News Updates

Providing a guaranteed basic income for people experiencing poverty can improve their immediate and future lives, advocates of the approach argue. Writing in Issues, Jiaying Zhao, Yuen Pau Woo, and Lorne Whitehead see the potential—and extend the discussion. They describe regular cash payments as among a handful of effective policy tools for fighting persistent poverty. To help policymakers in choosing their best options, the authors call for “a significant governmental investment in research to test various promising combinations of programs to lift the most disadvantaged people out of poverty while maintaining a vibrant and innovative economy.”

In the latest US outbreak of measles, at least six new cases have been confirmed in a Florida elementary school, and health officials point to the area’s lower-than-average vaccination rate as a contributing factor. In Issues, Daniel Hicks examines why some people resist vaccinations—or take other stances, such as denial of climate change, that run contrary to scientific consensus. Their views often “aren’t actually about the science,” he argues, but rather represent “proxy politics” prompted by deeper social and economic disagreements. Ultimately, Hicks notes, scientists and policymakers need to keep these gaps in mind in seeking effective public solutions.

Artificial intelligence is changing everyday life in countless ways, the online magazine POLITICO reports, and government at all levels is trying—and struggling—to keep pace. Issues has help to offer. In a special collection, experts in the social sciences and humanities explore policy and research options for managing the interactions between AI and society. In one essay, for example, Mike Ananny argues that we should reject assertions that AI can be managed only by technologists. Instead, consumers, developers, and policymakers alike should cast AI as a “public problem” to be collectively debated, accounted for, and steered for the common good.

North Carolina is the latest state to join a nascent initiative to help people who have been incarcerated successfully reenter society by providing them with expanded education, health care, and housing before and after their release. In Issues, Stefan F. LoBuglio and Anne Morrison Piehl take a deep look at the need for action, challenges involved, and how-to lessons gained from research and experience. “Unwinding mass incarceration will neither be cheap nor easy,” they write, “and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.”