Publications on Economic Well-Being

The increasing recognition of the importance of marriage for the social and economic well-being of children has led to demonstrations aimed at strengthening and stimulating healthy marriages. The next step is to ensure that factors closely linked with healthy marriages are addressed as well. This paper brings together research findings and policy ideas about the interactions between marriage, employment, and family functioning. It presents a framework and proposes several demonstrations aimed at improving employment and family outcomes for disadvantaged populations. The appendix reviews an extensive body of research on specific linkages between marriage, employment, and family functioning.

Building on our March forum, which analyzed how tax policy affects low-income working families, in April we turn to two supports designed to help parents stay in the workforce: child care subsidies and paid family leave.

Is there a correlation between exposure to racially integrated, low poverty areas and employment outcomes? Does moving from a poor, inner city neighborhood to a less poor area bring greater proximity to job opportunities, or contacts with new networks of neighbors who might steer movers to jobs? Does living in a community where more people work increase motivation to work or to increase income? In examining these questions for the MTO experimental movers, this brief finds that factors in addition to where people live affect their employment and earnings.

The federal Moving to Opportunity program (MTO) was designed to help poor minority families move from distressed, high poverty neighborhoods to better locations, thereby improving their quality of life and long term chances for well-being. Low income families living in concentrated poverty face a variety of challenges to their safety, health, and economic health, including poor schools, high crime and unemployment. This brief examines areas where the MTO program helped movers with those challenges, areas still problematic even after moving, and factors affecting those outcomes and considers policy implications for the next generation of assisted housing mobility initiatives.

The child tax credit (CTC) and the earned income tax credit (EITC) are designed to help working families with children. Yet these major initiatives leave out or provide limited assistance to some very low income families. Panelists discussed why tax programs for low-income families have expanded in recent years, while subsidy programs have remained relatively constant. They also analyzed problems that arise due to different treatment of families by CTC and EITC and the outlook and options for refining these programs that aim to support working families.