Pew Charitable Trusts

Fathers’ rights groups, such as the National Parents Organization, are pushing the proposals, arguing that they will give fathers a better chance at a fair ruling and pointing to new research that shows how joint custody may be better than sole custody for children’s health.

Health care for aging prisoners costs far more than it does for younger ones, just as it does outside prison walls. Corrections departments across the country report that health care for older prisoners costs between four and eight times what it does for younger prisoners.

They’re poor, more likely to be sexually abused, end up in foster care, drop out of school, become homeless. They’re often the prey of traffickers.

Safe injection sites, which also connect clients to treatment programs and offer emergency care to reverse overdoses, exist in 27 cities in other parts of the world. Some have been around for decades.

Initially, some objected to making naloxone widely available, arguing that it would simply enable more drug addicts to continue shooting up. Now that more Americans are dying of heroin and prescription painkiller overdoses than from homicides — roughly 28,000 people in 2014 — that argument rarely comes up.

Most of the machines, adopted by local governments after “hanging chads” left the 2000 presidential election in the balance for weeks, are at least a decade old. And they create a perilous situation: an equipment breakdown on Election Day could mean long lines, potentially leaving some people unable to vote.

Seven percent of community college dropouts leave because of an unplanned pregnancy, according to the American Association of Community Colleges.

Schools nationwide are reporting teacher shortages that go beyond the chronic struggle to fill positions at low-income schools and in subjects such as science and special education. Oklahoma, where education funding has been slashed, may be the hardest hit state.

As sales tax collections slow and the nation becomes a service-based economy, many states are considering expanding the universe of goods and, especially, services that are subject to the sales tax.

As affordable housing vanishes for low- and middle-income Americans, lawmakers in Minnesota and other states are being forced to look for ways to encourage new construction and ease a housing crunch that increasingly eats up more of people’s income.