OH

The final implementation report on the National Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) was released on January 15, 2019. It reflects demonstration activities that commenced in fall 2012, when the eight child support agencies competitvely awarded grants by OSCE to participate in CSPED began a one-year planning period, and concluded with the end of the demonstration period in September 2017. 

The purpose of this report is to begin to fill in the blanks by documenting the characteristics of more than 10,000 noncustodial parents who participated in the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration program (CSPED).  The federally funded intervention was operated by child support agency grantees within eight eligible states, and served noncustodial parents who were behind on child support payments and experiencing employment difficulties. (Author introduction)

The final impact report on the National Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) was released on March 14, 2019. The primary goal of the intervention was to improve the reliable payment of child support in order to improve child well-being and avoid public costs. Key outcomes related to noncustodial parents' (1) child support orders, payments and compliance, as well as attitudes toward the child support program; (2) work and earnings; (3) sense of responsibility for their children.

This study brief describes an alternative to the civil contempt process intended to increase engagement and consistent and reliable payments among noncompliant noncustodial parents. The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration project was developed by OCSE to adapt and apply principles of procedural justice to child support compliance eforts. Procedural justice is also referred to as procedural fairness.

An understanding of perceived barriers to health-care is critical to improving healthcare access for all Americans. To determine perceived barriers to health-care in an urban poor population in Dayton, Ohio, a face-to-face door-to-door survey of individuals identified through targeted, stratified, area probability sampling was done. A sample of 413 non-elderly poor adults, including 19% without telephones, reported personal relevance of various barriers to healthcare access.

We use data from the US Financial Diaries study to relate episodic poverty to intrayear income volatility and to the availability of government transfers. The US Financial Diaries data track a continuous year’s worth of month-to-month income for 235 low- and moderate-income households, each with at least one employed member, in four regions in the United States. The data provide an unusually granular view of household financial transactions, allowing the documentation of episodic poverty and the attribution of a large share of it to fluctuations in earnings within jobs.

In many cities, low-income residents live far from available jobs, and employers can’t find people to fill open positions. Economists call this “spatial mismatch”—a mismatch between where jobs are located and where job seekers live, which can cause high unemployment rates and lead to longer spells of joblessness. Data from Snag, the largest online marketplace for hourly jobs, show us that this is true for job seekers who use their platform.

In the United States, housing cost burden is most commonly defined by a household spending more than 30 percent of income on housing and utilities. While easy to calculate, it fails to account for how other essential expenses affect income available to spend on housing. This paper compares this ratio with shelter poverty, a measure of burden that accounts for these elements, evaluating differences in results between the two methods among renters in Ohio. Shelter poverty identifies a higher rate of households in economic distress due to housing market conditions.

Population health is associated with the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods. There is considerable scientific and policy interest in community-level interventions to alleviate child poverty. Intergenerational poverty is associated with inequitable access to opportunities. Improving opportunity structures within neighborhoods may contribute to improved child health and development.

The Children’s Bureau funded a multi-phase grant program referred to as Youth At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH) to build the evidence base on what works to prevent homelessness among youth and young adults who have been involved in the child welfare system. To date, there is very little evidence on how to meet the needs of this population.