Download or read book The Effect of Specific Welfare Policies on Poverty written by Signe-Mary McKernan and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty rates in the United States fell from a 25-year high of 15.1 percent in 1993 to near record lows of 11.3 percent in 2000 and have since increased steadily to 12.7 percent in 2004 (U.S. Census Bureau 2004a). The poverty rates for children and for people in single female-headed families followed a similar pattern, although at considerably higher rates -- 17.8 percent and 30.5 percent in 2004, respectively (U.S. Census Bureau 2004a, 2004b). Many political leaders pointed to poverty rate declines along with increases in employment and falling welfare caseloads that occurred in the late 1990s as evidence that the 1996 federal welfare reform had been a success (Kaus 2001). During the late 1990s, however, there was concern that welfare reform was leading to increases in deep poverty (living below 50 percent of the poverty threshold) (e.g., Sherman et al. 1998, as cited in Haskins 2001), as deep poverty rates increased in 1996 and were unchanged in 1997 (U.S. Census Bureau 2004c). Deep poverty rates subsequently fell, however. While trends in poverty and deep poverty generated discussion and speculation about the effect of welfare reform on poverty and deep poverty, there is limited and mixed information on welfare reform's effect on these outcomes. Moreover, the literature provides no guidance on how specific welfare reform policies affect poverty and deep poverty. Some of the welfare reform policies implemented by states are hypothesized to increase poverty (e.g., family cap), while others are hypothesized to decrease poverty (e.g., increases in the earned income disregard). Thus, on net, one could find an overall reform effect of zero, when in fact specific policies have affected families' economic well-being, but in off-setting ways. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the effects of a rich and comprehensive set of specific welfare policies on poverty and deep poverty among women and children. We capture objective and detailed measures of states' policies by measuring policies individually, and in continuous values such as dollars, wherever possible. Nineteen specific policies are included in our analysis. These polices are grounded in a conceptual framework of how policies can influence poverty and are measured in great detail on a monthly basis from 1986 through 2000. Our approach leads to results that are robust to alternate specifications. Variation in welfare policies over time and across states enables us to measure the relationship between policy and poverty. States implemented changes to their welfare programs via welfare waivers in the early to mid-1990s and then used the flexibility provided by federal welfare reform's 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to further change policies. We also examine how the effects of these policies change over time, as there can be short-run mechanical effects that are simply due to changes in grant size and eligibility rules, for example, as well as medium-run behavioral responses as families alter their work effort in response to changes in program rules. In addition, we contribute to the literature by examining the impact of welfare reform on the economic well-being of children as well as adults. We use longitudinal data from the 1988, 1990, 1993, 1996, and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We use these panels to provide data from January 1988 through December 2002, allowing us to capture the period prior to the implementation of state waivers, during the implementation of state waivers, and after the 1996 federal welfare reform. Further, these data capture periods of strong and weak economic conditions. We use the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules and related databases to measure our welfare policies. Overall, we find evidence that more lenient eligibility requirements for welfare receipt and more generous financial incentives to work generally reduce deep poverty, as hypothesized. We also find evidence that eligibility requirements for welfare receipt and financial incentives to work affect poverty. Time limits are hypothesized to have ambiguous effects on poverty and our results suggest that some stricter time limit policies may lead to lower rates of deep poverty and poverty. Our findings are generally consistent with our hypotheses and are also consistent across our population of ever-single mothers and children of ever-single mothers.

Download or read book A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.

Download or read book Policies to Address Poverty in America written by Melissa Kearney and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One-in-seven adults and one-in-five children in the United States live in poverty. Individuals and families living in povertyÊnot only lack basic, material necessities, but they are also disproportionally afflicted by many social and economic challenges. Some of these challenges include the increased possibility of an unstable home situation, inadequate education opportunities at all levels, and a high chance of crime and victimization. Given this growing social, economic, and political concern, The Hamilton Project at Brookings asked academic experts to develop policy proposals confronting the various challenges of AmericaÕs poorest citizens, and to introduce innovative approaches to addressing poverty.ÊWhen combined, the scope and impact of these proposals has the potential to vastly improve the lives of the poor. The resulting 14 policy memos are included in The Hamilton ProjectÕs Policies to Address Poverty in America. The main areas of focus include promoting early childhood development, supporting disadvantaged youth, building worker skills, and improving safety net and work support.

Download or read book Families Poverty and Welfare Reform written by Lawrence B. Joseph and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume combines essays by public policy scholars with comments by social project directors who speak from their experiences in the field. Essays include critical assessments of policies to reduce dependency on welfare and a discussion of the effects of poverty on women and children, as well as a look at welfare reform in Illinois.

