NEW YORK, Jan. 25 (AScribe Newswire) -- Despite recent welfare reforms, millions of Americans work full time and yet remain poor. In a concentrated effort to address the problems of the working poor, a coalition of community activists and business leaders in Milwaukee, Wis., launched New Hope, an experimental program that boosted employment among the city's poor while reducing poverty and improving children's lives. In "Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children" (Russell Sage Foundation, January 2007), Greg Duncan, Aletha Huston, and Thomas Weisner provide a compelling look at how New Hope can serve as a model for national anti-poverty policies.
- New Hope was a social contract - not a welfare program - in which participants were required to work a minimum of 30 hours a week in order to be eligible for earnings supplements and health and child care subsidies.
- All participants had access to career counseling and temporary community service jobs.
- All adults - both parents and non-parents, men and women - were eligible to participate.
Drawing on evidence from surveys, public records of employment and earnings, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observation, "Higher Ground" tells the story of this ambitious three-year social experiment and evaluates how participants fared relative to a control group. The results were highly encouraging:
- Poverty rates declined among families that participated in the program.
- Employment and earnings increased among participants who were not initially working full-time, relative to their counterparts in a control group. For those who had faced just one significant barrier to employment (such as a lack of access to child care or a spotty employment history), these gains lasted years after the program ended.
- Increased income, combined with New Hopes subsidies for child care and health care, brought marked improvements to the well-being and development of participants' children.
- Enrollment in child care centers increased, and fewer medical needs went unmet.
- Children performed better in school and exhibited fewer behavioral problems, and gains were particularly dramatic for boys, who are at the greatest risk for poor academic performance and behavioral disorders.
As America takes stock of the successes and shortcomings of the Clinton-era poverty and welfare policies, the authors convincingly demonstrate why New Hope could be a model for state and national efforts to assist the working poor. Evidence based and insightfully written, "Higher Ground" illuminates how policymakers can make work pay and improve the lives of children in families struggling to escape poverty. ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Greg J. Duncan is the Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. Aletha C. Huston is the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor of Child Development in the department of human ecology at the University of Texas, Austin and associate director of the Population Research Center. Thomas S. Weisner is Professor of Anthropology in the Departments of Psychiatry (Semel Institute, Center for Culture and Health) and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. BOOK: $24.95; cloth; 978-0-87154-325-7; January 2007; 6 x 9; 176 pp. Note to editors and reviewers: to request review copies of Higher Ground, please contact David Haproff at 212-750-6037 or david@rsage.org.
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ABOUT THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. Located in New York City, it is a research center, a funding source for studies by scholars at other academic and research institutions, and an active member of the nations social science community. The Foundation also publishes, under its own imprint, the books that derive from the work of its grantees and Visiting Scholars.
ON THE WEB: http://www.russellsage.org
CONTACT: David Haproff, Russell Sage Foundation,
212-750-6037
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