Urban Institute

Relative caregivers are an important part of the nation’s mixed-delivery child care system. Families may choose relative care because of trusted relationships, flexibility, cultural and linguistic continuity, affordability, and the ability to accommodate nontraditional work schedules.

Public budgets are a concrete expression of values. Which activities and institutions receive what levels of resourcing reflects the priorities shaping public policy. For public budgets to reflect society’s collective priorities, it is important that all members of the society be able to understand and act on them, notwithstanding certain complexities of the budgeting process. But municipal budgets, including public safety budgets, can be complex and opaque.

If considered intentionally, eviction filings can offer policymakers and housing experts a clear story of housing access in their area. Although a single eviction filing can speak to only that specific legal case, multiple filings from a tenant, against a landlord, or across a housing market can tell a broader story of housing barriers and risks. Currently, companies that offer tenant screening services are the most likely to link multiple eviction filings.

Participation in Registered Apprenticeship Programs by young people ages 16 to 24 more than doubled between 2015 and 2025, rising from 185,201 registered youth apprentices to 411,371. Despite this expansion, no standard definition of a youth apprenticeship program exists.

Public benefit programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and housing assistance help support young adults’ healthy development, especially when personal and family resources are limited. Yet accessing these benefits is particularly challenging for this age group because of program rules and processes that do not fit the complex realities of their lives, developmental stages, or strengths.

Over the past decade, federal and state policymakers and workforce development stakeholders have explored how to expand registered apprenticeship opportunities for young people ages 16 to 24. Because young apprentices often have limited workplace experience and are still navigating educational and personal transitions, they may require additional guidance and support to succeed in their programs.

The Social Genome Model (SGM) projects how changes in childhood and adolescence may affect adulthood outcomes. The SGM can help policymakers and practitioners identify and assess which policy interventions might most effectively and efficiently break patterns of intergenerational disadvantage.

When people have the capacity to access and use data, they can better understand and improve outcomes in their communities. But strengthening data capacity community-wide requires intentionality. This brief reviews lessons about nonprofit capacity building in general and data-capacity building specifically.

Housing Finance at a Glance is a monthly reference guide for mortgage and housing market data. It includes over 80 curated and updated figures describing current trends in the US housing finance market, including housing affordability, credit availability, serious delinquency rates, and mortgage insurance activity. These trends stood out most to housing finance policy researchers from this chartbook edition: First-lien PLS securitization rose 44 percent year-over-year (Page 8).

This brief looks at three estimates of the characteristics of public school students who are likely to be at risk of experiencing flooding at their school or in their neighborhoods.