Fast Focus

The purpose of Fast Focus is to provide brief, single-topic summaries of important IRP conferences, publications, and events to keep readers up-to-date on our latest poverty research between issues of Focus. There will be no overlap of articles in Fast Focus and Focus; the content of each will be distinct but complementary.

This is a “green” initiative; we will not be printing or mailing hard copies of Fast Focus.

Notification and an abstract of each new issue of Fast Focus will be e-mailed to “IRPFocusAlert” listserv subscribers along with a link to the full issue on IRP’s Web site.

If you would like to receive notification and an abstract of new issues of Fast Focus, send an e-mail message to irpfocusalert-request@ssc.wisc.edu indicating “ Subscribe" in the subject line.

Fast Focus No. 13-2011

January 2012

Boosting the employment and productivity of American workers
Harry J. Holzer

This issue of Fast Focus introduces an award-winning proposal by Harry J. Holzer that takes on the challenge of connecting less-educated and less-skilled unemployed Americans to education and training programs, and ultimately to employers that need more-specialized workers. He shows that there are good-paying jobs that do not require a four-year college degree, but not enough skilled workers to fill them. His plan is to create more effective education and training systems to improve workers' success and connect employers to the skilled workforce they need in the global labor market. This would be done through competitive grants from the federal government to states that expand proven training programs for the disadvantaged and, more generally, encourage education and workforce institutions to align themselves more closely with growing sectors that provide good-paying jobs. Evidence suggests that such grants could generate benefits that far outweigh their costs, including lower unemployment rates and higher earnings among the disadvantaged. Holzer presented his proposal at a forum hosted by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution on November 30, 2011, on training programs geared toward the needs of today's workforce. Holzer received the Hamilton Project's 2011 Policy Innovation Prize for the best proposal to create jobs and enhance productivity. The broader proposal appears in Raising Job Quality and Skills for American Workers: Creating More-Effective Education and Workforce Development Systems in the States, The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC.

Fast Focus No. 12-2011

October 2011

American poverty and inequality: Key trends and future research directions
Timothy Smeeding, Maria Cancian, John Karl Scholz, Barbara Wolfe, Robert Haveman, Jennifer Noyes, Katherine Magnuson, Carolyn Heinrich, Thomas Kaplan, Lawrence M. Berger, Marcia Carlson, J. Michael Collins, Julia Isaacs, Daniel R. Meyer, and James Walker

This issue of Fast Focus summarizes the research agenda of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under a new, five-year national Poverty Research Center grant from the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The award is one of three made in ASPE's reconfigured poverty center program that is designed to combat poverty and inequality in the 21st century (Stanford University and the University of California, Davis host the other two new centers). In receiving the award, IRP will continue the work it has pursued since 1966, when it was established as the nation's original, university-based center for research into the nature, causes, and cures of poverty and inequality in the United States. Central to the mission of the poverty research center program is capacity-building—supporting faculty research and faculty training; mentoring students; and enhancing awareness of issues related to poverty and inequality through dissemination of research findings to a range of audiences. The new program features formalized cross-poverty-center networks and a centralized advisory committee that oversees all three centers in collaboration with ASPE analysts. In this brief, IRP researchers assess poverty and inequality in the United States. They examine key trends over the decades since the War on Poverty was launched in the 1960s, review past research, and look ahead to how poverty may continue to change and require new approaches to mitigate its effects on individuals and families. They evaluate the policies and programs devised to improve opportunities for the disadvantaged and to help them on the path to self-sufficiency. Finally, they look ahead to project what researchers, policymakers, and practitioners will need to know to improve the life chances of all Americans and what research evidence is needed to inform and improve antipoverty efforts.

Fast Focus No. 11-2011

September 2011

Stepparents and half-siblings: Family complexity from a child's perspective
Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer, and Steven T. Cook

In this issue of Fast Focus, Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer, and Steven T. Cook summarize findings published in the journal Demography, which document the incidence and evolution of family complexity from the perspective of children. Following a cohort of firstborn children whose mothers were not married at the time of their birth, the authors consider family structure changes over the first 10 years of the child's life–considering both full and half-siblings who are coresidential or who live in another household. They find that 60 percent of firstborn children of unmarried mothers have at least one half-sibling by age 10. Complex family structures are more likely for children of parents who are younger or who have low earnings and for those in larger urban areas. Children who have half-siblings on their mother's side are also more likely to have half-siblings on their father's side, and vice versa, contributing to very complex family structures–and potential child support arrangements–for some children.

Fast Focus No. 10-2011

June 2011

Jobs, skills, and policy for lower-wage workers
Robert H. Haveman, Carolyn J. Heinrich, and Timothy M. Smeeding

This issue of Fast Focus is based on the presentations made by a group of economists, sociologists, and public policy and education experts at a national working conference hosted by IRP in March 2011, with financial support from the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The “Employment Prospects for Lower-Wage Workers: Easing the Implications of a Slow Recovery” conference, which was organized by Robert Haveman, Carolyn Heinrich, and Timothy Smeeding, featured presentations by leading researchers on the sources of U.S. labor market polarization and its impacts  on workers with varying types and levels of skills. Issues of technological change, job-outsourcing, the decline of trade unions, and the effect of minimum wages were assessed. Conference participants explored the consequences of these developments on a variety of economic and social phenomena, including the growth of wage and income inequality, the demand for public transfers, and the health and well-being of displaced workers and their families. To view the conference PowerPoint presentations, visit IRP’s Web site at www.irp.wisc.edu and search for “employment conference.”

