Prosperity dl briefing book pt2 by John Svicarovich

Oregon Prosperity Design Lab Briefing Book - Part 2

This is Part 2 of the briefing book prepared as background for your participation in the Oregon Prosperity Design Lab. Part 2 is focused on the target groups of people in poverty that we will be using as lenses in our designing work. There are a few introductory articles then sections for each of the target groups. I urge you to read the section for the target group you have been assigned to and, if you have time, review additional material from the other target groups. Once again, I want to thank Melissa Rowe of ECONorthwest and Sophie Duba, the Design Lab Assistant Coordinator, for their diligent work in researching and compiling the material for this Briefing Book. Even though this document includes a lot of material, it represents just a fraction of all the material available about the target groups. We did our best to include a range of topics and perspectives and tried to choose articles that would be of benefit to designers who are experts in this field and designers who are less familiar with the research on poverty. Beverly Stein, Design Lab Choreographer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Poverty Segment Research • • • •

Analysis of population segments in poverty in Oregon Profile of Oregon poverty: populations and policies Effect sizes of selected poverty reduction options Stakeholder forum input about target groups

2. Lenses for the Target Groups • •

•

“The Meaning of Poverty,” Donna Beegle Race/Ethnicity o Executive Summary of Communities of Color in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile, Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University o Selections from Poverty and Race through a Belongingness Lens, powell Place/Geography o Poverty, Policy and Place: How Poverty and Policies to Alleviate Poverty are Shaped by Local Characteristics, Blank

3. Teens aged 13-18

• • • • • •

Target group profile Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth, Levine Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-‐‑Income Youth, Schwartz and Leos-‐‑Urbel Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education, Terry Long Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-‐‑Income Women, Sawhill and Venator Executive summary of Oregon’s High School Dropouts: Examining the economic and social costs, Cascade Policy Institute

Additional reading • Improving Employment Outcomes for Disadvantaged Students, Holzer

4. Households with children and a first-generation immigrant parent • • • • • •

124

Target group profile Stepping Stone or Sink Hole? Immigrants, Poverty, and the Future of Metropolitan America, Pastor Characteristics of the Foreign-‐‑Born Population Working in Oregon, Oregon Employment Department In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-‐‑Born Residents in Oregon, Population Research Center, PSU Introduction to Investing in English Skills: The Limited English Proficient Workforce in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Wilson The Health and Well-‐‑Being of Children in Immigrant Families, Reardon-‐‑ Anderson, Capps, and Fix

Additional reading • Hispanic Nativity Shift: U.S. births drive population growth as immigration stalls, Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project • A Profile of the Foreign-‐‑born in the Portland, Oregon Tri-‐‑county Area, Lotspeich, Fix, Perez-‐‑Lopez, and Ost • “Portland metro area has fewer non-‐‑citizen immigrants, more naturalized citizens,” The Oregonian • Children of Immigrants Data Tool, Urban Institute • Immigration Explorer (interactive maps), New York Times • “Diversity in the Classroom,” Oregon, New York Times

5. Households with at least one disabled adult aged 18-64 • • • • • • •

177

Target group profile Costs, Cuts, and Consequences, Center for Studying Disability Policy Selections from Why Taking Disability into Account is Essential to Reducing Income Poverty and Expanding Economic Inclusion, Fremstad Selections from Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System, Autor and Duggan Selections from Restructuring Disability Insurance to Support Work Opportunities and Economic Self-‐‑Sufficiency, Bergman and MacDonald Long-‐‑term Poverty and Disability Among Working-‐‑Age Adults, She and Livermore Forum Highlights: Participant-‐‑Identified Leading Practices that Could Increase the Employment of Individuals with Disabilities in the Federal

Workforce, Government Accountability Office

Additional reading • Understanding Asset Development for Individuals with Disabilities, Assets for Independence Resource Center • “With Disability Benefits Running on Fumes, What to Do?”, Aaron • The State of 21st Century Financial Incentives for Americans with Disabilities, National Council on Disability • “Material Hardship, Poverty, and Disability Among Working-‐‑Age Adults,” Social Science Quarterly, She and Livermore • “Disability is a Cause and Consequence of Poverty,” Vallas and Fremstad

6. Households with children aged 0-4 • • • • •

•

215

Target group profile How Much Could We Improve Children’s Life Chances by Intervening Early and Often? Sawhill and Karpilow Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children, Cascio and Schanzenbach Two Policies to Boost School Readiness, Duncan, Kalil, Magnuson and Murnane Using Executive Function and Related Principles to Improve the Design and Delivery of Assistance Programs for Disadvantaged Families, LaDonna Pavetti Child Care and Education in Oregon and Its Counties, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership

