Politicians and scholars sometimes cast obesity as a problem that largely afflicts the poor. But as most obese adults aren’t poor and most low-income adults aren’t obese, this is a misconception.

As a researcher who looks into these...

Floodwaters in parts of Houston are beginning to recede after nearly a week of rain from Hurricane Harvey. The emphasis for many flood victims will now shift from survival to recovery.

While many economists are trying to determine the disaster’s overall toll – certain to be significant – a topic less explored is the financial...

Hurricane Harvey has taught us many lessons, but the most valuable may be the oldest lesson of all, one we humans have been learning – and forgetting – since the dawn of time: how much we all have to lose when climate and weather disasters strike.

The risks we...

As automation and artificial intelligence technologies improve, many people worry about the future of work. If millions of human workers no longer have jobs, the worriers ask, what will people do, how will they provide for themselves and their families, and what changes might occur (or be...

During the 20th century, there was nothing that could help you achieve labor market success more than a good education. Even today, education is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone is...

As with all natural disasters, the public and the business world have reacted with an outpouring of aid for people suffering from Hurricane Harvey’s extensive damage.

The usual appeals for Americans and U.S. companies to open their wallets, however, have been accompanied by increasingly loud calls from some corners urging donors to avoid the...

Around 1.7 million Muslims have gathered this year in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage – the hajj. The five-day pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for all Muslims who have the physical and...

There’s no better time than Labor Day to think about the critical role that work – both our own jobs and the labor of others – plays in all of our lives. But this role is surprisingly complex:...

When it comes to current debates in politics and policy, even a strident defense of the liberal arts – such as George Anders’s “You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Education” or Randall...

Ever since the Associated Press automated the production and publication of quarterly earnings reports in 2014, algorithms that automatically generate news stories from structured, machine-readable data have been shaking up the news industry. The promises of this...