Human Services

We are on the edge of an economic revolution, one in which local leaders in emerging communities are laying the groundwork for a new solidarity economy.

How can more eligible families fully use their WIC benefits? In this interview, Dani Lopez of Lulo shares how their tech platform is helping increase redemption, reduce waste, and ensure healthy food access with dignity.

Reliable federal data accessible in a timely manner to inform decision-making is foundational for economic growth and equity in the United States.

Misinformation around nutrition and health is rampant. Jonathan Kung talks about how we can use social media to combat it.

An excerpt from Silent No Longer on how disability services commodify and devalue the humanity of people with disabilities.

Success will go to those who follow the money, connect their work to growth and combine contextual intelligence, entrepreneurial drive and tech savviness.

FEMA is stretched thin, a GAO report warns. Its author offers advice for local leaders to respond strategically and build resilience now.

Editor’s note: The paper summarized here is part of the fall 2025 edition of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the leading conference series and journal in economics for timely, cutting-edge research about real-world policy issues. Research findings are presented in a clear and accessible style to maximize their impact on economic understanding and policymaking. The editors are Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellows Janice Eberly and Jón Steinsson. See the fall 2025 BPEA event page to watch paper presentations and read summaries of all the papers from this edition. Submit a proposal to present at a future BPEA conference here. Climate change is already imposing modest to significant costs on U.S. households, especially affecting poorer families and households in the Gulf Coast, Florida, and some parts of the West, suggests a paper discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on September 26. The paper examines some, but not all, costs of climate change under two different scenarios that vary in terms of what share of weather variability is attributed to climate change. “We find sizable costs to U.S. households from recent climate change patterns, ranging from $220 to $570 each year,” write the authors, Kimberly A. Clausing of the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law, and Christopher R. Knittel and Catherine Wolfram of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. Clausing, in an interview with The Brooking Institution, said the less-conservative scenario may be “closer to the truth.” Under it, the authors write, 10% of counties “have annual household costs exceeding $880 … [and] there are large swathes of the country … where damages are concentrated and exceed $1,000 per household per year.” The paper focused on two types of climate change costs: the effects on household budgets and the effects on mortality from extreme…

The when, where and how of informed disaster giving…

Learn about the effects of Trump administration federal grant cuts on Georgia nonprofits and their ability to serve local needs.

A new 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll shows how men and women of every generation, including Gen Z, are divided over questions about who takes on which roles in the family.