Information alone is insufficient for increasing low-income children’s math test skills or parental engagement in math activities. The provision of materials in concert with messaging to dissuade parents from procrastinating is effective at increasing scores and parental engagement, as are digital math apps.

From 2019 to early 2023, the share of job postings offering remote work for one or more days per week rose more than three-fold in the United States and by a factor of five or more in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Goal-setting messages led to an increase in parent reading time but had no effect on literacy skills, while reminder messages led to a decrease in literacy skills, despite no significant difference in reading time; also, technology may help boost reading skills of low-income children.

This work sheds new light on the underrepresentation of minority and poor households in scientific studies; analysis of a recent COVID-19 serological study suggests that hesitancy to participate is key.

While most approaches to early childhood development (ECD) programs focus on finding the “best program” to implement, this paper focuses on common mechanisms and relationships that transport across environments to reveal the power of fostering parenting or parental investment as essential to effective ECD.

Without additional action we should expect to lose an average of at least $800 billion every year to future pandemics. Investing to expand vaccine production so that we could vaccinate 70% of the global population against a new virus within six months would cost $60 billion up front and $5 billion a year and generate an expected net present value of over $400 billion. If the US went it alone it would generate $47 billion in net benefits or $141 per head, just from the first significant pandemic.

More than 10 percent of Americans with recent work experience will continue social distancing after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, and another 46 percent will do so in limited ways, with older persons, women, the less educated, lower wage earners, and “face-to-face” workers more inclined to social distance.

Based on surveys in 27 countries, this work finds that the pandemic catalyzed a shift to work from home (WFH) around the world, concentrated among college-educated workers. Workers value the option to WFH 2-3 days a week at five percent of pay, on average. Employer plans for WFH levels after the pandemic rise with individual-level productivity in WFH mode and with the cumulative stringency of government-mandated pandemic lockdowns during the pandemic.