— Katz, Bruce and Alan Berube. Katrina's Window: Confronting Concentrated Poverty Across America. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, October 2005. (PDF file) Using Katrina's devastation of New Orleans' low-income neighborhoods as a starting point, this paper argues for a refocusing of political energy on the problem of concentrated urban poverty. Though images of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina did provide a uniquely shocking vantage point into the problems facing low-income, racially segregated, and resource-limited neighborhoods, the authors point out that New Orleans is by no means unique when it comes to poverty clustering. Katz and Berube highlight the government policies that led to the creation of many distressed neighborhoods, and propose a set of policy changes aimed at increasing the geographic and economic mobility of families trapped in pockets of poverty. — McKernan, Signe-Mary, & Ratcliff, Caroline. The Effect of Specific Welfare Policies on Poverty. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2006. Aiming to understand how variation in AFDC/TANF rules impacts the prevalence and character of poverty, this paper analyzes the effects of 19 specific state welfare policies on the poverty and deep poverty rates of single mothers and children of single mothers. The authors find that lenient eligibility standards and strong financial incentives to work are associated with reductions in deep poverty, as are stricter time limits on benefit receipt. Broadly, this paper argues that choices made about welfare rules often have significant effects on the poverty of mothers and children. — Nichols, Austin. Understanding Recent Changes in Child Poverty. Assessing the New Federalism Discussion Paper 06-02. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, May 2006. Though child poverty fell sharply between 1993 and 2000, the years 2000 through 2004 saw a major reversal of that trend—a reversal particularly pronounced among black children. This paper parses the causes for these shifts in child poverty, considering both macroeconomic conditions (like unemployment rates and minimum wage laws) and family characteristics (like race and educational attainment). Nichols concludes that the decrease in child poverty during the 1990s was tied in large part to a strengthening job market for less-educated workers, while the increase that has characterized the beginning of this decade has been less dependent on education level. Nichols also notes that although the shift from cash assistance programs like AFDC/TANF toward earnings-based tax incentives may ultimately prove beneficial to poor families, its immediate effect is to harm those already at a disadvantage in the job market. — Winston, Pamela, Olivia Golden, Kenneth Finegold, Kim Rueben, Margery Austin Turner, and Stephen Zuckerman. Federalism After Hurricane Katrina: How Can Social Programs Respond to a Major Disaster? Washington, DC: Urban Institute, June 2006. This paper explores the key features of four essential federal-state-local programs that have offered supports to low-income families and individuals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—housing, unemployment compensation, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It argues that the complexity of their structures and limited scale have inhibited their ability to respond effectively and quickly to the needs created by Hurricane Katrina. It recommends that national policymakers develop a set of disaster relief mechanisms better suited to address the large-scale, cross-jurisdictional migration, diminished state fiscal capacity, increased demand for assistance, and other challenges that major disaster present. — Zedlewski, Sheila R. "Building a Better Safety Net for the New New Orleans." Washington, DC: Urban Institute, February 2006. This paper explores the ways in which the rebuilding process that awaits New Orleans represents a unique opportunity to create an effective, efficient social safety net for the city's many vulnerable residents. Zedlewski outlines New Orleans' social infrastructure as it stood pre-Katrina, and describes the potential for improving this infrastructure by tailoring it to the needs of specific groups, including people with disabilities, single parents, and adults lacking basic skills. If well-researched, specifically targeted programs are built into the planning process at an early stage, Zedlewski argues, New Orleans can overcome spending handicaps to create a model social safety net. |
