This report provides preliminary statistics on key items from the annual prison data collection. Statistics include all prisoners under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities and those sentenced to more than one year under the same authorities from 2012 to 2022. The report found that the U.S. prison population was 1,230,100 on December 31, 2022, a 2% increase from 2021 (1,205,100). At yearend 2022, persons sentenced to more than one year under the legal authority of state and federal correctional authorities accounted for 96% (1,185,500) of the total U.S. prison population. Additionally, at yearend 2022, 32% of persons sentenced to state or federal prison were black, while 31% were white, 23% Hispanic, 10% multiracial or some other race, 2% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 1% Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander.

This brief examines current research on the overlapping risk factors for veteran suicide and justice system involvement, as well as some unique effects that criminal justice contact may have on veteran suicide. The brief provides six key takeaways about veteran suicide risk, noting that the suicide rate for veterans is roughly 1.5 times higher than that for the general population, and approximately 31% of veterans have been arrested at some point in their lives, compared to 18% of non-veterans. In addition to justice system involvement, the brief also highlights five overlapping risk factors for veteran suicide: traumatic brain injury, military sexual trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, homelessness, and bad paper discharge. The authors conclude that contact with the criminal justice system could be utilized as an intervention point for suicide prevention efforts.

This study seeks to address the extent to which pretrial release conditions are associated with pretrial risk, and the potential of these conditions to maximize court appearances and minimize pretrial crime by examining the imposition of pretrial conditions on 223,260 released federal defendants. In the federal system, defendants placed on pretrial release may have multiple conditions imposed on them, which are aimed at ensuring court appearances and maintaining public safety. The results show that defendants received an average of about nine conditions and that the association between conditions and a defendant’s pretrial risk classification was relatively modest. The results also show conditions having no significant relationship with reductions in the likelihood of pretrial crime or missed court appearances for most federal defendants. However, the findings do show that conditions are associated with higher rates of pretrial failure (i.e., rearrests) for defendants designated low risk by the federal pretrial risk assessment tool as well as enhanced levels of revocations irrespective of risk.

This set of provisional web tables include fully edited and imputed data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2022 collection, which included three survey components: Institutional Characteristics for the 2022-23 academic year, Completions covering the period July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022, and data on 12-Month Enrollment for the 2021-22 academic year. Florida is in the top ten states for 12-month enrollment at degree-granting Title IV institutions (Title IV institutions are higher education institutions that process federal student aid). Average tuition and fees for academic year 2020-21 ranged from $8,487 per academic year for in-state students at public institutions to $30,065 for private, nonprofit institutions. In 2019-20, 57% of award recipients at 4-year Title IV degree-granting institutions were bachelor’s degrees (62% for public institutions, 52% for private, non-profit institutions, and 40% for private, for-profit institutions).

This study investigates the impacts of California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)-induced increases in per-pupil spending on student achievement and behavioral and attainment outcomes. The LCFF allocates state funding by the proportion of unduplicated high-need students in the district (students from low-income families, English learners, and youth in foster care). The goal of LCFF was to reduce academic achievement gaps between socioeconomically disadvantaged children and their more advantaged counterparts by committing $18 billion in increased state support, allocated based on pupil needs, to be incrementally distributed over 8 years. To examine the impact of increased funding on student outcomes, this study links district- and school-level information on school resources and per-pupil spending with longitudinal student data for the full universe of public school students in California who were first observed in kindergarten and followed as they progressed through the K–12 school system. The results indicate that a $1,000 increase in per-pupil spending experienced for 3 consecutive years through the LCFF led to a full grade-level improvement in both math and reading achievement, relative to what the average student achieved prior to the funding increases. Additionally, this increase in per-pupil spending resulted led to a 9.8 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of meeting college readiness standards in math and a 14.7 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of meeting college readiness standards in reading. The spending was also associated with improvements in student achievement, decreased suspensions and expulsions, and reduced probability of grade repetition.

In this report, the authors provide a preliminary look at the Improving Pre-Engineering and Computer Science Education Through Micro-Credentialing project to develop and implement micro-credentials as a means of providing scalable, competency-based certification of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching skills in Louisiana. For this project, the RAND Corporation partnered with the Louisiana Department of Education, Louisiana State University (LSU), and BloomBoard, Inc. (BBI), to develop 18 micro-credentials giving teachers the opportunity to demonstrate competency in STEM instructional topics related to pre-engineering, digital design and emergent media, and computer science. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the development of these micro-credentials (beginning in fall 2019) and the first year of the implementation of the micro-credentials with participating teachers in the 2021–2022 school year, as well as lessons learned to support those who are developing or implementing micro-credentials in other settings. The report finds that teachers saw value in the micro-credentials to their teaching, even when they had not completed them. Furthermore, teachers noted the usefulness of feedback that they received from assessors and the helpfulness of supports provided by LSU and BBI. However, few participating teachers completed more than one micro-credential, although the study goal was for teachers to complete six to eight micro-credentials per year. Although most teachers agreed that 10-15 hours per micro-credential was reasonable for completing each credential, teachers struggled to find enough time to complete them. Teachers suggested that they might have been able to make more progress if they had been able to collaborate with and receive some support from their peers in completing the micro-credentials.

