Suchergebnisse

I am submitting comments on behalf of the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) to express support for the ideas presented in the draft legislation, the "Measuring American Poverty Act." The proposal addresses a number of issues I raised in testimony given a year ago at this subcommittee's hearing on "Measuring Poverty in America" (Cauthen 2007). In brief, I argued that: Because poverty exacts such a high toll on our society, it is critical that we measure it in a meaningful way so that we can address it and measure the degree to which our anti-poverty policies are successful. The National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) 1995 recommendations for improving the official poverty measure offer the most promising – and efficacious – approach to creating a more accurate measure of income poverty. In a wealthy, advanced industrial society such as ours, it is imperative that we supplement measures of income poverty with additional indicators of the health and well-being of our nation's citizens, especially our youngest. The draft bill addresses all of these points, at least to some degree. This statement further articulates why NCCP supports the substantive intent of the draft bill. It also outlines some additional steps that must be taken if we are to improve our nation's ability to accurately assess the health and well-being of our citizens.

Commissioned by the Economic Policy Institute for its Agenda for Shared Prosperity, this report describes why work support benefits are critical for low-wage workers. It explains the current state of work supports in the U.S., highlighting the need to address benefit "cliffs" and high marginal tax rates; funding constraints; and participation barriers. The report concludes with a concrete set of proposals for reform at the national level.

This brief seeks to inform policymakers and others about the difficulties faced by low-income working parents as they strive to make progress in the workforce. Using data from NCCP's Family Resource Simulator, it highlights ways in which the current structure of work support policies often leads to unintended consequences. As low-wage workers increase their earnings above the federal poverty level, their families begin to lose eligibility for government work supports. Given that some of these benefits drop off quickly, earning more does not always improve a family's financial bottom line.

Despite Social Security's undeniable success at providing income protection for families, we now face national proposals that would dramatically alter the program. Creating private accounts to replace part of the current system represents a radical departure from the program's original design. Proponents argue that such accounts would ultimately provide greater security. But security for whom? What about child beneficiaries—how would they be affected? What about surviving spouses of workers who die, and disabled workers and their families? What about Social Security's original promise that hard-working people and their families would not be consigned to destitution simply because of early death or disability? These questions have barely been acknowledged, let alone addressed.

Social Security has provided a retirement safety net for the elderly for more than six decades. But the program also provides working parents with valuable—and irreplaceable—insurance protection for their families against the tragedies of serious disability and death. Given the importance of the survivor and disability components of Social Security, any responsible proposal for changing the program must address how the children and spouses of deceased workers, and disabled workers and their families would be affected.

These are challenging economic times for American families, especially those headed by lowwage workers. But state policy can play an important role in helping those who work hard achieve economic security for their families. This document outlines why state policymakers need to pay more attention to low-wage work, its effects on families and children, and what it takes for low-wage workers to make their families economically secure. It also describes a set of State Family Economic Security Profiles that the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) designed to highlight policy options available to state policymakers, the choices each state has made, and how families are doing economically in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

With an unparalleled focus on employment, the 1996 federal welfare reforms changed the nature of cash assistance programs for low-income families. By the end of the decade, welfare caseloads had reached their lowest level since 1969. Prior to these changes, employment rates among single mothers had begun to rise, and the trend continued throughout the 1990s. At the same time, child poverty declined steadily, reaching its lowest level since 1979, and the percent of low-income children living in families with at least one working parent increased. Although researchers disagree about the precise causes of these trends, the trends themselves have focused new attention on low-income families in the work force. Observers across the political spectrum have recognized that low-wage employment—even if full-time—may be insufficient to meet a family's basic needs. This recognition has led to new thinking about the role of government policies in helping low-income working families move toward economic security. This policy brief series focuses on state policy options that have the potential to improve children's economic security by increasing family income. More specifically, the series examines policies that seek to increase family income by encouraging, supporting, and rewarding work.

This fact sheet discusses how the U.S. government measures poverty, why the current measure is inadequate, and what alternative ways exist to measure economic hardship.

This fact sheet discusses how the U.S. government measures poverty, why the current measure is inadequate, and what alternative ways exist to measure economic hardship.

