What the states can do

Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society
September 2025

When we think about government policy, our focus typically is on the national level — and rightly so, as that’s where a lot of the important policy is made. But in the United States, state and local governments have both the authority and in many instances the resources to do a good bit themselves. Let’s take a look at what they’re currently doing and how they could do more.

I’ll highlight 12 states — California, Colorado, District of Columbia (Washington DC), Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington — where voters and policymakers have tended to be more progressive in recent decades and were we might therefore expect more state policy aimed at boosting the economic security and living standards of ordinary and less advantaged Americans.

In “What America Needs,” I recommend we add or improve health insurance, paid parental leave, child allowance, child food assistance, unemployment insurance and wage insurance, sickness insurance, disability assistance, social assistance, old-age pensions, eldercare, housing assistance, early education, apprenticeships, college education, affirmative action, criminal justice, full employment, minimum wages, the Earned Income Tax Credit, profit sharing, infrastructure and public spaces, and paid vacation days and holidays. I’ll focus on these here.

Let’s begin with a look at state populations, shown in figure 1. This matters for wellbeing. Policies in large-population states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York affect vastly more Americans than do policies in small-population states such as Wyoming, Vermont, Delaware, and Alaska. The progressive 12 states have a total of 115 million people. That’s one-third of all Americans. And it’s about the same number as the populations of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland combined.

Figure 1. Population
2024. “m” = million. Data source: US Census Bureau. The progressive 12 states are asterisked.

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HEALTH INSURANCE

Every American should have health insurance. We’ve been heading in this direction, but movement has been slow and unsteady.1 And the changes to Medicaid enacted in 2025 will reverse some of the progress that’s been made.2

As of 2023, 92% of Americans have health insurance. About 20% have Medicare, and another 20% have Medicaid. Roughly 5% are current or former members of the military and get health insurance through Tricare or the Veterans Administration. Around 55% have employer-funded private health insurance. And about 15% purchase private health insurance directly, usually via a healthcare exchange. These numbers sum to more than 92% because some people have multiple sources of health insurance — for instance, Medicare plus an employer-financed supplemental plan.3

States can get us closer to 100% health insurance coverage. Figure 2 shows the share of the population with health insurance in the progressive 12 states along with three others with the highest coverage and three with the lowest. All of the progressive 12 have coverage rates at 93% or better. Massachusetts has the highest at 97.4%.4

Figure 2. Health insurance coverage
Share of the population (including unauthorized immigrants). 2023. The horizontal axis doesn’t begin at zero. Data source: US Census Bureau, “HIC-4_ACS. Health insurance coverage status and type of coverage by state — all persons: 2008 to 2023.” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest health insurance coverage, and three with the lowest coverage.

How do the more successful states do it? And could they get all the way to 100%?

About half of the affluent longstanding-democratic countries achieve universal health insurance via a single-payer program, in which government pays for healthcare for everyone.5 This is a straightforward way to get to full coverage. Several states, including Vermont and California, have explored the possibility of doing this at the state level but have concluded it would require too large an increase in state tax revenues.6

The states with the highest coverage rates use a multi-pronged approach. First, all of them have taken advantage of the additional federal government funds provided by the 2010 Affordable Care Act to enroll more people in Medicaid.

Second, many have a mandate that not only large but also middle-sized firms provide an employer plan for their workers. In Hawaii, employers are required to cover most employees who average 20 or more hours of work per week.7 Massachusetts requires companies with more than ten full-time employees to provide insurance.8

Third, most successful states have boosted the number of people who purchase health insurance through an exchange. One way they can do that is by supplementing the national healthcare exchange with a state exchange and publicizing it heavily. Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont are among the states that do this. Another is by subsidizing the purchase of healthcare on the exchanges in order to lower the price. Massachusetts’ ConnectorCare program is an example.9

A fourth element is a state government program that provides health insurance at very low cost — low premiums, low deductibles, and low copayments — to people who have low income but don’t qualify for Medicaid. New York, for example, has an “Essential Plan” that offers health insurance to people in households with income below 250% of the national poverty line; there are no premiums and small deductibles and copayments.10 This is akin to what many other affluent countries that don’t have a single-payer system do in order to ensure that health insurance coverage is universal.

Fifth, some of the successful states have a health insurance mandate. Anyone without insurance must pay a significant fine. This incentivizes young, healthy, not-poor people to purchase insurance, which helps to provide revenue needed to make the overall system financially sustainable. Massachusetts has had this type of mandate since its major healthcare reform in 2006.

Sixth, some states permit certain unauthorized immigrants to get health insurance through one or more of the available options. As of 2025, this was the case in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington DC, and Washington state.11

Seventh, successful states tend to have simple, easy-to-understand enrollment and re-enrollment procedures.

Finally, these states have strong outreach and communication strategies, often utilizing nonprofit and community organizations.

Why haven’t any of the states achieved 100% coverage? Even the states with the most aggressive efforts haven’t figured out how to overcome a few obstacles: some people are uninsured temporarily,12 some don’t know how to get insurance, some feel it’s too expensive even with the government supports, and some people are unauthorized immigrants who aren’t eligible for certain supports.

Beyond insurance, in late 2025, in the face of the Trump administration’s degradation of the federal government’s data gathering, analysis, and advice capabilities, 15 states created the Governors Public Health Alliance to ensure that healthcare providers, insurers, and the public have access to evidence-based information.

PAID PARENTAL LEAVE

Every rich longstanding-democratic country other than the United States has a national paid parental leave program. The federal government’s 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act gives employees the right to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for the birth of a child or to care for a sick relative. This only applies to companies with 50 or more employees, and there is no requirement that the leave be paid. Only 23% of American workers have employer-provided paid family leave. Consequently, many low- and middle-income Americans with a newborn child take little time off. That’s unfortunate, because outcomes for children tend to be best when they are with their parent(s) during the first year of life.13

Beginning with California in 2004, some of the states have created their own paid parental leave programs. As of 2026, fourteen states — including nine of the progressive 12 (asterisked) — have a mandatory program, with most providing for 12 weeks of paid leave.14 Parents and their newborn children need more than 3 months, but this is a good start.

California*
Colorado*
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia*
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts*
Minnesota*
New Jersey*
Oregon*
Rhode Island
Vermont*
Washington*

A few other states have voluntary programs that firms can buy into.

