Understanding the consequences of growing up poor for a child's well-being is an important research question, but one that is difficult to answer due to the potential endogeneity of family income. Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by omitted variable bias and measurement error. In this…

This research brief summarizes a recent report on the educational advances of the second and third generations of California's immigrants, "Educational Progress Across Immigrant Generations in California," by PPIC researchers Deborah Reed, Laura E. Hill, Christopher Jepsen, and Hans P. Johnson, shed new light on California's immigrant…

This annual report of the Greater Minneapolis Day Care Association (GMDCA) details the accomplishments of the organization for 2001-2002. The report begins with a letter from the executive director focusing on need to continue funding for the Basic Sliding Fee Child-Care Assistance program to help low- and moderate-income working families. The…

This study examined the status of children in three Los Angeles, California neighborhoods, taking information from the 1998 Focused Study of Children and Neighborhoods, which involved 91 families. After discussing reasons to care about neighborhoods and suggesting that neighborhoods are the foundation upon which the basic social and economic…

The Food Stamp Program (FSP) provides millions of Americans with the means to purchase food for a nutritious diet. This report presents characteristics of food stamp households nationwide in fiscal year 2001. Information on household characteristics comes from FSP household data collected by the federal Food and Nutrition Service for quality…

Drawing on 1998-99 survey and ethnographic data from research on the implementation and effects of welfare reform in four large cities, this paper describes the food security of mother-headed families in highly disadvantaged urban neighborhoods who had received or currently receive cash welfare benefits. The families of four groups of women were…

This longitudinal study investigated two issues regarding child poverty dynamics: whether long-run transitions out of poverty have changed and whether the events associated with exits from poverty have changed over time. The study contrasted mobility patterns of young children over the 1970s with patterns over the 1980s, examining which poor…

Both social scientists and politicians agree that the way poverty is measured in the United States is inadequate. Noting that this metric influences our understanding of the extent of economic deprivation and influences the provision of social supports, this report presents various options to the current measurement and suggests a replacement for…

This paper discusses some of the ways in which state tax systems affect low-income families. The focus is on the working poor. Why state tax policy matters for these families is explained, describing some general trends in state tax structure among the 50 states. Attention is then paid to details on personal income and sales taxes in a subset of…

This paper examines changes in the distribution of family income over 30 years, estimating the effect of parental resources on college education, and noting the fact that families at the bottom of the income distribution were much poorer in the 1990s than the 1970s, while the opposite was true for families in the top quartile. Data came from three…

Several recent studies provide evidence that the choice between private and public schooling among white students is influenced by the racial composition of the local student population. None of these studies, however, examine whether Latinos are also fleeing to private schools in response to black schoolchildren. This study explores the…

Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent living arrangement in the United States. Although the effects of living in a cohabiting arrangement on child wellbeing are not fully understood, the literature on children growing up in cohabiting families suggests that they have poorer developmental outcomes than do those growing up in married-parent…

This special report of the Voices for Illinois Children argues that a refundable state earned income tax credit (EITC) would foster employment and reduce taxes for low-income Illinois families. The report maintains that many low-income working families and those beginning the transition from welfare to work confront ongoing poverty despite having…

This analysis examines poverty in families headed by working single mothers, addressing whether and to what degree their economic situations have improved. It investigates the effect of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which moved single mothers from welfare to work. Poverty data from the annual Census…

This report charts the experiences of women who have done better or worse than average after leaving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, highlighting differences in: education, health, and other characteristics; whether or not they were sanctioned before leaving; and welfare dependency (amount of time spent on welfare before leaving and off…