Government safety net programs aim to protect families during tough times—before they fall into poverty. But rising unemployment, foreclosures, and economic distress are putting pressure on a system already in need of updates and repairs.
Urban Institute experts, building on decades of welfare reform research, evaluated public safety nets and proposed new initiatives to bolster work supports and help families gain a stable financial footing. Read more.
Featured Links
Understanding Poverty Who is poor? What are the consequences? What works to alleviate poverty?
Low-Income Working Families Project Focusing on economic security, the safety net, improving life chances for children, and racial and ethnic disparities
Opportunity and Ownership Project Policy research on assets, ownership, and the opportunity for low-income families to achieve financial security
Early care and education can prepare children for school, but while some preschool and child care programs do an excellent job, others are inadequate and some may even harm healthy development. This study focuses on child care center directors to better understand why there is so much variation, and how public initiatives can better help poor-quality programs improve. Using data from in-depth interviews and classroom observations, the research considers how various factors—including director and program characteristics, market forces, and federal state and local policies—are associated with each other, director decision making, and program quality.
The Urban Institute conducted a comprehensive study of state efforts to modernize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Although modernization may be defined in many ways, this study adopted a broad definition of modernization described within four categories—policy changes, organizational changes, technological innovations, and partnering arrangements. The study included three data collection activities: initial site visits to four states; a national survey of all states, including a sample of local offices and partner organizations; and intensive case studies in 14 states. The states selected to participate in the case studies included Colorado, D.C., Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. The main focus of this report is on findings from the intensive case studies conducted between February and June 2009.
Low Social Security benefits are strongly related to individual characteristics and earnings histories. These associations suggest ways of shoring up Social Security and adopting other policies to help low-wage, low-skilled workers achieve more labor market success and greater retirement security. Social Security enhancements to aid beneficiaries with intermittent histories include caregiver credits or a minimum benefit that integrates caregiving, unemployment, and disability credits. To meet long-term, low-wage workers' needs, policymakers could adjust Social Security's bend points or replacement percentages; create a new minimum benefit; or adjust current law's special minimum benefit so it provides support greater than the poverty level.
We use data from the Health and Retirement Study linked to administrative data on earnings and benefits to determine why some workers end up with low Social Security benefits in retirement. Several characteristics are associated with family benefits of less than poverty. Racial disparities are pronounced. Women's risk is marked, especially for unmarried women, with caregiving an important contributor to low-benefit risk. Less-educated workers are also vulnerable, sometimes even when they have worked long careers. Workers with health problems and disabled workers-especially those disabled early in the career-are comparatively likely to have family benefits of less than poverty.
New York conducted a three-year pilot project (2006-2009) in five locations to help unemployed parents without custody of their children find work called the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. This report describes the implementation of this initiative and discusses challenges encountered and lessons learned. While all programs used a case management model to deliver employment and supportive services, the intensity of those services, the linkages to the child support program, the recruitment strategies, and the organizational structure of the programs varied. Despite these variations, programs successfully recruited and served a large number of participants, avoiding some of the challenges experienced by earlier fatherhood programs.
Latest Research
Browse by Topic:
Government safety net programs aim to protect families during tough times—before they fall into poverty. But rising unemployment, foreclosures, and economic distress are putting pressure on a system already in need of updates and repairs.