Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Olivia Golden on Low Income Working Familes

In this commentary for The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.), Olivia Golden and Sheila Zedlewski advise states to grab the federal dollars offered by the economic stimulus package to help pay for recession-driven increases in the demand for welfare.

In this commentary for SpotlightOnPoverty.org, Institute Fellow Olivia Golden lays out five strategic investments foundations can make to sustain the economic stimulus package's positive outcomes for low-income families.

As the director of the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services Agency, Olivia Golden led reform of a system in federal receivership. Now, in Reforming Child Welfare, she uses her expertise as an administrator, an academic, and an advocate to pinpoint the factors that lead to success. “Writing from the inside,” she maintains, “makes it possible to analyze, in retrospect, what we thought we were doing, what it felt like, and what led us to good or bad choices.” By sharing her personal story, along with her analysis of the research literature and two other case studies in Alabama and Utah, Golden finds fresh insight on improving outcomes for imperiled children and families.

This paper for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation conceptualizes a framework for a new safety net for low-income working families that is rooted in their most essential needs. It is organized around five key goals:(1) enabling parents to meet their family’s needs while working in lower-wage jobs, (2) helping families weather gaps in parental employment, (3) supporting parents’ job advancement, (4) helping parents combine work and child-rearing, and (5) improving children’s well-being and development. The paper describes these families’ circumstances, discusses gaps in current safety-net programs, and explores possible alternative approaches to meeting families’ most pressing needs.

About a quarter of American families with children work regularly but remain low-income. State and federal practitioners, policymakers, and national experts met in May 2005 to examine this group of working families that barely make ends meet despite "playing by the rules." This conference report lays out the salient point of the two-day roundtable and the thrust of a future agenda.