EconoFact Chats

Over 10 million children in the United States live in poverty. Poor children tend to have worse physical and mental health, worse educational outcomes, and lower lifetime earnings than their peers. On this episode of EconoFact Chats, University of Maryland professor Melissa Kearney joins Michael Klein to discuss the scope and causes of child poverty in the U.S., and the policy efforts to alleviate it.

Florida overwhelmingly voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour; and nationwide surveys suggest that two-thirds of Americans support increasing the federal minimum wage. As broad support for this policy grows, understanding who benefits from increases to the minimum wage becomes more important. On this episode of EconoFact Chats, Michael Klein speaks with Jonathan Meer at Texas A&M University, whose research spans many areas of economics, among them, the effects of raising the minimum wage. The discussion focuses on whether minimum wage increases help low-income workers, whether they lead to job losses or reductions in other job-related benefits, and which policy options might do more to help workers at the lower end of the wage distribution.

Current strategies to address climate change include subsidizing clean energy production, raising minimum efficiency standards for buildings and factories, and even instituting outright bans on gasoline-powered automobiles. But another strategy, one advocated by many economists -- the carbon tax -- harnesses market forces to lower greenhouse gas emissions. On this episode of EconoFact Chats, Tufts professor Gib Metcalf and host Michael Klein discuss what a carbon tax would look like, the bipartisan support for it, and how it could affect jobs and businesses. They also discuss broader opportunities for the new Biden administration to address climate change. The conversation draws on Metcalf's experience in the United States Treasury, as well as his recent book Paying for Pollution: Why a Carbon Tax is Good for America.