Our current "Great Recession" has hit the poor and middle class hard, but does this short-term downturn in prosperity characterize the last three decades? Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan from the University of Notre Dame take the long view and argue that things are not as bad as we think.

Why do Americans devote so much more time to working for pay than continental Europeans? Which population groups display the biggest differences in work activity across countries? Do taxes and entitlement programs explain the large national differences in work activity and their evolution over time? Richard Rogerson, a professor of...

A panel of retirement finance experts will discuss questions regarding retirement policy reform.

Conventional wisdom states that the economic well-being of all but the wealthiest Americans has stagnated or declined over the past twenty-five years. In Prices, Poverty, and Inequality: Why Americans Are Better Off Than You Think, Christian Broda and David E. Weinstein argue that this idea is based on misleading measurements...

Has the rise in earnings inequality in the United States over the past two decades resulted in greater economic stratification? This seminar will explore the connections among increased earnings inequality, year-to-year changes in earnings, and changes in economic status from one generation to the next. Professor Solon will review...

We should reduce Social Security benefits for middle- and high-income earners to encourage more working and saving—and free up the government to focus on the daunting challenges of Medicare and Medicaid.

This collection of essays, contributed by some of the nation's top scholars and thinkers, takes on the weighty task of sizing up America.

Even with the stock market collapse of the past two months, retirees under a hypothetical personal-account model would have significantly increased their total Social Security benefits.