Far from providing relief for working families, recent proposals to eliminate school property taxes in Pennsylvania would increase taxes on the middle class while sabotaging the chance to adequately fund Pennsylvania schools for middle- and low-income families. This report provides the first estimates of the impact of property tax elimination…

The pace of income growth since the 1970s has been slower for Pennsylvanians than in the 30 years following 1945. In addition to being slower, income growth since the 1970s has also been lopsided, with a small fraction of the highest-income households capturing most income growth in Pennsylvania. This report examines the extent to which these…

There are 29 million "middle jobs" in the United States that pay $35,000 or more on average and don't require a Bachelor's degree. There are five Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways that educate and train Americans for these jobs: employer-based training, industry-based certifications, apprenticeships, postsecondary certificates, and…

For recent high school graduates, life is tough. In the past year, one in four young high school graduates was unemployed and over half were underemployed. In the past decade, recent high school graduates' wages have fallen by 12 percent to just $19,400 annually in 2011, below the poverty threshold for a family of four. The downward plight of high…

According to Census Bureau data, the gap in after-tax income between the richest 20 percent of American households and the rest of the nation hit its widest point in 1984. The top fifth of U.S. households received 42.3 percent of all after-tax income that year, a gain largely at the expense of middle income households. Since 1980 the share of…

An analysis is made of the way data were treated in several studies which concluded that family incomes have increased as fast as college costs and that there is no special difficulty in paying for higher education for middle income families. Trends in tuition costs are confounded by presenting average tuition data aggregated for all types of…