In 2007, New York City launched the first test of a conditional cash transfer program in the United States. Called Family Rewards, the program sought to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by offering cash assistance to poor families to reduce immediate hardship, but conditioned this assistance on families' efforts to improve their…

Through a year-long study of welfare-to-work students in the community college CalWORKs program, we investigated what self-authorship development looks like by examining developmental progress, and whether there are patterns in development along the three dimensions of self-authorship. Findings demonstrate progress toward self-authorship, but…

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…

Objective: To examine the effectiveness of learner-centered education in conveying the message to change participants' fruit and vegetable consumption. Design: Focus groups were conducted with sites participating in the Finding the Teacher Within (FTW) program and comparison sites 4-6 months after participants attended the Special Supplemental…

This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics--the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data…

This paper details the structure and eligibility criteria for the two largest public child care subsidy programs in Minnesota, the Minnesota Family Investment Program Statewide (MFIP-S) and the Basic Sliding Fee Program (BSF). These programs assist low-income families to pay for child care in order for parents to work, search for a job or…

In 2005, an estimated 48 million children aged 0-18 years--12 percent of all children in sub-Saharan Africa--were orphans, and that number is expected to rise to 53 million by 2010. One quarter of all orphans are orphaned because of AIDS, and about 2.6 million children are currently infected with HIV. Untreated, most children born with HIV will…

Analyzes public policy strategies to support single parent families with children in Western European countries. Compares and contrasts with American policy. (FMW)

The study described in this paper used data from two national samples of families with children to describe the home environments in which welfare children are being raised and to identify the children's health, learning, and behavior problems. The study compared children whose families had received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)…

Seven studies dealing with adjustment to technological change which were done by independent experts are presented. "Programs in Aid of the Poor," by Sar A. Levitan assesses the state of social insurance, public assistance, the poverty program and other assistance to the poor and compares them to current proposals as the negative income…

This book analyzes the responses of five states (Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin) to challenges posed by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 to alter state welfare programs and management systems. Using case studies, the book highlights similarities and differences in the states'…

States have used variants of these three approaches to structure the welfare to-work component of welfare reform for single mothers: (1) put education or training first; (2) place job searching first; and (3) create a flexible program that allows staff and participants choice in the initial and subsequent activities. Research on these program…