Over the last decade and a half, fertility rates in the U.S. have declined from above-replacement at the top of the Great Recession, to below replacement rate a few years later. Since then, fertility rates have continued along a downward trajectory.

More recently, the total fertility rate—a measure of the expected number of children a woman will have if she survives her reproductive years, and a sum of age-specific fertility rates—declined to record lows (1.64) during the pandemic. In 2021, U.S. births ticked up enough to put birth rates inline with their pre-pandemic, downward trend and remain at sub-replacement levels.

For a variety of reasons, sub-replacement level fertility and continued fertility decline have caused concern among researchers and commentators alike. For one thing, assuming that sub-replacement level fertility is sustained, and that it is not mitigated or offset by population momentum, increasing life expectancy, or immigration, population size will decline over time.^[1] This could have economic and fiscal implications, including declining overall GDP or widening solvency issues for major federal programs and public pensions.

Although most commentators focus on recent fertility decline, the history of declining fertility begins much earlier. During the hundred year period from 1800 to 1900, total fertility rates fell from seven children per woman to less than four (Figure 1) and continued to fall. This occurred during a period of rapid economic and social change that included industrialization, urbanization, changes in medicine and mortality, and implementation of compulsory childhood education in most states.

Then, in the first third of the twentieth century, fertility continued to decline, until the total fertility rate fell below the replacement rate prior to the second World War. Americans worried about low fertility in the pre-war years, during the war, and afterwards, though by the end of World War II fertility had begun to rebound. This “baby boom” shocked demographers of the day, who did not forecast it (in fact, quite the opposite, demographers projected a continued downward trend for fertility).

Later, demographers were unable to predict the end of the baby boom. Today, the cause of the baby boom is still debated, with various researchers arguing that factors including technological improvements, women’s labor market opportunities, and wartime mobilization motivated it. Adding to the mystery, the baby boom occurred both in countries that were involved in the war and countries that weren’t.

In addition to experiencing sub-replacement fertility briefly in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, the U.S. also experienced sub-replacement fertility during the three-decade-plus period from 1972 through 2005 (admittedly, during the latter half of this period, the fertility rate was relatively stable and remained close to replacement level).

Although many seem to think of falling fertility as self-evidently negative, some historical context helps to temper this impulse. For instance, during the longest sustained decline in fertility (1800–1940), child mortality dropped by around 86 percent. This arguably motivated at least a portion of the decline in fertility, since under diminishing child mortality, couples did not need to have as many births in order to achieve the same family size.

Similarly, during certain periods of (post-1930s) fertility decline, female labor force participation increased inversely with fertility.^[2] So, as women gained economic and social freedoms and joined the workforce, they also had fewer children. Though there is some debate whether increased labor force participation was a cause or a consequence of fertility decline during this period, women obtaining economic and social freedoms should be celebrated.

Likewise, certain causes of the most recent (2007–2022) fertility decline are not self-evidently negative: a significant portion of the recent decline in fertility is a result of a decline in teen births, which peaked in the ‘90s and fell 75 percent from 1991 until 2020. Teen fertility decline accelerated since 2007, just as U.S. fertility began its most recent decline.

Most people would consider the decline in teen births a positive development, as teenagers do not typically have the financial independence, academic or professional training, emotional development, and/​or a supportive and committed partner that makes caring for an infant easier or even possible. Indeed, in the 90s, the high rate of teen births was a major focus of policy scholarship.

In line with the idea that a significant piece of the recent decline in fertility is due to a decline in teenage births, another paper finds that 35 percent of the decline in fertility in the years between 2007 and 2016 is due to a reduction in unintended births, or births that were either undesired or occurred earlier than the mother would like. If true, a substantial portion of the decline in fertility is a function of women meeting their fertility preferences, not missing them.

Although fertility decline may have economic, fiscal, or social consequences, it is critical that information consumers and policymakers understand that fertility does not always decline for nefarious reasons. The history of U.S. fertility helps to provide some clarity on this account.

The one thing that the American welfare system does not need is a middle-class expansion. This year, the federal government will spend more than $1.1 trillion to fund 134 welfare or anti-poverty programs, and because many of those programs are jointly administered and funded with states and localities, those governments will contribute an additional $744 billion. In total, we will spend roughly $1.8 trillion on welfare this year. When you consider that this amounts to roughly $49,700 per person below the poverty level, it is obvious that welfare spending reaches well into the middle-class.

