VIDEO
Ron Haskins, December 30, 2011
Ron Haskins says that while automatic budget cuts will do some harm to some anti-poverty programs, the largest and most important programs — including Medicaid and Social Security — have been largely shielded.
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, August 22, 2011, The Brookings Institution
On the 15-year anniversary of landmark U.S. welfare reform legislation, Ron Haskins says the law has largely succeeded in reducing poverty. However, budget pressures bode ill for such programs. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, June 20, 2011, The Brookings Institution
Ron Haskins discusses the causes of poverty in the United States and provides a general overview of anti-poverty programs. Haskins examines programmatic costs and impacts, including a focus on programs that fight poverty by working to improve children’s development. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Martha Ross, December 08, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Martha Ross spoke to the Advisory Board of the Community Foundation for Prince George’s County, describing research on the suburbanization of poverty both nationally and in the Washington region. Despite perceptions that economic distress is primarily a central city phenomenon, suburbs are home to increasing numbers of low-income families. She highlighted the need to strengthen the social service infrastructure in suburban areas. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Scott W. Allard and Benjamin Roth, October 07, 2010, Brookings Institution
Since 2000, poverty in the suburbs of the nation’s largest metro areas has grown by 37 percent—more than twice growth rate seen in cities and well above the national average. Scott Allard and Benjamin Roth examine the social services networks in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. to determine whether resources are adequately available to meet the rising need for safety net services in suburban communities. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Elizabeth Kneebone, October 07, 2010, Brookings Institution
The latest data from the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) show that the worst U.S. economic downturn in decades exacerbated trends set in motion years before, by multiplying the ranks of America’s poor. Elizabeth Kneebone uses the data to explore poverty trends in the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas and finds that the recession’s impact has been uneven among different regions. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
David H. Romer and Justin Wolfers , September 2010, The Brookings Institution
The papers in the Fall 2010 volume of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity analyze the Great Recession. They examine the effects of the business cycle on the incomes of the richest Americans; welfare, welfare reform, and poverty during recessions; the failure of modern macro-economic models to forecast economic conditions; regulatory response to shadow banking in the financial crisis; and expenditures by state and local governments over the business cycle. The remaining paper studies the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act. Read More
VIDEO
Ron Haskins, August 20, 2010
In 1996, welfare was changed from an entitlement to a program with time limits and work requirements. Has welfare reform worked? In @ Brookings, Ron Haskins takes a closer look.
PAST EVENT
Thursday, June 10, 2010
3:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Washington, DC
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan drafted an influential report on the deterioration of low-income black families that helped shape U.S. social welfare policy over the past 45 years. On June 10, Governance Studies at Brookings will host James Patterson, professor emeritus at Brown University to discuss his book, Freedom is Not Enough (Basic Books, 2010), a history of the Moynihan Report and its influence, and examine the connections between marriage, race and poverty. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, Spring 2010, Democracy
Ron Haskins states that the strategy of combining personal responsibility with community and government support could help millions of residents of some of the nation’s worst neighborhoods – and simultaneously demonstrate to a skeptical public that a new war on poverty can be won. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Julia B. Isaacs, January 04, 2010, The Brookings Institution
Already high child poverty rates are expected to increase with the recession. In 2008, on average, nearly one in five children lived in poverty, but some states, particularly those in the South, had rates as high as 30 percent. Julia Isaacs uses increases in the use of the food assistance program to predict that child poverty rates in 2009 will be particularly high in nine states in the South and Southwest. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, December 18, 2009, The Brookings Institution
Ron Haskins discusses the future of the welfare reform law of 1996, stating that it is impossible to know what will happen during reauthorization, but for politicians, advocates, reporters, and scholars interested in the fate of the 1996 reforms, getting an understanding of the reforms that seem the most likely to be repealed or modified before the reauthorization debate begins will provide the basis for both intellectual and lobbying action for or against the possible changes. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ron Haskins, December 09, 2009, House Budget Committee
Ron Haskins testified before the House Committee on the Budget on the issue of how far social policy should go in demanding work. Haskins argued that the current economic situation requires a determination of what changes in federal and state policy would allow states to respond more quickly and completely during the next recession, but without any permanent loosening of the current work requirements. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Henry J. Aaron, December 01, 2009, The Brookings Institution
Henry Aaron responds to “Spending on Children and the Elderly: An Issue Brief," arguing that pitting the interests of the elderly and disabled against those of children is politically
short-sighted because advocates of public outlays for children and for the elderly have
been - and should remain - allies against those who believe that the role of government should
be limited to providing for defense and public safety, and little else. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Julia B. Isaacs, November 2009, The Brookings Institution
According to Julia Isaacs, the United States spends 2.4 times as much per capita on the elderly as on children, with the ratio rising to 7 to 1 if only the federal budget is taken into account. Isaacs compares expenditures on children and the elderly in the United States to that of other countries, and asks whether these spending patterns make sense for the country's long-term welfare from a life-cycle perspective. Read More