At the 1987 Winter Meeting of the National Governors' Association, the Governors adopted a policy program calling for a major reorientation and reform of the nation's welfare system. This document addresses how the welfare system can be reformed to better encourage the self-sufficiency of recipients and reduce their dependency, and how to use…

Research findings are reported which depict characteristics and conditions of young adolescents in the 1980s. Discussion begins with an overview of what is known about the physical, socioemotional, and cognitive growth of young adolescents. It is argued that: (1) adults perpetuate many myths about teenagers; (2) adolescence is no more pathological…

Testimony concerned: (1) problems a high-risk, low-income mother had in receiving prenatal care; (2) dimensions of the infant mortality problem in Chicago, Illinois; (3) programs of the Illinois Department of Public Aid (IDPA) that address the problem; (3) the need for the IDPA to design a plan to implement SOBRA (the 1986 Sixth Omnibus Budget…

This report recommends that the Social Security Act Title XIX be amended to include a 24-month extension of Medicaid to families who become ineligible for cash assistance under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. This amendment accompanies the Family Welfare Reform Act of 1987 (H.R. 1720), which is proposed to replace the…

Catholic charities and church groups have been actively engaged in providing basic shelter needs for homeless people long before the issue of homelessness came to the national attention. The purpose of this hearing was to allow the U.S. Catholic Conference and its Domestic Policy Committee to present its report, "Homelessness and Housing: A…

Increasingly, poverty has become concentrated among the urban underclass in the United States. The dramatic economic changes underlying this situation have taken place within the context of larger changes in global, national, and regional political economies, including such factors as industrial restructuring and migration flows. In addition, the…

Housing has become an increasingly unaffordable commodity for most low income Black and Hispanic households. A comprehensive set of data on housing conditions nationwide was collected by the Bureau of the Census and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of the American Housing Survey for 1985. The following key…

Census data on poverty in 1987 indicate that the economic recovery has been uneven, with the poor sharing less fully in the gains than in prior recoveries. Despite a drop in the national unemployment rate from 7 percent in 1986 to 6.2 percent in 1987, the poverty rate of 13.5 percent has remained essentially unchanged. Although 1987 represented…

The Hispanic American elderly represent an ever growing share of America's older population. This report provides statistical information about the older Hispanic American population in the following areas: (1) demography; (2) composition; (3) geographical distribution; (4) population projections; (5) income; (6) poverty, including poverty among…

Data from the 1980 Census were used in a study of the major demographic and socioeconomic differences between Puerto Ricans and "Other Hispanics" (excluding Cubans and Mexicans) residing in New York City. The research was conducted partly to understand whether the Puerto Rican population, with a much longer residence history in New York…

An estimated 44,340 longer term resident households in rural Kentucky were studied to identify the variables that explained changes in household income status between 1974-79. In a nine-county area of south-central Kentucky, rapid employment growth between 1974 and 1979 created new job opportunities, but employment growth did not benefit all…

This study on the economic self-sufficiency of the Southeast Asian refugee household was conducted in order to gather information on the economic status of these refugees, the factors that contribute to self-sufficiency, and refugees' needs for services. A survey of 1,384 households of Vietnamese, Sino-Vietnamese, and Lao refugees who arrived in…

Five studies on the situation of women in Latin America focus on (1) the integration of women in development, (2) the family as the immediate social framework of children and women, (3) some types of poor women in Latin America, (4) the educational situation of women, and (5) women in development and housework. An introductory section outlining…

Allowances for mothers in the prairie provinces of Canada originated when long-term trends converged at a time of unprecedented social, economic, and political crisis for the state. One crisis condition, World War I, afforded an opportunity for the proponents of both female emancipation and prohibition to combine and force concessions from the…

The infant mortality rate in the District of Columbia is higher than that for any other state. This high rate stems from the great number of infants born seriously underweight and reflects the area's high percentage of births to impoverished black women. Efforts to reduce the mortality rate have centered around the medical treatment approach,…