Ripe for Reform

This report examines how Arkansas has advanced community- and family- friendly policies in recent years through Republican and Democrat administrations including major improvements in education, expansion of children’s health care, maintaining a balanced budget and key social services thru two severe recessions, and making the state tax system more fair to low-income families. Barth argues that Arkansas’s ability to take on big policy problems is a tremendous opportunity for the state to advance and serve as a model for other states, but warns that this trend is in jeopardy now as Arkansas’s political discourse becomes more polarized.