RAND

More than 1 in 5 children report using AI for emotional support. Is this good news or bad? RAND's Ryan McBain discusses.

"I study crime, so I rarely get to deliver good news. This is good news. The generation that filled our prisons is aging out, and the generation behind it is not replacing them."

What do we know about how students are using AI? How effective are schools' cell phone policies? And what do schools need to navigate these and other challenges? New Q&A with RAND's Melissa Diliberti:

We're pleased to welcome Amanda Hsiao to RAND. In this role, she will strengthen our research on Taiwan's evolving politics, capacity, and strategic outlook, as well as its interactions with rapidly changing regional and global dynamics.

China controls more than 70% of the world's supply of critical minerals. And Beijing has shown a willingness to weaponize that dominance through export controls. The U.S. has responded with a set of policy tools to secure critical minerals. Which tools work? And what are their trade-offs?

Show of hands: Who remembers taking pre-calculus or calculus in high school? Who remembers thinking “I’m never gonna use this”? A solid grounding in mathematics in high school continues to be important for jobs that pay a family-sustaining wage. Some of these jobs require a 2- or 4-year college degree and some do not. Decisions about math coursetaking are made as early as middle school. We used RAND's American School Leader Panel to ask middle and high school principals about the importance of math relative to students’ postsecondary plans. Secondary principals see Algebra I as important for nearly all students. But the gap widens for advanced courses. It is largest for algebra II, pre-calculus, and calculus, where secondary principals were two times more likely (for Algebra II) and 4-5 times more likely (for calculus and pre-calculus) to say that those courses were important for students planning to attend college.   These findings reveal that principals think about math preparation differently depending on students' college plans — especially for advanced courses. Their views reflect norms for college preparation but may not always align with what students on non-college tracks actually need. So, did those pre-calculus or calculus skills ever come in handy? Questions or want to run an American Educator Panel survey? Reach out to us at surveypanels@rand.org

RAND's Carter Price has an idea for how to give workers an edge in the age of AI: rebalance the tax code so that it doesn't incentivize employers to replace humans.

Making sense of the U.S. critical mineral policy experiment. I’m pleased to announce the release of our new RAND report, Evaluation of U.S. Policies to Increase Domestic Access to Critical Minerals, with Omar Aboulezz, Scott Behmer, and Thomas Blaubach. As China increasingly exploits its dominance of #criticalmineral supply chains, the United States has launched an aggressive, all-of-government industrial policy effort to secure the domestic supply of critical minerals and ensure uninterrupted production in critical markets, such as defense, energy, and manufacturing. But beyond the general objective of securing domestic access to critical minerals, the government has revealed little about why the various tools were chosen, what each is intended to accomplish, and how they are intended to work together. Our analysis set out to help answer those questions. We examined each policy tool in the context of economic theory and historical experience, and we conducted structured interviews with representatives of firms in the critical mineral value chain. We used this information to identify strengths and weaknesses of different tools, the alignment of specific tools with specific segments of the critical mineral value chain, policy tools that are of little interest to industry, and policy gaps that the existing suite of tools does not fill. Some key findings and recommendations include: ➡️ Stockpiling is the only fast path to resilience—every other policy tool examined takes years to significantly strengthen the U.S. critical mineral supply chain. ➡️ Policy design and implementation both matter—uncertainty, lack of transparency, and slow timelines make otherwise sound policy tools less effective. ➡️ Make all critical mineral programs competitive and open to qualified applicants, using objective and transparent eligibility criteria. ➡️ Stop making equity investments in critical mineral producers; low-cost debt achieves similar goals without the governance complications and ownership dilution. ➡️ Extend production tax credits indefinitely; their value depends on durability, and industry will not plan around credits that may disappear before projects reach production. ➡️ Include producer countries in plurilateral trade agreements to secure affordable feedstock access for U.S. refiners until domestic mining capacity expands. ➡️ Match policy tools to the specific market segment and commodity. Download the report here: https://lnkd.in/gPftxhwC

The effects of a policy are best measured in decades, not years. Jeffrey Wenger explains how the RAND Budget Model can quickly estimate what a proposal would cost and the long-term effects it could have on people's lives. The RAND Budget Model is a core capability of the RAND von Furstenberg Family Budget Model Initiative. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4jC0VWI

A new RAND report offers a clear framework for understanding the U.S.-China competition—and how Washington can gain strategic leverage. Learn more about what's at stake in our Weekly Read.