CHILD ALLOWANCE

Most rich democratic nations have a universal “child benefit” or “child allowance.” The US version is the Child Tax Credit (CTC). It provides up to $2,200 per child per year. (The amount is adjusted for inflation over time.) Up to $3,400 is “refundable,” meaning a family with multiple children can receive this amount even if they don’t owe any federal government income taxes. However, families that have no earnings or that don’t file a federal income tax return don’t qualify, so for some low-income households the program is of no benefit.

Some states now offer their own child tax credit.15 Twelve states — including nine of the progressive 12 (asterisked) — have a refundable state credit, with varying eligibility rules and maximum amounts. The most generous, Colorado’s, provides up to $3,200 for each child under age 17 and up to $2,400 for children under 6, depending on the family’s income.

California*
Colorado*
District of Columbia*
Illinois*
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts*
Minnesota*
New Jersey*
New Mexico
Oregon*
Vermont*

Five other states have a nonrefundable credit.

CHILD FOOD ASSISTANCE

Some children don’t get enough healthy food. A straightforward way to address this is via K-12 schools. The federal government’s National School Lunch Program, established in 1946, provides money for public and nonprofit schools to offer free or low-cost lunch to children in low-income families.16

Some states have created universal programs to make breakfast and lunch available to all children17:

California*
Colorado*
Maine
Massachusetts*
Michigan
Minnesota*
New Mexico
New York*
Vermont*

A few other states — New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington — have programs that expand on the federal government program but aren’t universal.

During the summer, when most children aren’t in school, the SUN Bucks (Summer EBT) program provides low-income families with $120 per child to help defray the cost of food. The federal government funds the program, but states must bear some of the administrative cost and they have to opt in. In 2025, about three-quarters of the states did so, including all of the progressive 12.18

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND WAGE INSURANCE

Unemployment insurance is key to economic security. America’s unemployment insurance program was created in 1935 as part of the New Deal. The federal government pays for it, but states have considerable leeway in determining eligibility criteria and benefit levels. (Duration of benefit receipt doesn’t vary much across the states. It’s a maximum of 6 months in most, with the federal government typically increasing this to 12 months during recessions.)

Among Americans who lose their job, only about 40% are eligible to receive unemployment compensation. And the share of prior earnings that they receive averages just 45%.19 According to one recent estimate, the optimal wellbeing-enhancing eligibility rate is 93% and the optimal replacement rate is 68%.20 Figure 3 shows how the states do on each of these two dimensions of unemployment insurance policy.21 The progressive 12 states tend to do better. But most of the states are a long way from the optimal levels, particularly on recipiency.

A key reason for low recipiency rates is that nonstandard workers or people with nonstandard jobs — persons who have low wages, work part-time or intermittently, move frequently from one employer to another, are self-employed, or interrupt employment for childbirth or family care — often don’t qualify for unemployment compensation.22 These kinds of workers are more common now than in the past and are likely to become even more common going forward. Adjusting eligibility criteria to better accommodate them would help to address this problem.

Figure 3. Unemployment insurance recipiency rates and replacement rates
2023. Recipiency rate: share of unemployed persons who are receiving unemployment compensation. Replacement rate: share of prior earnings replaced by unemployment compensation. Data source: Ayushi Narayan and Ryan Nunn, “How Unemployment Insurance Access and Benefits Vary by State,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2025, figure 2. The horizontal axis extends to 93% and the vertical axis to 68% because those are optimal recipiency and replacement rates, according to calculations in Serdar Birinci and Kurt See, “The Implications of Labor Market Heterogeneity on Unemployment Insurance Design,” November 2024, p. 30. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest recipiency rates, and three with the lowest recipiency rates. Washington, DC isn’t included due to missing data.

We also should add a wage insurance component to the program. Some Americans who get laid off can’t find a job that pays as well and are forced to settle for less. For a year or two, wage insurance would fill half of the gap between a person’s former pay and their new lower wage. None of the states has a wage insurance program.

SICKNESS INSURANCE, MEDICAL LEAVE, AND TEMPORARY DISABILITY INSURANCE

The United States is the only rich country without a nationwide public sickness insurance program. Though many large private-sector firms offer employees some paid sickness days, about 20% of employed Americans get zero days of paid sick leave.23

The way sickness insurance programs typically work is that a person who can’t (or shouldn’t) come to work due to illness, a serious condition, or a temporary disability receives about 70% of her or his pay while out, with the first few days or weeks paid by the employer and subsequent ones paid from a public sickness insurance fund.24

Some of the states have stepped in in one or more of three ways. First, some require firms to provide paid sick leave to their employees, with Connecticut the first in 201225:

Alaska
Arizona
California*
Colorado*
Connecticut
District of Columbia*
Maryland
Massachusetts*
Michigan
Minnesota*
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey*
New Mexico
New York*
Oregon*
Rhode Island
Vermont*
Washington*

Second, some states require that employers offer not only paid “parental” leave but “family and medical leave,” with serious health conditions covered.26

Colorado*
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia*
Maine
Maryland (beginning in 2028)
Massachusetts*
Minnesota*
Oregon*
Washington*

A third way state government have tried to help is via temporary disability insurance for Americans who are disabled temporarily but don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, worker compensation, SSDI, SSI, or veterans compensation and don’t have private disability insurance. Five states provide temporary disability insurance for such circumstances:

California*
Hawaii*
New York*
New Jersey*
Rhode Island

LONG-TERM DISABILITY ASSISTANCE

About 20% of Americans are disabled. Approximately 30% will at some point in their career experience a disability significant enough to cause them to miss 90 or more days of work.

As noted above, some states provide insurance for temporary disability. For long-term disability, Americans receive compensation from one or more of three national public programs: workers compensation, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).27

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

We want social policy to promote employment for adults who are able, but we also need it to ensure a decent minimum living standard for those who aren’t.28 Social assistance programs provide cash or near-cash to people who have low income but receive little or nothing from other programs (unemployment insurance, disability assistance, Social Security, and so on). The United States has two main social assistance programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children prior to 1996) and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly called Food Stamps).

Since the 1970s, federal government funding for AFDC-TANF has decreased steadily and significantly. As a result, state governments have tightened eligibility criteria, shortened duration, and reduced benefit levels. They’ve done so in different ways and to varying degrees, particularly since the 1996 “welfare reform” gave the states greater discretion. Figure 4 shows two key indicators: the recipiency rate and the maximum benefit level. Suppose we say that a decent recipiency rate would be 90% of families that have below-the-poverty-line income and a decent maximum benefit would be an amount sufficient bring a family with zero income above the poverty line ($24,080 for a family of three as of 2023). As we see in the figure, all of the states are well below these thresholds, though the progressive 12 states do better than most.

