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Coonoor Behal

What Strategies Work for the Hard-to-Employ? | mdrc 2012 - 0 views

www.mdrc.org/at-strategies-work-hard-employ

behaviors barrierstowork employment MDRC ACF

shared by Coonoor Behal on 25 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Coonoor Behal on 25 Mar 13
     
    "In the context of a public safety net focused on limiting dependency and encouraging participation in the labor market, policymakers and researchers are especially interested in individuals who face obstacles to finding and keeping jobs. The Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ (HtE) Demonstration and Evaluation Project was a 10-year study that evaluated innovative strategies aimed at improving employment and other outcomes for groups who face serious barriers to employment. The project was sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. This report describes the HtE programs and summarizes the final results for each program. Additionally, it presents information for three sites from the ACF-sponsored Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project where hard-to-employ populations were also targeted. Three of the eight models that are described here led to increases in employment. Two of the three - large-scale programs that provided temporary, subsidized "transitional" jobs to facilitate entry into the workforce for long-term welfare recipients in one program and for ex-prisoners in the other - produced only short-term gains in employment, driven mainly by the transitional jobs themselves. The third one - a welfare-to-work program that provided unpaid work experience, job placement, and education services to recipients with health conditions - had longer-term gains, increasing employment and reducing the amount of cash assistance received over four years. Promising findings were also observed in other sites. An early-childhood development program that was combined with services to boost parents' self-sufficiency increased employment and earnings for a subgroup of the study participants and increased the use of high-quality child care; the program for ex-prisoners mentioned abov
Coonoor Behal

Welfare Reform and the Work Support System | Brookings Institution - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...welfare-sawhill

welfarereform work EITC policy 1996 povertyprograms worksupport

shared by Coonoor Behal on 09 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Among other provisions, the 1996 reforms required work of almost every adult that joined the welfare rolls. In addition, with some exceptions, a limit of five years was placed on the receipt of cash welfare by individual families.
  • Beginning roughly in the mid-1970s with the enactment of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the federal government originated or expanded a series of programs that provide benefits to working families. Unlike welfare benefits, which are intended primarily for the destitute, these work support benefits are designed to provide cash and other benefits to working adults and their families. In addition to the EITC, the major benefits in the system include the child tax credit, the minimum wage, state income supplement programs, food stamps, health insurance, and child care.
  • This evolution toward a work-based system of support progressed further as a result of state responses to the 1996 welfare law.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • As a result, the typical one-parent family with children was far better off working than on welfare, and employment rates among this group increased dramatically, due to the strong economy of the 1990s, welfare reform, and the availability of these expanded work supports
  • The value of these new work support programs at both the federal and state level cannot be overemphasized. The EITC alone provides roughly $4,000 a year in extra benefits to a low-wage worker with two or more children, and the children remain eligible for Medicaid. The average woman leaving welfare earns about $7 an hour, or $13,000 in after-tax income. The combined value of food stamps and the EITC, then, brings her total income up to about $19,000—enough to boost a single parent family with three or fewer children above the federal poverty line
  • Polls show that the public is willing to do more for those who work.
  • Many of these policies respond to complaints that the 1996 welfare law placed too much emphasis on reducing caseloads and not enough on reducing poverty.
  • The work support system serves three primary goals. First, it provides incentives for work.
  • A second goal of the work support system is to help ensure that parents working at low-wage jobs have enough total income to provide an adequate standard of living.
  • The third goal of the work support system is to insure that those who lose their jobs or cannot find work will not be destitute.
  • The minimum wage is not very well-targeted. Only one quarter of minimum-wage earners live in poor families.
  • By 2000, the federal EITC was providing over $30 billion in cash supplements to working families, making it the biggest program other than Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income that provides benefits to low-income families. And unlike nearly every other program for low-income families, it provides benefits only to families that work. It is, in short, the quintessential work support program.
  • States have taken two major approaches to improving work incentives. First, since enactment of the 1996 reforms, nearly every state has allowed parents who find jobs to retain more of their welfare benefit. This policy enables many families to work and continue receiving earnings supplements from welfare.
  • under current federal rules, working families can exhaust their five-year limit on welfare while receiving just a small supplement to their earnings. For this reason, time limits may actually discourage work
  • A second approach states have followed is to create their own EITC programs.
  • nearly all the families leaving welfare are eligible for food stamps
  • less than half the families leaving welfare receive the food stamp benefits to which they are entitled.
Coonoor Behal

