Sound policy rests on sound data. If lawmakers don’t know how many eligible families go without public health insurance or food stamps, how can they judge programs or proposals? Or if the impacts of tax cuts on all income groups aren’t calculated, who is to say that cuts are fair or effective? The immediate test of reliable data is whether all stakeholders and both sides of the aisle use them.

Analyzing policy means figuring out who wins and who loses both now and later, how to avoid unintended consequences, how to pay for benefits or compensate losers, and how to manage change administratively.  For these complex tasks, our tools are computer modeling, survey design and analysis, cost-benefit and regression analysis, site visits, and other methods, including some that we pioneered. 

Since even well-conceived policies can go awry in action and competition for funding can be fierce, social programs’ effectiveness and reach must  be evaluated rigorously.  We help policymakers and  program administrators take the measure of the initiatives they fund and run. Our findings also temper our own  policy proposals with realism.

Sound policy research can spark public debate and civic participation and make government and nonprofit institutions more accountable and effective. Our researchers and communications experts get policy ideas and data to key audiences through our web site and electronic newsletters, forums, debates, media briefings, testimony, publications, and adjunct teaching in local universities.