Additional reading • Addressing the Parenting Divide to Promote Early Childhood Development for Disadvantaged Children, Kalil • PBS Frontline: Poor Kids (video) • State Strategies to Reduce Child and Family Poverty, NGA Center for Best Practices

7. People coming out of the corrections systems (parole, probation, juvenile detention or prison) •

Target group profile

279

• • •

•

Former Prisoners and Disadvantaged Youth: Changing Outlook and Opportunity, Miller Incarceration and Social Inequality, Western and Pettit Selections from Employment-‐‑Focused Programs for Ex-‐‑Prisoners: What have we learned, what are we learning and where should we go from here? Bloom Improving Prisoner Reentry Through Strategic Policy Innovations, NGA Center for Best Practices

Additional reading • “For Many Ex-‐‑Offenders, Poverty Follows Prison,” NPR • “Prison and the Poverty Trap,” New York Times • Evidence-‐‑Based Adult Corrections Programs: What Works and What Does Not, Aos, Miller, and Drake; Washington State Institute for Public Policy

Poverty rates reach 30-‐40% for some racial/ethnic minority populations

Hispanic/Latino

30.2%

American Indian / Alaska Native

33.6%

Black Asian Non-Hispanic White

40.8% 12.4% 14.5%

Source: US Census American Community Survey, 2012

Estimated number of Oregonians in poverty, by population segment, 2012 0

10,000

Two-parent disabled with child(ren)

20,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

29,569

31,947

30,747

Childless able-bodied 45-64

59,252

Childless able-bodied 18-29 enrolled in school

57,194

Two parent w no BA (married)

25,334

241 27,096

Childless disabled 45-64

43,200

Childless 65+

39,543

Childless able-bodied 30-44

31,747

Childless able-bodied 18-29 not enrolled in school

30,397

Two parent w no BA (unmarried)

14,298

Single parent w youngest under 6

9,127

Single parent w youngest 6 and over

9,483 5,637

One-parent immigrant with child(ren) 3,517 Childless disabled 30-44

40,000

34,587

Two-parent immigrant with child(ren)

One-parent disabled with child(ren)

30,000

adults children 108

14,055 18,253 15,769

9,341 10,767

10,744

Two parent w BA (married) 4,892 4,728 Childless disabled 18-29

7,570

Two parent w BA (unmarried) Source: ECONorthwest analysis of 2012 ACS PUMS

Poverty rate by population segment, Oregon, 2012 Two-parent disabled with child(ren)

21%

Two-parent immigrant with child(ren)

18%

Childless able-bodied 45-64

Childless able-bodied 18-29 enrolled in school

36%

Two parent w no BA (married)

13% 29%

Childless disabled 45-64 Childless 65+

Childless able-bodied 30-44

12%

Childless able-bodied 18-29 not enrolled in school

14%

Two parent w no BA (unmarried)

23%

Single parent w youngest under 6

49%

Single parent w youngest 6 and over

26%

One-parent disabled with child(ren)

60%

One-parent immigrant with child(ren)

65%

Childless disabled 30-44 Two parent w BA (married)

31% 2%

Childless disabled 18-29 Two parent w BA (unmarried) Source: ECONorthwest analysis of 2012 ACS PUMS

27% 2%

Employment status of Oregonian adults in poverty, 2012 0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Two-parent disabled with child(ren) Two-parent immigrant with child(ren) Childless able-bodied 45-64 Childless able-bodied 18-29 enrolled in school Two parent w no BA (married) Childless disabled 45-64 Childless 65+ Childless able-bodied 30-44 Childless able-bodied 18-29 not enrolled in school Two parent w no BA (unmarried) Single parent w youngest under 6 Single parent w youngest 6 and over One-parent disabled with child(ren) One-parent immigrant with child(ren) Childless disabled 30-44 Two parent w BA (married) Childless disabled 18-29 Two parent w BA (unmarried) employed

Source: ECONorthwest analysis of 2012 ACS PUMS

unemployed

not in laborforce

Medicare/ Medicaid

SNAP Aged 38K

Not in Labor Force 189K

Adults 419K

Disabled 65K

SSI

Nondisabled 85K

SSDI

TANF/ERDC

Unemployed 62K

Oregon’s Poor 641K

Social Security

In Labor Force 173K

Unemployment Insurance

Minimum Wage

Employed 111K

Demographics

EITC

White (66%) Hispanic (19%)

