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COVID: Trade-offs in School Reopening

We estimate that each month of school closures in response to the COVID pandemic cost current students between $12,000 and $15,000 in future earnings due to lower educational quality. We also estimate total value-of-life, medical, and productivity costs per infection at $38,315 for September 2020. Using these costs, we calculate the cost-benefit threshold to keeping schools closed for October at over 0.355 new expected infections in the community per student kept out of school.

COVID: Trade-offs in School Reopening

Biden’s Healthcare Proposals

The Biden healthcare plan focuses on expanding access and affordability of insurance and decreasing prescription drug prices. We estimate that by 2030, relative to current law, the Biden plan would decrease the uninsurance rate from 10 percent to 6 percent, decrease private insurance premiums by 23 percent and out-of-pocket spending by 16 percent, and decrease the percent of the population that forgoes medical care from 7 percent to 4 percent. The Biden healthcare plan would increase net spending by $352 billion over ten years but would reduce debt by 4.5 percent over that period due to dynamic growth effects.

Biden’s Healthcare Proposals

Analyzing President Trump’s Proposed Capital Gains and Dividend Tax Cut

PWBM estimates that reducing the top preferential rates on capital gains and dividends from 20 percent to 15 percent will cost $98.6 billion dollars over the ten year budget window. This tax cut will only benefit tax units in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, with 75 percent of the benefit accruing to those in the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution.

Analyzing President Trump’s Proposed Capital Gains and Dividend Tax Cut

Dynamic Distributional Analysis of the Biden Platform

PWBM uses dynamic distributional analysis to evaluate the effects of the Biden platform on different age and income groups. We find that working-age individuals in the bottom 40 percent of taxable income benefit the most due to expanded health insurance, increases in housing subsidies, and lower cost of prescriptions in the Biden platform, while young, high-income individuals and wealthy retirees see net losses due to tax increases and lower returns on their savings.

Dynamic Distributional Analysis of the Biden Platform

Presidential Candidate Joe Biden’s Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion

Presidential candidate Joe Biden recently announced a proposal to temporarily expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC). We find that this proposal would cost $110 billion if implemented solely for calendar year 2021 and would cost $1.4 trillion over ten years if extended permanently. While higher income households are more likely to have qualifying children and would see larger average tax cuts ($1160 for the 90-95th percentile), lower income groups would see the largest relative benefit, with after-tax incomes increasing by 9 percent for the bottom quintile.

Presidential Candidate Joe Biden’s Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion
PDF Brief Brief

Biden 2020 Analysis

This legacy brief is available as a downloadable PDF.

The Increasing Mortality Gap by Education: Differences by Race and Gender

Additional education is associated with similar reductions in mortality rates for men and women—in 2016, for example, men and women with high school degrees had mortality rates 16 percent and 14 percent lower, respectively, than those without degrees. That same year, however, the mortality advantage of completing a high school degree was 18 percentage points higher for White people than for Black people.

The Increasing Mortality Gap by Education: Differences by Race and Gender