How the government fights poverty, in one chart - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...nt-fights-poverty-in-one-chart

chart infographic povertyprograms SocialSecurity elderly seniors

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • the effects of the government programs are still large. The programs reduced poverty for children under 18 by 8.8 percent (or 6.5 million children) and for people 18-64 by 6.1 percent (or 11.8 million people).
  • Government programs reduce poverty among seniors by 36 percent, and 34.9 percent of that decrease is due to Social Security.
  • Were it not for Social Security, 43.6 percent of seniors would be poor. That’s 14.5 million seniors that one program is keeping afloat.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In 2011, the poverty rate not including unemployment insurance or Social Security would have been 7.8 percentage points higher, and it would have been 3.1 points lower if you take food stamps and EITC into account. So all told, these four government programs reduced poverty by 10.9 percent, or 33.6 million people.
Coonoor Behal

Casey B. Mulligan: A Tale of Two Welfare States - NYTimes.com - 0 views

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/...a-tale-of-two-welfare-states

Britain ACA taxrates incentives

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Beginning next month, Britain will strive to put its welfare system on a different path by unifying many programs under a single “universal credit” system, what the department describes as an “integrated working-age credit that will provide a basic allowance with additional elements for children, disability, housing and caring.” The department forecasts that its “universal credit will improve financial work incentives by ensuring that support is reduced at a consistent and managed rate as people return to work and increase their working hours and earnings.”
  • The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Affordable Care Act’s means-tested subsidies and cost-sharing will implicitly add more than 20 percentage points to marginal tax rates on incomes below 400 percent (see Page 27 of the C.B.O. report) of the poverty line (a majority of families fit in this category) by phasing out the assistance as family incomes increase, although a number of families will not receive the subsidies because they already get health insurance from their employer.
  • In summary, the United States intends to move in the direction of more assistance programs and higher marginal tax rates, while Britain intends to move in the direction of fewer programs and lower marginal tax rates.
Coonoor Behal

http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-17.pdf - 2 views

www.census.gov/...acsbr10-17.pdf

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
    • Coonoor Behal
      Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
       
      Why aren't poverty thresholds different based on cost of living across different states and cities? Does it make sense for the poverty threshold in NYC to be the same as Boise?
    • Vetan Kapoor
      Vetan Kapoor on 28 Nov 12
       
      Good point. My guess would be that the poverty line is calculated based on some basket of goods deemed vital to function at a basic level, and that most of these goods are within a fairly narrow price range (food, clothing etc.). Also the highest expenditures are probably in rent/housing (30-50% of income) and for low income folks these should be pretty comparable giving housing vouchers and other HUD type assistance?
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "People living in poverty tend to be clustered in certain neighborhoods rather than being evenly distributed across geographic areas."
  • ...4 more comments...
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "...living in areas with many other poor people places burdens on low-income families beyond what the families' own individual circumstances would dictate."
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "some government programs target resources to communities with concentrated poverty. Many of these programs use the Census Bureau's definition of "poverty areas" (census tracts with poverty rates of 20 percent or more)"
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "the South had a larger proportion of people (27.4 percent) living in poverty areas than any other region, followed by the West (21.6 percent)."
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "Nearly half (49.0 percent) of the 10.3 million people residing in category IV tracts lived in poverty, while a little more than a quarter (27.3 percent) of the 56.6 million in category III were in poverty."
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "More than one-half of the families in categories I, II, and III were married-couple families while only 43.2 percent of families in category IV tracts were married couples. Female householder families represented about 14 percent of families in category I tracts, but 46.2 percent of families in category IV tracts."
  • Coonoor Behal on 26 Nov 12
     
    "The poverty thresholds are updated annually to allow for changes in the cost of living using the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). They do not vary geographically."
Vetan Kapoor

Notes from "Poverty in America" by John Iceland (2012) - 0 views

Poverty in America: A Handbook (John Iceland, 2012) Chapter 4: Characteristics of the Poverty Population * 22.4% of Americans were poor in 1959, 11.1% in 1973, and 12.5% in 2003 * 70% of impoveri...

notes povertytraits books stats

started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13 no follow-up yet
Coonoor Behal

HUD finds program success in review sessions - FederalNewsRadio.com - 0 views

www.federalnewsradio.com/...ram-success-in-review-sessions

qual HUD HUDstat datasharing homelessness performance

shared by Coonoor Behal on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Coonoor Behal on 06 Feb 13
     
    Possible qual for data sharing agreements between agencies - could be our suggestion as a first step toward poverty-focused agencies working together.
Coonoor Behal

Involvement of TANF Applicants with Child Protective Services (July 2001) - 0 views

www.irp.wisc.edu/...dp122901.pdf

behaviors policy TANF children overlap data

shared by Coonoor Behal on 15 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Coonoor Behal on 15 Feb 13
     
