Framework for a New Safety Net for Low-Income Working Families
The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy
of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed
to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
The text below is an excerpt from the complete document. Read the
full report in PDF format.
Abstract
This paper for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation conceptualizes a framework for a new safety
net for low-income working families that is rooted in their most essential needs. It is organized
around five key goals:
- enabling parents to meet their family’s needs while working in lower-wage jobs,
- helping families weather gaps in parental employment,
- supporting parents’ job advancement,
- helping parents combine work and child-rearing, and
- improving children’s well-being and development.
The paper describes these families’ circumstances, discusses gaps in current safety-net
programs, and explores possible alternative approaches to meeting families’ most pressing
needs.
Introduction
More than a decade after the passage of welfare reform, the old safety net for families has changed
dramatically. Yet the shape of the new safety net has not fully emerged. Seven in ten low-income
families have at least one adult who is working regularly, yet too often these families struggle
to pay bills, raise children, and maintain a stable family life. For them, the ad hoc, patchwork
nature of today’s public programs and private benefits is all too evident.
The gaps in the safety net are also evident to employers that seek to hold onto a workforce divided
between work and family obligations and to stay afloat financially in a world of global competition.
Employers see the inconsistency of the safety net when they must choose whether to offer job benefits
that other nations support from public resources but that American families receive only through
work. Finally, the gaps are all too evident as well to local, state, and federal policymakers and
administrators, who try to mesh an often-fragmented program structure to families’ needs.
This paper offers a framework for thinking about the complex array of public programs and private
benefits that can help low-income working families chart a course toward steady work, economic
security, and healthy development for their children. Making a difference to these families requires
paying attention both to their private-sector workplaces and to many different public programs.
These workplaces often pay low wages, lack flexibility in scheduling, and provide limited benefits.
The public programs—such as housing and child care subsidies, job training, health insurance,
and income supports like the earned income tax credit (EITC) and food stamps—typically are
not coordinated withone another, and each program operates under its own set of rules and financing
and administrative structures.
Helping low-income working families also requires paying attention to the adults’ lives
as both parents and workers. Because low-income families are less likely than better-off families
to have flexibility at work, are more likely to be raising children with physical or emotional
health problems, and are more dependent on each week’s paycheck without significant private
resources, they face even more wrenching conflicts between family and work than other Americans.
Doing justice to this complexity requires a carefully designed framework. A narrow, program-driven
approach to policy development is unlikely to meet the needs of these families. But a broad, crosscutting
approach that seeks to cover all the relevant issues at once—workplace conditions, work-based
benefits, and public programs that affect children and their parents—can easily get bogged
down in complexity. The list of public programs and private job benefits that could be relevant
to family wellbeing soon becomes overwhelming, and the expertise required to sift through the evidence
is scattered among multiple policy fields.
This paper responds to this challenge by developing a framework that is clear and relatively simple,
yet cross-cutting in its approach to policies and programs. It is grounded in the needs of low-income
working families that, in turn, lead to five core goals for public policy. These goals are rooted
in the circumstances of the families, not only in the organizational structure of government agencies
or of policy expertise.
To begin, this paper describes the diversity of low-income families and how they get by in today’s
economy. Then, it develops the framework for a new safety net around five key goals. After that,
the paper summarizes existing programs and policies in the United States that fit into this five-goal
framework. Finally, it highlights a selection of policy ideas that aim to close the gaps in the
current safety net. Two tables in the appendix provide greater detail on the array of existing
programs that address the five goals and information on a few examples of possible policy or program
approaches to addressing current gaps. The paper concludes with a brief discussion that suggests
how this framework might be used to support action by policymakers and how the framework leads
to next steps for research and analysis.
(End of excerpt. The complete report is available in PDF format.)
The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Usage, posting and reprint of materials on the UI web site:
Most publications may be downloaded free of charge from the web site in PDF format. This information may be used and copies made for research, academic, policy or other non-commercial purposes. Proper attribution is required.
Copyright of the written materials contained within the Urban Institute website is owned or controlled by the Urban Institute. Posting UI research papers on other websites is permitted subject to prior approval from the Urban Institute—contact paffairs@urban.org.
If you are unable to access or print the PDF document please contact us or call the Publications Office at (202) 261-5687.
Latest Research
Browse by Topic:
PDF
Printer-friendly summary
