The Cato Institute
Handbook on Affordability
Why Everything Feels So Expensive
The Cato Institute Handbook on Affordability explains what caused today’s cost-of-living squeeze and how long-standing government policies in housing, energy, health care, transportation, childcare, food, and college costs make things worse. Prices are up. We’ve all felt it. But not every high price has the same cause. This handbook separates economy-wide inflation from barriers to supply and competition—and provides practical policy solutions that could make your life more affordable.
Inside the Handbook
Six Essential Areas. Independent Analysis. Real Solutions.
Written by Cato economists and policy experts, this handbook shows how government policy barriers keep core household expenses inflated. These six sections highlight some of the biggest affordability pain points and the pro-market reforms that could ease them.
Housing
How zoning, permitting delays, parking mandates, minimum lot sizes, and construction-input tariffs choke off supply and drive up rents and home prices.
Energy
How regulatory uncertainty, input tariffs, permitting problems, and state energy mandates can push utility bills and fuel costs higher than they need to be.
Health Care
Why subsidies and mandates often raise underlying costs, and how insurance deregulation, expanding clinician supply, and more drug competition could improve affordability.
Childcare
How staff-ratio rules, credential mandates, zoning barriers, visa limits, and other regulations reduce options and raise the cost of raising kids.
Food
How sugar protections, farm-input tariffs, labor restrictions, fuel mandates, marketing orders, and local zoning rules drive up grocery prices long before food reaches the shelf.
Higher Education
Why federal aid and accreditation barriers have helped fuel tuition growth, and how stronger competition could expand lower-cost options for students.
Edited By
Handbook Contributors
and more
Why this Handbook
One Cost Squeeze. Two Kinds of Causes.
There’s no shortage of debate about affordability. What’s harder to find is a guide that separates post-2021 inflation from the policies that keep specific goods and services unnecessarily expensive. This handbook does that.
It begins with monetary and fiscal policy, then turns to the laws and regulations that raise costs in housing, energy, health care, transportation, childcare, food, higher education, and more, before describing the free market reforms that could bring them down.
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Independent Research Since 1977
For more than 40 years, the Cato Institute has been an independent, nonpartisan think tank advancing individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. To maintain our independence, we don’t take government funding.
Our scholars work across a wide range of policy areas, sharing solutions in plain language rather than jargon, and finding common ground with people across the political spectrum. The goal is a freer, more prosperous society built on principles most Americans can agree on.