Of course, we wouldn’t want to cut off program eligibility at the poverty level. Doing so would create an enormous welfare cliff—a marginal tax rate that discourages work, savings, and family formation through a rapid drop-off in benefits as individuals earn additional income. Still, our welfare system is not narrowly targeted.

None of this, of course, includes one-time expenditures like those designated as pandemic relief. Nor does it include middle-class entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security, which while not purely welfare, nevertheless represent transfer payments from the government and are cornerstones of the modern welfare state. Overall, government payouts, including middle-class entitlements, now account for more than a third of all wages and salaries in the United States.

One form of middle-class welfare being widely discussed on both the left and right are various forms of wage supplements. There may indeed be an argument for wage supplements as a second-best solution for low-income workers, notably for changing the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) from the largely natalist child subsidy it is today, to more of a pure wage supplement. But even here, there are trade-offs involved. Such a subsidy limits labor mobility and imposes substantial compliance costs on businesses. Employers often lower wages and absorb the subsidy, shifting labor costs to taxpayers. There is also a high fraud and unintentional error rate. Those negatives may be preferable to the alternatives (such as a higher minimum wage or the existing structure of the EITC) for low-income workers facing steep welfare cliffs, payroll tax burdens, and low wages.

All the negatives of wage supplements are as applicable, if not more so, as those supplements expand into the middle-class, but without any of the potential benefits that might apply to low-wage workers. Moreover, while changes to the EITC could be made cost neutral by limiting the child-subsidies embedded in it, an expansion of welfare, including wage supplements into the middle-class, would need to be paid for, most likely through either higher debt or increased taxes. Either approach would be likely to lead to slower economic growth, lower wages, and fewer jobs (as well as potentially higher inflation). In that way, the expansion would end up becoming self-defeating.

No doubt many working- and middle-class families are struggling in today’s economic environment. But there are many ways to help those families without a massive expansion of the welfare state. Many of those solutions will be featured in a new book from Cato to be released this Fall. Be on the lookout for Empowering the New American Worker: Market-based Solutions for Today’s Workforce, edited by Scott Lincicome.

For years Americans have been concerned with rising home prices, and, at least grudgingly, recognized that one way to bring down those costs was to build more housing. But many drew the line on building those new homes in their own neighborhood—what made NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) one of the most recognized rallying cries in local politics.

A newly released Cato Institute National Survey of 2,000 adults, conducted by YouGov, suggests that the tides may be slowly shifting. The road to housing reform remains bumpy—but it is not impassable.

That is fortunate, because housing affordability is one of the most significant economic issues today and zoning regulations that limit home building are one of the greatest barriers to housing affordability. Without public support, it is difficult to make necessary changes to improve housing supply and reduce costs.

Recent research finds that zoning regulations push up the cost of housing by more than $300,000 or $400,000 per quarter of an acre in cities including San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. In New York, the “zoning tax” on housing was estimated at more than $500,000 per quarter of an acre near the urban core in 2018.

With regulatory burdens that high, interest rates continuing to climb, and continued inflationary pressures on housing, it is no wonder that Americans are deeply concerned about housing costs. In the survey, fully 87 percent of Americans are at least “somewhat concerned” about housing costs, and 61 percent are either “very” or “extremely” concerned. Roughly 69 percent are worried that their children or grandchildren will not be able to afford a home, and a majority of Americans do not believe they could afford to buy the house they live in today.

What is more unexpected is that Americans seem increasingly willing to build housing in their back yard. Overall, it is still a close call, with just 51 percent supporting more housing in their own neighborhood. Democrats (63 percent) are more likely to support building more housing, while independents (47 percent) and Republicans (39 percent) are more skeptical.

However, support for building housing increases when benefits are mentioned. For example, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) support building more houses, condos, and apartments in their community if it means it would be easier for people to afford housing in their neighborhood. Phrased that way, support for more housing increases among all groups, including Republicans (53 percent).

