In a long-anticipated move, President Obama announced a new College Scorecard to better inform prospective students’ college choices. According to some estimates, 41 percent of students say they can’t find enough helpful information to make their college decisions. Our own work with low-income students revealed that in the absence of easy, useful information about college options, students often […]
This post is part of a series about Poverty Interrupted, ideas42’s groundbreaking effort to bring a behavioral science approach to the problem of intergenerational poverty. Imagine that your car is having some trouble and it will cost $150 in service to take care of the problem. Unfortunately, your insurance will only cover 10% of this […]
It’s been an historic week for the world of behavioral science: President Obama has issued an Executive Order encouraging federal agencies to apply behavioral insights in their programs, policies, and operations for the first time ever. Paving the way for this landmark declaration is the successful track record of the White House Social and Behavioral […]
We probably don’t need to tell you, savvy reader, that behavioral science is fascinating. The insights on human behavior that have come from the last few decades of research are not only profound and compelling, but can also delight. Take loss aversion. First demonstrated by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, this principle says we dislike […]
In the U.S., 44% of households are considered “liquid asset poor”, lacking savings to cover basic expenses for three months. What would it take to increase the financial resilience of these families? Could you do it with a simple 30-minute phone call? At ideas42, we think so. With funding from MetLife Foundation under its financial […]
ideas42’s network of academic affiliates represent some of the world’s foremost experts in behavioral science. With the ideas42 Affiliate Series, we invite them to share their insights and what inspires their exploration into human behavior. Our third interview brought one of ideas42’s newest affiliates, Adam S. Levine of Cornell University, to our New York office. Adam’s research […]
For the 45.3 million Americans who struggle to cover basic expenses, living in poverty is costly in terms of time, money, and cognition. Recent research by two of ideas42’s cofounders gives a name to the cognitive costs of poverty: a bandwidth tax, levied by the experience of scarcity. They find that lacking a key resource, […]
ideas42’s network of academic affiliates represent some of the world’s foremost experts in behavioral science. With the ideas42 Affiliate Series, we invite them to share their insights and what inspires their exploration into human behavior. For the second interview of the ideas42 Affiliate Series, we recently invited Anandi Mani to visit our New York office to give […]
Most car owners know that regular oil changes keep their cars running smoothly. Every few months, they visit their local dealerships, service stations or Jiffy Lubes and drive off 15 minutes later with the maintenance complete. But what if places like Jiffy Lube didn’t provide direct services? What if instead they hosted one-hour informational seminars […]
by Eldar Shafir
Like many of us, I’m lucky enough to be able to manage my daily life while devoting just a sliver of my mind to looking after my personal finances. But for lower-income American households, navigating continuously challenging financial situations takes up a significant portion of their time, attention, and cognitive resources. Since we are all […]
This link will direct you to one of our partner sites
