Government safety net programs aim to protect families during tough times—before they fall into poverty. But rising unemployment, foreclosures, and economic distress are putting pressure on a system already in need of updates and repairs.
Urban Institute experts, building on decades of welfare reform research, evaluated public safety nets and proposed new initiatives to bolster work supports and help families gain a stable financial footing. Read more.
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Understanding Poverty Who is poor? What are the consequences? What works to alleviate poverty?
Low-Income Working Families Project Focusing on economic security, the safety net, improving life chances for children, and racial and ethnic disparities
Opportunity and Ownership Project Policy research on assets, ownership, and the opportunity for low-income families to achieve financial security
San Mateo County is one of a small number of innovative local jurisdictions that is expanding coverage for uninsured adults and at the same time undertaking a reform of its safety net primary care system. We evaluated the impact of the systems redesign by comparing outcomes for a group of people served at the largest county safety net clinic prior to systems redesign (2006) to those served at the clinic after systems redesign (2009). Use of any preventive care services in a year climbed from 25.9 percent to 33.3 percent. Continuity of care also rose significantly, and emergency room use declined. The county's experience provides an example for other communities to follow as they improve the efficiency of health care services for the most vulnerable members of society.
Children are more likely to succeed if they have a stable home environment, adequate nutrition and the opportunity to get a good education. Unfortunately, nearly 50 years after the march on Washington, opportunity still has a racial dimension, argues Institute fellow Margaret Simms in this commentary for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) provides supplemental nutritious foods, nutrition education, and referrals to other health, welfare, and social services. WIC eligibility is restricted to infants, children age 1 through 4, and pregnant and postpartum women who are either income or adjunctively eligible.
This project extends WIC national eligibility estimates to single years of age for children, produces estimates for each State and the District of Columbia, and updates methods for estimating eligibility in the territories. The project also implemented calculation of standard errors of estimate for national, regional, State, and Puerto Rico estimates.
This report describes the work the Urban Institute performed to generate the Model of Income in the Near Term, Version 6 (MINT6). MINT is a tool developed for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to analyze the distributional consequences of Social Security reform proposals. MINT is a micro-level data file of individuals born between 1926 and 2075. It starts with a rich set of income and demographic characteristics from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data linked to SSA data on earnings and benefits. MINT then projects these characteristics until death or the year 2099.
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Government safety net programs aim to protect families during tough times—before they fall into poverty. But rising unemployment, foreclosures, and economic distress are putting pressure on a system already in need of updates and repairs.