Figure 4. TANF recipiency rates and benefit levels
2023. Recipiency rate: share of families with income below the poverty line who receive TANF benefits. Data source: Urban Institute and OPRE, Welfare Rules Database, via Victoria Bowden, Diana Azevedo-McCaffrey, and Maria Manansala, “AFDC and TANF Caseload and Poverty Data, 1978-2023,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 11, 2025. Benefit level: maximum monthly benefit for a family of 3 persons, adjusted for state differences in cost of living. “k” = thousand. Data sources: Kevin Moclair, Sarah Knowles, Lauren Simpson, and Ilham Dehry, “Graphical Overview of State and Territory TANF Policies as of July 2023,” OPRE Report 2024-358, December 2024; US Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Regional price parities by state and metro area.” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest recipiency rates, and three with the lowest recipiency rates. Washington, DC isn’t included due to missing data.

SNAP benefit levels are determined by the federal government. States do, however, have some input into who is eligible. Today a majority of states use a “broad-based categorical eligibility” standard: income limit of 200% of the federal poverty line and no asset limit.29

OLD-AGE PENSIONS

For most Americans, income security in old age rests on some combination of five pillars: Social Security and SSI, an employer-based pension, savings, homeownership, and earnings from employment. Social Security is a very good old-age pension program, and with a few tweaks to its funding it will continue to be.30

An important way states can help is by shoring up employer-based pensions. Rather than allow Americans to contribute to defined-contribution plans if they have a steady job and if their employer offers a plan and if they know about that plan and if they feel they can afford to put some of their earnings in it, we can make contributing the default option and make the plan available to everyone. Employers that have an existing plan can continue it, but they must automatically enroll all employees and deduct a portion of earnings unless the employee elects to opt out. Employees who lack access to an employer plan are automatically enrolled in a new universal retirement fund, and those who lack an employer match are eligible for matching contributions from the government.31

In the absence of federal government action along these lines, some states have created their own programs. California’s CalSavers program, the largest of these, began in 2019.32 It requires any firm with five or more employees to enroll them if it doesn’t offer a company-sponsored pension plan. The program deposits 5% of each paycheck, unless an employee chooses to opt out. There is, however, no matching contribution from the employer or the state.

As of 2025, 17 states have this type of mandatory auto-enroll defined-contribution pension program for people who lack access to a plan through their employer.33 These include all of the progressive 12 except Massachusetts (which has a voluntary rather than mandatory program), along with six others:

California*
Colorado*
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia*
Hawaii*
Illinois*
Maine
Maryland
Minnesota*
New Jersey*
New York*
Oregon*
Rhode Island
Vermont*
Virginia
Washington*

ELDERCARE

Sweden spends a little over 3% of its GDP on long-term care, enabling 12% of elderly Swedes to receive “home-help services” in their home — for several hours, throughout the day, or round-the-clock if needed — and another to 5% live in an eldercare institution, all with very small out-of-pocket cost. In the US, Medicaid is the principal government funder of long-term eldercare, and it covers a relatively small share of elderly Americans who need support.34

The American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) regularly produces a state-by-state scorecard for eldercare. It scores each state on a wide array of indicators in five areas: (1) affordability and access, (2) choice of setting and provider, (3) safety and quality, (4) support for family caregivers, and (5) community integration. Examples of the indicators include: Does the state have fully functioning aging and disability resource centers — networks of organizations at the state and community levels that help consumers and family caregivers learn about and navigate options for long-term services and support? What share of older persons with disabilities are enrolled in Medicaid? What share of Medicaid expenditures on older people goes to home-based care, which people tend to prefer over nursing homes? What share of nursing home residents end up hospitalized within six months? Only some of the scorecard’s indicators reflect government policy; others are a product varying individual preferences, family resources, market processes, and more.

Figure 5 shows state scores as of the 2023 report. All but one (Illinois) of the progressive 12 are among the top performers, according to this measure.

Figure 5. Eldercare
State performance on long-term services and supports. Scale: 0 to 20. 2023. Data source: Susan Reinhard et al, “Long-Term Services and Supports State Scorecard, 2023 Edition,” AARP Public Policy Institute. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest scores, and three with the lowest scores.

It’s important to emphasize that no matter how helpful these state policies, they don’t do much to reduce the massive cost of eldercare to individuals. Medicaid will pay for nursing home care and in-home care, but it has a stiff asset limit, which often forces recipients to spend down most of their assets in order to qualify. Without Medicaid, the cost is for many people prohibitive: the average yearly cost is about $30,000 for a home-health aide (30 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, $20 per hour), $45,000 for a room in an assisted living center, and $85,000 for a room in a nursing home.35

Washington state has recently created the first state program that attempts to do something like what in some other rich democratic countries is achieved by a national public eldercare program: accumulate funds over time and then pay for eldercare services for those who need them. Workers pay in 0.58% of their earnings and, if eligible when they are elderly, can use a lifetime benefit for home care, equipment, respite, and more. However, the maximum benefit amount is a total of $36,500, which is enough for just one year of home care.36

HOUSING ASSISTANCE

Many Americans would like to live in or near a large city but can’t afford to because rental housing costs are too high. Figure 6 shows what this looks like across the US states. All of the progressive 12 states have a comparatively high share of renters whose rent payment is 50% or more of their household’s income.

The too-high cost of rental housing is perhaps the biggest contemporary failing of the more progressive states.37 And the magnitude of the problem would be even more visible if we were to focus on cities rather than states, as most of the large US cities with the highest rent prices are located in the progressive 12 states: San Jose, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside, Seattle, Boston, New York, Sacramento, Washington DC, Portland.38

Figure 6. Severely rent burdened
Share of renting households whose rent payments are 50% or more of household income. 2023. Data source: Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, Alexander Hermann, and Sophia Wedeen, “Deteriorating Rent Affordability: An Update on America’s Rental Housing,” Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, 2024, appendix table A5, using data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest share of severely burdened renters, and three with the lowest.

The chief cause of high rents is an inadequate supply of rental housing relative to demand for it. The key obstacle to expanding supply is restrictions on new building stemming from zoning laws and historical preservation designations.39 We should loosen these restrictions. Local government is the ideal source of action, but where city councils and mayors are unwilling or unable to act, state governments may have to step in.

States with especially high rental costs have begun to act, by lightening or removing regulations that impede construction of new rental housing.40 However, housing is slow moving, so this fix could take a decade or more to have a significant impact.

