Publications

Health insurance literacy is a complex issue that requires a multifaceted approach to address. Our goal throughout this project was to better understand health insurance literacy, its impact on people across the country, identify available resources, and propose steps to improve understanding of health insurance. This report will be valuable to policymakers aiming to grasp […]

As New Jersey prepares to elect our next governor tomorrow, November 4th, the months ahead offer a pivotal opportunity to chart a path toward a more innovative and resilient state. To help inform this transition, the New Jersey State Policy Lab invited affiliated faculty and staff to identify the most pressing priorities for the next […]

We continue to showcase preliminary findings from our survey of New Jersey residents on their support for sentencing reform in four key areas. The second area concerns public support for establishing rehabilitative release programs that allow incarcerated persons who have reached a certain age and served a specified portion of their sentence to petition a […]

Over the past several years, Governor Phil Murphy’s administration has instituted several nationally innovative environmental justice initiatives. In 2018, early in his first administration, Governor Murphy issued Executive Order No. 23 (E.O. 23), which acknowledged that “historically, New Jersey’s low-income communities and communities of color have been exposed to disproportionately high and unacceptably dangerous levels […]

At the state and national levels, there is a growing recognition that improving college access in isolation is not sufficient. The focus on ensuring that students have the support they need to succeed has shifted the focus to persistence and completion. In research conducted with the New Jersey State Policy Lab and the Newark City […]

Community colleges play a vital role in expanding access to higher education, especially for students from historically underserved communities. Understanding how students navigate the transfer pathway from two-year to four-year institutions is essential for improving educational outcomes. This blog highlights findings from the National Student Clearinghouse’s Tracking Transfer report, comparing New Jersey’s community college students […]

Over the past 10 years, many U.S. states have implemented mandatory paid family leave policies to help address the lack of such policy on the national level. In this post, we examine how paid family leave enrollment among parents in the U.S. has changed. We use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation […]

The United States, with its growing elderly population, is experiencing a significant demographic shift. This trend is evident in New Jersey, which faces rapid population aging and increasing healthcare expenditures. This in turn highlights the critical need to ensure high-quality long-term care, with nursing homes playing a central role. New Jersey relies on nursing homes […]

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) provides access to the largest source of financial aid to pay for a 2- or 4- year college or vocational school. Students who complete it are more likely to enroll in and persist through college (Debaun, 2019; McKinney & Novak, 2013; Novak & McKinney, 2011). However, financial […]

As part of our ongoing evaluation of the certificate program developed by Rutgers University’s Center for Research on Ending Violence in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF), we are excited to share recent progress. Over the past several weeks, our research team has conducted a series of in-depth interviews with […]

Traffic safety is a critical concern in New Jersey where annual traffic crashes typically exceed 200,000, according to the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), with many of them resulting in non-fatal injuries that have lifelong impacts on victims. Currently, this data is not easily accessible. Researchers, advocates, and the public have an interest in […]

Over our next five blog posts, we will highlight selected preliminary findings from our work surveying members of the New Jersey public on their support across different areas of sentencing reform in the state. The first area concerns the public’s support for the creation of a new mitigating sentencing factor for defendants who are survivors […]