Fast Focus No. 9-2011

March 2011

Unmarried parents in college: Pathways to success
Sara Goldrick-Rab and Kia Sorensen

This issue of Fast Focus is based on an article published by Sara Goldrick-Rab and Kia Sorensen in the fall 2010 issue of The Future of Children (Vol. 20, No. 2; used here with permission), which focuses on “fragile families,” defined as families in which the parents were unmarried when the child was born. The authors examine unmarried parents in college at a time when postsecondary education and training have become increasingly important to workers’ success in the U.S. labor market and therefore to families’ economic security. Noting that access to higher education has dramatically expanded in the past several decades, Goldrick-Rab and Sorensen focus on how unmarried parents fare once they enter college. They argue that, contrary to the expectation that college access consistently promotes family stability and economic security, deficiencies in current policy lead to adverse consequences for some families headed by unmarried parents. And although rates of college attendance have substantially increased among unmarried parents, their college completion rates are low. The authors examine their barriers to success, and the effects of their studies on family life, describing empirically tested supports that have helped more unmarried parenting students attain a degree and thus find better employment at higher wages.

Fast Focus No. 8-2010

December 2010

Fighting child poverty in the United States and United Kingdom: An update
Timothy M. Smeeding and Jane Waldfogel

Last year Timothy Smeeding and Jane Waldfogel published an article in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management that showed how child poverty trends in the United States and United Kingdom had diverged over the past decade, during which the United Kingdom pursued an ambitious war on child poverty. Now there are new data for the two countries, which reveal that the differences are even starker than before. This Fast Focus brief is designed to update their findings in the context of the ongoing recession as well as the change in government in the United Kingdom and subsequent ongoing changes in public policy toward poor children. Ten years into the U.K. initiative to halve child poverty in 10 years, if poverty is measured in absolute terms as we do in the U.S., they have more than achieved their interim goal, because of both fiscal effort and persistence, as Jane Waldfogel documents in her book Britain’s War on Poverty (published by Russell Sage Foundation in 2010). The authors assert that a more concerted national effort will be needed if the United States is to achieve anything like the successes of the United Kingdom in reducing its high child poverty rates.

Fast Focus No. 7-2010

December 2010*

*This brief is a revision of Fast Focus No. 7-2010, which was originally issued in October 2010. The first version of the brief contained only two of the provisions of the ARRA (i.e., increased SNAP benefits and expanded tax credits), while this final version presents results for a simulation using four provisions: SNAP benefits, refundable tax credits (EITC and Child Tax Credit), Making Work Pay Credit, and Economic Recovery Payment.

The effects of the 2009 ARRA on poverty in Wisconsin
Timothy M. Smeeding, Julia B. Isaacs, Joanna Y. Marks, and Katherine Thornton

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 contained temporary policy changes to offset or lessen the negative effects of the economic recession. These policies included provisions increasing refundable tax credits for families and larger nutrition assistance benefits for those enrolled in the program. In this brief, the authors analyze the effect of the tax and nutrition assistance portions of the ARRA on poverty in Wisconsin, using a broader, more complete measure of poverty developed at IRP. Under the Wisconsin Poverty Measure, we can observe how the existence of refundable tax credits and non-cash benefits (particularly nutrition assistance) serves to reduce poverty, even before the enactment of the ARRA. This brief demonstrates that the 2009 expansions of the safety net under the ARRA helped mitigate poverty even more than the existing tax credit and nutritional assistance programs extant in 2008. The effect was greatest on families with children, in accordance with the design of the policy changes.

Fast Focus No. 6-2010

August 2010

Promising antipoverty strategies for families
Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer, and Deborah Reed

American families are becoming increasingly diverse, dynamic, and dependent on labor market earnings to avoid poverty and economic distress. Children are less likely to live in families with both parents and more likely to rely on their mother’s earnings to avoid poverty. The recession has highlighted the urgent need for antipoverty programs supporting families, but the authors emphasize that the needs the programs address are longstanding, not only cyclical, and therefore require a sustained response. In this brief, the authors review changes in family structure, the relationship between family structure and employment, and early evidence on differential impacts of the recession on families, and they explore the implications of these changes for policy. They argue that supporting resident parents’ efforts to balance work and family responsibilities and supporting and enforcing nonresident parents’ contributions to their children will help reduce poverty and economic difficulties.

Fast Focus No. 5-2010

May 2010

Early findings from New York City's conditional cash transfer program
James A. Riccio

In 2007, New York City’s Center for Economic Opportunity launched Opportunity NYC: Family Rewards, an experimental, privately funded, conditional cash transfer (CCT) program to help families break the cycle of poverty. CCT programs offer cash assistance to reduce immediate hardship, but condition these transfers on families’ efforts to build up their “human capital,” often by developing the education and skills that may reduce their poverty over the longer term. Family Rewards is the first comprehensive CCT program in a developed country.

Aimed at low-income families in six of New York City’s highest-poverty communities, Family Rewards ties cash rewards to prespecified activities and outcomes in children’s education, families’ preventive health care, and parents’ employment. The three-year program is being operated by Seedco—a private, nonprofit intermediary organization—in partnership with six community-based organizations. It is being evaluated by MDRC through a randomized control trial involving approximately 4,800 families and 11,000 children, half of whom can receive the cash incentives if they meet the required conditions, and half who have been assigned to a control group that cannot receive the incentives. This brief summarizes an MDRC report on initial findings during the program’s early operating period.

Fast Focus No. 4-2009

December 2009

The "Great Recession" and redistribution: Federal antipoverty policies
Gary Burtless

Brookings economist and IRP affiliate Gary Burtless presented a lecture at IRP on November 19, 2009, on "Recession and Redistribution: The Economy, Public Policy, and the Poor." His talk, summarized in this issue of Fast Focus, represents one presentation in IRP's continuing series on the "Reorganization of Social Policy in a Recession," an interdisciplinary seminar series that brings distinguished researchers from other institutions to the UW–Madison campus to present their work on designing and evaluating public policies that support people in the current recession and on the net effects of those policies on vulnerable (especially poor) children and families. Support for the series is provided by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Fast Focus No. 3–2009

June 2009

Measuring the "faith factor" in social service program outcomes
Jennifer L. Noyes

The Institute for Research on Poverty's working conference on "Measuring the Role of Faith in Program Outcomes" was convened to begin to address gaps in knowledge about whether and why the faith factor might improve social service program outcomes. Support for the conference was provided by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Faith-based providers, current evaluators of faith-based services, and other experienced evaluators in attendance all left with a better shared understanding and an articulation of the elements of FBO service delivery that require evaluation. In this brief summary of conference outcomes, Jennifer Noyes summarizes the key evaluation challenges identified: What are faith-based services? How does context influence the role of faith? How does faith intersect with service delivery? And how does the interaction of faith and service provision affect desired outcomes? Noyes concludes by noting the opportunities and directions for additional research in this arena that may be fruitful for learning the contribution of the faith factor in social service program delivery.

Fast Focus No. 2–2009

March 2009

President Obama and antipoverty policy: What does the stimulus bill do to fight poverty, educate citizens, and improve public health?
Timothy Smeeding

IRP Director Timothy Smeeding moderated a panel discussion about the economic stimulus bill on which this issue of Fast Focus is based. Daniel R. Meyer, Professor of Social Work and IRP Affiliate, commented on the bill's cash and noncash transfer programs, indicating that the stimulus bill represents both a continuation of thirty-year trends in policies affecting low-income families (such as providing work supports over aid to nonworkers) and some nontrivial increases in existing benefit-program outlays. Sara Goldrick-Rab, Assistant Professor of Education Policy Studies and Sociology, Scholar at the Wisconsin Center for Advancement of Postsecondary Education, and IRP Affiliate, spoke about aid to education in the bill, lauding the administration's new emphasis on higher education as essential to escaping poverty, but also noting that more than half of the $100 billion earmarked for new education funding will go to keeping schools open. Pamela Herd, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Sociology and IRP Affiliate, talked about health and health care support, noting that about one-fifth of the stimulus is for broadly construed health and health care, about half of which is to keep the public health insurance system going, mainly through increased Medicaid funding. Herd noted that the broader context of President Obama's health care plan is two-fold: expand coverage and control costs. Andrew Reschovsky, Professor of Public Affairs and Applied Economics, IRP Affiliate, and Affiliate of the Wisconsin Center for Advancement of Postsecondary Education, presented a synopsis of how the federal stimulus bill influenced the State of Wisconsin's education budget, noting that federal stimulus funds will support poverty-related programs and special education, and that this budget has no increase in equalization aid, unlike in past years.

Fast Focus No. 1–2008

December 2008

A state of agents? Third-party governance and implications for human services and their delivery
Carolyn Heinrich

This brief concerns the increasing use of “agents of the state” (nongovernmental for-profit or nonprofit organizations) to provide and administer social service programs formerly handled by government, and it explores the implications of this practice, especially for vulnerable citizens. Third-party governance was the focus of an IRP conference held in summer 2008, and in this overview, conference organizer Carolyn Heinrich summarizes the proceedings and presents key insights from three of the conference papers that focus on social service delivery (affordable housing, foster care and family services, and mental health). The research efforts reveal that government exercises very limited oversight of agents of the state, yet the organizational structures and incentives that government establishes to promote service quality, efficiency, and effectiveness appear to weigh heavily on service outcomes. Government plays a far more vital and active role than just funding the services, even if it is not engaging directly in service provision. That role is essential for ensuring equity in access to services and improving service outcomes.