Policy Reports / Social Security

The Economic Cost of the Social Security Payroll Tax

The payroll tax that funds Social Security, Medicare and Disability Insurance, called FICA, is already the largest tax most American families pay. In the future, it will claim an even greater share of Americans' incomes. From its current level of 15.3 percent (combining the employer and employee shares), the payroll tax will need to rise above 25 percent of workers' incomes by the middle of the century in order to pay benefits to today's teenagers when they retire.

News Release

NCPA'S Moore: Court Unlocks The Schoolhouse Door

This is great news, not only for the children in Cleveland's school choice program, but for children trapped in failing schools across the country. With this decision, government bureaucrats can no longer claim constitutional protection when they prevent those with the humblest of means from exercising the same choices most middle and upper-income families make.

Pete du Pont

Shredding the Constitution

Next Monday the International Criminal Court officially comes to life. The required 60 nations have ratified it–although the U.S. has not–so in September the member nations will meet to set rules for selecting judges and its prosecutor.

Brief Analyses / Welfare

Immigrants, Welfare and Work

Throughout its history, the United States has been a nation of immigrants. However, in recent years, and even more so since September 11, 2001, Americans have favored a stricter immigration policy.

Brief Analyses / Welfare

Welfare Reform: Reasons To Stay the Course

The number of Americans receiving cash welfare – called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) – has fallen in half; the number of Americans living in poverty has fallen 21 percent; and the annual incomes of the poorest women have increased nearly $1,000.

Pete du Pont

Just What the Doctrine Ordered

President Bush launched a redefinition of American foreign policy. The principal defense doctrines of the 1950s–the containment of threatening nations and massive retaliation against them should they attack America–are not effective in protecting our citizens against terrorist attacks. Sept. 11 proved it.

Brief Analyses / Health

Health Care in Five Nations

A new survey sheds light on the relative merits of the health care systems in five English-speaking countries. This is the latest in a series of studies conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Commonwealth Fund in New York City.

Brief Analyses / Welfare

Giving Patients More Control

Eighty-eight percent of Americans with private health insurance coverage get it through employers, and the employment-based health insurance system has served millions of Americans for more than 50 years.

Pete du Pont

The Gulag's Legacy

Five hundred miles to the northwest lies Magadan, the administrative center of the former Soviet Gulag. For prisoners it was the end of a long journey from western Russia and the beginning of a descent into death. They were forced to come here from across the Soviet Union by railroad cattle car, without much food and minimal water.

Pete du Pont

Improving the Welfare Reform Success Story

Who said government programs don't work? Since enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), in conjunction with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), unprecedented numbers of people have made the transition from welfare to work.