Intra-Year Employment Instability and Economic Well-Being Among Urban Households: Mitigating Effects of the Social Safety Net
This article examines the associations among employment status, income supports, poverty, and material hardship and whether the safety net buffers against financial hardship among households with unstable employment. Consistent unemployment is strongly associated with low income and poverty status, but not material hardship. Findings also suggest that cash transfers effectively buffer against the negative impact of persistent unemployment, while in-kind transfers appear more important for the unstably employed.
The Effects of the New York City Minimum Wage Increases on Earnings, Poverty, and Material Hardship: Evidence from the Poverty Tracker
This report examines the impact that the New York City minimum wage increases in 2017, 2018, and 2019 had on low-wage workers in the Poverty Tracker sample, looking specifically at earnings, poverty, material hardship, employment, and benefit receipt. The increases contributed to a significant increase in annual earnings of minimum wage workers and did benefit workers that were more likely to face poverty and material hardship.
Keeping Up with Inflation: How policy indexation can enhance poverty reduction
As families across the United States contend with record-high inflation, the values of several government benefits and tax credits are not keeping up. This paper, published by the Century Foundation, examines the antipoverty potential of one policy, the expanded Child Tax Credit, under different scenarios to shine a spotlight on the importance of inflation indexation for optimizing the antipoverty effects of government policies.
Effects of the Expanded Child Tax Credit on Employment Outcomes
To evaluate the actual employment effects of the expanded CTC, we use two large national datasets to investigate whether there is any evidence that the initial child payments led to reductions in employment. Our analyses do not support claims that the CTC has negative employment effects.
State Fact Sheets: Policy Options to Address Youth and Young Adult Poverty
We explore the anti-poverty effects of federal policy options in the areas of basic needs, family tax, and economic opportunity for youth and young adults. We break out state-level results across three age groups: ages 14 to 17, ages 18 to 24, and the whole youth and young adult population (ages 14 to 24), as well as by racial and ethnic groups.
U.S. Monthly Poverty Rate Declines to 13.2% in January 2021
Using our monthly poverty framework, we find that the December 2020 COVID-19 economic relief package—continuing enhanced unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, and increased SNAP benefits—kept 13 million individuals from poverty in January 2021.
Monthly Poverty to Spike After Expiration of the CARES Act Unemployment Benefits
Using our monthly poverty framework, we find that a failure to extend two unemployment provisions of the CARES Act in December 2020 could see the number of individuals in poverty in January 2021 increase by 4.8 million.
Parental Unemployment Reaches Historic Highs During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Urgent policy action is needed to prevent long-lasting detrimental effects of the spike in the share of children with at least one unemployed parent during the pandemic. Black and Latino children have been particularly affected and mothers are more affected than fathers.
The CARES Act and Poverty in the Covid-19 Crisis
We apply new forecasting methods to project the effect of the CARES Act on 2020 poverty rates. If households can access pandemic relief, the CARES Act could return poverty rates to pre-crisis levels.
Forecasting Estimates of Poverty During the Covid-19 Crisis
We develop a novel method for forecasting poverty rates to assess how much the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic may increase levels of poverty in the US. Without policy action, poverty could reach the highest levels in more than 50 years.
Gender in the Labor Market: The Role of Equal Opportunity and Family-Friendly Policies
We find that problems with access to family-friendly policies are linked to overall low levels of access to such policies for both women and men. A federal provision for paid family leave, expanded public or subsidized child care, and employer mandates for scheduling control and flexibility can help all families and continue progress towards a more gender-equitable workforce.
Fighting Poverty With Jobs: Projecting the Impacts of a National Subsidized Employment Program
In this joint report by the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, we consider a policy proposal for a national subsidized jobs program and find that it would reach millions of U.S. workers left behind in today’s economy, reducing the poverty rate among participants by nearly half.
Left Behind: The One-Third of Children in Families Who Earn Too Little to Get the Full Child Tax Credit
The current federal Child Tax Credit provides up to $2,000 per child per year to qualifying children, but low-income families lose out because they do not have enough earnings to qualify for the full benefit. This brief documents who is currently “left behind” in terms of realizing the full benefits of the federal Child Tax Credit because of the CTC’s earnings requirement, finding that those left out are disproportionately children of color, those in families with young children, those with single parents, and those who reside in rural areas.
Medicaid Work Requirements and Poverty: Losing Coverage Could Cost Families over $1,000 per Year, Throwing Many into Poverty
We analyze poverty impacts of the Trump administration's proposal to allow states to impose Medicaid work requirements and find that close to 3 million individuals would lose coverage, annual medical expenses could rise by over $1,000 per family losing coverage, and over 130,000 Americans would enter poverty if work requirements were imposed on Medicaid recipients.
Effectiveness of Antipoverty Policies and State Differences in Cost of Living
In our latest brief, we find that the main reason antipoverty programs seem to make less of a difference in high-cost areas is simply that the costs in those areas are greater. Our analyses show that costs of living are critical to the accurate assessment of state-level poverty rates and the true impact of antipoverty programs.
Recent Trends in Food Stamp Usage and Implications for Increased Work Requirements
Proponents of the efforts to expand SNAP work requirements argue that “work-capable” adults are increasingly taking up SNAP benefits while working less. We find that “work-capable” adults do not represent a growing segment of the SNAP caseload and a majority of “work-capable” adults who receive SNAP are working during the year that they receive benefits.