Three years have passed since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) restructured the nation's welfare system. During that time, caseloads have dropped 40 percent, and many former welfare recipients have found employment. Yet, while some families are better off financially, others are spending more time in work activities with no financial gain. Because of low wages, many employed parents continue to struggle to pay their rent and provide food for their families. Lack of affordable child care and health care continues to threaten job stability for many as well. A portion of those who remain on welfare will require substantial assistance to prepare for work, while others will be unable to handle employment because of poor health, substance abuse, domestic violence, or other challenges. The changes in welfare have also had unanticipated effects on other social welfare programs. Medicaid and food stamp caseloads have dropped more than expected, suggesting that some eligible families are not being enrolled. Policymakers at all levels of government are taking note of these changes. They have begun to debate what steps are needed to help families make lasting transitions to employment and to ensure that work pays more than welfare. Missing from much of the debate, however, is a discussion of the implications of welfare reform for children and the opportunities that it holds to strengthen child outcomes. Children comprise 70 percent of all welfare recipients, and more than one-third of them are younger than age six. When welfare reform is viewed from the perspective of young children's needs, the policy picture changes. Although children may benefit from policy efforts to promote work and increase family income, additional steps are needed to ensure their healthy growth and development and to see that welfare reform helps and does not hurt them. Like all young children, those growing up in low-income families need regular health care and positive early learning experiences. They also need nurturing relationships with their parents and other adults who care for them. To provide for these basic needs, all low-income parents transitioning to employment need access to high-quality health care for their families and high-quality child care and child development programs for their young children. Some parents need additional services, such as family support or parent education, to help them meet the complex demands of work and parenting. A significant proportion of low-income parents with young children need intensive services, such as substance abuse treatment or mental health services, for themselves and their children. Still others need access to shelters to exit abusive relationships. In short, if policymakers are concerned about improving young children's health and development as a way to impact their immediate well-being as well as outcomes for the next generation of families, the policy debate about welfare reform must be broadened beyond employment and income. Policymakers need to focus on the full array of basic and specialized supports required to enhance the well-being of low-income young children and their families. This means that in addition to efforts to promote employment and increase family income, deliberate policy, program, fiscal, and collaborative strategies are needed to: ■ Strengthen basic supports (e.g., access to health care and child care); ■ Promote young children's health and development (e.g., high-quality child care, comprehensive early childhood programs, and family support activities); and ■ Address specialized child and family needs (e.g., mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence interventions for children and their parents). As the title Beyond Work suggests, this issue brief focuses on non-economic strategies to promote child and family development in the context of welfare reform. It is based on interviews with directors of child development and family support programs, statewide early childhood initiatives, state and local partnerships between early childhood and welfare programs, and Starting Points initiatives (a multisite effort to support young children and families funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York). The first section discusses why it is important to integrate child and family development perspectives with welfare reform implementation. The second section describes specific strategies and provides examples from initiatives and programs across the country.

In Colorado, as in other states across the country, the high cost of child care puts reliable, high-quality care out of reach for many families. Child care subsidies can help, but current policies reach only a fraction of those in need of assistance. Moreover, families who do receive subsidies can find themselves penalized for working and earning more as just a small raise can trigger a substantial loss in benefits. Using results from NCCP's Family Resource Simulator, this report illustrates these policy challenges and discusses possible solutions that would better help Colorado's low- to moderate-income workers meet their child care needs.

Using results from NCCP's Family Resource Simulator, a policy simulation tool, this report analyzes the effectiveness of Illinois' "work support" policies—benefits such as earned income tax credits, health insurance coverage, child care assistance, and food stamps. We find that when families receive the benefits for which they are eligible, Illinois' policies are generally successful in helping families close the gap between low earnings and basic expenses. Rewarding progress in the workforce, however, remains a challenge. Small increases in family income can trigger sharp reductions in benefits, leaving families no better off—or even worse off—than before.

What happens when a family loses one or more vital work supports? This brief uses the Family Resource Simulator, developed by the National Center for Children in Poverty, to illustrate the impact of the loss of benefits on working families. The Simulator is a web-based tool that calculates a family's resources and basic expenses in the context of federal and state policies as family earnings increase. Calculations are based on hypothetical families, created by selecting family characteristics and making choices about which public benefits the family receives when eligible.

About 85 percent of low-income children have parents who work, and most have at least one parent working full-time, year-round. Nonetheless, many of these parents are unable to afford basic necessities for their families, such as food, housing, and stable child care. Even a full-time job is not always enough to make ends meet, and many parents cannot get ahead simply by working more. As earnings increase—particularly as they rise above the official poverty level—families begin to lose eligibility for work supports. At the same time, work-related expenses, such as child care and transportation, increase. This means that parents may earn more without a family experiencing more financial security. In some cases, earning more actually leaves a family with fewer resources after the bills are paid. The Family Resource Simulator, developed by the National Center for Children in Poverty, illustrates how this happens. This web-based tool calculates resources and expenses for a hypothetical family that the user "creates" by selecting city and state, family characteristics, income sources, and assets. The user also selects which public benefits the family receives when eligible and makes choices about what happens when the family loses benefits (e.g., does the family seek cheaper child care after losing a subsidy?). The result is a series of charts that show the hypothetical family's total income from various sources as earnings rise, as well as the cost of basic family expenses. Using the Simulator, this report describes the experiences of two hypothetical families in the workforce.