Other programs can help: government subsidization of private construction of low-cost rental units, government subsidization of affordable rental housing owned by nonprofits and communities (“social housing”), direct government provision of rental housing (“public housing”), a subsidy to low- and middle-income renters so that rent takes no more than 30% of their income.

EARLY EDUCATION

Universal high-quality early education for children age 1 to 4 facilitates employment for parents and enhances opportunity, particularly for children who grow up in less-advantaged homes.41

Private markets tend to not be very good at providing accessible, affordable, high quality childcare and preschool. The federal government funds Head Start, subsidizes childcare for some poor families via the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), allows a tax break for childcare, and funds some special education services. Yet these efforts are nowhere near sufficient to ensure that all American children have access to good-quality childcare and preschool.42

A number of states have stepped in to help.43 New Mexico provides free childcare and prekindergarten to families with income below 400% of the federal poverty line. The system rates high on quality measures. And the state has created a permanent funding stream to sustain continuation and possible expansion of the system. Washington DC has more than 80% of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in its public early education system. Vermont offers preschool to all 3-to-5-year-olds, with extensive financial assistance to families that have income below 575% of the poverty line, though provision is only for 10 hours a week and 35 weeks a year.

Figure 7 offers a summary scoring of each state’s early education system based on access for 3- and 4-year-olds, affordability (state resources), and quality. Most of the progressive 12 are above the US average, and there are additional states — such as New Mexico, West Virginia, and Maryland — that have highly-rated systems. These scorings are based mainly on rankings rather than absolute performance levels, so a high score doesn’t necessarily indicate that the state’s program is excellent.

Figure 7. Early education access, affordability, and quality for 3- and 4-year-olds
2024. Data source: National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), The State of Preschool 2024, table 1. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest scores, and three with the lowest scores.

K-12 EDUCATION

Despite thousands of studies, there is little agreement about how best to improve America’s K-12 schools. One thing we do know matters is funding.44 State governments can have a significant impact here. Historically, most of the money for K-12 education expenditures came from local property taxes, plus a bit from the federal government. Increasingly, state governments have stepped in to boost spending levels, particularly in school districts where property values tend to be lower and hence property tax revenues are lower.

Figure 8 shows how the states perform on K-12 spending. The measure is the share of a state’s students who are in districts in which spending is adequate, with “adequate” defined as the estimated per-pupil spending level that would be required for students in the district to achieve national average math and reading test scores. Spending adequacy isn’t determined solely by the quantity of spending, but also by the context in which the spending occurs — what are a school’s costs for teachers and equipment, what are the family and neighborhood circumstances of its students, and so on. The share-of-the-state’s-students measure gets at not only the adequacy of average spending in the state but also whether there are particular districts that get a lot less funding than others.

Most of the progressive 12 states do reasonably well (three are missing due to inadequate data). California is an exception, but its low score is due mainly to high costs rather than to low or unequal school funding.

Figure 8. K-12 spending adequacy
Share of a state’s students who are in districts in which spending is adequate, with “adequate” defined as the estimated per-pupil spending level that would be required for students in the district to achieve national average math and reading test scores. 2021. Data source: Bruce D. Baker, Matthew Di Carlo, and Mark Weber, “The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems,” January 2024, appendix table A2. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest scores, and three with the lowest scores. Hawaii, Vermont, and Washington DC aren’t included due to missing data.

APPRENTICESHIPS

Of the 60% of Americans who don’t get a four-year college degree, some enter the labor market directly, others get some vocational training in high school or community college, and others complete a certificate program of some sort. Some fare reasonably well, but the experience of other affluent nations suggests that a more robust approach to vocational education could help. One option is an apprenticeship program that students would begin around age 16 and that combines classroom instruction with on-the-job training. The best such programs run for three or four years and are tightly integrated with employers and employer organizations to ensure that the skills being produced are needed ones rather than simply ones schools feel competent to provide.45

The federal government currently does little to encourage or support apprenticeships, but the states do quite a lot.46 Every state either has its own state apprenticeship agency or partners with the US Department of Labor to oversee apprenticeship programs and/or supports for them. There are no clear indicators to use in determining whether, and to what degree, some are better than others.

All 51 states

One type of support is a direct grant to firms that create or expand apprenticeship programs. Minnesota’s Dual Training Grant and Pennsylvania’s PAsmart grants are examples.

A second is tax credits for employers who create or participate in an apprenticeship program. New York’s Empire State Apprenticeship Tax Credit, Massachusetts’ Registered Apprenticeship Tax Credit, and others give qualified employers a tax credit per apprentice, sometimes only for specified industries or occupations.

A third type of support is payment of tuition, fees, and sometimes other expenses for the classroom portion of apprenticeship programs. Examples include California’s Apprenticeship Initiative and Washington’s WA Grant for Apprenticeship.

COLLEGE EDUCATION

America’s colleges and universities are among the country’s greatest achievements. Taken as a whole, they’ve long been, and remain, the best in the world. Yet too few Americans from less-advantaged families enroll in college and end up getting a four-year degree. All of the US states have extensive public university systems. Most could do better at providing widespread access and high quality at an affordable price.

Here are a handful that currently stand out as exemplary:

California. The state’s two public university systems, University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU), enroll about 800,000 undergraduate students in total. Tuition and fees are about $10,000 per year for CSUs and $15,000 per year for UCs, and financial aid reduces these amounts significantly for students from low-income families. One-third of all admissions are reserved for transfer students from the state’s community colleges, offering a clear route to a four-year degree for many students from less-advantaged backgrounds. Ratings of college value relative to cost score a number of these universities quite highly. And California has some of the top-ranked public universities in the nation, such as UCLA and UC-Berkeley.

Washington. The University of Washington and Washington State University are strong research universities. They’ve got established transfer pipelines. And the Washington College Grant fully covers tuition for families with income below about $80,000.

Minnesota. The University of Minnesota system offers a broad state network and a strong main research campus. Tuition is free at all of the state’s public universities for students whose parents have an income below $80,000.

New York. The State University of New York (SUNY) and City University of New York (CUNY) systems offer access across the state. The Excelsior Scholarship covers tuition at all campuses for families with incomes below $125,000.

North Carolina. The North Carolina university system features two nationally recognized flagship campuses — UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State — along with a number of strong regional campuses. The NC Promise reduces tuition to just $1,000 at four of those campuses.

Florida. Florida’s public universities have comparatively high on-time completion rates. And the average cost of in-state tuition is the lowest in the country, at around $6,500.

