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

Do States’ Immigrant-Friendly Policies Improve the Health of Children of Immigrants? The Impact of Driver’s License Policies for Undocumented Immigrants and “Sanctuary” Policies on Access and Use of Health Care

If 10.5 million undocumented immigrants are unable or afraid to access health care, medical needs will go unmet and, in the face of COVID-19, lives may be lost. This report explores how immigrant-friendly policies increase the chances that children of immigrants receive preventative health care, thus reducing the likelihood of having unmet medical needs and potentially reducing the chances of disease outbreaks.https://educate.bankstreet.edu/gse/1004/thumbnail.jp

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

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

Disability Perspectives on Paid Leave: A qualitative analysis of leave-taking among workers affected by disabilities or serious health conditions

Study importance: This report presents findings from a ground-breaking qualitative research study on how workers with disabilities and working caregivers of people with disabilities use, need, and benefit from paid family and medical leave. It is one of the only studies to directly hear from workers to specifically explore whether current paid and unpaid leave policies and programs meet the needs of the disability community. The study’s findings offer recommendations for ways in which policymakers, employers, and paid leave advocates can be more inclusive of the disability community to ultimately make paid leave accessible to all. Methods: Researchers at the National Center for Children in Poverty in New York received funding from The Arc of the United States to conduct and analyze in-depth telephone interviews with 90 workers with a range of disabilities and/or serious health conditions and working caregivers in California, New Jersey, New York, and North Carolina. These states were chosen to represent a range of policy contexts. California, New Jersey, and New York have had long-standing temporary disability insurance programs and, in the past 2 decades, expanded these programs to offer paid family leave as well. North Carolina workers did not have any leave benefits or protections beyond the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, or (FMLA), unless their employers chose to offer them. Findings: Major findings include: • Workers with disabilities and working caregivers take leave for diverse and often disability-specific reasons. • Workers want to maximize their time at work and benefit when they can use paid leave in conjunction with other employment benefits. • Workers highly value the FMLA and state-administered paid leave options, which in this study included programs in California, New Jersey, and New York. • Multiple barriers and gaps limit workers’ access to any type of leave, including fear of job loss and stigma against disabilities. In states with paid family and medical leave insurance, certain program features also limit access, including low awareness and understanding of the program, inadequate wage replacement, narrow or unclear covered reasons for leave, and inadequate coverage for self-employed and public workers. Recommendations/Conclusions: Based on these findings, the paper provides recommendations for how policymakers, employers, and advocates can make it easier for all workers to take leave from work during a stressful period of their lives. Both federal and state policymakers and administrators of leave programs can apply these recommendations. These recommendations center on both the policy dimensions necessary for making a paid leave program disability-inclusive (e.g., anti-retaliatory provisions, job-protection, coverage for public and self-employed workers, hourly leave), and the administrative elements necessary for ensuring the success of such a program (e.g., simple application process and funding for outreach). Recommendations for employers aim to increase empathy in the workplace at low or no cost while increasing worker morale and loyalty. Recommendations for advocates center on the best ways to educate the disability community about available leave programs and their leave-taking rights. Ultimately, a comprehensive, national paid leave policy with disability-inclusive policy dimensions will improve access to leave for all workers

The Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 Early Release Science data: Panchromatic Faint Object Counts for 0.2-2 microns wavelength

We describe the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) Early Release Science (ERS) observations in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) South field. The new WFC3 ERS data provide calibrated, drizzled mosaics in the UV filters F225W, F275W, and F336W, as well as in the near-IR filters F098M (Ys), F125W (J), and F160W (H) with 1-2 HST orbits per filter. Together with the existing HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) GOODS-South mosaics in the BViz filters, these panchromatic 10-band ERS data cover 40-50 square arcmin at 0.2-1.7 {\mu}m in wavelength at 0.07-0.15" FWHM resolution and 0.090" Multidrizzled pixels to depths of AB\simeq 26.0-27.0 mag (5-{\sigma}) for point sources, and AB\simeq 25.5-26.5 mag for compact galaxies. In this paper, we describe: a) the scientific rationale, and the data taking plus reduction procedures of the panchromatic 10-band ERS mosaics; b) the procedure of generating object catalogs across the 10 different ERS filters, and the specific star-galaxy separation techniques used; and c) the reliability and completeness of the object catalogs from the WFC3 ERS mosaics. The excellent 0.07-0.15" FWHM resolution of HST/WFC3 and ACS makes star- galaxy separation straightforward over a factor of 10 in wavelength to AB\simeq 25-26 mag from the UV to the near-IR, respectively.Comment: 51 pages, 71 figures Accepted to ApJS 2011.01.2

Loss of Perineuronal Net in ME7 Prion Disease

Microglial activation and behavioral abnormalities occur before neuronal loss in experimental murine prion disease; the behavioral changes coincide with a reduction in synaptic plasticity. Because synaptic plasticity depends on an intact perineuronal net (PN), a specialized extracellular matrix that surrounds parvalbumin (PV)-positive GABAergic (gamma-aminobutyric acid [GABA]) inhibitory interneurons, we investigated the temporal relationships between microglial activation and loss of PN and PV-positive neurons in ME7 murine prion disease. Anesthetized C57Bl/6J mice received bilateral intracerebral microinjections of ME7-infected or normal brain homogenate into the dorsal hippocampus. Microglial activation, PrP accumulation, the number of PV-positive interneurons, and Wisteria floribunda agglutinin-positive neurons (i.e. those with an intact PN) were assessed in the ventral CA1 and subiculum at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 weeks postinjection. Hippocampal areas and total neuron numbers in the ventral CA1 and subiculum were also determined. Loss of PN coincided with early microglial activation and with a reduction in synaptic plasticity. No significant loss of PV-positive interneurons was observed. Our findings suggest that the substrate of the earliest synaptic and behavioral abnormalities in murine prion disease may be inflammatory microglia-mediated degradation of the PN

The F-BAR protein CIP4 promotes GLUT4 endocytosis through bidirectional interactions with N-WASp and Dynamin-2

F-BAR proteins are a newly described family of proteins with unknown physiological significance. Because F-BAR proteins, including Cdc42 interacting protein-4 (CIP4), drive membrane deformation and affect endocytosis, we investigated the role of CIP4 in GLUT4 traffic by flow cytometry in GLUT4myc-expressing L6 myoblasts (L6 GLUT4myc). L6 GLUT4myc cells express CIP4a as the predominant F-BAR protein. siRNA knockdown of CIP4 increased insulin-stimulated 14C-deoxyglucose uptake by elevating cell-surface GLUT4. Enhanced surface GLUT4 was due to decreased endocytosis, which correlated with lower transferrin internalization. Immunoprecipitation of endogenous CIP4 revealed that CIP4 interacted with N-WASp and Dynamin-2 in an insulin-dependent manner. FRET confirmed the insulin-dependent, subcellular properties of these interactions. Insulin exposure stimulated specific interactions in plasma membrane and cytosolic compartments, followed by a steady-state response that underlies the coordination of proteins needed for GLUT4 traffic. Our findings reveal a physiological function for F-BAR proteins, supporting a previously unrecognized role for the F-BAR protein CIP4 in GLUT4 endocytosis, and show that interactions between CIP4 and Dynamin-2 and between CIP4 and NWASp are spatially coordinated to promote function