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was not a surprise. Although the attempts to overturn the 2020 election failed, the threats remain with us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the text of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Lecture in Social Science and Public Policy delivered by Alan S. Blinder, Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, in Washington, D.C. on October 25, 2023. Topics included the gap between sound economics and good politics, the influence of economists on public policy and his advice to economists interested in actual policymaking.

After the 2020 presidential election, some state-level officials endorsed antidemocratic rhetoric, and a smaller faction took action against the election results. To fortify American democracy, safeguarding election certification from politically motivated interference is imperative. We explore the potential of nonpartisan certification of elections for mitigating antidemocratic actions, arguing that such a practice would shield the certification process from political pressures that might compel politicians to attempt election overturns. Through an original survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of Americans, we analyze how nonpartisan certification impacts elected officials' public approval. The results indicate that our proposed reform is an incentive-compatible solution by which elites in government can maintain support without acting against the electoral process. Furthermore, we demonstrate that there is broad support among all segments of the public for empowering nonpartisan commissions to certify elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the history, magnitude, and scope of voter suppression in the United States., showing that, when it is attempted, it targets the voting rights of a disfavored group. We argue that this is an important weakness of American democracy and that current efforts at voter suppression focus on states with major demographic shifts that are seen by some to be threatening. We then discuss the consequences of recent decisions by the Supreme Court to weaken key elements of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that a weakened Voting Rights Act has led to a resurgence of voter suppression in some states and that those same states often see a rise in countermobilization efforts aimed at encouraging targeted communities to register and vote. An undeniable impact of current attempts at voter suppression, we argue, is that it signals to certain communities that their participation in elections is not wanted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research highlights a growing divergence among U.S. states in their costs of voting, the partisan balance of their legislative districts, and the responsiveness of state policy to public opinion. Less is known, however, about a new and acute threat to democracy at the state level: policies that increase the states' vulnerability to election subversion. In this article, we investigate recent trends in state legislation that transfer election administration authority from independent to partisan actors, making it more likely that a losing presidential candidate could take office over the will of the electorate. We find that Republican control of state legislatures and the closeness of the 2020 presidential election are associated with these policies. Interestingly, these policies are mostly uncorrelated with gerrymandering and voter suppression policies that were enacted in the 2010s. We conclude with a discussion of how a recent Electoral Count Act reform in Congress partly mitigates the risk of election subversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly literature on racist violence has typically focused on the experiences of young males who suffer a disproportionate share of the police violence directed at their communities. This study widens our view of the effects of racist violence by examining the experiences of the family members of these men, and particularly the wives, children, parents, and siblings. The article shows that family members often witnessed the abuse of their loved ones, endured feelings of helplessness in the face of these acts of violence, confronted threats (or worse) from these officers at the time or subsequently, and experienced firsthand the injustice of the justice system. The article builds on a recent scholarship on racist violence—primarily lynchings—that focuses on the effects of this violence on the families and communities of the victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News outlets are increasingly nationalizing their presentation of news stories, framing and presenting local news in a broad national context. We investigate how supply-side and curation-side factors of the news cycle contribute to the nationalization of news coverage. Through the computational analysis of 1.05 million Google news results on four days in July–August 2020, that corresponded to 1,581 news stories published on the George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, we examine the relationship between the nationalization of news coverage, stories' search rank in Google News, and the geographic distance between the news event and the stories' reading audience. Further, we explore the role of Google News in curating locally focused news. Our findings help to map the media ecosystem in a digital age, highlighting the influence of algorithmic power in politics and showing that excessive circulation of national news may have a profound negative impact on news diversity and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the public communication challenges that health officials in rural America faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I analyze the role that public health officials played in communicating news and information about the pandemic in 29 rural counties in Illinois. These officials were challenged by a diminished reporting capacity among local media outlets, and by a political radicalization of local Republicans, who no longer regarded local media as trusted nodes in local storytelling networks. I find that while public health officials can help fill a community's critical information needs about risk and emergency, the public's take-up of this information depends on sociocultural and political forces that shape the broader communication context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media landscape is more expansive than ever and offers increasingly fast and cheap ways to consume information. However, many racially and economically marginalized communities live in information environments that fail to provide in-depth coverage of critical topics, such as day-to-day finance. I offer an overview of financial access and news deficits to argue that financial institutions and news providers have historically underserved racially and economically marginalized communities, contributing to information gaps in financial news and the need for alternate sources of information. I investigate how the placement of brick-and-mortar fringe economy financial providers, such as payday lenders, affects how people learn about and make sense of their financial options. I show that these sorts of concrete neighborhood characteristics influence how people participate in today's economy and share information. Because economic participation is an essential element of citizenship, I propose that these kinds of disparities in neighborhood characteristics and financial access should influence the ways in which