College Students 57K

Two or more races (4%) African American (4%)

Oregon Opportunity Grant

Asian (3%) Native American (2%)

Age 13+ 36K

Other (2%) Hawaiian / Pacific Islander (1%)

•National School Lunch Program

Kids 161K

•Title I Education Investment

Age 0-12 125K Unmarried, cohabitating. Combined income over poverty line. 60K

•Home Visiting •High-Quality Pre-K •WIC

Eﬀect Sizes of Selected Poverty Reduc5on Op5ons (in Standard Devia5on Units) 0.50 0.45 0.40 0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00

FAFSA FAFSA Career Career Assistance (File Assistance Academies Academies FAFSA) (A6end college) (Future (Complete earnings-‐males) school)

Youth Mentoring (GPA)

$1,000 EITC Full Day K (Test Full Day K (Test High quality (Test scores) scores-‐all) scores-‐Head preK (Test Start) scores)

Source: ECONorthwest. Faded portion indicates eﬀect-‐size before fade-‐out.

Nurse Family Partnership (Test scores)

Stakeholder Forum Input About Target Groups for Oregon Prosperity Design Lab During October of 2014, the Oregon Prosperity Agenda and the Oregon Business Council (OBC) in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, United Way of Columbia-‐ Willamette, and The Ford Family Foundation, facilitated eight Stakeholder Forums throughout Oregon. Combined, over 360 participated in the Forums. The forums asked for input in two areas. One was input into policy concepts being developed by the OBC Poverty Task Force, with input summarized in a separate document. The second was input for the Oregon Prosperity Design Lab, with input summarized below. The five target groups listed below represent about 60% of Oregonians in poverty. At the Forums, participants were asked to read a case study representing the target group and review target group demographic data. Then, in small groups they were asked to discuss then record answers to six questions about what is working or not working to help achieve prosperity for their assigned group. This document summarizes common themes (similar responses from two or more workgroups) for the six questions. Notes: We heard feedback about the lack of focus on the fact that poverty disproportionately impacts poverty communities of color, and the need for an “equity lens” when working on strategies to address prosperity. We also recognize that by providing a case study, some of the questions may have been answered in response to the case study, rather than considering the diverse demographic characteristics of the target groups. Target Groups representing about 60% of Oregonians in Poverty: 1. Teens aged 13-‐18, living in households in poverty 2. Single-‐ or two-‐parent households (with children) in poverty with at least one parent who is a first-‐generation immigrant 3. Households in poverty with at least one disabled adult aged 18-‐64 4. Single-‐ or two-‐parent households in poverty with children aged 0-‐4 5. People coming out of the corrections systems (parole, probation, juvenile detention or prison) living in households in poverty

1. Teens aged 13-‐18, living in households in poverty Common Themes What’s Working: Individual Development Account (IDA) program, education programs (college prep or community college); SUN Schools What’s not working: Lack of vocational/tech programs; employment connections; one-‐size fits all approach Strengths: Networked; resourceful; creative Barriers: Affordable housing; employment; self-‐defeating/perceptions Outcomes: Higher average income; family wage jobs; advocacy/political representation Urban/Rural: More community involvement in rural; less access to educational and job opportunities Notes: Differentiate data within racial groups. Need to connect local industries (ag, tech) to schools. 2. Single-‐ or two-‐parent households (with children) in poverty with at least one parent who is a first-‐ generation immigrant Common Themes What’s Working: Head Start; subsidized housing; IDAs What’s not working: Documentation; language/cultural issues; lack of financial planning Strengths: Strong family and community connections; strong work ethic and determination; commitment to education Barriers: Language; distrust of government – especially with undocumented; racism/stereotypes Outcomes: Stable housing and employment; educational attainment Urban/Rural: More housing options in urban areas (although more expensive); fewer opportunities and resources in rural areas Notes: There is an important distinction to note with this population – documented or undocumented. 3. Households in poverty with at least one disabled adult aged 18-‐64 Common Themes What’s Working: Subsidies including TANF, SNAP, housing; family support What’s not working: Non-‐subsidized permanent housing; childcare Strengths: Family support; resilient; motivated Barriers: Transportation; the time needed to process paperwork to receive benefits

