Publications

Pandemic-related school closures posed several challenges to students and their families, including learning losses, adverse socioemotional and mental health outcomes, and food insecurity. The pandemic and associated school closures also negatively impacted educators; they rapidly had to adjust their instructional models to fit remote learning. These changes in instruction practices, coupled with health concerns and […]

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 [...]

To gain a clear understanding of racial and ethnic disparities related to poverty, it is most important to focus on the poverty rate rather than the poverty count. According to the results presented in Figure 1.1, a much greater share of Black (17.3 percent) and Hispanic (17.9 percent) New Jerseyans lived in poverty in 2019 […]

Housing affordability and ownership accessibility The main expense incurred by New Jersey’s residents is shelter or housing. As of 2019, New Jersey ranked third in the country for median monthly housing costs, after California and Hawaii.[1] In that same year, the median gross rent for a two-bedroom apartment in New Jersey was $17,316; hence, a […]

Over the past two decades, children in New Jersey have been more afflicted by poverty than have adults. Growing up in poverty translates to higher exposure to economic deprivation, chronic exposure to stressors, inadequate nutrition, and limited educational opportunities, amongst other hardships. Research points to the negative consequences associated with child poverty, including higher prevalence […]

The impact of the pandemic on poverty and inequality continues to be studied at a global and national scale.[1],[2] Although the U.S. Census data have yet to reflect the full extent of the pandemic on poverty, numbers are expected to rise [3] due to an economic slowdown that has disproportionately affected the most vulnerable communities.[4] […]

The New Jersey State Policy Lab started operating when some of the first local-level data were released from the 2020 Census. It, therefore, seemed somewhat natural for the Lab to produce a census-based product that likely would appeal to governments within the State of New Jersey. The idea was not simply to reproduce the 2020 […]

In the past few weeks, discussions on the “Great Resignation” and labor shortages have permeated news cycles. These phenomena, characterized by (1) record-high levels of voluntary resignations and (2) job openings surpassing the number of unemployed workers, are being described as major “threats” to the nation’s post-pandemic economic recovery efforts. New Jersey is one of […]

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 for the fourth-highest statewide unemployment rate in the nation, at 7.2 percent. Prime factors […]

R/Econ, the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service, has just completed a new report that compares the amount of federal tax dollars paid by each state with the amount of federal allocations received. This report contrasts its findings with the January 2021 Rockefeller Institute of Government report on the same topic by including actual 2019 federal tax revenue […]