Republicans, more than Democrats or Independents, adjust their support for building more housing based on who they believe will be moving into their neighborhood. For example, when told that more building would make housing affordable for young families, some 64 percent of Republicans were in favor. On the other hand, Republican support declines steeply if it is suggested that the new residents would be low-income (45 percent) or people of color (44 percent). Interestingly, it was this latter argument (that building housing would benefit people of color) that Democrats favored most in the survey, and an extension of this argument motivated liberal Minneapolis’s reform to end single family zoning in 2018.

Regardless of the politics of building more homes, it is worth noting that the evidence supports the idea that relaxing regulatory restrictions to increase housing supply is beneficial for all mentioned groups—both young families, people with lower incomes, and people of color.

For families with young children, not only can reforming zoning alleviate budget pressures and allow growing families to buy or rent the space necessary to live comfortably, but evidence suggests it can also improve school choice for parents. For example, a study found that Houston—the only major city without a traditional zoning code—has lower home prices at every school quality level than other major cities, which indicates greater access to a broader range of schools for young families.

Just as young families have been blocked from critical amenities and educational opportunities as a result of restrictive residential zoning, low-income individuals have also suffered as a result of the practice: previous research finds that restrictive zoning limits home building in economically productive locations with greater job opportunities, and Euclidean zoning is well known to segregate by income.

For people of color, zoning likewise reduces opportunity and access and freezes segregated living patterns in place. In one study, 50 percent of the difference in levels of racial segregation between leniently regulated (less‐​segregated) Houston and restrictively zoned (more‐​segregated) Boston was a result of restrictive regulation. In another study, reducing zoning regulation was estimated to reduce the difference in racial segregation by at least 35 percent between the most and least segregated areas.

For this and many other reasons, policymakers across the country should marshal current public support for building more homes and make zoning reform a policy priority. Doing so would unlock opportunity for a wide variety of people.

The Enhancing American Retirement Now (EARN) Act includes a troubling provision that has received very little media coverage. An ABLE account amendment would increase spending on means-tested welfare programs by circumventing federal asset tests.

When the original ABLE Act emerged back in 2014, my then-colleague at the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector, and I wrote:

While the upfront cost of the ABLE Act is not enormous by Washington standards, the precedent of weakened asset limits in multiple welfare programs may well lead to huge costs in the future. Welfare spending did not balloon to nearly $1 trillion dollars annually overnight. It slowly grew via small, incremental expansions of benefits and eligibility like those contained in the ABLE Act.

And here we are, eight years later, and the ABLE Act may be undergoing a major expansion. Just like we predicted.

Many federal means-tested programs (including Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, and Section 8 housing) have asset tests, limiting individuals with other financial resources from becoming eligible for benefits.

The purpose of asset tests is to ensure that individuals use their own resources before relying on taxpayers for support. This is only fair. Working-class American families should not be subsidizing more affluent individuals who can afford to pay their own bills. In the case of the ABLE Act, a National Disability Institute report from 2015 predicted that “these account holders will most likely come from families earning over $90,000 per year.”

The original ABLE Act passed in 2014. It created tax-preferred savings accounts for people with disabilities to save for a broad range of qualified expenses. More importantly, the law exempts ABLE account assets and distributions from being counted against federal means-tested benefits, such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid.

Individuals who wouldn’t normally qualify for these welfare benefits — because they have significant financial resources they could draw on to support themselves — are able to continue to receive welfare support for as long as those assets are held in a designated ABLE account.

ABLE accounts can be opened in 43 states and the District of Columbia, shielding up to $16,000 in annual contributions, made by anyone on behalf of the beneficiary, from asset tests. Working beneficiaries may contribute an additional amount up to the individual Federal Poverty Level.

There are no limits on how much someone can accumulate in an ABLE account. Once accounts exceed $100,000 in value, account holders would lose their SSI cash benefits. However, Medicaid beneficiaries can keep their benefits, regardless of how high their account balances grow.

Currently, only children and adults whose disability occurred before age 26 and who meet federal program disability standards are eligible to open an ABLE account. The amendment included in the Senate EARN Act would make ABLE accounts available to individuals who experienced their onset of disability before age 46. According to a news release by Senator Bob Casey (D‑PA) this change would expand ABLE account access for 6.2 million individuals.

