The tax code is designed to raise government revenue. Domestic support obligations (DSOs) — namely, child support and spousal support — are designed to ameliorate the financial burdens that arise upon divorce.
The Child Support Services Division of the Colorado Department of Human Services made a conscious decision to change its service delivery method from an enforcement approach to a two-generational (2Gen), family-centered approach. Eleven counties have participated in a pilot project, the 2Gen Child Support Services Transformation Project, to implement the 2Gen approach. This report summarizes the findings and lessons learned from the first eight months of the project.
This presentation was given at the 57th National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics (NAWRS) Workshop in 2019. The presentation provides an overview of the Mobility Mentoring program, a new program built to improve economic mobility. The presentation also highlights policy changes related to the TANF program and how to implement mobility coaching programs.
The objective of this study was to identify differences in child care availability by rural–urban location for all counties in Wisconsin, and describe implications for recruitment and retention of health care workforce. We used data on licensed child care slots for young children (age <5), socio-demographic characteristics, women’s and men’s labor force participation, and household structure for all counties in Wisconsin in 2013 (n = 72). Data came from KIDS COUNT, County Health Rankings, and the American Community Survey.
In this article, we address three questions concerning the long-term effects of parenting-focused preventive interventions: 1) Do prevention programs promote effective parenting in families facing normative stressors as well as those facing frequent adversity? 2) Do parenting programs prevent children’s long-term problems? 3) Do changes in parenting mediate long-term effects of programs? We address these questions by summarizing evidence from 22 programs with randomized trials and followups of three years or longer.
Housing and utility costs consume the majority of monthly incomes for millions of families in the United States. Missed payments can result in penalties, utility shutoffs, and evictions. Between 14 and 16 percent of the U.S. population experiences utility and/or housing hardship each year, defined as the inability to make full and on-time payments. We found that utility hardship is more common and persistent than housing hardship. Households that experience only utility hardship are notably more disadvantaged than those with only housing hardship.
The Food Stamp Program (FSP, known since 2008 as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is one of the largest safety-net programs in the United States. It is especially important for families with children. However, the FSP eligibility of documented immigrants has shifted on multiple occasions in recent decades. When I studied the health outcomes of children in documented immigrant families affected by such shifts between 1996 and 2003, I found that just one extra year of parental eligibility before age 5 improves health outcomes at ages 6-16.
Parents struggling with food insecurity can experience heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. These pressures may negatively affect their parenting, which may in turn affect the behavior of their children. In this study, we investigated the parenting aggravation levels of parents who experienced food insecurity in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We also explored the extent to which such aggravation may be responsible for the link between food insecurity and children’s behaviors.
Since the early 1990s, the social safety net for families with children in the United States has undergone an epochal transformation. Aid to poor working families has become more generous. In contrast, assistance to the deeply poor has declined sharply, and what remains often takes the form of in-kind aid. A historical view finds that this dramatic change mirrors others. For centuries, the nature and form of poor relief has been driven in part by shifting cultural notions of which social groups constitute the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. This line was firmly redrawn in the 1990s.
This report uses the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe custodial families served by the IV-D program, a federally mandated program that promotes parental responsibility and family self-sufficiency by providing families with child support services. (Excerpt from author summary)