Reports And Briefings

Introduction

The last quarter century has seen a dramatic increase in grade inflation on student report cards in elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States. So much so that a student’s grade point average (GPA), which was once as useful as SAT or ACT scores, has become almost worthless as a predictor of how well the student would do in college or graduate school. And high school graduation rates have continued climbing even as the 12th-Grade results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have remained stagnant or even declined. There has also been a notable decline in disciplinary actions by schools for student misconduct or lack of application.

Progressive education reformers have sought to make family background less of a determinant of how well a student does in school. Yet evidence from two nationwide household surveys of parents conducted nearly a quarter of a century apart demonstrate that family factors, such as marital stability, parent education, family income, and race and ethnicity, are as important as ever—or even more so

Housing is a core part of the family formation process, yet surprisingly little is known about what kinds of houses Americans want for their families. We remedy that gap in our recent report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, which presents evidence from a survey of nearly 9,000 Americans ages 18-54. 

Today, apartments as a share of home construction are at their highest level in decades. This is concerning since, as we show in Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, almost nobody in America wants to raise a family in an apartment. Our survey of almost 9,000 Americans finds a broad-spectrum rejection of apartment living across every single demographic group surveyed.

For decades, one of the dominant trends in American housing geography has been suburbanization, which has always been associated with public narratives around crime. In Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, our survey of almost 9,000 Americans finds that safety is the single most important factor shaping the housing decisions of young families. No amount of affordability or amenities will ever be enough to convince a family that a neighborhood where they feel unsafe is a great place to raise kids.  

Introduction

Our report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, presents evidence that local land-use regulations worsen housing affordability for young families. These regulations include: floor-area ratios set at very low levels, high parking requirements, height limits, and convoluted permitting processes. This fact sheet explores how land-use regulations affect housing affordability and fertility.  

Introduction

Our report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, highlights one set of policies that imperil housing affordability: urban growth boundaries. UGBs are rules or policies setting hard limits about where land can be developed, with development beyond those limits requiring hard-to-get special exemptions or permissions. In some areas, UGBs are impenetrable barriers, while in others they simply increase development cost and restrict how much housing can be built on undeveloped land. This fact sheet explores UGBs.

In times of revolutionary technological change such as our own, it is challenging to preserve and extol what is distinctly human. This is especially the case when the technological change is state-sponsored, as AI is becoming under the Trump Administration. In his recent executive order, President Trump stated that his administration seeks “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”²  We praise the Trump Administration for foregrounding human flourishing as a primary policy objective in its quest for AI superiority and for seeking to direct federal efforts to promote its advancement.

Though promoting human flourishing is first on the list of priorities for how to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance, much of the deepest thinking around AI has focused on the administration’s latter two policy goals, i.e., economic competitiveness and national security. While these three goals are fundamentally interrelated, human flourishing cannot be simply reduced to economic and military dominance.

Our comment seeks to offer guidance regarding the administration’s first AI policy goal: the promotion of human flourishing. As we and others have outlined in “A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right,” a statement that has garnered the support of dozens of eminent conservative leaders alongside prominent technologists, human flourishing depends on a culture of thriving families.³ The family begets human children, and it is unmatched in its natural ability to raise them to be healthy and productive. In other words, there can be no policy to promote human flourishing that does not have the objective of empowering and advancing the well-being of families. Conversely, any technological program that undermines the family is opposed to human flourishing. We echo Vice President Vance’s hope that AI can “make people more productive, more prosperous, and more free,” as he put it in his February 11, 2025, speech at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, France. But as the president’s executive order underscores, ensuring that human flourishing is advanced in the era of AI will require the government to make deliberate policy choices.

We recommend the following five policy actions: 1) establish the President’s Council on Technology and the Family; 2) require family impact and opportunity assessments; 3) incorporate a family-focused strategy and personnel in AI research and development; 4) balance automation with investments in job recovery and skill development; and 5) protect minors from AI-related harms.   

Abstract

American young adults face a housing affordability crisis far more severe than the crisis facing older Americans. Among young adults under age 35, homeownership rates have fallen by almost half since the 1970s, while the rate among older Americans has been comparatively stable. This young adult housing affordability crisis is a major factor suppressing rates of marriage and fertility in the United States, thus imperiling the health, happiness, and long-term demographic outlook for the entire country. Although the current plight of young families has many causes, local, regional, state, and federal housing policies have contributed in damaging ways. 

While our novel survey of over 8,000 Americans ages 18-54 reveals enormous pent-up demand for spacious, single-family housing in safe neighborhoods despite longer commutes or smaller yards, actual land-use regulations increasingly ban this kind of development. Urban growth boundaries prevent expansion into new greenfield developments, even as pro-development “Yes-In-My-Back-Yard” (YIMBY)-style policies focus almost exclusively on small housing units in large buildings, a housing type Americans almost uniformly dislike for their family in our representative survey.

