HERITAGE CENTER FOR DATA ANALYSIS

William W. Beach, Director

The CDA has created one of the largest collections of privately held public policy databases in the United States, which the Center employs to analyze policy changes ranging from taxes to welfare. The Center constructs these databases largely from publicly available, federal data on important economic, social, and cultural aspects of American life. These databases frequently are used to estimate the likely effects of policy changes on such key dimensions of everyday life as marriage rates, income growth, educational attainment, and retirement decisions.

Center economists use specially developed models of the federal tax system, Social Security, and a wide range of other major programs to estimate how large and small policy changes will affect the federal budget, the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans and behavioral changes to individuals. The Center shares its analysis of proposed legislation with policymakers in and out of government, members of Congress and their staff, officials within the executive branch, and the public policy community.

The CDA specializes in estimating the economic effects of policy changes through an integrated set of econometric models developed by Global Insight and maintained by the CDA. For example, Heritage analysts use the Global Insight U.S. Macroeconomic Model, one of the major models used by leading government agencies to gauge a policy’s effects on the national economy and households. The Center traces these national effects to individual businesses and states through the Global Insight model, special models developed by the Center, and other publicly available federal databases.

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