All Published NJSPL Reports
Report Release: Reengaging COVID-Disconnected College Students in Newark
By Elisabeth Kim, Ph.D., Bernie Lombardi, Ph.D., and Robyn Ince, Ed.M. The New Jersey State Policy Lab, in collaboration with the Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC), is releasing a report that examines barriers and opportunities to reengaging COVID-disconnected college students [...]
Report Release: Linking Broadband Availability and Education to Digital Skills
By Gregory Porumbescu, Canyu Gao, and Mattia Caldarulo. The widespread adoption of hybrid work models and the emergence of new information technology solutions are emphasizing the need for individuals to develop internet skills [...]
Report Release: R/ECON Forecast Summer 2024
By Will Irving Read Report R/ECON’s economic forecast for New Jersey as of June 2024 continues to show a slowing trajectory, though the decline in annual GDP growth is not as pronounced as [...]
Graduate Student Brief: The Socioeconomic Implications of Offshore Wind Policy in New Jersey
By Jessica Parineet. New Jersey currently has an ambitious goal to install 11,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind capacity by 2040, as part of a broader commitment to 100% clean electricity by 2035 [...]
Report Release: Digital Skills for Accessing Local Government Services
By Vishal Trehan, Stephanie Walsh, Gregory Porumbescu, and Andrea Hetling. Digital skills are increasingly essential for citizens to access and utilize online government services effectively. However, there are also reports of disparities in digital skill levels [...]
Report Release: Can Reducing Learning Costs Improve Public Opinion of Means-Tested Benefit Programs?
By Gregory Porumbescu, Stephanie Walsh, and Andrea Hetling. Means-tested public benefit programs, such as SNAP, are intricate and subject to a large number of rules and eligibility requirements. The high learning costs associated with these programs [...]
Report Release: Senior Connect: A Community-Engaged Approach to Promote Digital Equity for Older Adults
By Diane Hill, Ph.D., Donita Devance, MCRP, and Epiphany Munz, B.A. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way that we communicate and interact as a society. Importantly, it highlighted the need for digital literacy [...]
Report Release: 15-Minute Neighborhoods: A Pathway to Creating Healthier, More Just, Resilient, & Sustainable Communities in New Jersey
By Jon Carnegie, June Greeman, and Jacob Thompson Read Report Over the past several years, several policy threads have gained prominence in New Jersey. These include adapting to climate change, advancing social justice, [...]
Report Release: Resilience Through Functionality: Outcome-Driven Quantification Approach with Stakeholders-Based Calibration
By Michel C. Boufadel, Ph.D., P.E., Firas Gerges, Ph.D., Hani Nassif, Ph.D., P.E. In the face of escalating challenges posed by climate change and rapid urbanization, community resilience is of paramount importance. Quantifying resilience is a crucial step in identifying vulnerabilities [...]
Report Release: The Transportation Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By Robert Noland, Hannah Younes, Evan Iacobucci, and Wenwen Zhang. The COVID-19 pandemic had major impacts on transportation behavior in New Jersey and throughout the world. Our research sought to examine these changes and whether any changes will be long-lasting [...]
Report Release: Who Experienced the Greatest Financial Burden from Inflation in NJ?
By Jocelyn Fischer, Ph.D. and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Ph.D. During the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey has experienced record high levels of inflation. These price increases raise concerns about New Jerseyans’ financial well-being. However, inflation [...]
Report Release: R/ECON Forecast November 2023
By Will Irving. R/ECON’s economic forecast for New Jersey as of November 2023 shows slow or stagnant growth over the next five to six quarters, with GDP recovering to a steady but tepid rate of increase in 2025. This largely mirrors the U.S. trajectory [...]
Report Release: The Relationship Between New Jerseyans’ Digital Literacy, Perceptions of E-Government, & Trust in the State Government
By Seulki Lee-Geiller and Abigail Alcala. Public trust in government is crucial for a functioning democratic society as it signifies a belief that government has the right to govern and make decisions on behalf of the population [...]
Data Brief Release: Inflation Hurts Everyone but Some More than Others in New Jersey
By Jocelyn Fischer and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers. Inflation levels in the U.S. have reached decades-long highs during the COVID-19 pandemic and in its wake. Because inflation can erode people’s ability to afford the goods and services they need, the recent uptick in inflation has raised concerns [...]
