Margaret C. Simms, Project Director

In 2007, we completed the Assessing the New Federalism (ANF) project and moved to the next step in our research—studying the broad set of needed supports for families with children. The new Low-Income Working Families project, building on more than a decade of ANF research, follows families struggling to balance work and family, and pay for basic needs. Researchers seek to identify appropriate roles for the public and private sectors in helping these families thrive.

As the policy emphasis moves away from income supports and toward work, it is apparent that the social support structure for low-income families with children has significant holes. Our researchers identified the gaps in the current safety net and established five goals for a new structure that encourages work and supports families.  The goals enable parents to meet their family’s needs while working in lower-wage jobs, help families weather gaps in parental employment, support parents’ job advancement, help parents combine work and child-rearing, and improve children’s well-being and development.

To assess the role of private employers, we brought together business leaders and industry representatives, federal and state policymakers, national policy experts, and researchers to discuss the different roles public and private sectors can play in improving the labor and economic outcomes of low-income parents and their children. The group also suggested directions for future policy, practice, and research.

We studied several current programs to determine their effectiveness in the new environment. One study assessed whether work support programs, specifically Food Stamps and Medicaid, helped women stay off welfare. Our research showed that women who used food stamps to transition off welfare were less likely to return to the program and more likely to be employed. We also found that modifications to child support pass-through regulations for families on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) could generate additional income support for low-income families with children.  If all states made these changes, child support distributed to families on welfare would more than double, increasing their incomes and decreasing their dependence on other benefits. The expansion would cost federal and state governments between $117 and $145 million, less than 1 percent of TANF costs.