Low-Income Working Families

a new Urban Institute project

a family in the park The Low-Income Working Families Project applies rigorous research methods to track families over time and to analyze the risks these families face. It incorporates crosscutting research expertise, from housing to health care and labor markets, honed at the Urban Institute over the past 40 years.

Who are these families?

Although important to policy, low-income working families are vaguely defined, and their needs sometimes invisible. These lower-wage families generally look like the typical American family—most have two parents, over 70 percent of the main earners have at least a high school degree, and most are U.S. citizens. They strive to balance work with family life, to pay the spiraling costs of health care and housing, and to raise healthy, happy children.

Yet, their wages often fall short of meeting their families' needs. An illness can become financially catastrophic. Child care for the almost 19 million U.S. children who live in low-income working families can be hard to find and even harder to afford. The risks of low incomes and poor jobs can be enormous.

Changing research focus: Federalism to Private/Public Context

The Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism Project closely followed struggling families over the past decade as many left welfare—first in a booming economy, then through a recession, and now in a period when wages have stagnated and health insurance costs have skyrocketed.

The Low-Income Working Families Project builds on more than a decade of ANF research. While ANF studied public safety-net programs as they shifted largely from the federal government to the states and from cash welfare to work supports, the new project spotlights the private and public sector context for families' success or failure.