Report Release: First, Do No Harm: Algorithms, AI, and Digital Product Liability
By Marc Pfeiffer. The relatively recent introduction of publicly accessible artificial intelligence driven chatbots (e.g., Bard, Bing, ChatGPT, Claude) have focused public attention on the broader individual and societal harms that can result from algorithms [...]
Report Release: Analyzing Child-Care Provider Subsidies in New Jersey: Issues, Impacts, and Options
By Andrea Hetling. Public child-care subsidies are designed to reduce the financial burdens of child care for households that meet certain income thresholds in order to improve employment and/or educational opportunities for parents and other legal guardians. In New Jersey, child-care subsidy payments [...]
Report Release: Access to Nature for People with Disabilities: Barriers, Challenges, and Opportunities
By Josephine O’Grady. In New Jersey, 24% of the population has a disability. People with disabilities suffer from a wide range of health disparities, including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and depression. Through the Inclusive Healthy Communities (IHC) Grant Program, initiatives in New Jersey are underway [...]
Report Release: Youth Mental Health in New Jersey: Current Status and Opportunities for Improved Services
By Karen Lowrie and Brooke Schwartzman. Teens of today have faced major shifts in societal, environmental, community, familial, and individual spheres, heightened by racial and school-based violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, creating challenges [...]
Report Release: The Impact of Eliminating Adjustment Aid for School Districts in New Jersey
By Michael S. Hayes. In 2018, New Jersey implemented the S-2 bill, which aimed to reduce adjustment aid to school districts in the state. The objective of this policy was to end a practice of “overfunding” school districts, which had it not been for the adjustment aid [...]
Report Release: One Million More Acres: We’re One-Third of the Way There…
By Thomas G. Dallessio. As the nation’s most densely populated state, New Jersey has a reputation for suburban sprawl development that belies its nickname, “The Garden State.” “You’re from Jersey? What Exit?” is both a joke and a truism for many [...]
Report Release: The Status of New Jersey’s Childcare Infrastructure
By Jocelyn Fischer and Debra Lancaster. While children, parents, and employers have felt the sting of childcare market failures for several decades, deficiencies in the market were made more apparent and were more deeply felt as a result of pandemic-related closures and labor shifts [...]
Report Release: Using Technology to Reduce SNAP Learning Costs: Lessons from a Survey Experiment
By Stephanie Walsh, Ph.D. Interactions with government processes, whether to renew a driver’s license or apply for public assistance, commonly include frictions referred to as administrative burdens [...]
Data Brief Release: Cannabis Use in New Jersey – Residents Share Their Opinions
By Charles S. Menifield and Yong-Chan Rhee. Marijuana was first legalized for medicinal purposes in California in 1996 (Kan et al. 2020). Since then, 37 more states and the District of Columbia have legalized medicinal marijuana [...]
Report Release: Garden State Open Data Index
By Jim Samuel. Open data and artificial intelligence (AI) are vital for future value creation. The value of aligning open data with AI development and deployment requirements has been elaborated upon in the Garden State Open Data Index (GSODI) 2023 report [...]
Report Release: Enhancing the Resilience of New Jersey Communities Using ARez
By Michel C. Boufadel, Ph.D., New Jersey Institute of Technology; Firas Gerges, Ph.D., Princeton University; and Hani Nassif, Ph.D., Rutgers University – New Brunswick. The New Jersey State Policy Lab has released a new report in collaboration with researchers [...]
Report Release: Disparities in High-Leverage Mathematics Course-Taking in New Jersey, 2016-2020
By Vandeen A. Campbell, Ph.D. The New Jersey State Policy Lab, in collaboration with the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, is releasing a report that examines patterns in high school math course-taking across New Jersey [...]
Data Brief Release: A Supply-Demand Model Informs Childcare Market Deficits in New Jersey: Estimates Point to Need for More Data
By Sarah F. Small and Debra Lancaster. Failing childcare markets have been detrimental to the US economy in recent years.[1] We have examined the childcare crisis in New Jersey from both the supply side and the demand side [...]
Report Release: Equitable Property Acquisitions to Enhance Climate Resilience
With support from the New Jersey State Policy Lab, the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center Climate Corps conducted research to better understand how flood buyback and managed retreat programs [...]
Report Release: Discipline Inequity and Segregation in New Jersey’s High Schools
By Elisabeth Kim, Ph.D. The most segregated high schools in New Jersey often have the highest suspension rates. For example, this is the case for schools that serve large percentages of students of color (90%+) [...]
