In "School Communities of Strength," Peter W. Cookson, Jr., lays out a blueprint for providing equitable educational opportunities for students from all socioeconomic strata, and particularly for the five million American children who live with the extreme material hardship known as deep poverty. This work issues an urgent call to action…

Families who live in poverty face disadvantages that can hinder their children's development in many ways, write Greg Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal. As they struggle to get by economically, and as they cope with substandard housing, unsafe neighborhoods, and inadequate schools, poor families experience more stress in…

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children's education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in…

Focuses on three income support programs: unemployment insurance, public assistance, and food stamps, and examines the extent to which low income groups, particularly blacks, participated in these programs, the factors responsible for the nonparticipation of many poor, and the adequacy of support provided to participants in these programs.…

The paper summarizes the results of an analysis of recently issued Census data. Examining the anti-poverty effectiveness of cash and non-cash benefit programs from 1979 to 1986, the analysis focuses on the impacts of those programs on families with children, the group whose poverty rate has risen most rapidly since 1979. The data reveal that…

In rural Mexico, the Progresa program provided educational grants to poor mothers of children enrolled in grades 3-9 and attending 85 percent of the school days. Payments were increased at the higher grades, a premium was paid for girls enrolled in grades 7-9, and every 6 months the grants were adjusted upward to compensate for inflation. The…

This report examines state earned income tax credits (EICs) as a means to assist working poor families to escape poverty. Specifically, the report notes that six states have their own EICs, expressed as a percentage of the federal EIC, with the advantages being that the credit is a reward for work, is a pro-family policy, is efficiently targeted,…

The National Center for Children in Poverty is developing a series of issue briefs on children and welfare reform to help policymakers, community leaders, and advocates use the opportunities afforded by welfare changes in ways that are most likely to benefit both children and adults. This second issue brief focuses on the impact of federal and…

Although more Americans are working than ever before, economic and employment trends over the past decade have resulted in low-income families falling even farther below the poverty level than ever before. The purpose of this oversight hearing is to discuss strategies to overcome family poverty. Testimony was submitted by six expert witnesses in…

Five papers which criticize Charles Murray's book, "Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980" are presented in this report. In general, the papers dispute Murray's thesis that the poor did not benefit from social policies but were, instead, substantially harmed by these programs. The papers (and their authors) are: (1)…

The problems facing low-income families headed by women and some current and planned Ford Foundation responses are discussed in this paper. The first section presents a general overview of the problem, with special focus on nonpayment of child support and teenage pregnancy. The debate over the Federal welfare program and other attempts to use…

Continuing erosion of the structure of low-income families perpetuates a vicious cycle of moral and economic troubles--poverty, drug and alcohol dependency, out-of-wedlock births, child and spouse abuse, juvenile delinquency, and crime--that feed on and create more impaired families. Accordingly, this report contends that the major portion of the…

This report addresses the sources and remedies for child poverty in the United States through a review of the effects of trends, policies, and changes in social relationships; and an analysis of data concerning poverty and children. An introduction sketches the present condition of children in poverty and the policies and attitudes of the past 30…

This monograph looks at the increasing number of poor women and discusses anti poverty programs in regard to this group. Figures are presented which indicate an increase in the number of poor women in the 1970s, and show that Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately represented among the poor. The paper suggests that the child-bearing role of…

Noting that the mid-1990s are an era of experimentation in welfare initiatives, this publication summarizes 34 research studies on children and welfare reform. Articles include studies of children and parents in poverty, studies of program models likely to have direct implications for children, and outcome evaluations of welfare-to-work programs…