/sites/default/files/styles/banner_image/public/default_images/inside-page-banner_2_1.jpg?itok=Er8q0C-3
Fellow 2019-20

Benjamin Marx

Economics

Marx image
From Lester M. Salamon and Chelsea L. Newhouse, “The 2019 Nonprofit Employment Report,” Nonprofit Economic Data Bulletin #47. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, January 2019). Available at ccss.jhu.edu.

Quantitative Analysis of the Nonprofit Economy

Nonprofit organizations provide a wide variety of services, including arts, education, and healthcare. Estimates suggest that the nonprofit sector has been growing faster than the rest of the U.S. economy for several decades. Income inequality has also grown over this period. Are these phenomena related? Has one trend caused the other, or perhaps mitigated the other? What explains the rapid growth of the nonprofit economy, and what are its effects?

This research will describe the scope of the U.S. nonprofit sector using data from the IRS and U.S. Census Bureau, including confidential administrative data that can only be accessed in a small number of Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (FSRDC). The project will examine the quality of publicly available data and will study determinants of growth of a community’s nonprofit sector and its effects.