Recession Ready

In this proposal Robert Collinson, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Benjamin Keys propose a plan to support homeowners and renters to stabilize households and housing markets during future economic downturns. Their proposal would create new emergency rental assistance accounts for low-income households; implement an automatic, three-month forbearance period for vulnerable mortgage borrowers in response to elevated local unemployment; and establish a permanent tax credit exchange program that would allow states to exchange tax credits for direct subsidies at a fiscally neutral price when demand from tax credit investors falls.

Wendy Edelberg, Sara Estep, Stephanie Lu, and Emily Moss examine and offer new insights on the recent history of housing policy from the latter half of the 20th century to today, compare homeowner and renter experiences, and analyze housing assistance policies. The authors conclude that to increase housing stability, policymakers should improve housing policies to create better infrastructure and more-inclusive housing programs in addition to supplying additional funding.

In these Economic Facts, Hamilton Project reviews trends in women’s labor force participation and documents how mothers of children under age 13 have changed how they spend their time. These 10 economic facts detail some of the ways in which work, time, and caregiving have changed for mothers with young children from before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic through 2020 until early 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the United States with a set of unique public health and economic challenges. Economically, the crisis has negatively affected businesses, the labor market, and households. In this set of 10 facts, Wendy Edelberg, Kristen Broady, Lauren Bauer, and Jimmy O’Donnell assess the extent of these economic damages and provide an overview of existing policy interventions.  

The COVID-19 pandemic poses an existential threat to small businesses, with more than 400,000 lost since the crisis began. Many small businesses are financially fragile and not equipped to weather a prolonged period of substantially reduced revenues. In this proposal, Steven Hamilton of The George Washington University calls for a significant expansion of refundable tax credits to help support small businesses through this crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on Black Americans—yet these unequal outcomes are not novel challenges. Bradley Hardy and Trevon Logan outline several pre-pandemic conditions that have impeded Black Americans’ economic security and increased their vulnerability to the current crisis.