New Jersey. For a student whose parents income is below $65,000, tuition and fees in the junior and senior year of college are $0.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Since the late 1960s, affirmative action programs in education and employment have promoted opportunity for women and for members of racial and ethnic minority groups. Court rulings and referendums have weakened or ended these programs in recent decades. Affirmative action should continue, but with family background as the focal criterion.47

Policy action by state governments is most likely to come in admissions to state universities. Some examples: California, Florida, and Texas guarantee admission to one of the state’s public universities to students whose high school GPA is in the top 10% of their school. California goes farther to take into account family income, parents’ education, high school quality, and student’s experience of disadvantage in making admissions decisions for in-state students at state universities. New York’s SUNY and CUNY system schools take educational and economic disadvantage into account in admissions. New Jersey’s campuses do the same. Pennsylvania has a program that provides state grants to colleges that take socioeconomic status into account. Since the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that race can’t be used as a factor in college admissions, other states have begun to include parents’ education and socioeconomic advantage as an element of “holistic” admissions review.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

People who end up in prison often have had difficult lives, including limited education and significant trauma.48 As violent crime in the United States increased sharply and steadily in the 1960s and 1970s and then remained at a high level through the early 1990s, many policy makers signed on to a “lock ’em up” response. At the time, social scientists had little knowledge about the drivers of crime and how best to combat it. Given this ignorance, and in a context in which a “tough on crime” approach was popular with voters, their choice is perhaps understandable.

Today we can, and should, do better. A sensible approach to criminal behavior — not just low-level drug offenders but also persons convicted of violent crimes — would minimize time in jail and prison, ensure a decent living standard after release, and provide sustained and extensive individualized support and monitoring.

Incarceration rates tend to be comparatively low in the progressive 12 states (except Washington DC), as we see in figure 9.

Figure 9. Incarcerated
Incarcerated in federal, state, or local prisons and jails. Per 100,000 population. 2024. Data source: US Department of Justice, via Wikipedia, “List of U.S. states and territories by incarceration and correctional supervision rate.” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest incarceration rate, and three with the lowest.

Some states have begun to move in a helpful direction by, for example, creating new early-release pathways, enrolling prisoners in Medicaid and other public support programs prior to release and checking periodically to ensure enrollment remains intact (California’s Medi-Cal Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative), forbidding landlords from asking about criminal history in the rental application process (New Jersey’s Fair Chance in Housing Act), reducing detention for technical parole violations, providing rent support in the months or years following release, increasing caseworker-to-client ratios for former prisoners, ending drivers license suspension for unpaid traffic tickets, providing coordinated transition programs (Michigan’s Offender Success), funding nonprofit organizations that provide individualized support (Colorado’s WAGEES program), and exploring alternatives to prison (Oregon’s Justice Reinvestment).

FULL EMPLOYMENT

Employment is valuable for individuals and for countries.49 A key is supportive monetary policy, which is handled at the national level by the central bank.50

States can help in several ways. One is to improve schooling, from preschool to K-12 to apprenticeships to college and beyond (see above). A second is better family-friendly policies, particularly early education, paid parental leave, and sickness insurance (see above).

A third way for states to help boost employment is via active labor market policy — government assistance to firms and workers to help people train for and land in suitable jobs, both when starting out but especially later in the life course. These programs facilitate communication and coordination between education, training, apprenticeship, and job placement.51 Most states now have these programs. They include California’s High Road Training Partnership, Maryland’s EARN, Massachusetts’ WCTF, and Virginia’s FastForward, among others. Many are relatively new, and we don’t have good comparative evaluations of these programs that would facilitate a scoring or ranking. But that should eventually be possible.

EMPLOYEE VOICE

The programs we’ve looked at so far are designed mainly to improve economic security and opportunity. They do so largely via public services and public insurance programs. What about wages and incomes? Education will help, as will programs that make it easier for people to get into and remain in paid work. Are there other things states can do?

Downward pressure on wages is a signature feature of the post-1970s economic era. Labor unions are the principal institutional mechanism available to counteract this pressure. Their strength during the three decades following World War II was integral to the sustained pay growth that occurred during that “golden age.” Today only 10% of employed Americans are union members. Increasing this share significantly probably would be the most effective way to ensure regular wage increases for middle- and low-paid workers.52

As figure 10 indicates, unionization varies a good bit across the US states. All but one (Colorado) of the progressive 12 are above the US average, and in some cases well above. This is due mainly to two things. First, these states don’t have so-called “right to work” laws that make union organizing in private-sector firms more difficult. Second, these states have governments that aren’t hostile to collective bargaining with public-sector unions.53

Figure 10. Labor union representation
Share of employees whose jobs are covered by a union or an employee association contract. 2024. Data source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state.” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest union representation, and three with the lowest.

Still, increasing unionization is a very tall order. America’s declining unionization rate isn’t a recent phenomenon. Nor is it a peculiarly American problem; unionization has been falling in most affluent democratic nations, and at roughly the same pace as in the US.54

MINIMUM WAGE

The federal minimum wage in the United States is low, and it has been flat, in inflation-adjusted terms, for half a century. We should increase it and index it to inflation.55 States and localities can set their minimum wage at a higher level. More than half of the states currently do.

Figure 11 shows state minimum wages adjusted for cost of living differences. All of the progressive 12 have a minimum wage at or above the US average of $11.40 per hour. Most are well above that level. A number of localities — New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, and others — set their statutory minimum wage even higher, as they should given that their cost of living is higher.

Figure 11. Minimum wage
Statutory minimum wage, adjusted for state differences in cost of living. 2024. Data source for minimum wages: US Department of Labor, “State minimum wage laws.” Data source for cost of living adjustment: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Regional price parities by state and metro area.” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest minimum wages, and three with the lowest minimum wages.

There are several other things states can do with respect to minimum wages.56 They shouldn’t prevent localities from setting a minimum wage above the state minimum. They should include classes of employees that aren’t covered by the federal minimum wage, such as agricultural workers. They should end the sub-minimum wage allowance for tipped workers.

EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT

The federal government’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) subsidizes earnings by as much as 45%, providing up to $6,500 for a household with two children. The amount of the EITC increases with earnings up to a certain level, then plateaus, and then decreases with earnings. It is paid to households rather than to individuals, and the money comes in a lump-sum once a year. Households with at least one employed adult and earnings up to about $50,000 are eligible. The credit is “refundable”; if it amounts to more than the household owes in federal income taxes, the household receives the difference as a cash refund. While it could be improved with some changes, the EITC is a very good policy.57

More than 30 states now have their own EITC. Most are designed to supplement the federal EITC — to add to the amount a household receives from the federal credit. As we see in figure 12, each of the progressive 12 states has a state EITC, and in most it adds one-third or more to the amount of the federal credit.