This policy may incentivize more individuals on federal disability programs to work, with associated benefits to themselves and their communities. There’s also the risk that looser eligibility standards will motivate more individuals to apply for federal disability programs when they otherwise may have continued to work. The latter would drive up federal government spending on benefits.

To qualify, individuals must be entitled to federal disability benefits under the Supplemental Security Income program (a means-tested welfare program that pays monthly benefits to people who are disabled, blind, or age 65 or older) or the Social Security Disability Insurance program (a program that provides monthly cash benefits to workers who meet the statutory definition of disability and have achieved insured status).

Both programs are poorly administered and subject to fraud and abuse. They have loose eligibility standards and inconsistent determination processes, which result in excess benefit payments. Unreliable disability determination processes make the ABLE Act expansion more troubling, because this asset test loophole will increase incentives for individuals to apply for federal disability programs.

Alternatively, individuals can also qualify by presenting a “disability certification” confirming documentation of a physician’s diagnosis that the individual meets the functional disability criteria in the ABLE Act.

The EARN Act, including the ABLE Age Adjustment Act amendment, is reportedly being considered for passage during a lame-duck deal later this fall.

The Congressional Budget Office should first produce a score of the fiscal impact this massive expansion of ABLE accounts would have on the federal budget.

It would be further instructive for the Congressional Research Service to produce a report on current ABLE account usage, including the income level of participating families.

Working-class taxpayers have a right to know who benefits from welfare programs that are intended for those who need them most.

The Los Angeles City Council has voted unanimously to place on the March 2024 ballot a measure that would require hotels to accept the placement of homeless persons in vacant rooms. The measure would “require hotels to report the number of vacant rooms” to the city each afternoon for this purpose. In addition, it would impose a complicated permitting process on new hotel developments of more than 100 units, and require hotel developments of 15 or more rooms to include development of nearby affordable housing to replace any displaced by the project.

Members of the hotel-worker union UNITE HERE Local 11 drew up the proposal and collected the 126,000 signatures. It’s part of a pattern in which unions have drawn up far-reaching regulatory schemes aimed at employers which they have then presented to the L.A. city council for enactment by a signature process. Earlier, UNITE HERE had gotten the council to require hotels to adopt a variety of management practices favorable toward its interests, including providing daily room maintenance unless customers affirmatively opt out.

While the measure compelling hotels to house the homeless might temporarily bump up the demand for room cleaner jobs, it’s not clear that it would serve the best interests of hotel employees in other ways. Heather Rozman, executive director of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles, told a council meeting packed with opponents of the measure that the proposal has already begun to chill conference business, as well as threatening increases in insurance premiums and other costs. If business and leisure travelers are scared off by the prospect of confronting the disorders of a homeless shelter amid their stay, it’s not hard to imagine that many workers who currently thrive in the sector would lose both salary and tip income associated with amenity provision: valet parking, room and concierge service, and so forth. Councilman Joe Buscaino, urging voters to defeat the measure, said “Placing paying hotel guests next to an unhoused person shows a complete misunderstanding of the causes of homelessness, which often stem from mental illness and drug abuse.” Rozman said hotels are not public safety providers and “should not be forced to clean up behind the city’s humanitarian crisis.”

Elsewhere, too, labor unions have sought to obtain gains through state and city action that they could not obtain, or might never even try to obtain, at the bargaining table. The Washington Post recently reported that the same hotel union demanded of the Alexandria, Va. city council that it block approval for new hotels unless they guarantee unionization. (City lawmakers responded that they aren’t legally entitled to do that.) Going back a few years, you can see why the union’s leadership might have assumed official arm-twisting of this sort was fair play: then-Boston mayor Marty Walsh easily survived a scandal after City Hall operators told concert organizers they wouldn’t get permits unless they signed up with a Walsh-allied union, and Walsh himself, outrageously, vowed to deny permits for a Trump hotel based on his opposition to the opinions expressed by the real estate magnate, who had not at that point been elected president. Walsh now serves as labor secretary in the Biden administration.

Hotels make a target because they can’t go anywhere. They need, and we need, a legal system that respects property rights.

Throughout the pandemic, people have poured into states in the south and intermountain west, including states like Idaho, Arizona, and Utah. According to Census Bureau estimates, areas including Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah sustained some of the highest net migration increases during the 2020–2021 period.

