|
Sept 10 2008
RSVPThis talk will discuss the public policy agenda for the near future, aimed at assisting low-income families to become more economically self-sufficient. Following the passage of landmark legislation reforming the cash welfare system in this country in the mid-1990s, major increases in employment among single mothers were linked with major declines in their use of cash assistance. The current debate over 'next policy steps' focuses on a very different set of issues than did the debate of the 1990s. Among the key topics to be discussed: Why we should focus on fathers and low-income men as well as single mothers and their children; the importance of linking low-income persons with mainstream financial institutions; and further policy options that would help provide support for working and non-working low-income families.
Rebecca M. Blank has been the Robert V. Kerr Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution since July 2008. Prior to coming to Brookings, she was dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and co-director of the National Poverty Center. She served as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997-1999. Her 1997 book, It Takes A Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty, won the Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations. Her more recent work includes the books The New World of Welfare (co-edited with Ron Haskins , 2001, Brookings Press), Is the Market Moral ? (co-authored with William McGurn, 2003, Brookings Press) and Working and Poor (co-edited with Sheldon Danziger and Robert Schoeni, 2006, Russell Sage Press).
________________________________________________________________
Nov 5 2008
Ron Haskins is a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. A former White House and congressional advisor on welfare issues, Ron Haskins co-directs the Brookings Center on Children and Families. He is expert on preschool, foster care, and poverty and was instrumental in the 1996 overhaul of national welfare policy.
________________________________________________________________
Jan 14 2009
Kathryn Edin is professor of public policy and management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. Her research focuses on urban poverty and family life, social welfare, public housing, child support, and nonmarital childbearing. Her most recent publication (with Paula England), Unmarried Couples with Children, is an analysis of a four-year study of 50 unmarried couples who shared a birth in 2000. Previous publications include the results of a six-year ethnographic study in eight Philadelphia neighborhoods, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (with Maria J. Kefalas), and Making Ends Meet: How Low Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work (with Laura Lein). Edin received her PhD in sociology from Northwestern University in 1991 and has also taught at Rutgers University, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania.
____________________________________________________________
Mar 25, 2009
Research on disadvantage and children's development in the United States has focused to a great degree on economic disadvantage and poverty. However, children in "mixed-status" immigrant families (e.g., those with an undocumented parent) may be affected by additional familial experiences of disadvantage that are consequences of undocumented status. This presentation will examine what the everyday family experiences of citizenship status and how they may influence the development of infants and young children in mixed-status immigrant families, using longitudinal qualitative and quantitative data from a birth cohort of Chinese, Mexican, and Dominican infants of immigrant parents in New York City.
Hirokazu Yoshikawa is a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a developmental and community psychologist who conducts research on the development of young children in immigrant families, and the effects of public policies (particularly antipoverty policies and early childhood intervention) on children's development. His currently funded work examines how public policies, parental employment, and transnational contexts influence very young children's development in Chinese, Mexican, Dominican, and African American families.He has also conducted extensive research on the effects on children of public policies related to welfare, employment, and early childhood intervention. In late 2006, Russell Sage published Yoshikawa's book on the effects of low-wage employment on children ( Making it Work: Low-Wage Employment, Family Life, and Child Development, with Thomas S. Weisner and Edward Lowe). He regularly advises government agencies, foundations, and educational and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and abroad.
|
|