Outcomes: Stability and predictability with income and housing Urban/Rural: Rural has less transportation and access to resources Notes: Vocational Rehab is an important agency and should be engaged. Assistance for home-‐based businesses. Debt and medical bills are a barrier. 4. Single-‐ or two-‐parent households in poverty with children aged 0-‐4 Common Themes What’s Working: Education/Vocational Training; Section 8/Housing Assistance What’s not working: Loss of benefits; Safety net not coordinated; childcare Strengths: Resiliency; resourceful/leverage resources; perseverance Barriers: Communication skills/soft skills; low wages/lack of family wage jobs Outcomes: Getting off public assistance; stable wage/higher wage Urban/Rural: Rural – transportation issues; less access to services Notes: Needs for the children include full-‐day pre-‐school, and new educational systems for age 0-‐4. 5. People coming out of the corrections systems (parole, probation, juvenile detention or prison) living in households in poverty Common Themes What’s Working: Central City Concern (CCC); mentoring; alcohol and drug treatment; jobs in prison/skills training; housing What’s not working: Difficulty securing employment; prior conviction box on applications; not enough longer term support; substance abuse Strengths: Education opportunities in prison; resourceful/determined Barriers: Recurring substance abuse; lack of housing and support systems Outcomes: Stable living wage employment and housing; re-‐integration into the community; low recidivism; drug/alcohol recovery Urban/Rural: Rural areas lack services and transportation; more opportunities in urban areas; potentially more discrimination of criminal records in rural communities Notes: Racial justice issues; overrepresentation in correction system. No distinction between minor felony vs. major felony.

Lenses for the Target Groups Breaking the Iron Cage of Poverty, Donna Beegle http://www.cwda.org/downloads/tools/americanpoverty/Breaking-‐‑Iron-‐‑Cage-‐‑ Beegle-‐‑keynote.pdf Communities of Color in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile http://www.coalitioncommunitiescolor.org/docs/AN%20UNSETTLING%20PRO FILE.pdf Poverty and Race through a Belongingness Lens, powell http://www.nwaf.org/content/uploads/oldsite/FileCabinet/DocumentCatalogFile s/Other/PMpowell.pdf Poverty, Policy and Place: How Poverty and Policies to Alleviate Poverty are Shaped by Local Characteristics http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/18920/1/wp040002.pdf

The Meaning of Poverty What We Learn is Based on Life Experiences The word “poverty” is used to describe many different life situations. Some students may be from generational poverty, others may be experiencing working-class poverty. Each of these life experiences shape expectations, knowledge, confidence and opportunities for gaining an education. Below are some characteristics of different life experiences labeled “Poverty.”

Generational Poverty • Family has never owned land • Never knew anyone who benefited from education • Never knew anyone who moved up or was respected in a job • Highly mobile • High family illiteracy • Focus is on making it through the day

Working-Class Poverty • Working, but rarely have money for any extras • Most do not own property • Live pay check to pay check • Few have health care • Focus on making it two weeks or through the month • Poverty seen as personal deficiency

Immigrant Poverty • Have little or no resources • Face language and culture barriers • Seem to do have a stronger sense of self and often do better than those born into poverty in America • Poverty is viewed as a system problem

Situational Poverty • Surrounded by people who are educated or able to earn a living wage • Attends school regularly and has health care • Has crisis (health, divorce, etc.) and income drops • Generally is able to make it back to middle-class • Has not internalized the poverty as personal problem • Does not recognize advantages of growing up middle-class • Can be harsh judge of those in poverty

PO Box 23071 Tigard, OR 97281 • www.combarriers.com • dbeegle@combarriers.com • 503.590.4599 • Fax: 866.383.4659