Report Release: What Influences Differences in New Jersey’s Municipal Tax Rates?
By Michael Lahr, Tia Azzi, and Maia de la Calle, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service. It is vital for New Jersey policymakers to understand what affects municipal tax rates. In this brief, we analyze local government spending [...]
Report Release: Does the Decision to Allow Local Cannabis-Related Businesses Impact Home Sale Prices?
By Michael S. Hayes, Associate Professor, Rutgers University-Camden and Prakash Kandel, Ph.D. Student, Rutgers University-Camden. During the 2020 general election, New Jersey voters approved a ballot question to amend the state constitution to allow residents [...]
Data Brief Release: New Jersey’s Changing Population and Childcare Needs
By Sarah F. Small and Debra Lancaster. Like many parents in the United States, New Jersey parents have faced some formidable obstacles finding accessible quality childcare. This is particularly true given changes in the childcare landscape during COVID-19, as documented in our recent report [...]
Report Release: Equal Access to STEM Pathways? A Closer Look at Science Course-taking Trends in New Jersey’s High Schools
By Vandeen Campbell. New Jersey students in high schools segregated by both race and poverty tend not to take advanced science courses. Only about one-quarter (25%) of high school freshmen in schools segregated by both race [...]
Data Brief Release: New Jersey’s Childcare Landscape During COVID-19: A Slow and Uneven Recovery
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Many New Jersey parents felt the sting of reduced childcare access during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the childcare landscape has not made a recovery [...]
Report Release: State Equity Initiatives
By Marilyn Rubin. Government actions have the potential to make a substantial and lasting impact on equity for all residents. One of government’s most powerful levers for advancing equity is its budget [...]
Report Release: Pandemic’s Impact on Women in NJ: Domestic Violence, Access to Healthcare and Housing
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. With so much economic precarity brought on by the pandemic, many women in New Jersey have been confronted with issues of homelessness and inaccessible healthcare [...]
How has COVID Affected Women and Work in New Jersey? Our New Report Investigates
Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Women’s work lives have been disrupted in profound ways during COVID-19: in their roles as frontline workers confronting the virus, as caregivers taking on even more unpaid care work at home due to childcare disruptions [...]
Report Release: COVID-19 and the Gender Wage Gap in New Jersey
With childcare disruptions, deep unemployment, and job changes, women in New Jersey have faced turbulent economic prospects worse than men’s along several dimensions throughout the pandemic. However, New Jersey women are no stranger to economic inequities [...]
Release of “Evaluating Evaluations” Report
By Tracy P. Glova. The New Jersey State Policy Lab today issued a report on evidence-based policymaking and program evaluation in New Jersey. “Evaluating Evaluations: Analyzing Evidence‐Based Policymaking in New Jersey and Insights from other Leading States” compares evidence-based practices [...]
Report Release: Enhancing Child Tax Credits’ Support of New Jersey’s Neediest Families
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster. Many New Jersey parents breathed a sigh of relief upon receiving their Child Tax Credit Payments in late 2021. Our new report at the Rutgers Center for Women and Work, in partnership with the New Jersey State Policy Lab [...]
Report on Food Security and Organic Waste Reduction
By Jeanne Herb. The New Jersey State Policy Lab and the Organics Workgroup of the NJ Climate Change Alliance have partnered to inform the development of statewide public policy aimed at reducing food waste, contributing to food security, and reducing landfill organic wastes [...]
Report Release: The New Jersey Housing Crisis in a COVID Era
By Katharine Nelson. Affordable housing is increasingly scarce within the United States, and COVID-19 has dramatically exacerbated the simmering crisis in affordable housing. In New Jersey, the risk of eviction is greater than across the country [...]
Report Release: Cannabis Legalization: A Baseline Study
Today, we’re releasing our report, Cannabis Legalization: A Baseline Study, as part of a project led by Dean Charles Menifield, one of the Policy Lab’s Co-Principal Investigators. This report explores education, health, and law enforcement outcomes associated with the legalization of marijuana [...]
Our First Report: Encouraging Activation of Vacant Commercial Properties
The New Jersey State Policy Lab is publishing our first report, Vacant Commercial Property in New Jersey: Causes and Solutions, written by Michael Hayes and Pengju Zhang. The economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in vacant [...]