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
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, September 2008, First Focus
Ron Haskins offers ways policymakers could create an entitlement to housing assistance that would more fairly distribute housing benefits and convert housing into a more effective element in the nation’s work support system. The goal of reform would be to get the most out of the resources now devoted to housing by providing at least some benefit to all eligible families that want a housing subsidy. 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
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
Friday, May 16, 2008
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
Washington, DC
The National Healthy Marriage Resource Center and the Center on Children and Families at Brookings Institution are cosponsoring a series of three seminars to share the lessons learned to date from research and the experience of over 300 healthy marriage and relationship programs located across the USA serving diverse populations. In this seminar on May 16, researchers, program administrators and program participants focused on key lessons learned about the economic factors that affect couples' lives. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Rebecca M. Blank and Brian Kovak, May 2008, Brookings Institution
There are a growing number of low-income single mothers who are long-term welfare recipients or are without steady employment. They tend to face more barriers to stable employment, with less education, younger children, higher rates of mental and physical health problems and substance abuse, and a history of domestic violence. In this brief, Rebecca Blank and Brian Kovak propose a new program to link these mothers to medical and economic support and give them greater assistance in securing employment. Read More
PAST EVENT
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
9:00 AM to 11:15 AM
Washington, DC
The Center on Children and Families and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy held a forum to discuss the policy challenges posed by single mothers who have not been able to find stable employment and who may have used up their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families eligibility or face sanctions. These women head the families that are most vulnerable to the current economic downswing. Read More
VIDEO
Rebecca M. Blank, Hon. Tom Downey and Hon. Nancy Johnson, May 07, 2008
At a forum cosponsored by the Center on Children and Families at Brookings and the National Poverty Center, an elite panel of experts, featuring Brookings’s Rebecca Blank, discussed policy challenges posed by single mothers who have not been able to find stable employment and who may have used up their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families eligibility or face sanctions. These women head the families that are most vulnerable to the current economic downswing.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Homi Kharas, April 23, 2008, Newshour with Jim Lehrer
Rising food prices partly reflect the spillover from high energy costs, and are causing major problems for poor people. Homi Kharas argues for more development assistance for agriculture production to increase food supplies in the long run as well as for more assistance for sustainable development projects to create jobs and higher wages so that poor people can afford the rising costs of food. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Rebecca M. Blank, April 16, 2008, The Brookings Institution
A substantial number of low-income individuals make use of services within the alternative financial sector, particularly pay-day lenders and check cashing outlets. The high cost of these services has led many observers to seek policies that would reduce the use of informal financial services among lower income households. In this paper, Rebecca Blank reviews the reasons why individuals utilize AFS outlets and discusses the policy options that could affect these decisions. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Elizabeth Kneebone, April 14, 2008, The Brookings Institution
In this report, Elizbeth Kneebone examines the changing distribution of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients across large cites and suburbs, smaller metro areas, and rural communities throughout the country. While taxpayers in large cities and rural areas were the most likely to claim the EITC in 2005, more than one-third of EITC filers lived in the suburbs of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Julia B. Isaacs, March 2008, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
This study by Brookings expert Julia Isaacs compares the Food Stamp Program with eight other public assistance programs across four measures of program effectiveness—administrative costs, error payments, program access, and benefit targeting. Read More
VIDEO
Isabel V. Sawhill, Ian Solomon, Doug Holtz-Eakin, Gene Sperling, Julia B. Isaacs and Ron Haskins, March 20, 2008
On March 20, the Center on Children and Families at Brookings and the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project a discussion to examine the findings of "Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America," a new volume by Brookings experts Julia Isaacs, Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins.