State Support for Higher Education Drops Dramatically Since 2000

by | Dec 14, 2016

A conservative interest group recently claimed that higher education has become a tremendous suck on state resources. A close examination of public higher education revenue in Minnesota tells a different story. Since the turn of the century, state support for higher...

Education Alone Does Not Explain the Racial/Ethnic Earnings Gap

by | Oct 11, 2016

Americans in general experienced strong earnings growth from 2014 to 2015; this was especially true for blacks and Hispanics, as noted in the preceding article in this series. Over the longer term, however, the earnings gap between white Americans and most minority...

Equal Pay Day and Student Loans

by | Apr 12, 2016

Today is Equal Pay Day, the day when women’s earnings “catch up” to men’s earnings from the previous year. In other words, it takes a woman from January 1, 2015 to April 12, 2016 to earn the same as a man earns in 2015. Women, in 2016, make...
Executive Summary: Minnesota's Budget Surplus

Executive Summary: Minnesota's Budget Surplus

by | Mar 3, 2016

The conservative effort to use the entire budget surplus to reduce state taxes—often referred to as the “give it back” campaign—is based on the premise that state revenues and expenditures have increased dramatically and thus all legitimate state expenditure needs...
Minnesota's Budget Surplus: Balancing Tax Cuts and Investments

Minnesota's Budget Surplus: Balancing Tax Cuts and Investments

by | Mar 3, 2016

I. Introduction Last March, a group of legislators gathered at the State Capitol with a simple message: “Give it back!” The “it” refers to the state budget surplus, then projected to be nearly two billion dollars for the upcoming fiscal year (FY) 2016-17 biennium....