Previous Events

Long-Term Care in an Era of Shrinking Government

With the CLASS Act dead, the 7 in 10 seniors who will eventually need help with eating, dressing, or bathing, and their unpaid family caregivers are wondering where they can go from here. Many relatives of the aging struggle to balance their elder care duties with employment and other family responsibilities. The care they provide equates to $375 billion a year.

Nursing home care averages about $75,000 per year (and much more in certain parts of the country), while home health aides cost about $21 per hour. Options for financing long-term care are limited. Medicare covers long-term care only under certain conditions and for only a limited time. Only 12 percent of adults age 65 or older have private insurance. As a result, many families pay out of pocket until they exhaust their resources and turn to Medicaid. Event detail

Doing More with Less Leveraging Community Capital

Panelists will discuss the Urban Institute's Community Platform and other on-the-ground approaches to strengthening the capacity of communities and nonprofit organizations to tackle challenges in education, public health, economic development, aging, and other issues. Event detail

The Nation's Priorities and Children: How Well Do They Go Together?

In a month, Congress's Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, known informally as the Super Committee, will issue its recommendation on how to deflate the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. In a year, Americans will go to the polls to select many federal, state, and local leaders. And in between these events, state capitals will tangle anew over shrinking revenues, burgeoning constituent needs, and balanced-budget dictates.

Where, in all of this, are America's 74 million children? What challenges and opportunities are posed by budget battles when we think about the dramatic changes in children's lives in recent decades -- almost 22 percent living in poverty, the trend toward "majority minority" among children, the regional shifts from northern states losing children to southern states gaining them? What will it take to come to national and state budget decisions that invest at the level needed for the youngest generation to succeed, especially in light of states' senior role in funding children's programs and services? Event detail

Fixing U.S. Budget Policy: What Can the United States Learn from Canada?

In the mid-1990s, Canada faced a dire fiscal problem. Budget deficits reached almost 6 percent of GDP, the public debt had doubled in just ten years, and GDP growth was a full percentage point below that of the United States. In a remarkable turnaround, federal spending was cut from 21 percent of GDP to 16 percent of GDP in just five years, resulting in annual budget surpluses that continued until the 2008–09 recession. Perhaps more importantly, fiscal responsibility gained the strong support of Canadian voters across the political spectrum. Come learn how Canada did it. Event detail

Budget Pressure and Changing the Charitable Deduction: For Better or Worse?

As budgetary pressure forces policymakers to look for ways to reduce the deficit, new proposals have emerged to reform both directly and indirectly the income tax deduction for charitable contributions. With charities already struggling from increased need and decreased giving due to the recession, it is vital to understand the effects that tax reform proposals could have on the charitable sector. This session explores the impact of the income tax deduction on charitable giving and present new estimates of the effects of specific tax reform proposals on the charitable sector. Event detail

First Tuesday: Nonprofit Outlook: Where's the Light at the End of the Tunnel?

The recession and its aftermath continue to ravage many nonprofits with a trifecta of troubles: reduced giving from individuals, government funding cuts, and increased demand for services. Mix in bruised foundation and corporate philanthropy, unemployment rates stuck over 9 percent, rising poverty levels, the desperate status of most state budgets, and the politics of the federal deficit and you have an environment choking the nonprofit sector. Event detail

Avoiding Budget Catastrophe

Continuation of current U.S. fiscal policy will lead to an enormous accumulation of debt with potentially disastrous consequences. As the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction attempts to produce a bipartisan proposal to trim $1.5 trillion from budget deficits over the next decade, many commentators fear that their proposals might simultaneously undermine our fragile economic recovery while not really addressing the enormous long-term budget challenges. Please join us for a conversation about how to avoid a budget catastrophe. We will discuss options for fiscal reform and the trade-off between the immediate need to address a floundering economic recovery and the long-term need to achieve fiscal sustainability. Event detail

TANF Performance: How States Are Raising the Measurement Bar

The federal government requires states to measure how well they are doing in attaining the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program's goals. Some states have gone beyond federal requirements and added additional performance measures, making them useful laboratories for understanding the possibilities and challenges of broader and varied performance measurement in TANF.

This forum will discuss what states are doing to move beyond federal measurement standards and will preview a forthcoming Urban Institute report, "Improving State TANF Performance Measures," funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Event detail

Immigration and the Changing Face of Metropolitan America

Over the last two decades, the United States has witnessed its biggest wave of immigration since the late 19th century. Today’s immigrants have settled in many more communities across the country, including some that received few immigrants in the past. The diversity of these destination communities means that recent immigrants’ experiences and effects vary widely.

Join us as a distinguished panel discusses the implications of immigration’s mix and magnitude. How are metropolitan communities affected by and adapting to the influx of immigrants -- and the children of immigrants? What new challenges and opportunities confront local, state, and federal policy? Event detail

Public Surveillance Cameras: A Clear-Eyed Look at Their Implementation and Impact

Cities are increasingly turning to surveillance cameras to reduce crime, but do they stop wrongdoing in its tracks or simply push it into other neighborhoods? If the cameras perform as intended, what are their costs to police budgets and citizen rights? Event detail