we conceive of and deliver information to marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many ideas have been proposed for improving the economics of producing journalism, but this article explores a few new ones focused on local journalism. These ideas include an increased reliance upon retired journalists, more collaboration with academic researchers, providing reports to aid those looking to move to a new community, and an outline for allowing news organizations to gain a legal right to a much larger portion of the financial benefits associated with prosocial investigative journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a definition of media policy and, through a discussion of specific areas of public policy, describes the scope of media policy as an area of potential government intervention. I argue for a more expansive conceptualization of media policy than has typically guided the work of 21st-century media policymakers. I also argue that there has been a troubling tendency to apply a technology policy framework to contexts that would be better served by a media policy analytical framework. The result has been a neglect of core media policy principles that are focused on cultivating an informed citizenry and ensuring that communities' information needs are being met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing decline of local news not only deprives communities of important information, but also provides an opening for misinformation through so-called pink slime journalism: local media that poses as a news outlet and exploits the low cost of automating content to deceive readers. Is there an advantage to posing as a newspaper online? In this study, I use a survey experiment to assess how readers respond to the same headline delivered to them as a fake newspaper, a fake website, or a real television station. Respondents rated the fake local newspaper as less credible than a real television station or a fake local website, but they rated fake local websites as credibly as real local television. Readers' preference for following local or national news and the timing of assessment moderate these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2017, in response to catastrophic declines in the commercial model that has traditionally undergirded U.S. journalism, lawmakers in 10 states have introduced legislation specifically designed to provide support to local news media. This analysis identifies four mechanisms in the legislation: tax incentives, establishment of a task force or commission, appropriation of general funding, and mandated advertising expenditures. Through late 2022, five of 24 bills introduced have been enacted in four states, a rate about the same as for state legislation enactment overall. I discuss several challenges attendant to the enactment of legislation aimed at supporting local news: (1) partisan divides, (2) budgetary restrictions, (3) narrow definitions of local news media, and (4) exacerbation of the deterioration of the economic conditions faced by news media by legislation that guts public notice laws. I also discuss the mandating of advertising expenditures enacted in New York and Chicago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a firsthand account of research conducted for the Federal Communications Commission in connection with its inquiry into communities' critical information needs and how well they were being met by local news and information sources. I detail the industry and political pressures brought to bear in opposition to that inquiry and the extent to which opposition to this kind of research undermines the development of prosocial local information ecologies. Finally, I discuss what can be done to develop research in this vein and shore up local information needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary provides a synthetic overview and analytic framework for understanding the papers in this volume of The ANNALS, which focuses on sharing networks in a comparative context. Economic crises endemic to capitalist societies generate the need for support networks, while welfare state configurations influence their importance as an additional survival tool. Social norms set the stage for the degrees of reciprocity and durable obligation that networks engender and the boundary conditions that enable or disable the most vulnerable members of the social hierarchy to tap the resources of more privileged contacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that child development is positively affected when families can access overlapping, simultaneous forms of public assistance. Universal participation in social safety net programs is rare among eligible populations, though, and assessing the dynamics of multiple benefits use is particularly complex: which households with children receive multiple benefits, which combinations of benefits are most common, and which households are most likely to access benefits as the safety net expands in some ways and contracts in others? We use almost 40 years of data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine trends in both the number of public benefits accessed by American households with children and the types and combinations of benefits that households access. We find that the percentage of households with children using at least two benefits has increased, but the beneficiaries of increasing benefit use have been disproportionately higher-educated, White, and married households with incomes above the poverty line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People who seek public benefits for their families often struggle to navigate the complicated labyrinth of U.S. safety net programs. We show that states can meaningfully improve access for families in need—even in the absence of significant policy change—by adopting widely used technology and common research practices. Technology and research can be applied to each stage of benefits delivery: outreach, application, and renewal. The suggestions we offer vary in their ease of implementation: some are simple, like sending repeated renewal reminders through as many channels of communication as possible; others are more involved, like bundling together separate program applications. We argue that if states are to succeed at simplifying the enrollment process—and thereby increase the share of eligible people receiving benefits—they can help their own cause by building and maintaining a modern technological infrastructure for data collection and analysis, and then act on what those data reveal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) has become an increasingly important element of the U.S. safety net. We discuss the structure of the CTC and its effects on childhood poverty and other indicators of well-being during its three distinct phases: prior to the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) expansion, during the expansion, and after the expansion's expiration. We also examine recent efforts to establish state-level CTCs. We show that, in 2020, roughly one in three children were ineligible for the full CTC because it is tied to family earnings. The temporary expansion under the ARP extended full CTC eligibility to nearly all of these children, thus moving more than three million children out of poverty in the expansion months. State-level analyses show how states could establish CTCs that reduce child poverty rates by half, either as a complement to an expanded federal CTC or in the absence of a continued federal expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]