Download or read book Changing Poverty Changing Policies written by Maria Cancian and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty declined significantly in the decade after Lyndon Johnson's 1964 declaration of "War on Poverty." Dramatically increased federal funding for education and training programs, social security benefits, other income support programs, and a growing economy reduced poverty and raised expectations that income poverty could be eliminated within a generation. Yet the official poverty rate has never fallen below its 1973 level and remains higher than the rates in many other advanced economies. In this book, editors Maria Cancian and Sheldon Danziger and leading poverty researchers assess why the War on Poverty was not won and analyze the most promising strategies to reduce poverty in the twenty-first century economy. Changing Poverty, Changing Policies documents how economic, social, demographic, and public policy changes since the early 1970s have altered who is poor and where antipoverty initiatives have kept pace or fallen behind. Part I shows that little progress has been made in reducing poverty, except among the elderly, in the last three decades. The chapters examine how changing labor market opportunities for less-educated workers have increased their risk of poverty (Rebecca Blank), and how family structure changes (Maria Cancian and Deborah Reed) and immigration have affected poverty (Steven Raphael and Eugene Smolensky). Part II assesses the ways childhood poverty influences adult outcomes. Markus Jäntti finds that poor American children are more likely to be poor adults than are children in many other industrialized countries. Part III focuses on current antipoverty policies and possible alternatives. Jane Waldfogel demonstrates that policies in other countries—such as sick leave, subsidized child care, and schedule flexibility—help low-wage parents better balance work and family responsibilities. Part IV considers how rethinking and redefining poverty might take antipoverty policies in new directions. Mary Jo Bane assesses the politics of poverty since the 1996 welfare reform act. Robert Haveman argues that income-based poverty measures should be expanded, as they have been in Europe, to include social exclusion and multiple dimensions of material hardships. Changing Poverty, Changing Policies shows that thoughtful policy reforms can reduce poverty and promote opportunities for poor workers and their families. The authors' focus on pragmatic measures that have real possibilities of being implemented in the United States not only provides vital knowledge about what works but real hope for change.

Download or read book Welfare Reform and Its Long Term Consequences for America s Poor written by James P. Ziliak and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-17 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading poverty experts address the longer-term effects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

Download or read book Welfare Reform written by Jeff GROGGER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.

Download or read book The Poverty of Welfare written by Michael Tanner and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1996 Welfare Reform Act was the most significant changes in social welfare policy in nearly 30 years. The Poverty of Welfare examines the impact of that reform, looking at the context of welfare's history, and concludes that while welfare reform was a step in the right direction, we have a long way to go to fix the deeply troubled system.

Download or read book Globalization and Poverty written by Ann Harrison and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

Download or read book Poverty and Public Policy written by Michael Morris and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1986-09-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Federal poverty programs have long been the subject of controversy in the United States. Conservatives argue that many of these "interventions" exacerbate the very problems they are supposed to solve. This accusation is applied with particular vigor to programs which directly provide individuals with economic resources. Supporters of these programs usually agree with conservatives that a "genuine" or "permanent" solution to the poverty problem must be based on efforts that increase economic self-sufficiency. Disagreeing with both of these perspectives on poverty policy, the authors propose a strategy of direct resource provision, which they believe has a substantially greater antipoverty impact. ISSN 8755-5360; no.3.

Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-12-04 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 fundamentally changed the nation's social welfare system, replacing a federal entitlement program for low-income families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with state-administered block grants, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. PRWORA furthered a trend started earlier in the decade under so called "waiver" programs-state experiments with different types of AFDC rules-toward devolution of design and control of social welfare programs from the federal government to the states. The legislation imposed several new, major requirements on state use of federal welfare funds but otherwise freed states to reconfigure their programs as they want. The underlying goal of the legislation is to decrease dependence on welfare and increase the self-sufficiency of poor families in the United States. In summer 1998, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asked the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council to convene a Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs. The panel's overall charge is to study and make recommendations on the best strategies for evaluating the effects of PRWORA and other welfare reforms and to make recommendations on data needs for conducting useful evaluations. This interim report presents the panel's initial conclusions and recommendations. Given the short length of time the panel has been in existence, this report necessarily treats many issues in much less depth than they will be treated in the final report. The report has an immediate short-run goal of providing DHHS-ASPE with recommendations regarding some of its current projects, particularly those recently funded to study "welfare leavers"-former welfare recipients who have left the welfare rolls as part of the recent decline in welfare caseloads.