About 1.4 million manufacturing jobs were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic but the industry was already facing a potential labor crisis — a projected 2.1 million unfulfilled jobs by 2030 resulting from a lack of skilled labor, according to a study by the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte. Now that the pandemic emergency has ended, the industry has more jobs to fill and is actively seeking highly skilled workers. The NAM study shows that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have a growing influence on workforce trends and can help manufacturers fill these empty jobs. U.S. Census Bureau data also show diversity trends playing a larger role in the manufacturing sector. The Census Bureau’s Job-to-Job Flows Explorer shows us that the number of workers changing jobs to go into manufacturing in each of the race groups (Black or African-American alone, Asian alone, etc.) increased from 2019 to 2022. Additionally, according to the Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators Explorer Tool, the number of workers in each race category steadily increased from 2014 until 2020, relative to manufacturing employment in 1993. In 2020 there was a brief dip, but the employment growth resumed in 2021 and 2022. . At the top of the employment hierarchy, business ownership in manufacturing became more diverse, a sign that diversity initiatives may have had an impact. According to the 2021 Annual Business Survey, women owned 36,453 of the 240,194 Manufacturing Sector employer firms in the United States. In addition, 34,452 were co-owned by women and men with each owning equal shares of the company. There were 23,911 minority-owned employer firms in 2020 and 3,402 were equally owned by minorities and non-minorities. The breakdown by race and ethnicity: (1) 10,988 Hispanic-owned; (2) 1,557 Black or African American-owned; and (3) 10,456 Asian-owned.

This report reviews the federal role in supporting the financing of manufactured housing and examines trends in the use of federal financing for manufactured housing and federal efforts to assess and improve financing options. The report found that the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Veterans Affairs, and Agriculture administer loan guarantee programs for manufactured housing. Federal agency financing of manufactured homes increased for mortgages, but not for personal property loans in recent years. Additionally, the report found that few personal property loans were made because these loans are capped at an amount lower than the average purchase price of a manufactured home. The report recommends that HUD implements planned changes to increase financing options for manufactured homes, including identifying options for greater securitization of mortgage and personal property loans, and establishes time frames and milestones for actions.

This brief provides background on trends in debt holding among older Americans and addresses three key questions: 1) As more older households carry debt in retirement, what share are at high-risk and low-risk of financial hardship? 2) Is the growth in debt holding driven by the high- or low-risk households? and 3) What are the different types of high-risk households? The findings show that that high-risk borrowers are driving the growth in debt. The authors identify four groups of high-risk borrowers with different characteristics: (1) financially constrained households with low levels of wealth, (2) credit card borrowers that are middle-wealth households with no obvious need to borrow, (3) low/middle-wealth households whose house has become a large liability and constraint on their income in retirement, and (4) wealthy spenders for which about a quarter of their income goes to debt payments. The authors conclude that the debt burdens of high-risk borrowers are cause for concern, but a one-size-fits-all solution does not exist, so targeted interventions would be most effective.

who have had COVID-19 may continue to have symptoms or develop new symptoms months after being infected with SARS-CoV-2. This can lead to long-term health and economic impacts on those affected and on society. This report uses data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey to describe the percentage of adults who ever had or had Long COVID at the time of interview (currently have Long COVID) by sociodemographic and geographic characteristics. Long COVID was defined as self-reporting the presence of symptoms for at least 3 months after having COVID-19 among those who reported either a positive test or a doctor’s diagnosis of COVID-19. Key findings from the report include that in 2022, 6.9% of adults ever had Long COVID and 3.4% had Long COVID at the time of interview (currently have Long COVID); women were more likely than men to ever have or currently have Long COVID. Adults ages 35–49 were the age group most likely to ever have (8.9%) or currently have (4.7%) Long COVID. The percentage of adults who ever had or currently had Long COVID varied by race and Hispanic origin. Adults with family incomes at 400% or more of the federal poverty level were less likely than those with family incomes at 200%–399% to ever have or currently have Long COVID. The percentage of adults who ever had Long COVID was lower in large central metropolitan areas compared with medium and small metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. Current Long COVID was lowest in large central metropolitan areas.

This report describes the ongoing work to engage fathers and paternal relatives through a collaborative learning approach called a Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) as part of the Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare (FCL) project, and to assess the potential contributions of the FCL BSC to lasting change. Six teams representing child welfare agencies in Connecticut, Colorado, California, and North Carolina received support through BSC FCL to develop and test strategies to improve the engagement of fathers and paternal relatives in child welfare services. The descriptive evaluation described in this report aimed to assess the progress agencies made in supporting such engagement in three outcome domains: (1) organizational cultures and networks; (2) staff skills and attitudes; and (3) documented changes in father and paternal relative engagement outcomes, such as levels of identification, engagement in child welfare activities, and the extent to which their needs are assessed and addressed. The descriptive evaluation also documented potentially promising strategies that agencies developed and continued to use after the conclusion of the FCL BSC. The report found that the FCL BSC helped agencies develop new strategies and continue existing efforts; child welfare staff reported improved paternal engagement and that their agencies had become more intentional about working with fathers and paternal relatives; and staff felt that participating in the FCL BSC was a valuable experience, helping them focus on addressing challenges in service provision, identifying solutions with support from experts and other agencies, creating new partnerships and reinforcing existing ones, and laying a foundation for changes in practice and culture.

This brief presents findings from research on equitable access to early care and education (ECE) supports. Early care and education includes both formal and informal non-parental care for children from birth to age 5 who are not yet in kindergarten. Families with low and middle incomes have lower rates of participation in ECE and experience gaps in affordability, including an inequitable cost burden within the current ECE system. Subsidized ECE stems from a variety of federal, state, and local funding sources, but in 2018 only 15% of all children eligible under federal rules and 23% of all children eligible under state rules received subsidized child care. The findings from this research indicate that reducing the burden associated with applying and enrolling in ECE can help families that face barriers related to language or access to technology. Additionally, strategically increasing the ECE supply in geographic regions with insufficient access may strengthen equitable access to ECE. Furthermore, stabilizing the ECE supply with financial support and training can lead to more sustainable, higher-quality ECE providers.