RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone, October 24, 2008, The Brookings Institution
The Federal Reserve System and its 12 member banks partnered with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program to produce a new, in-depth look at concentrated poverty in America. The two-year study profiles 16 high-poverty communities across the United States, investigating the historical and contemporary factors associated with their high levels of economic distress. Read More
VIDEO
Alan Berube, August 12, 2008
In a new report, Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone explain that following a dramatic decline in concentrated poverty in the 1990s, the number of low-income workers and families living in high-working-poverty neighborhoods rose by a striking 41% in the first half of this decade. Alan Berube says that help for high working-poverty communities will come from stronger national and regional economic growth—plus targeted efforts to protect neighborhoods of choice and connection.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube, August 08, 2008, The Brookings Institution
After dramatic declines in concentrated poverty in the 1990s, the number of low-income workers and families living in high-working-poverty neighborhoods rose by a striking 41% in the first half of this decade, according to a new report from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. The report's authors draw on data from the IRS to measure the change in rates of “concentrated working poverty” nationally and in many of the largest metropolitan areas across the country. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, Summer 2008, Pathways Magazine
The bipartisan economic stimulus package was a straightforward application of Keynesian fiscal policy: Spend your way out of recession. However, some might wonder if it’s possible to design a stimulus package that could also reduce inequality. In this paper, Ron Haskins explains why targeted stimulus may reduce poverty in the short run but cannot substitute for investments that will reduce inequality in the long run. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Stephen D. Holt, June 05, 2008, The Brookings Institution
Many low-income working families would benefit from a streamlined ability to access the proceeds of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) throughout the year as they pay for ongoing expenses like housing, child care, and transportation. The federal government should consider adopting a model for direct periodic payment of the EITC, as most other countries with in-work tax credits provide. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Alan Berube, David Park and Elizabeth Kneebone, June 05, 2008, The Brookings Institution
Slowed economic growth and rising prices for necessities like food, transportation, and child care threaten to exacerbate the challenges already facing America's low-income workers and their families. The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) could do more to help close the growing gap between stagnant wages and rising prices. "Metro Raise" demonstrates how an expanded and modernized EITC would benefit families and communities in the nation's major metropolitan areas. Read More
PAST EVENT
Monday, April 28, 2008
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Washington, DC
In Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton University Press and Russell Sage, 2008), political scientist Larry Bartels argues that economic inequality in America is partly a product of our democracy, dominated by partisan ideologies and the interests of the wealthy. William Galston moderated a discussion with Bartels, Thomas Mann and Elisabeth Jacobs. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
David F. Garrison, Marni D. Allen, Margery Austin Turner, Jennifer Comey, Barika X. Williams, Elizabeth Guernsey, Mary Filardo, Nancy Huvendick and Ping Sung, April 24, 2008, The Brookings Institution
The District of Columbia is struggling to attract and retain families with children. Most newcomers are singles and childless couples. The total number of school-age children has declined slightly. Many of the city’s schools suffer from long-standing physical, management and academic problems. The availability of quality public schools, near affordable family-friendly housing, will help determine the city’s success. Read More
PAST EVENT
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Washington, DC
During the nation’s infancy, Alexis de Tocqueville meticulously studied America’s democratic experiment and defined the contours of American exceptionalism. Nearly 200 years later, scholars James Q. Wilson and Peter Schuck reconsider what defines the United States and its role in our rapidly changing world in Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation (Public Affairs, 2008). William Galston moderated a discussion with Wilson, Schuck and Brookings scholars Don Kettl and Ron Haskins. Read More
VIDEO
Isabel V. Sawhill, February 20, 2008
Economic inequality across American households has been growing for a number of years. Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families and co-author of Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America examines how upwardly mobile we really are.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, Julia B. Isaacs and Isabel V. Sawhill, February 2008, Economic Mobility Project
Is America still the land of opportunity and mobility? How much opportunity to get ahead actually exists in America? Brookings scholars Julia Isaacs, Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins provide new evidence and summarize research on both the extent of intergenerational mobility in the United States and the factors that influence it. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Eloise Pasachoff, January 2008, CCF Working Paper
In a CCF working paper, Eloise Pasachoff argues that the federal government has an important role to ensure equal educational opportunity for all. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, January 23, 2008, House Committee on Education and Labor
While the nation has been struggling to eliminate the education gap, Ron Haskins testifies on ways to improve all preschool education received by poor children. Read More
VIDEO
Ron Haskins and Martha Raddatz, January 07, 2008
In the late 1990s, Congress and President Clinton collaborated on bi-partisan legislation that led to a substantial decline in child poverty in the United States – especially in African-American communities. Ron Haskins explains that the next president should reinvigorate the fight against poverty through increasing benefits while requiring more personal responsibility.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
John Karl Scholz, December 2007, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper
To address a few problems with low-income families, John Karl Scholz proposes a two-part policy designed to increase the return to work. He argues that increasing the return to work for childless low-skilled workers will lower unemployment rates and will improve other social benefits. Read More