Download or read book The New World of Welfare written by Rebecca M. Blank and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress must reauthorize the sweeping 1996 welfare reform legislation by October 1, 2002. A number of issues that were prominent in the 1995-96 battle over welfare reform are likely to resurface in the debate over reauthorization. Among those issues are the five-year time limit, provisions to reduce out-of-wedlock births, the adequacy of child care funding, problems with Medicaid and food stamp receipt by working families, and work requirements. Funding levels are also certain to be controversial. Fiscal conservatives will try to lower grant spending levels, while states will seek to maintain them and gain additional discretion in the use of funds. Finally, a movement to encourage states to promote marriage among low-income families is already taking shape. The need for reauthorization presents an opportunity to assess what welfare reform has accomplished and what remains to be done. The New World of Welfare is an attempt to frame the policy debate for reauthorization, and to inform the policy discussion among the states and at the federal level, especially by drawing lessons from research on the effects of welfare reform. In the book, a diverse set of welfare experts—liberal and conservative, academic and nonacademic—engage in rigorous debate on topics ranging from work experience programs, to job availability, to child well-being, to family formation. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research on welfare reform, the contributors cover subjects including work and wages, effects of reform on family income and poverty, the politics of conservative welfare reform, sanctions and time limits, financial work incentives for low-wage earners, the use of medicaid and food stamps, welfare-to-work, child support, child care, and welfare reform and immigration. Preparation of the volume was supported by funds from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Download or read book Out of the Poverty Trap written by Stuart M. Butler and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Public Policy and the Income Distribution written by Alan J. Auerbach and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2006-01-23 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last forty years, rising national income has helped reduce poverty rates, but this has been accompanied by an increase in economic inequality. While these trends are largely attributed to technological change and demographic shifts, such as changing birth rates, labor force patterns, and immigration, public policies have also exerted a profound affect on the welfare of Americans. In Public Policy and the Income Distribution, editors Alan Auerbach, David Card, and John Quigley assemble a distinguished roster of policy analysts to confront the key questions about the role of government policy in altering the level and distribution of economic well being. Public Policy and the Income Distribution tackles many of the most difficult and intriguing questions about how government intervention—or lack thereof—has affected the incomes of everyday Americans. Rebecca Blank analyzes welfare reform, and presents systematic research on income, poverty rates, and welfare and labor force participation of single mothers. She finds that single mothers worked more and were less dependent on public assistance following welfare reform, and that low-skilled single mothers had no greater difficulty finding work than others. Timothy Smeeding compares poverty reduction programs in the United States with policies in other developed countries. Poverty and inequality are higher in the United States than in other advanced economies, but Smeeding argues that this is largely a result of policy choices. Poverty rates based on market incomes alone are actually lower in the United States than elsewhere, but government interventions in the United States were less than half as effective at reducing poverty as were programs in the other countries. The most dramatic poverty reduction story of twentieth century America was seen among the elderly, who went from being the age group most likely to live in poverty in the 1960s to the group least likely to be poor at the end of the century. Gary Englehardt and Jonathan Gruber examine the role of policy in alleviating old-age poverty by estimating the impact of Social Security benefits on the income of the elderly poor. They find that the growth in Social Security almost completely explains the large decline in elderly poverty in the United States The twentieth century was remarkable in the extent to which advances in public policy helped improve the economic well being of Americans. Synthesizing existing knowledge on the effectiveness of public policy and contributing valuable new research, Public Policy and the Income Distribution examines public policy's successes, and points out the areas in which progress remains to be made.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty written by David Brady and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 937 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international, inter-disciplinary group of scholars to provide their perspectives on the issue. Contributors engage in discussions about the leading theories and conceptual debates regarding poverty, the most salient topics in poverty research, and the far-reaching consequences of poverty on the individual and societal level.

Download or read book Social Welfare Policy written by W. Joseph Heffernan and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1992 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Poor No More written by Peter Cove and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s, America set out to end poverty. Policy-makers put forth an unprecedented package of legislation, funding poverty programs and empowering the poor through ineffectual employment-related education and training. However, these handouts produced little change, and efforts to provide education and job-training proved inconsequential, boasting only a 2.8 percent decrease in the poverty rate since 1965. Decades after the War on Poverty began, many of its programs failed. Only one thing really worked to help end poverty-and that was work itself, the centerpiece of welfare reform in 1996. Poor No More is a plan to restructure poverty programs, prioritizing jobs above all else. Traditionally, job placement programs stemmed from non-profit organizations or government agencies. However, America Works, the first for-profit job placement venture founded by Peter Cove, has the highest employee retention rate in the greater New York City area, even above these traditional agencies. When the federal government embraced the work-first ideal, inspired by the success of America Works, welfare rolls plummeted from 12.6 million to 4.7 million nationally within one decade. Poor No More is a paradigm-shifting work that guides the reader through the evolution of America's War on Poverty and urges policy-makers to eliminate training and education programs that waste time and money and to adopt a work-first model, while providing job-seekers with the tools and life lessons essential to finding and maintaining employment.