Communities of Color in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile

A partnership between

Executive summary Communities of Color are a vital presence in Multnomah County. Our leadership has strengthened efforts to improve community health and well-being in many areas. Our roles have stretched from being a sounding board to policy makers, to sitting on philanthropic boards, to staffing committees and advisory groups on matters of importance like child welfare, community development, funding patterns and growing the green economy. Our voice is valued. Yet progress of our peoples is far from assured. Communities of color are a growing portion of Multnomah County’s population. Today, the official count is that communities of color comprise 26.3% of the County’s numbers and this number is growing much more quickly than that of Whites, due to high fertility rates and migration. Yet we do not really know how large our communities of color really are. Official measures to enumerate our community members are plagued by legacies of distrust and cynicism. They are also plagued by the whiteness that pervades all forms of data collection and interpretation. As a result, population measures chronically undercount our numbers. This is due to an array of factors such as ongoing invisibility for some communities of color – for the African immigrant and refugee community, and for the Slavic community, no data are routinely collected. Also at issue are survey question dilemmas, such as the failure to count the Latino community as a community of color, or outdated practices such as allowing only one racial identity to be selected. In addition, language accessibility renders participation impossible for the estimated 5.1% of the county’s population who cannot communicate in either English or Spanish. 2 Traditional research practices undermine our very existence as our experiences are omitted from routine data reporting in many areas. We have had to use up a significant amount of political capital just to collect the data in this report. A key message is that our communities of color have tolerated invisibility for long enough, and insist that research and reporting practices change sufficiently to make the data on all our communities routinely available in the public arena. Our communities themselves contribute to the undercounting, as many are reticent to participate and to identify as a person of color. While the larger context for this shame or reticence may have been created by mainstream society, we have work to do inside the community to encourage prideful identification as a member of a community of color. This project is the result of determination among many leaders in our communities, members of the Coalition of Communities of Color, who defined the need for expanded research, and asserted our leadership and capacity to define the reach, interpret the findings, and consolidate recommendations for change. This report, “Communities of Color in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile” is the result of that determination. Before you today are the fruits, as sour and as bruised as they are, of the first two years of a research partnership with Portland State University. This report documents the experiences of communities of color in Multnomah County. The results are indeed unsettling, as many key insights emerge from the data. First, disparities with White communities exist across all institutions addressed in the report. The magnitude of these disparities is alarming. Consider some of the data findings: • Communities of color earn half the incomes of whites, earning $16,636 per year, while white people earn $33,095 annually. Disparities close to this magnitude exist regardless of one’s family and household configuration.

Communities of Color in Multnomah County Coalition of Communities of Color & Portland State University 7|Page

• • •

• • • • •

Poverty levels among our communities are at levels at least double those of whites. Our child poverty rate, collectively, is 33.3%, while that of white children is 12.5%. Educational attainment is stratified by race. While only 7% of Whites did not graduate high school, 30% of communities of color did not. Disparities exist at the preschool level. By the time children enter kindergarten, there is a disparity that, depending on the measure, averages between 5% and 15% in readiness for learning scores. Most children of color are unable to access preschool programs, though they are overrepresented in Head Start initiatives. One-quarter of public school students of color were racially harassed in a 30-day study period, either at school or on the way to school. The figure is constant for both students in grade 8 and grade 11. Educational disparities in our local public schools are deeply entrenched and gains made earlier in the decade have been lost, and the achievement gap is widening. The labor market is similarly bruised by disparities. Communities of color access management and professional positions at half the levels of Whites. One of every two Whites access such high status and high paid work, while less than one of every four people of color access these positions. Communities of color have unemployment rates that are 35.7% higher than whites. Health disparities, while unevenly distributed across communities of color, average out to result in significant disproportionality. Low birth weights among communities of color are 37% worse than for White babies. Child welfare disproportionately removes African and Native American children from their homes and places them in foster care. The longer children are in care, the much greater likelihood they are African American and Native American. Juvenile detention rates are much worse for children of color. They are 50% more likely to be held than released into the community once they engage with the police. Even systems designed to improve the challenges facing communities of color, such as the protected contracting practices at the City, County and Metropolitan levels fail to deliver sufficient benefits to our communities of color. Less than one-tenth of 1% of the City of Portland’s contracting dollars goes to minority-owned businesses.3

In every system we looked at, there are significant disparities. The breadth and depth of these disparities is deeply unsettling. Our best understanding of this is that institutional, ideological, behavioral and historic racism intersect to create these harrowing results. Add to this dynamic that of whiteness and white privilege, and we create the one-two punch that leads to the horrors of racism coexisting with the privileges of whiteness. Undoing such inequities must occur at all levels of every system. Second, communities of color in Multnomah county suffer more than similar communities of color nationally. In the measures explored in this report (incomes, poverty, occupation and education), communities of color have between 15% and 20% worse outcomes. It is more difficult to get ahead here in Multnomah County than it is more generally across the USA. When we tally the disproportionate “hit” or additional income losses for communities of color living in the county, the average tally of such costs is $8,362/year. This inequity does not hold true for White people. On average, one’s income is enhanced by living in Multnomah County. The average benefit to a White person living in Multnomah County is $689/year. While not a large benefit, it illustrates that the harms of being a person of color in the county is additionally disparaging when Whites have a correlated benefit.