Figure 12. Earned Income Tax Credit
Percentage of the federal EITC. Data source: Tax Policy Center, “How Do State Earned Income Tax Credits Work?” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the most generous EITC, and three with the least generous.

PROFIT SHARING

Profit sharing, whereby employees receive part of their compensation in the form of a portion of the firm’s profit rather than as a guaranteed wage or salary, is a way to facilitate pay increases in a context of weak labor unions. Few companies in the United States have a profit sharing plan. Encouraging its expansion probably hinges on government offering some financial incentive.

Only one state currently offers any such incentive:

Colorado*

Colorado’s Employee Ownership Tax Credit will reimburse a portion of the cost a firm incurs in implementing a profit sharing plan.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND PUBLIC SPACES

Public spaces and services matter for people’s lived experience. Think of roads, bridges, stoplights, enforcement of speed limits, air traffic control, sidewalks, museums, parks, sports fields, forests, campgrounds, beaches, oceans, lakes, swimming pools, zoos, phone lines, broadband, the internet, public television and radio programming, subsidization of free private TV and radio networks, libraries, festivals, and more.

Most funding and decision making for infrastructure occurs at the national or local level. States are responsible for highways, school buildings, some parks, regulation of electricity and gas utilities, and a few additional things.

One key infrastructure role for states is expansion of high-speed internet access. Figure 13 shows the share of states’ households that have access to internet with at least 1 gigabyte per second download speed. The progressive 12 are about average.

Figure 13. High-speed internet access
Share of residences with fiber or cable internet with download speed of 1 GB per second or faster. 2024. Data source: Federal Communications Commission, “FCC National Broadband Map,” service = residential, technology = any technology, speed >= 1000/100. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest shares, and three with the lowest shares.

Perhaps the most important infrastructure contribution of states in coming years will be to facilitate clean energy. This includes not only energy production but also the transmission lines to bring solar, wind, and other clean energy from where it is generated to where it will be used. Texas has been very aggressive in permitting and supporting the construction of transmission.58 Most other states are behind, but some, including California, are aiming to catch up.59 Figure 14 shows the share of states’ electricity production that comes from clean energy sources. Here most of the progressive 12 states are above the national average, and a few — Vermont, Illinois, and Washington — are standouts.

Figure 14. Electricity production from clean energy sources
Share of electricity production that is from biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, or wind. (Non-clean sources are mainly natural gas, oil, and coal.) 2021-23. Data source: Nadia Popovich, “How Does Your State Make Electricity?,” New York Times, August 2, 2024, using data from the US Energy Information Administration. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest shares, and three with the lowest shares.

PAID VACATION DAYS AND HOLIDAYS

In other rich democratic countries, the law requires that companies give their employees between 10 and 38 paid vacation days and holidays per year. The average in these nations is 27 days. In the United States, the number is zero. Most Americans do get some paid days off. Yet some get none, and the average number for those who get any is just 18.60

We should make the provision of paid vacation days and holidays mandatory. State governments can do this. The Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t require that employers provide any paid vacation or leave time, but it doesn’t prevent state governments from doing so.61 One state stands out here:

Illinois*

In 2024 Illinois began requiring firms, including small ones, to give their workers 5 days of paid leave per year.62 Unlike what some other states are doing via sick leave policies (see above), in Illinois these days aren’t conditional on (actual or pretend) illness.

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

To get the United States to something approaching Nordic levels of wellbeing-enhancing policy, we would need to increase government expenditures by around 10% of GDP.63

States can’t do the whole thing. But suppose we aim for them to go half of the way, with the federal government doing the rest. That means the states would need to increase expenditures by, on average, 5% of their GDP.

HOW TO PAY FOR IT

State government revenues come mainly from four sources: (1) Around half come from state taxes. (2) Transfers from the federal government account for around one-third. (3) Employer and employee contributions to fund state social insurance programs — state employee pensions, unemployment insurance, worker compensation, and some others — account for about 10%.64 (4) Charges tied to specific public services and goods — tuition and fees at state colleges, fees for public hospital services, tolls on highways, driver’s license fees, park entrance fees, etc. — are about 10%.

State governments can pay for new or expanded programs partly by increasing social contributions and charges. But suppose a state needs to pay for all of the 5%-of-GDP spending increase via taxes. How should it do that?

Figure 15 shows state tax revenues as a share of state GDP. Because these amounts fluctuate somewhat depending on economic conditions (particularly in circumstances such as the 2020-22 Covid pandemic), the numbers shown in this chart are averages for the years 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2023. There’s a good bit of variation across the states, from around 3% in Texas and New Hampshire at the low end to Vermont’s 10% at the high end. In most of the states, tax revenues are between 4% and 7% of state GDP.

The average for all states is 5.5%, and the average for the progressive 12 states is 6.1%. So adding 5% of state GDP in tax revenues means getting to, on average, approximately 11%.

Figure 15. Tax revenues
Share of the state’s GDP. Average for the years 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2023. Data source for tax revenues: US Census Bureau, “Annual survey of state government finances (ASFIN).” Data source for GDP: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Regional economic accounts,” table SAGDP. The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), three others with the highest levels, and three with the lowest levels.

If a state wants to increase its tax revenues, who should pay? Broadly speaking, there are two options: “soak the rich” or “spread the burden.” The world’s rich democracies tend to do the latter. Most have a proportional tax system, with working class, middle class, and affluent all paying roughly the same share of their pretax income in taxes.65 Federal government tax revenues in the United States come mainly from income taxes (individual and corporate), and those taxes are progressive. State and local tax revenues have tended to be regressive, because a key source of tax revenue is sales taxes.66 The overall US tax structure thus ends up being close to proportional.67

Figure 16 shows, for a sampling of the US states, average effective tax rates at various points along the pretax income distribution. If the line for a state is relatively flat, the state’s tax system is proportional — people at all points along the income distribution pay roughly the same share of their income in state (and local) taxes. If the line slopes up to the right, the tax system is progressive. If the line slopes down to the right, the tax system is regressive.

