Our latest dataset is Title I Education Grants. See how much your state and county received from this federal program to help improve teaching and learning in high-poverty schools.

If we want to have a say in how our tax dollars are spent, we need to have a say in who represents us. Fortunately, we do have a say in who represents us – in theory, at least. In practice, a majority of Americans of voting age don’t have any role in determining their representation. According to the Census Bureau, just 37 percent of eligible voters actually voted in the 2010 midterm elections. Frankly, that stinks.

Unemployment rose sharply following the start of the Great Recession in 2007. At the same time, enrollment in Medicaid increased as Americans who were hard-hit in the economic downturn qualified for the health insurance program for low-income Americans. Medicaid enrollment rose from 16.6 percent of the under-65 population in 2007 to 20.6 percent in 2010.

This is a guest post from Hudson Hollister, Executive Director of the Data Transparency Coalition and former Counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. President Obama appears to agree that the Recovery.gov model is the future of federal spending transparency. In June 2011, he established a new panel of ...

This is a guest post from Hudson Hollister, Executive Director of the Data Transparency Coalition and former Counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Three and a half years ago, Congress passed the federal stimulus law, which required 28 federal agencies to spend hundreds of billions of ...

The Challenge NPP is participating in the Knight News Challenge, seeking funding for the mobile piece of our new Backyard Budget project. Please help us strengthen our proposal by reading it and telling us what you think; you can do this on the News Challenge website. What is Backyard Budget ...

To accompany this week’s look at employment numbers, we’ve updated last year’s unemployment and underemployment story from NPP’s Federal Priorities Database. The chart below compares unemployment rates to underemployment rates. Underemployment is a number that not only counts the unemployed but also counts people no longer looking for work and ...

Housing occupancy data (vacant vs occupied and owners vs renters) are now current through 2010.

It’s late Friday afternoon. A young worker sitting at his desk receives his first paycheck. “Oh. Wow,” he exclaims, “My first paycheck!” His eyes move quickly to his take-home pay. “Man, I hate taxes,” he grumbles. But his feisty paycheck talks back, offering to tell him the story of the ...

SNAP participation and monthly benefits data are now current through fiscal year 2011.