In order to tackle falling fertility and marriage rates, policymakers must tackle restrictive housing policies, particularly those policies that prevent the construction of commercially-developed, efficiently-arranged, reasonably-priced single-family homes. To that end, this IFS report provides policy recommendations for every level of authority ranging from neighborhood HOAs to the federal government, with specific advice on how to ensure that government policies persistently create affordable housing for all Americans—especially young adults hoping to transition into family life.

What is the Family Structure Index?

The Family Structure Index is a measure of the most important family structure trends in the US, focusing on each state’s share of adult residents who are married, have children, and raise those children together through their high-school years.

How was the Index Calculated?

The index was calculated for each state by: 1) The percentage of married adults aged 25 to 54, 2) The average number of lifetime births per woman. 3) The percentage of children aged 15 to 17 who are living with their married parents.

What Does the Index Score Mean?

Index scores higher than 60 indicate that the state is above the national average in at least one of the components. Index scores lower than 60 mean the state is below average in at least one area

What is the American dream? It is a “better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank,” in the words of James Truslow Adams, the historian who coined the term just over a century ago. Adams knew it would be hard to sustain the dream. That is why every generation must strive, he wrote, to “save the dream from the forces which appeared to be overwhelming and dispelling it.”¹

In our day, we know that ordinary citizens’ faith in the American dream is diminished. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found only one in three of U.S. adults feels the American dream still “holds true” compared to half of those polled in 2012.² There are good reasons for this. For many Americans, life is not “better, richer, and happier.” In this century, “deaths of despair”—with ordinary Americans dying because of suicide, drug overdoses, or alcohol poisoning—have surged, even as reports of hope and happiness among the American people have fallen.³

Although the precarious state of the dream can be attributed in part to changes in the nation’s economy, one of the biggest, unheralded forces “dispelling” the American dream is the falling

fortunes of the American family. Recent research from Gallup and the University of Chicago, for instance, suggests that the nation’s retreat from marriage is one of the most important factors driving deaths of despair up and happiness down across America.⁴

This research could not be more relevant for the state of Ohio. Right now, the American dream is out of reach for too many men, women, and children across Ohio. Tens of thousands of men and women in the state have lost their lives to suicide, drugs, and alcohol in the last decade, such that the state ranks third in deaths of despair.⁵ As Figure 1 (page IV) indicates, 17% of Ohio children are poor, putting the state in the top third (15th) of states for child poverty. And the state ranks in the bottom quintile when it comes to hope.⁶ So, when it comes to guaranteeing a “better, richer, and happier life” for all families, Ohio clearly has a ways to go.

One key to saving the dream in Ohio is to strengthen and stabilize family life across the state. This is especially important because Ohio ranks 29th on the new Family Structure Index from Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) and the Institute for Family Studies (IFS). The index, which is based on trends in marriage, family stability, and fertility and is introduced for the first time in this report, indicates that the state falls below average on key indicators of family strength.

Ohio’s below-average standing on the Family Structure Index matters because this report will show how closely the fortunes of Ohio families are tied to educational success, poverty, and the emotional well-being of children across the state, how strong families are tied to safer streets, how closely connected economic mobility for poor children is to the state of the unions in their communities across the state, and how falling fertility imperils the demographic future of the state, as Ohio media outlets have recently noted.⁷ Moreover, given the importance of the family for children, adults, and the state as a whole, this report from Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies also spells out a series of public policies and civic measures the legislature, businesses, churches, and families can advance to renew the foundations of marriage and family across the state. We do so because we want every Ohioan—men, women, and especially children—to have a shot at the “better, richer, and happier life” that the American dream offers.

1. David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream. (Random House, 2023): xii.
2. Rachel Wolfe, “The American Dream Feels Out of Reach for Most.” Wall Street Journal. (August 2024).
3. Carol Graham, “America’s crisis of despair.” Brookings Institution. (January 2021).
   Sam Peltzman, “The Socio-Political Demography of Happiness.” U Chicago Stigler Center. (October 2023).
4. Peltzman, “The Socio-Political Demography.” Jonathan Rothwell, “Married People are Living Their Best Lives.” Institute for Family Studies. (February 2024).
5. Susan Hayes, David Radley, et al., “States of Despair.” The Commonwealth Fund. (August 2018).
6. “The Geography of Hope and Desperation in America: An Interactive Vulnerability Indicator.” Brookings Institution. January 2023.
7. Mark Williams, “Ohio’s population projections are dire. Why are so many counties left behind?” Columbus Dispatch. October 2024. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2024/10/13/ohio-projections-show-most-counties-will-lose-population-by-2050/74710065007/;
   Samantha Hendrickson, “Ohio’s baby bust: Why young Buckeyes are having kids at the lowest rate in history,” Columbus Dispatch. October 2024.  https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2024/10/20/ohios-birth-rate-is-low-why-arent-buckeyes-having-kids/75071740007/