Research Library

Latinos are the largest and most rapidly expanding minority group in the U.S. Our latest brief describes the overall state of health and wellness among Latino children and the broader community — including indicators of obesity, mental health, and kindergarten readiness.

The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border far exceeds the immigration system’s capacity, and the flow is not stopping. In this brief, visiting scholar Katia Adimora talks to experts in the field about what the real issues are and how best to solve them.

This brief outlines how the Small Business Administration's long-standing 7(a) loan program can build upon the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen its operations and impact.

Information and cyber action have been important but ancillary components of the Ukraine war since its outbreak on February 24, 2022. We offer a set of observations:

In the second brief of a two-part series on the Chinese Communist Party's 100th anniversary, the author examines the rhetoric of China's president, Xi Jinping, and his deeply nationalistic vision of a unified country that erases ways of being Chinese that do not conform to that of the Han majority.

When illegal workers use false documents to get a job in the U.S., their employers may complete the paperwork by deducting Social Security, federal, state and Medicare taxes from each paycheck. As of 2010, illegal workers have contributed $12 billion to the Social Security system alone. Such workers face poverty in old age, as they are barred from collecting retirement benefits because of their immigration status, and they have not accrued a pension in their home country.

A study comparing the community benefit expenditures of two sets of Houston hospitals leads the authors to propose strategies that can better justify the tax exemptions the institutions enjoy.

This brief explores how a quirk in the measurement of women’s labor force participation and the demographic peculiarities of the Persian Gulf have resulted in the significant undercounting of female citizen labor in the Gulf Cooperation Council. I

Houston and Harris County area law enforcement leaders weigh in on the need for drug policy reforms in the United States.

While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms.