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Eight briefs examine barriers to employment among parents on TANF, the circumstances of single mothers with no earnings or cash welfare, reasons for the high share of child-only TANF cases, how TANF connects to the broader safety net, how state TANF programs meet federal work requirements, how employment and earnings can be improved for TANF recipients, how state programs can link TANF clients to education and training, and TANF's changing caseloads.

Fragile households seeking solid footing in a weak economy will receive reinvigorated support as Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and South Carolina take up the challenge of streamlining services aiding low-income working families. The six states have been awarded three-year grants to test and implement easy-to-navigate, quick-to-deliver public benefit systems. The grants, the centerpiece of the Work Support Strategies: Streamlining Access, Strengthening Families (WSS) initiative, average about $460,000 per state for each year.

Crime declined throughout Chicago and Atlanta as the two cities undertook the nation’s largest public housing transformations, but some destination neighborhoods for families leaving public housing with vouchers saw smaller than expected decreases. Many neighborhoods to which public housing families relocated experienced no adverse effect on neighborhood crime, demonstrating a much smaller impact of public housing transformation on crime than popular accounts imply. But in neighborhoods where relocated households were more concentrated, the study’s rigorous econometric modeling techniques indicated that crime did not fall at the expected rate.

The Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute and the Association of Fundraising Professionals established the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) to conduct research on fundraising effectiveness and help nonprofit organizations increase their fundraising results. The 2011 FEP Donor Retention Supplement are based on data provided by 2,377 participating nonprofits about the 2010 behavior of 1.8 million 2009 donors to their organizations. Donor confidentiality is maintained for all FEP annual surveys. FEP measures and publishes statistics on gains, losses and net growth for both "number of donors" and "amount of gifts" (dollars).

The federal government spent $87.2 billion on children's health in 2010, accounting for 10 percent of the $916.2-billion federal health budget, Urban Institute researchers estimate. Children's share of the health budget has quintupled from 1960's 2 percent even as kids 18 and under have declined from 33 percent to 24 percent of the U.S. population.

Children in low-income families would be disproportionately affected by cuts in federal spending, an analysis of public resources spent on children concludes. Low-income children, 42 percent of the child population, received 70 percent of federal spending and tax expenditures in 2009 geared toward those 18 years or younger.

Many states' unemployment insurance programs, which fund the first 26 weeks of benefits, are near bankruptcy. In a fragile recovery with still high unemployment rates, the choice is coming down to raising taxes or cutting benefits to keep the programs afloat. Several states have already opted to reduce benefits.

At the Urban Institute forum, Gov. Branstad will speak about his proposed education reforms -- and why they matter to today’s kids -- and Iowa’s Healthiest State in the Nation Initiative, a privately led, publicly endorsed endeavor. The discussion will explore states’ hurdles in meeting child and family needs in an era of fiscal constraint, improving service efficiency and effectiveness, and what the federal government ought to do to increase states’ ability to succeed.

Many boomers, the 77 million or so Americans born between 1946 and 1964, face daunting retirement challenges. Traditional employer-sponsored pensions have been disappearing, replaced by 401(k)-type plans whose payouts depend on unpredictable investment returns. The 2008 stock market crash wiped out trillions of dollars in retirement savings, and the worst housing slump since the Great Depression has suppressed home equity values. Rising health care costs and potential Social Security cutbacks add to boomers' concerns.

The Urban Institute's MetroTrends research team has created an interactive report card on racial and ethnic equity in the nation's top 100 metropolitan areas. A brief commentary by Margery Austin Turner, the Institute's vice president for research, accompanies the map.

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