The American Opportunity Study is an ongoing initiative to build the country's capacity to access and analyze linked administrative data. It is best viewed as a population-level scaffolding on which other administrative data can then be hung. This scaffolding, if used as a stand-alone resource, will allow for long-run analyses of fundamental population and labor market processes. If combined with data from other sources, it will allow for long-run program evaluation and other experimental and quasi-experimental analyses. We discuss the current status of the American Opportunity Study, its potential to advance the field, remaining obstacles that must be overcome to build it, and how it can work within the guidelines suggested by the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.

To reduce child poverty and income instability, and eliminate extreme poverty among families with children in the United States, we propose converting the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a universal, monthly child allowance. Our proposal is based on principles we argue should undergird the design of such policies: universality, accessibility, adequate payment levels, and more generous support for young children. Whether benefits should decline with additional children to reflect economies of scale is a question policymakers should consider. Analyzing 2015 Current Population Survey data, we estimate our proposed child allowance would reduce child poverty by about 40 percent, deep child poverty by nearly half, and would effectively eliminate extreme child poverty. Annual net cost estimates range from $66 billion to $105 billion.

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic's effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic's implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic's social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic's short- and long-term consequences unfold.