Press Releases

A new Urban Institute study offers the first national look at the characteristics, access to services, and parenting approaches of poor, depressed mothers with infants. Eleven percent of poor 9-month-old infants live with a mother suffering from severe depression symptoms. Among all infants nationally, the figures are 41 percent and seven percent, respectively.

Hispanics in the United States increasingly fuel the nation's economic engine, especially as their labor-force participation grows and baby boomers retire. Yet, educational, political, residential, and cultural challenges facing Hispanic children are likely to hamper their future achievements, say contributors to Growing Up Hispanic: Health and Development of Children of Immigrants. The volume examines how neighborhood, family, school, and community affect these children's development and well-being.

In a new policy brief "Reducing Poverty and Economic Distress after ARRA: Next Steps for Short-Term Recovery and Long-Term Economic Security," scholars from the Urban Institute and Georgetown University say carefully targeted federal expenditures are needed to mitigate high unemployment over the next three to five years. If left unchecked, high levels of joblessness could do long-term damage to children and youth, erode states' abilities to fund educational and social services, and hamper long-run prospects for the U.S. economy. In the brief, three goals are presented for policymakers to consider when shaping antipoverty policies after the expiration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provisions. In addition, the Urban Institute presents eight two-page summaries covering policy papers presented at a post-ARRA forum hosted by the Institute and Georgetown University earlier this year.

Rolf Pendall, an expert on land use controls and the former director of graduate studies in city and regional planning at Cornell University, joined the Urban Institute today as the director of the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center.

Already off to a tough start in life, 49 percent of American babies born into poor families will be poor for at least half their childhoods, a new Urban Institute study finds. Among children who are not poor at birth, only 4 percent will be "persistently" poor as children.

The authors examine well-intended programs that fell short of their objectives and argue that the public policy world cannot be divided neatly into successes and failures. The reality is that some ideas work in some places some of the time. Good results are hard to sustain and even harder to replicate.

Many of the economic stimulus provisions set out by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) expire this year. But the joblessness and hardship that resulted from the 2008-2009 recession will not end so quickly. With these developments in mind, federal and state officials, leading policy experts, and economic researchers came together earlier this year to discuss what can be done to reduce poverty and economic suffering. The research and recommendations originally presented at the January 15 conference are now available in eight reports.

Donald Marron, who served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and as acting director of the Congressional Budget Office, will become the director of the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center May 17.

Marguerite Roza's Educational Economics uncovers an education-finance system in which district after district does not know or does not effectively calculate how resources are allocated among its schools. School leaders who try to track dollars and services from the district to each school often use district averages to estimate per-school spending. But averages, writes Roza, mask wide variations in the actual distribution of experienced teachers, enrichment programs, and social services among schools in the same district.

Strongly held but conflicting values have shaped the U.S. social safety net and the policy debates since its expansion in the 1960s. A new Urban Institute Press book disentangles these beliefs and shows how they have led to the patchwork of mostly uncoordinated programs the safety net is today.