    This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) applicants in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. We examine the level of involvement of TANF applicants with the child welfare system both before and after their application for TANF assistance and inclusion in our study. We also present preliminary multivariate models of the hazard of our sample's CPS involvement with child protective services subsequent to their application for TANF. We find a high level of overlap between TANF and child welfare populations. We also find a set of correlates of CPS involvement after TANF application that are robust to a variety of model specifications. Although our findings are preliminary and further analyses based on longer-term follow-up of our sample will no doubt provide greater clarity, we believe that our findings to date provide food for thought for the designers and administrators of both TANF and child welfare programs.
Coonoor Behal

The Welfare Rules Database - 0 views

anfdata.urban.org/...WRDWelcome.cfm

TANF welfare rules database cashtransfer cashassistance

shared by Coonoor Behal on 15 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Coonoor Behal on 15 Feb 13
     
    The Welfare Rules Database provides a comprehensive, sophisticated resource for anyone comparing cash assistance programs between states, researching changes in cash assistance rules within a single state, or simply looking for the most up-to-date information on the rules governing cash assistance in one state.
Coonoor Behal

Poverty Program: USA Poverty - 0 views

www.povertyprogram.com/usa.php

povertystats

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Characteristics of the average homeless family:
  • These families were very low income—the average income for all families was only $573/month
  • Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12
     
    Lots of statistics on US poverty and poverty factors/indicators
Coonoor Behal

National Poverty Center | University of Michigan - 2 views

www.npc.umich.edu/poverty

povertystats seniors children alternatives EITC

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The methodology for calculating the thresholds was established in the mid-1960s and has not changed in the intervening years.
  • Money income does not include noncash benefits such as public housing, Medicaid, employer-provided health insurance and food stamps
  • The poverty rate for children has historically been somewhat higher than the overall poverty rate.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Since the late 1960s, the poverty rate for people over 65 has fallen dramatically.
  • The poverty rate for people in households headed by single women is significantly higher than the overall poverty rate.
  • In 2010, 19.9 percent of foreign-born residents lived in poverty, compared to 14.4 percent of residents born in the United States. Foreign-born, non-citizens had an even higher incidence of poverty, at a rate of 26.7 percent.
  • Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 24 percent of the total population, but 36 percent of the poor population.
  • The official poverty measure has been criticized for not accounting for several factors that can affect a family's economic well-being and for not having been updated, except for inflation, for four decades. 
  • For example, while cash benefits from government assistance programs are included in a family's income when calculating the official poverty measure, benefits received in-kind such as food stamps, Medicare or Medicaid, employer provided health insurance, housing subsidies, and other social services are excluded.  Taxes that families pay and tax credits they receive such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) do not enter into the official poverty determination.
  • Additionally, the threshold value a family must earn to escape poverty was developed in the 1960s by combining emergency food budget data from the US Department of Agriculture with an estimate of what fraction of income families spend on food. Although the thresholds are adjusted each year for inflation, some analysts believe that these numbers no longer accurately reflect the minimal resources a family requires.
  • These alternative measures tend to show lower levels of poverty than the official measure in any year, but the timing of increases and decreases in the poverty rate is very similar across measures. This similarity suggests that, despite the criticism it receives, the official poverty measure provides a reliable indicator of changes in the poverty rate from year to year.
  • These alternative definitions tend to show higher levels of overall poverty than the official measures in any year, although the difference is usually less than one percentage point.
  • Coonoor Behal on 25 Nov 12
     
    Nuts that the only time the poverty threshold is lower is for single individuals age 65 and older. Seems like you'd have greater expenditures in your old age considering health care costs.
Coonoor Behal

Casey B. Mulligan: Poverty Should Have Risen - NYTimes.com - 0 views

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/...poverty-should-have-risen

incentives perpetuatingpoverty recession povertyline povertyprograms

shared by Coonoor Behal on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • When measured to include taxes and government benefits, poverty did not rise between 2007 and 2011, and that shows why government policy is seriously off track.
  • rnment help, that amounts to 100 percent taxation (providing more benefits as income falls is sometimes called “implicit taxation”).
  • It is almost as if our present programs of public assistance had been consciously contrived to perpetuate the conditions they are supposed to alleviate.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Under the Obama administration, workers with disposable income in the neighborhood of the poverty line did not, on average, see their job losses during the recession translate into significant reductions in their disposable income.
  • it is possible for the government to help too much
  • The results suggest that the government was helping too much.
  • the percentage of people in households with disposable income less than the poverty line was 15 percent in 2011, just as it was in 2007 before the recession began.
  • Erasing incentives is not the way to a civilized society but rather to an impoverished one.
Vetan Kapoor

Notes from "The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity" by J... - 0 views

Ch 3: The Free-Market Fallacy * 63% of Americans concur that "It is the responsibility of government to take care of people who can't take care of themselves. The sentiment that government should h...

started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13 no follow-up yet
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