Emily Badger

The wage gap between the sexes in America has been closing much faster than anyone realized, but that’s tempered by learning it’s been much wider than measurements had shown.

Transportation used to be one of the few guaranteed areas of agreement when ideology trumped pragmatism in D.C. But that’s no longer the case.

A lot of people say they watch the Super Bowl mostly for the ads. But it turns out a good game surrounding those ads makes them seem better.

After decades of obstacles hindering the voting process, new laws will allow overseas and military voters to submit their votes in time for the 2012 election.

Rather than moaning about too many cars on the road, the Ridesharing Institute says the real key to battling traffic congestion and pollution is filling empty passenger seats.

Researchers looking at how we fixate on threats uncover more evidence of a biological component to the red-blue divide.

A report from The Sentencing Project argues that a primary driver for privatizing corrections isn’t really paying off.

The Research Works Act would prevent publicly funded research from automatically being available to the public for free. Private publishers back the bill, while open-access partisans are appalled.

For decades, academics have been running a lively prediction market in political aspirations. But now commodities traders have proposed actually selling options on presidential candidates.

Although they can’t put their finger on what a Republican looks like, when GOP voters think someone looks Republican, that candidate gets more votes.

The divide between new technology and what the government understands about it threatens the U.S., says Clay Johnson of Expert Labs.

An astronomer and an economist suggest the world would be a more sensible place if it dropped floating days of the week and leap years by switching to their Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar.

A new scorecard for violence prevention in Los Angeles puts hard numbers on hard problems, and does it for every ZIP code in the sprawling city.

Despite evidence that needle exchange programs for drug users slow the spread of AIDS, the new U.S. government spending bill once again defunds such programs.

In a lesson taught by schools of fish, researchers determine that uninformed individuals are actually a benefit to democracy by sanding off extreme views.

After swooning over promises that science would always trump politics in his administration, some observers are troubled by President Obama’s decisions on smog and contraception.

Efforts to slow obesity by taxing sodas hit the wrong target, argue three economists who propose a better-aimed tax on sugar and syrup that even they admit still sidesteps the real problem.

Political scientists have determined that labeling supporters of stands that otherwise might be unassailable can have a sleazy efficacy, although not everyone falls for tactic.

While for-profit higher education draws federal ire over student loans and unrealistic promises, the sector still fills an important vocational niche.

Law professor David Friedman offers a libertarian thought experiment in which the concept of law — i.e. rights enforcement — is determined by the marketplace, and not the political process.

The upward spiral in U.S. health insurance costs is especially acute for employers that offer the benefit and employees shouldering more of their own costs.

For years Americans having been moving long distances less and less, but the current bad times are pushing the percentages to post-World War II lows.

The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court debate on health-care reform offers a prime time to start televising its hearings and allowing cameras in the courtroom.

An experiment demonstrates the death by a thousand cuts that could result from across-the-board cuts that would follow a deadline fumble by the U.S. deficit “super committee.”

A better reading of American poverty by the Census Bureau shows more are poor than thought, but also that aid programs and tax credits can make a difference.

The next generation of political fact checking will offer humor and quicker turnarounds without further propagating the underlying deception.

The U.S. military is paying more attention to the culture of the places where it fights, putting a new weapon in its arsenal, according to both soldiers and academics.

In a discouraging post mortem, it turns out neither the U.S. economy nor the environment really benefited from the 2009 “cash for clunkers” car-trading scheme.

Decentralized regulation in the gun-friendly U.S. creates ample opportunities for guns to leech from lightly regulated areas to stricter locales.

Europe forges ahead on tackling greenhouse gas emissions, but the U.S. wants to ground certain rules that affect its airlines.

Backers of a move to add utility bills into home-loan considerations say it will boost energy conservation and create lots of jobs that can’t be exported.

The Obama campaign’s adept use of technology in the 2008 election created not a permanent edge but a permanent path for others to follow, suggest two professors.

Popular movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party suggest that mass demonstrations have moved from the last resort of the powerless to the first resort of the newly empowered.

Might it be that the traits and culture of the first nonnative colonizers in North America have left an indelible mark on the local society where they settled?

A new study, released on the 10th anniversary of the start of America’s longest war, highlights the widening disconnect between the nation’s troops and its civilians.

While they may not have what it takes to win the White House, third parties have been responsible for putting up many of the road signs to future policy directions.

Two political scientists review a survey of perceptions about the U.S. Supreme Court and find the public may actually want the justices to trade their black robes for red and blue ones.

With women still a minority among tenure-track researchers, the National Science Foundation unveils a raft of policies to keep women in science and engineering research careers.

The fight over whether the Internet should have a meter has created some unexpected alliances in the groups lobbying the FCC.

The argument that taxing the rich is bad because they’re responsible for making jobs has some merit, says a researcher, but only for a subset of the wealthy — those funding start-ups.

A researcher who compared the Netherlands’ marijuana use with that of other European countries and the U.S. finds the Dutch regime of tolerated small sales of cannabis does not lead to a drug free-for-all.

A new report finds that Washington’s recent — but still limited — interest in rigorously evaluating government programs is both encouraging and unprecedented.

The U.S. intelligence community wants to mine lots and lots of the tidbits bopping around on the Internet to suss out trends before they make the news.

While giving the public notice of sex offenders living in their midst reduces sex crime overall, it doesn’t seem to keep convicted offenders from striking again.

How far can federal regulators go in cramming ugly — if accurate — messages onto packs of cigarettes over the objections of the tobacco companies that sell them?

As the U.S. Congress prepares to weigh a new round of massive budget cuts mandated by this summer’s deal on the deficit, some odd bedfellows offer a suite of suggestions for saving green by being green.

Welfare reform, 15 years old this week, was designed to get the structurally poor into jobs. What happens when there are lots more poor and lots fewer jobs?

While saving the world’s threatened languages may seem informed more by nostalgia than need, federally funded researchers say each tongue may include unique concepts with practical value.

Despite cries to crack down on illegal immigration, a new analysis suggests that border crossings from Mexico have been falling for years and border crimes are less common than national average.

While the Obama administration pushes forward the idea of a “reverse boot camp” for veterans mustering out, economists say these unemployed vets aren’t all that different from civilian jobless.