Social Policy
Vox’s coverage of social policy, from food stamps to paternity leave to gun control.
The policy fight is moving well beyond sports and youth medicine. The political response hasn’t caught up.
Bogotá’s radical experiment in caregiving is going global.
Raising the retirement age does more to hurt poorer people who live less long.
The president is keeping his hands off Social Security and Medicare — at least for now.
Pro-natalists want America having more babies — but only one of their proposals helps actual children.
The Trump administration is putting millions of people’s retirement benefits at risk.
Spare bedrooms are America’s next housing market.
Universal programs are much easier to administer than means-tested ones.
A brief history of how America’s public housing experiment was designed to fail.
The political crisis is months in the making
America’s fragmented safety net makes it easy for cuts to go unnoticed.
Trump could weaponize Title IX against trans kids.
Successful minimum wage ballot measures offer small signs of hope.
Investors in private prisons think they’ve hit the jackpot with a second Trump presidency.
Millions of Americans who are eligible for welfare programs still don’t receive all the benefits they are entitled to.
Politicians need to get realistic about what it will take to protect Social Security.
We are living through an inflection point in America’s relationship with guns. There may be no going back.
Dozens of other democracies have short election cycles. Can the Democrats learn something from them?
A major study backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman shows unconditional cash has benefits that have nothing to do with AI.
Giving people cash makes them less poor. It doesn’t fix everything.
Day care as public safety and public relations.
The UK is getting a new government. What is it promising to do?
Declining birth rates do matter, but we need to approach them thoughtfully.
How conspiring doctors, questionable tonics, and twisted patriotism led to the 1864 Arizona abortion ban that has finally been repealed.
These radical social conservatives could define Trump’s second term.
Roughly 80 percent of House Republicans just lined up behind a plan to cut Social Security and ban all abortions.
A second Trump presidency is likely to bring more austerity than the first one did.
Why so many college applicants are worried about being able to afford school.
How America has made it harder for Black people to marry.
Local governments are trying a new way to address the housing crisis.
We’re not bringing back the extended child tax credit. But this deal is better than nothing.
To our generation, being a mom looks thankless, exhausting, and lonely. Can we change the story?
These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
The results show the power of cash transfers to reduce homelessness.
Legacy and geographic preferences will continue to favor white applicants, a new study finds.
For many working-class Americans, cars are a burden and a necessity.
People living in tents has become one of the most urgent issues in American politics.
Robert Greenstein isn’t a household name. But his career lobbying for the poor has changed the lives of millions of Americans.