Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/KatherinRossPhillips

States make many decisions that affect working parents. This paper compiles policy data that cover four types of state decisions: job-protected family care policies; child care subsidies; early childhood education and elementary school schedules; and tax policy. The collection of policies provides a summary of key information in each of the four areas that should be useful for future research. Each section of the report discusses how employers and employees can benefit from the relevant type of family policy, summarizes the federal role in the policy area, and highlights state policymaking. Detailed tables outline specific state policy provisions.

Analysis of the 2002 National Survey of America's Families indicates that older workers and those with incomes at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty line are more likely to have paid leave than younger workers and low-income workers. More than half of poor workers, working welfare recipients, and workers who recently left welfare do not receive paid leave. Most working parents have access to maternity or paternity leave regardless of their work hours, job tenure, or firm size. The relatively even distribution of access to maternity and paternity leave, compared with the uneven access to paid leave, could be an effect of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. The author concludes that parents who are likely to need leave--those with young children and working welfare recipients--are less likely to have it. [View the corresponding press release]

This paper uses data from the 1990 and 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation to assess whether changes in welfare policy affected welfare entry rates. It also assesses whether changes in entry rates are accompanied by improvements in the circumstances of families that choose not to receive welfare. The authors conclude that policy shifts and changes in attitudes toward work and welfare are the most likely explanations for the drop in welfare entry rates. The bulk of the change came after the implementation of welfare reform. Declining entry rates are not accompanied by substantial improvements in the well-being of low-income single mothers who are not on welfare.

According to data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families, programs that "stop the clock" when recipients work at least 30 hours per week could benefit many families. Approximately 613,000 families who receive TANF could automatically qualify because the primary caregivers in the families already work 30 or more hours per week. Another 192,000 TANF participants would qualify if they increase their hours of work from between 20 and 29 hours to 30 hours per week. An additional 750,000 eligible, non-recipients working at least 30 hours per week could benefit if they reenter welfare. The brief provides data for each of these three groups on employment, welfare participation, and the potential effects of this policy on their behavior and economic well-being.

Using data from the National Survey of America's Families, this paper finds that levels of parent work are not generally associated with positive child outcomes even when family income is considered. For all children, positive outcomes are more strongly associated with both family and child characteristics, such as education and mental health, than with patterns of parent work. Job characteristics, such as access to family leave and flexible work schedules, may have more of an effect on parenting and child well-being than levels of work.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest cash transfer program for low-income parents in the United States. The refundable tax credit supplements wages and offsets taxes paid by low-income workers. Research suggests that the EITC has not only been effective in moving families over the poverty line, but it has also encouraged work among single mothers.

One in six nonelderly Americans lives in families in which the adults work at least half-time on average but whose incomes fall below twice the federal poverty level. The primary earner in working low-income families typically works full-time, year-round. While the work effort of the primary earner in low-income working families matches that of higher-income families, other adults in these families work less. Even if all able-bodied adults ages 25-54 in these families worked full-time, we find that only about 20 percent of these families would increase their earnings to above 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

During the second half of the 1990s, as millions of people moved off the welfare rolls and into low-paying jobs, policymakers and policy analysts have become increasingly concerned about the challenges facing the "working poor." The annual earnings of a full-time, full-year worker making $6 an hour-well above the federal minimum wage ($5.15 per hour) - are too low to lift a family of three above the federal poverty line. Even families with slightly higher earnings who take advantage of programs like food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) still must pay work-related expenses and struggle to make ends meet.

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