Making Unemployment Insurance Work Better for Low-Income Working Families

This Webinar addressed the factors that influence low-income families’ access to Unemployment Insurance, including monetary eligibility, non-monetary eligibility, and differential take-up. It was designed as a cross-disciplinary discussion, presenting two recent papers and then hearing from the National Employment Law Project about how state policies impact access to Unemployment Insurance benefits for low-wage workers.

The Webinar was facilitated by H. Luke Shaefer, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and affiliate at the National Poverty Center of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. The two papers were presented by Alix Gould-Werth, Doctoral Candidate in Social Work and Sociology at the University of Michigan and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Doctoral Candidate in Government and Social Policy and graduate fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at Harvard University. Claire McKenna, Policy Analyst at the National Employment Law Project addressed trends in State policies.