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About a quarter of American families with children work regularly but remain low-income. Parents balance the stress of a low-paying job, often with inflexible hours and few benefits, against the demands of raising children. They face greater risks with fewer cushions than their middle-class counterparts. Many exist one step away from catastrophe: a sick child or absent child care provider could trigger the loss of a job and the onset of poverty. About 6 in 10 low-income families (those with incomes below twice the federal poverty level) contain at least one adult who works year round and full time. Yet more than one-quarter of these families experience food and housing insecurities, and over one-third lack health insurance. Low-income families working less than full-time experience these hardships at much higher rates. Not surprisingly, children living in working families struggling to meet basic needs often lag behind others on a range of measures.

The Urban Institute, together with the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations, sponsored a roundtable in May 2005 entitled "Next Steps toward a Working Families' Policy Agenda." The purpose of the roundtable, attended by state and federal practitioners, policymakers, and national experts, was to examine this group of working families that barely make ends meet despite "playing by the rules." Without aiming for consensus, this broad group of participants discussed the next steps in a policy and research agenda that would bolster the economic security of low-income working families with children.

While participants came to the roundtable with vastly different perspectives, they agreed that the well-being of these families matters. It matters because more than one in four American children are growing up in low-income working families. It matters because, if these children are not given the foundation they need to succeed in school and at work, our national economic future is at risk. And for many participants, it matters because of a basic sense of fairness. We have made a national choice through our tax and welfare policies that parents ought to work. The other side of that promise, as several participants saw it, is that work should pay parents enough to raise children in a safe and secure environment.

The roundtable began with the premise that working families' needs cut across multiple spheres: jobs that pay enough so families can make ends meet; some flexibility for parents to balance work and family obligations (for example, paid leave); insurance coverage against the risk of unemployment; affordable and safe housing; health insurance; and stable child care. So the solutions must also cut across multiple spheres: better jobs; workplace benefits; opportunities for parents to improve their skills and advance on the job; improved access to public programs that fill in gaps in child care, health care, housing, and income; and new ways to insure families against risk. The conference brought together experts from these different areas to examine the interwoven perspectives.

Conference papers provided background on the circumstances of low-income working families with children and on current programs and policies affecting working families. Participants represented elected and appointed officials of both parties as well as nonpartisan organizations and voiced a broad range of perspectives from their positions in the executive and legislative branches of government, business and labor, research, academia, and policy. They offered expertise in employment and labor markets, child care and child development, health and health insurance, housing and neighborhoods, income support, and parental leave and associated work and family issues.

Asked at the start of the roundtable to identify core concerns, participants described everything from not enough well-paying jobs to retaining optimism in the face of poverty. The diverse responses mirrored the diverse perspectives:

• Managing the risks of such adverse events as illness, job loss, or housing crisis
• Building career ladders so the poor can get ahead, not just get by
• Improving workers' skills and education to meet the requirements of better-paying jobs
• Changing work supports so they fit together in a more holistic approach that makes work pay
• Giving children the assets they need to have more successful lives while their parents struggle with day-to-day questions
• roviding opportunities for jobs with health insurance coverage and paid leave
• Finding affordable solutions for high-quality child care
• Ensuring that noncustodial fathers get the support they need to play an important role in their children's lives

This conference report lays out the salient points of the two-day roundtable and the thrust of a future agenda. It provides the backdrop for a series of Low-Income Working Families papers and briefs to emerge from the roundtable.¹ Forthcoming papers in this series will elaborate on many of the individual topics touched on in this overview—a profile of the working poor, participation in work supports, promising approaches to promoting employment, unemployment insurance, child care—providing in-depth analysis as well as policy recommendations.

Background papers will be published separately and will also be available on the Urban Institute web site (http://www.urban.org). Taken together, the research provides a base for assessing what is known about the multiple challenges and risks facing the more than 9 million families working regularly but still struggling.

Notes from this section of the report

1. The three papers released to date are Who Are Low-Income Working Families? by Gregory Acs and Pamela Loprest, Working to Make Ends Meet: Understanding the Income and Expenses of America's Low-Income Families by Gregory Acs and Austin Nichols, and Can We Improve Job Retention and Advancement among Low-Income Working Parents? by Harry J. Holzer and Karin Martinson. All three papers were published in September and are available on the Urban Institute web site. In addition, the first brief in the Perspectives on Low-Income Working Families series—"An Introduction to Unemployment and Unemployment Insurance" by Wayne Vroman—was published in October.

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