Joel C. Cantor, Carl Van Horn The COVID-19 pandemic has been a source of unprecedented stress and uncertainty across the US and globally. And we know that some groups including minorities, women, and older individuals have experienced much greater difficulty than others, exacerbating long-standing inequities in health and well-being. One group of significant concern are those [...]
Conflict resolution has been finding several solid ‘homes’ in the last several years. Here is one example provided by Rosalyn Metzger, a lawyer and mediator, who supports and participates in a program, CIT, that teaches police officers, hospital screeners, and others, advocates included, how to respond to members of the public who are in crisis. What [...]
Maia de la Calle & Michael L. Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) As national media coverage focuses on the pandemic’s impact on individual states’ economies, New Jersey, one of the COVID-19 hotspot states at the early height of the outbreak, has been hit particularly hard. As of August 2021, New Jersey was tied [...]
Robert B. Noland and Wenwen Zhang Over the last year and a half, the transportation system in New Jersey and throughout the country has seen dramatic impacts due to the pandemic. The lockdowns in effect from March 2020 to early June 2020 led to large reductions in vehicle traffic and public transit use. More people [...]
Michael L. Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) In a state such as New Jersey, where the cost of living is about a third more than the national average, childcare costs are largely out of reach for many families who rely on childcare in order to join the workforce. Research from Rutgers University’s National [...]
Vandeen Campbell Ninth grade is a critical year for getting adolescents on a path to secondary and postsecondary success. For underperforming secondary schools and districts looking to turnaround the trajectory of their freshman cohorts, offering students intense support as they transition from 8th to 9th grade is an investment very likely to yield dramatic change [...]
Charles Menifield In 2010, the state of New Jersey legalized marijuana for medical purposes with the passage of S. 119 - The Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act. In November 2018, the New Jersey State Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committees voted to advance legislation that would legalize recreational marijuana. On December 27, 2020, the New Jersey [...]
Kyle Farmbry Among the many challenges brought by COVID-19, the pandemic is exposing the vast scope of our housing affordability crisis. This crisis has been brewing for some time, and policy responses such as moratoria on evictions and the provision of rental assistance have provided crucial lifelines for countless families dealing with crisis. However, the [...]
Anna Heckler Organic waste, which includes food scraps, yard trimmings, and other biodegradable materials, contributes to 30% of United States (US) municipal solid waste and 14% of US methane emissions (EPA, 2021; Gunders, 2017). Food waste alone amounts to 22% of the entire municipal solid waste stream, with 40% of the US food supply uneaten [...]
Amal Muse Every decade, across the United States, the federal government collects comprehensive data on every individual based on basic population characteristics including age, sex, marital status, household composition, family characteristics, and household size. This data collection effort, the U.S. Census, helps determine how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding, including grants [...]