Figure 1. U.S. regional migration, 2020–2021, numbers in thousands

Source note: Net internal migration encompasses migration to/​from U.S. states. Net migration includes migration from abroad. California has some of the highest outbound migration of any state; this depresses net migration estimates for the West. Table A‑2: Annual Inmigration, Outmigration, Net Migration, and Movers from Abroad for Regions: 1981–2021

Following increasing in-migration, cities in these once-affordable states rapidly encountered housing affordability issues. For example, at the end of June 2022, Phoenix, Arizona and Salt Lake City, Utah had monthly mortgage payments that were up over 70 percent, year-over-year. Observed rents were up 15 percent year-over-year in the same areas (having fallen from their peak of 20–25 percent).

Various factors—including changing consumer needs, supply chain issues, labor shortages, and the like—combined with rising demand to produce rising prices. In addition, policies including restrictive zoning became newly salient in western states with burgeoning population growth.

However, there is another less-recognized policy issue affecting housing supply that is specific to western states: a substantial portion of the land is owned by the federal government and not developable.

For example, in Nevada, Utah, and Idaho, the federal government owns more than 80 percent, 63 percent, and 60 percent of the land.^[1] In other states like Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, California, and Montana, the federal government owns more than one-third to one-half of available land.

Contrary to public perception, the vast majority of federal lands are not national parks, monuments, or Bureau of Indian Affairs land. Instead, a majority of federal western land is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS).

BLM land was once described as “land that nobody wanted” owing to the fact that homesteaders had passed over it. Today, BLM and USFS land is used for a variety of uses, including grazing, mining, recreation, and energy transmission and production.

This land is not so far from urban development that it is of no practical use, and a significant portion of lands are within city or county boundaries: previous estimates indicate that there are 217,000 acres of BLM and USFS land within Utah city boundaries, and 650,000 acres of USFS and BLM lands within one mile of Utah city borders.

Presented with a similar set of facts in the 1990s—Las Vegas, Nevada was the fastest growing metropolitan area at the time and landlocked by federal lands punctuating private property—federal legislators passed a bill that allowed local governments in the Clark County, Nevada area to nominate federal land for competitive market auction.

Figure 3. Example of typical federal land sold to private parties in the Las Vegas metro area

Source: SNPLMA: A Model for Success, Department of the Interior

The sale of federal land in the Clark County area subsequently resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars being allocated to Nevada public schools and more than a billion dollars allocated to Nevada’s trails, parks, and natural areas, creating an unusual win-win for Nevada developers, conservationists, and residents alike.

Earlier this year, Senator Lee and cosponsors introduced the HOUSES Act, a bill with similar objectives but more specific focus on housing development than the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) of the ‘90s. The proposed HOUSES Act would allow local governments to nominate and purchase federal land and then develop the land for housing projects that meet certain density minimums and other criteria.^[2]

Similar to SNPLMA, proceeds from HOUSES would be made available for environmental initiatives including improvements to existing National Parks, wildfire prevention programs, public water infrastructure projects, and restoration initiatives.^[3]

But in spite of legislative efforts, the question remains: how much good could federal lands reform really do for housing affordability? This week, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) made a serious attempt to answer this question in a new report.

The JEC study first martials new figures and visuals indicating that federal land is, indeed, adjacent to many existing developed areas in western states. For example, one visual (Figure 4) highlights existing developed areas (white) and existing federal lands (both dark and light red). JEC finds that population per square mile significantly declines in many counties after accounting for federal land—what you would expect to find in places where development is constrained.

Figure 4: “Western States’ Population Centers at Night and Federal Land, 2021”

Source: The Houses Act: Addressing the National Housing Shortage by Building on Federal Land 

The authors then evaluate the effect of federal land reform on housing. They estimate buildable federal land by limiting land to BLM-managed land and remove all remaining land parcels containing water, marshland, or a slope greater than 15 degrees that would make development challenging. Then, using various assumptions based on the HOUSES Act, the report models how many homes could be built on eligible buildable parcels before A) the available buildable land runs out or B) the so-called housing “shortage” is eliminated.^[4]

JEC concludes that the HOUSES Act could significantly influence housing supply in western states. Specifically, the study finds that HOUSES reforms could lead to the construction of approximately 2.7 million homes, including 430,000 homes in San Diego County, California; 350,000 homes in Maricopa County, Arizona; 109,000 homes in Clark County, Nevada; and 55,000 new homes in Utah County, Utah alone.

