SNAP Take-up Among Immigrant Families with Children

Drawing on household data from the 2009 American Community Survey and administrative data from the SNAP program, this report compares selected characteristics of immigrant families participating and not participating in the SNAP program with those of native families

Building a Competitive Future Right from the Start: How Paid Leave Strengthens 21st Century Families

This paper provides a brief history of paid family leave policy, in the United States and abroad; synthesizes cutting-edge knowledge about paid leave and its impact on family and civic life; and concludes with a set of recommendations – for policymakers, researchers, public health and early childhood stakeholders, business leaders, and federal, state, and local education agencies – to guide the work going forward

Knowing What Works: States and Cities Build Smarter Social Policy with New and Improved Poverty Measurement

To better understand poverty and find the best strategies to reduce it, states and localities need to know who is poor, why they are poor, and what policies work best for different groups. Rather than rely on the official poverty measure, in use since the early 1960s, several states and localities have taken the lead in developing new measures of poverty that more accurately account for the resources available to their residents as well as their needs. Supported by a strong body of innovative research from the federal government and public policy research organizations, these new measures not only more accurately gauge the level of poverty but offer a cost-effective way to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs. Improved poverty measurement also helps policymakers identify effective new programs to assist vulnerable populations in meeting their families’ often-pressing needs. This brief provides an up-to-date look at how pioneering states and localities are using – or plan to use – improved poverty measurement to build smarter social policy. In a difficult fiscal climate, investing in better measures to estimate poverty and evaluate the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs is sound practice that will enable policymakers to quantify whether and how interventions are improving outcomes for children and their families

Income and Beyond: Taking the Measure of Child Deprivation in the United States

Comparatively little work has been done in the United States to develop multidimensional measures of child deprivation using individual level data. Our research, using Panel Study of Income Dynamics/Child Development Supplement data for a sample of older children and adolescents, introduces an experimental measure to demonstrate the new insights in child well-being that can be gained by looking beyond family income. Besides low income, our measure includes 16 indicators of deprivation encompassing child, parental, familial, and environmental conditions associated with poor outcomes in childhood and adulthood. We describe the surprisingly high incidence of deprivation among the sample children and examine differences by demographic characteristics. We calculate correlations among low income and other indicators of deprivation to understand how children are likely to be exposed to multiple deprivations. Using multivariate modeling, we examine the joint association of income and non-income contextual indicators with three child outcome deprivations: poor health, low social/emotional well-being, and poor basic learning skills. We find that the multidimensional measure provides valuable information about children at risk for poor development outcomes not captured by more standard income poverty and material hardship measures. The paper concludes with suggestions for public policy initiatives that may help reduce child exposure to these risk factors and ameliorate their effects

The Florida Minimum Wage: How Much Can It Really Buy, and How High Should It Be?

In Florida and across the nation, there is much debate about the adequacy of the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 has not increased since July 2009, and has fallen by more than fifty cents in real terms since then. Adjusted for inflation, the current minimum wage is far below the federal minimum wage in effect from the late 1950s through the 1970s. Recognizing the inadequacy of the federal minimum wage, numerous states—including Florida—have set higher minimum wages for their residents. In the past year, Florida state legislators have advanced legislation or promoted ballot initiatives that would raise the state’s minimum wage, now set at$8.05. To help inform the policy debate, this brief advances three arguments for raising the Florida minimum wage. First, the current wage is not high enough to lift many families with working parents out of poverty. Because of this, parents in Florida working at the current minimum wage and with incomes below the poverty line cannot access federal healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, leaving them without affordable health insurance if they lack employer-provided coverage. Finally, the state minimum wage is also far too low to offset important work-related expenses such as child care, serving as a disincentive for a second parent in a two-parent family to increase his or her working hours

Three Policy Reforms to Help Low-Income Children in Ohio

Ohio advocates and policymakers have recently proposed important new policy initiatives to help the state’s struggling working families. This policy brief models three reforms that promise to significantly improve the economic security of low-income Ohio families with children. First, we examine the effect of introducing a free and universal prekindergarten program for four-year-olds on families’ out-of-pocket child care costs. Child care costs are a major expense for working parents. Second, we investigate the problem of the “canyon effect” in child care subsidy policy and identify solutions. As described by Policy Matters Ohio, the canyon effect occurs when a working parent who loses a child care subsidy—because she loses her job, for example—must take a job at a lower wage to qualify again for the subsidy. Because child care is so costly, a subsidy can make the difference between being able to work or not, so the parent has a strong incentive to recover child care assistance, even if it means moving down a career ladder. Finally, we model the effect of improving the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on the economic well-being of Ohio working families. The Ohio EITC is currently set at 10 percent of the federal credit and is not refundable, meaning that a family that has no income tax liability does not receive the credit. The improved EITC would be refundable and equal to 30 percent of the federal credit; it would also remove an existing cap on the credit for earnings above a very low level. The impact of each of these reforms on the economic security of representative low-income families in the state is estimated with the National Center for Children in Poverty’s 2015 Ohio Family Resource Simulator (FRS) policy modeling tool, updated with the assistance of Policy Matters Ohio

Basic Facts about Low-income Children, Children under 3 Years, 2013

Children under 18 years represent 23 percent of the population, but they comprise 33 percent of all people in poverty. Among all children, 44 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families. Our very youngest children – infants and toddlers under age 3 years – appear to be particularly vulnerable, with 47 percent living in low-income families, including 25 percent living in poor families. Being a child in a low-income or poor family does not happen by chance. Parental education and employment, race/ethnicity, and other factors are associated with children experiencing economic insecurity. This fact sheet describes the demographic, socio-economic, and geographic characteristics of children and their parents. It highlights important factors that appear to distinguish low-income and poor children from their less disadvantaged counterparts

Taxing the Poor: State Income Tax Policies Make a Big Difference to Working Families

An NCCP analysis of state tax policy finds that a significant number of states continue to push the working poor deeper into poverty by imposing income tax liabilities on poverty-level earnings–liabilities that in some states reach hundreds of dollars. In contrast to states that tax the poor, a growing number of states offer supports to poor families through refundable tax credits, providing income supplements that that can reach up to almost two thousand dollars per family

Basic Facts about Low-Income Children, Children Under 3 Years, 2014

Children under 18 years represent 23 percent of the population, but they comprise 32 percent of all people in poverty. Many more children live in families with incomes just above the poverty threshold. Among all children, 44 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (21 percent) live in poor families. Our very youngest children—infants and toddlers under age 3 years—appear to be particularly vulnerable, with 47 percent living in low-income families, including 24 percent living in poor families. Being a child in a low-income or poor family does not happen by chance. Parental education and employment, race/ethnicity, and other factors are associated with children’s experience of economic insecurity. This fact sheet describes the demographic, socio-economic, and geographic characteristics of children and their parents. It highlights important factors that appear to distinguish low-income and poor children from their less disadvantaged counterparts

Basic Facts about Low-income Children, Children under 18 Years, 2012

Children under 18 years represent 23 percent of the population, but they comprise 34 percent of all people in poverty. Among all children, 45 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families. Being a child in a low-income or poor family does not happen by chance. Parental education and employment, race/ethnicity, and other factors are associated with children’s experience of economic insecurity. This fact sheet describes the demographic, socio-economic, and geographic characteristics of children and their parents. It highlights the important factors that appear to distinguish low-income and poor children from their less disadvantaged counterparts