Figure 16. Tax progressivity
Effective tax rates: taxes paid as a share of pretax income. Dots and thick lines: 2023. Thin lines: 2018. The states are ordered by tax progressivity; numbers in parentheses are state rank. The tax rates are averages for the following groups: p0-20, p20-40, p40-60, p60-80, p80-95, p95-99, p100 (top 1%). Excludes households with a “head” aged 65 or over. Includes consumption taxes (general sales taxes and specialized excise taxes), property taxes (taxes on homes, businesses, and motor vehicles), and income taxes (on individuals and businesses) collected by state and local governments. Data source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), “Who Pays? State-by-State Data.” The states included are the progressive 12 (asterisked), two others with the most progressivity, and two with the most regressivity.

Eleven of the states shown in the figure have tax systems that are essentially proportional. The top seven of these actually are progressive, but only mildly so; the other four are regressive, though again only a little bit. These 11 states almost certainly could increase progressivity somewhat. Three of the states shown in the figure that have the most regressive tax systems are among the progressive 12: Hawaii, Illinois, and Washington. These states certainly could boost taxation of the affluent. One way — though not the only way — to do this is via an increased income tax rate on high incomes. California (in 2012 and 2016), New Jersey (2020), and Massachusetts (2022) have done this successfully, in some cases with the revenues earmarked for specific expenditures such as schools or transportation.68

While many progressive states could increase revenue by taking more solely or largely from people with high incomes, it’s not clear that they could double their current revenues (as a share of GDP) by doing so. They might well need to add both a bit more progressivity and higher tax rates across the board. That’s particularly true of a state like Colorado, which has a proportional tax system but has such low tax rates that it collects only 4% of the state’s GDP in revenues.

SUMMARY

The US federal government is behind its counterparts in many other rich democratic countries in adopting and expanding policies that improve the lives of ordinary people. State governments can help pick up the slack, and some of them have been particularly active in recent decades. There’s a good chance they can, and will, move even further in this direction.

Let’s close with a summary of what California, America’s largest state and one of its most progressive, has and hasn’t done by way of moving its policies and institutions closer to those of a good society:

  • Health insurance coverage: 93%. This is only slightly above the national average, but a significant achievement given that unauthorized immigrants are 4.5% of the state’s population.
  • Paid parental leave: 2 months for a newborn child, mandatory participation, replacement rate of 60-70% depending on earnings, funded by social insurance contributions.
  • Child allowance: $1,000 per year refundable tax credit for families with a child under age 6 and income below $30,000.
  • Child food assistance: Universal free school breakfast and lunch.
  • Unemployment insurance: Recipiency rate and replacement rate around the national average.
  • Sickness insurance, medical leave, and temporary disability insurance: 1 week per year of paid sick leave, mandatory for firms with one or more employees. Also temporary disability insurance for people who are disabled temporarily but don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, worker compensation, SSDI, SSI, or veterans compensation and don’t have private disability insurance.
  • Long-term disability assistance: California, like other states, doesn’t have a policy in this area. It’s handled via three national public programs: workers compensation, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
  • Social assistance: TANF benefit of up to $1,000 per month, with 64% of families below the poverty line qualifying (highest recipiency rate in the country as of 2023).
  • Old-age pension: CalSavers automatic-enrollment pension system for people whose employer doesn’t offer a plan, mandatory for firms with five or more employees, deposits 5% of each paycheck unless the employee opts out.
  • Eldercare: California scores in the top ten on AARP’s eldercare scorecard that assesses states on affordability and access, choice of setting and provider, safety and quality, support for family caregivers, and community integration. However, no state has anything like an eldercare program that will cover most of the cost of eldercare for an average person or household.
  • Housing assistance: This issue is, arguably, where California’s policy and performance has been most lacking. Rental costs relative to income are among the highest in the nation. The problem is especially severe in the state’s large cities. California has begun to remove or weaken regulatory measures that have impeded construction of new rental housing.
  • Early education: Access, affordability, and quality for 3- and 4-year-olds ranks tenth in the country.
  • K-12 education: California’s public schools are underfunded, but that’s due more to high costs than to a small number of dollars spent. And since 2010 the state’s voters have twice voted in favor of increased money for K-12 schooling funded by tax increases on high-income households.
  • Apprenticeships: California’s Apprenticeship Initiative helps with payment of tuition, fees, and sometimes other expenses for the classroom portion of apprenticeship programs.
  • College education: The state’s two public university systems, University of California and California State University, enroll about 800,000 undergraduate students in total. Tuition and fees are about $10,000 per year for CSUs and $15,000 per year for UCs, and financial aid reduces this significantly for students from low-income families. One-third of all admissions are reserved for transfer students from the state’s community colleges. Ratings of college value relative to cost score a number of these universities quite highly. And California has some of the top-ranked public universities in the nation, such as UCLA and UC-Berkeley.
  • Affirmative action: Admission to a UC school is guaranteed for students whose high school GPA is in the top 10% of their school. UC and CSU universities go farther to take into account family income, parents’ education, high school quality, and student’s experience of disadvantage in making admissions decisions for in-state students.
  • Criminal justice: Significant reduction in incarceration since the mid-2000s. Medi-Cal Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative enrolls prisoners in Medicaid and other public support programs prior to release and checks periodically to ensure enrollment remains intact.
  • Full employment: Like many states, California has a program (the High Road Training Partnership) that aims to facilitates communication and coordination between education, training, apprenticeship, and job placement.
  • Employee voice: Like most other progressive states, California doesn’t have a so-called “right to work” law and the state government engages in collective bargaining with public-sector unions. Only 16% of workers in California are represented by a labor union — higher than in many other states but nevertheless quite low.
  • Minimum wage: $16.50 per hour. Automatically adjusts over time for inflation.
  • Earned income tax credit: Refundable EITC that adds nearly 50% to the amount a household receives from the federal EITC
  • Profit sharing: Like nearly every state, California doesn’t currently offer any inducement for firms to adopt profit sharing.
  • Infrastructure and public spaces: 54% of households have high-speed internet (1 GB download) as of 2024. 61% of electricity production is from clean energy sources as of 2023.
  • Paid vacation days and holidays: Like every other state apart from Illinois, California doesn’t mandate any vacation days or paid holidays.
  • Other: Additional wellbeing-enhancing efforts by California’s government include an array of services for residents with severe mental illnesses, low-cost public auto insurance for persons with low income, new funds for roads and high-speed rail, and more.
  • State government revenues. Tax revenues are 6% of the state’s GDP, via a proportional tax system with people at all levels of the income distribution paying about 10-12% of their income in state and local taxes.

As we’ve seen throughout, California isn’t alone. Other progressive states — including Colorado, the District of Columbia (Washington DC), Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington — have been moving in a similar direction. They should continue. And others should follow suit.

  1. Lane Kenworthy, “Healthcare,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  2. One Big Beautiful Bill Act. ↩︎
  3. US Census Bureau, “HIC-4_ACS. Health insurance coverage status and type of coverage by state — all persons: 2008 to 2023.” ↩︎
  4. A complementary indicator, the share of people who answer “no” to the question “Was there a time in the past 12 months when you needed to see a doctor but could not because you could not afford it?,” correlates very closely across the states with the share who lack health insurance. Commonwealth Fund, “Adults age 18 and older who went without care because of cost in past year,” using data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). ↩︎
  5. Kenworthy, “Healthcare.” ↩︎
  6. Wikipedia, “Single-Payer Healthcare”; Sarah Kliff, “What Bernie Sanders Can Learn about Single-Payer from His Home State of Vermont,” Vox, 2016; Melissa R. Michelson, Nadine Koch, and Jolly Emrey, Governing California in the Twenty-First Century, 10th edition, W.W. Norton, 2025, ch. 10. ↩︎
  7. State of Hawaii, “About Prepaid Health Care.” ↩︎
  8. Wikipedia, “Massachusetts Health Care Reform.” ↩︎
  9. Wikipedia, “Massachusetts Health Care Reform.” ↩︎
  10. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “New York: State Innovation Waiver under Section 1332 of the ACA.” ↩︎
  11. Phil Galewitz, “States Expand Health Coverage for Immigrants as GOP Hits Biden Over Border Crossings,” KFF Health News, December 28, 2023. ↩︎
  12. The American Community Survey, our main source of data on health insurance coverage, asks about current health insurance status. ↩︎
  13. Lane Kenworthy, “Early Education,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Work-Family-Leisure Balance,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  14. Bipartisan Policy Center, “State Paid Family Leave Laws Across the U.S.” ↩︎
  15. NCLS, “Child Tax Credit Overview”; Zachary Parolin, “Targeted Child Tax Credit: An Affordable Option for State Governments to Reduce Child Poverty Rates,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2025. ↩︎
  16. Food and Nutrition Service, US Department of Agriculture, “National School Lunch Program.” ↩︎
  17. Food Research and Action Center, “State Healthy School Meals for All Legislative Chart.” ↩︎
  18. Food and Nutrition Service, US Department of Agriculture, “SUN Bucks (Summer EBT).” ↩︎
  19. Lane Kenworthy, “What America Needs,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  20. Serdar Birinci and Kurt See, “The Implications of Labor Market Heterogeneity on Unemployment Insurance Design,” November 2024, p. 30. ↩︎
  21. The recipiency rate is the share of unemployed persons who are actually receiving unemployment compensation, which isn’t the same as the share of unemployed persons who are eligible to receive unemployment compensation. But the eligibility rate is much more difficult to calculate accurately, and recipiency rate likely is a good proxy. ↩︎
  22. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  23. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  24. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  25. Sophia M. Mitchell, “State Paid Sick Leave Laws,” Issue Brief, US Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, December 2024. ↩︎
  26. National Partnership for Women and Families, “State Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance Laws.” ↩︎
  27. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  28. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  29. US Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, “Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE).” ↩︎
  30. Lane Kenworthy, “Social Programs,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Inclusion: the Elderly,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  31. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  32. The Calsavers website has a good description of program features. ↩︎
  33. Center for Retirement Initiatives, “States,” Georgetown University. ↩︎
  34. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  35. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  36. WA Cares Fund, “How the Fund Works.” ↩︎
  37. Zachary Parolin, “Housing Policy and Poverty: the Case of California,” Niskanen Center, 2025. ↩︎
  38. Jonathan Jones, “U.S. Cities with the Highest Rent Prices,” Construction Coverage, March 10, 2025, using data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. ↩︎
  39. Lane Kenworthy, “Affordable Renting,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  40. Kenworthy, “Affordable Renting.” ↩︎
  41. Lane Kenworthy, “Early Education,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  42. Kenworthy, “Early Education”; Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  43. National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), The State of Preschool 2024. ↩︎
  44. C. Kirabo Jackson and Claire L. Mackevicius, “What Impacts Can We Expect from School Spending Policy? Evidence from Evaluations in the United States,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2024. ↩︎
  45. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  46. ApprenticeshipUSA, “States That Offer Tax Credits for Hiring Apprentices and Tuition Support for Registered Apprentices.” ↩︎
  47. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  48. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  49. Lane Kenworthy, “Employment,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  50. Lane Kenworthy, “Macroeconomic Policy,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  51. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  52. Lane Kenworthy, “Employee Voice,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “How to Ensure Rising Incomes When Labor Unions Are Weak,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  53. Heidi Shierholz, Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and Jennifer Sherer, “Workers Want Unions, but the Latest Data Point to Obstacles in Their Path,” Economic Policy Institute, 2024. ↩︎
  54. Kenworthy, “Employee Voice”; Kenworthy, “How to Ensure Rising Incomes When Labor Unions Are Weak,” ↩︎
  55. Kenworthy, “How to Ensure Rising Incomes When Labor Unions Are Weak”; Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  56. David Cooper, “Minimum Wage: State Solutions to the U.S. Workers Rights Crisis,” Economic Policy Institute, July 30, 2025. ↩︎
  57. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  58. Isabel Hoyos and Gernot Wagner, “How States Like Texas Are Driving the Clean Energy Boom in the Trump Era,” Columbia Business School, 2025. ↩︎
  59. Laurel Rosenhall, Soumya Karlamangla, and Adam Nagourney, “California Rolls Back Its Landmark Environmental Law,” New York Times, July 1, 2025. ↩︎
  60. Lane Kenworthy, “Work-Family-Leisure Balance,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  61. US Department of Labor, “Vacation Leave.” ↩︎
  62. Illinois Department of Labor, “Paid Leave for All Workers Act FAQ.” ↩︎
  63. Kenworthy, “What America Needs.” ↩︎
  64. These are sometimes called “insurance trust revenue.” ↩︎
  65. Lane Kenworthy, “Taxes,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  66. Katherine Newman and Rourke O’Brien, Taxing the Poor, University of California Press, 2011. ↩︎
  67. Kenworthy, “Taxes.” ↩︎
  68. California Budget and Policy Center, “Californians Could Maintain Higher Taxes on Wealthiest With Proposition 55”; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “New Jersey Budget Deal Advances Equity with Millionaires Tax and More,” 2020; Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, “Fair Share Amendment.” ↩︎