As a result of this new development, the authors find that an additional 8 percent of the population in twelve western states would be able to afford an average home (a 24 percent increase from the baseline). Crucially, this increase in housing development would be possible with the conversion of just 0.1 percent of existing federal land holdings.

As the report acknowledges, federal land reform is in no way a substitute for zoning reform at the state and local government level. Moreover, the study’s estimates hinge on the implicated counties’ interest in, and use of, the proposed program: counties with strong environmental impulses may be less inclined to make use of the program.

Still, this study provides evidence that federal land reform could be a promising federal tool to improve housing supply and thereby housing affordability. This will likely come as welcome news to many western municipalities with housing markets under pressure from growth.

^[1] These figures “understate federal lands in each state and the total in the United States” as “they include only land of the five largest land-managing agencies: BLM, FS, FWS, NPS, and DOD lands.” See CRS report.

^[2] Purchase is subject to approval. Details about how local governments will disburse said lands to private actors, or otherwise initiate housing development, are not prescribed by the Act.

^[3] Despite the positive effects of the SNPLMA on increasing developable land, Clark County, Nevada remains landlocked by federal lands.

^[4] The authors acknowledge that “shortage” is an economically imprecise description, as homes can generally be purchased at the market-clearing price. Nonetheless, in this and another paper, the authors admit the term is still of practical use due to its prevalence in the national debate. Defining “shortage” as the number of homes that would be built absent supply constraints, they find that previous estimates understate housing supply problems because they take existing historical development trends as a given.

Occupational licensing continues to get in the way of workplace flexibility for parents, especially mothers. Tennessee’s licensing requirement for would-be lawyers is an example of how occupational licensing holds parents back.

Under state law, Tennessee requires lawyers who wish to practice in the state to have worked full time as a lawyer for five of the last seven years in another state, or else sit for the bar exam. This means that lawyers with part-time work experience must either take time off to prepare and sit for another exam or else they are prohibited from practicing law in the state.

This rule may seem innocuous, but the requirement effectively makes it harder for lawyers with part-time hours to practice in Tennessee. Preparing and sitting for the bar exam is not an insignificant requirement: law students routinely spend months preparing for the exam and even take out loans to cover the thousands of dollars in forgone income, bar prep courses, exam fees, travel, and lodging necessary to successfully complete it.

The rule hits working mothers especially hard: of the 21.4 million voluntary part-time workers in 2016, 67 percent were women. Among these women, the most common reason for part-time work was family or personal obligations. Notably, most part-time lawyers are women, specifically mothers with children, according to LexisNexis.

Tennessee’s licensing rule holds some of these women back and contributes to the fear that many women have that they will be penalized for going part time or taking leave from work while their children are young. This is truly unfortunate and, in Tennessee’s case, ensures that the legal profession misses out on legal talent.

Lisa Blatt, described as a “legendary high court litigator” with “an unmatched win record” and one of the most successful lawyers today, relates the following story about how part-time work made her career possible in Reflections of a Lady Lawyer:

“…I was ready to quit practicing law entirely to spend more time at home. I also was mentally exhausted. Paul [my boss] suggested that, instead of quitting, I take a leave of absence. And he said something I will never forget: he told me I was good at my job. I took Paul up on his offer, took a half-year off, and returned to the office six months later, still on a part-time basis. Paul’s flexibility and understanding of the challenges facing working mothers saved my career. For the last eighteen years, I have remained part-time.”

If, in an alternate universe, Ms. Blatt had moved to Tennessee, she would be subjected to additional scrutiny or else disqualified from practicing law, and the legal profession would have lost out on a great talent. This would be highly unfortunate and avoidable; the American Bar Association and most other states do not require full-time work in order to be admitted to practice law.

Fortunately, the Network of enlightened Women (NeW) has filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Tennessee to try to get this regrettable licensing rule changed (details here). With any luck, the admission by motion rule requiring full-time work will be changed, and this will allow for greater flexibility for mothers, parents, and any other lawyer that chooses to work part time in the years to come.