Communities of Color in Multnomah County Coalition of Communities of Color & Portland State University 8|Page

Third, we looked to a local comparison group to see how communities of color here fared in relationship to those in a western nearby city. In comparison with King County (home to Seattle), we have worse disparities and worse outcomes on every measure examined: child poverty, those who get a university degree, incomes, occupation, and renters who pay more than 30% of their incomes on rent. In King County, the child poverty rate for children of color is 21.5%, while here it is 33.3%. This must inform our thinking about what is possible. For King County to have better conditions for people of color, while having relatively similar concentrations of people of color (30.9% compared to ours at 26.3%), should spark our sense of possibilities. Fourth, we wondered if local conditions were improving or deteriorating for communities of color. We examined disparities in two ways â&#x20AC;&#x201C; generational changes in incomes, and a contemporary examination of the last two years of available data on a wider array of disparities. In the first instance, we found that the generational picture on incomes of White families and families of color has changed markedly. Only the wealthiest 40% of White families have gained significant ground over the last generation (at an average of $47,663/year) while that same grouping among families of color have lost income (facing an average loss of $1,496 per year). While it is not surprising that there has been a significant growth between rich and poor (as this fact has received considerable attention at the national level over recent years), it is disturbing that this growth between rich and poor is considerably racialized (meaning that benefits seen by White families are not shared by families of color). The net impact is that there is a significant decay of income equality between Whites and communities of color across the generation. Our second view on changes across time was a thorough view of changes that occurred in the last year (from 2007 to 2008, as the most recent data available). In 26 measures, we found that 16 measures were worse, 6 were better, and 4 stayed the same. The crucial measures of incomes, obtaining a university degree, all poverty measures and health insurance had all deteriorated. Four of the positive gains (in home ownership, mortgage burden, unemployment and dropout rate) were due not to an improved situation for communities of color, but due to a more rapidly deteriorating situation for white people, thus narrowing disparities. We can thus conclude that there were clear gains in only two of the 26 measures â&#x20AC;&#x201C; clearly demarking that current disparity reduction efforts are ineffective in achieving key positive outcomes for communities of color. Fifth, we have learned an important lesson about our Asian communities. Many may know that these communities fare quite well in national studies, typically outperforming Whites on measures such as incomes, occupations, education, poverty and housing. That is not the situation for this community in Multnomah County. Here, the characteristics of the Asian community much more closely resemble those of other communities of color than they do of Whites. Sixth, for the first time, two additional communities of color are profiled â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Slavic community and the African Immigrant and Refugee community. Separate sections of the report profile these communities. Overall, these two communities are very highly educated but are mostly unable to access occupations, incomes and reductions in poverty rates that are typically associated with high education levels. Within the African community, poverty levels parallel those of the African American community as the depths of racism, social exclusion, and inadequate income support programs result in more than 50% of children living in poverty. In the Slavic community, the employment barriers that prevent the community from accessing good jobs results in high levels of poverty, unemployment and income disparities among families.

Communities of Color in Multnomah County Coalition of Communities of Color & Portland State University 9|Page

Seventh, the need for expanded support for culturally-specific services is in evidence in this report. Our leaders and organizations have an array of effective services customized to meet the specific and unique needs of communities of color. The failings of mainstream institutions to address the needs of communities of color are abundant and must create the impetus to act, to act holistically, and to act under the leadership of communities of color who have the legitimacy and the urgency to remedy many of the shortcomings that besiege Multnomah County. Eighth, we have determined that there is an undercount of youth in the 2007 American Community Survey that is in the magnitude of 4.8% and further that there is a miscoding of communities of color by an additional 14.9%. We derived these figures from the more robust and more comprehensive data from public school records (centralized at the Oregon Department of Education). This is the first “hard” evidence that there is an undercount issue within ACS. While we do not advocate modifying ACS figures with these numbers, we do highlight that counting our communities is riddled with challenges. As a solution, we are developing “culturally-verified community counts” that better reflect what we believe our accurate numbers to be. Ninth, we affirm the following commitments and directives that aim to advance racial equity. 1. Affirm culturally-specific services funding. We affirm and appreciate Multnomah County’s dedicated funding pool within the Department of Human Services, SUN Service System and seek to expand this commitment, urging all funding units in all levels of government to make such allocations a priority. 2. Support equity initiatives in existence. At the County-level, initiatives such as the Equity Council, Undoing Institutional Racism, and Multnomah County Health Department’s Health Equity Initiative hold promise to reduce disparities. Tenth, we make the following recommendations for addressing the needs of communities of color. 1. Expand funding for culturally-specific services. Designated funds are required, and these funds must be adequate to address needs. Allocation must recognize the size of communities of color, must compensate for the undercounts that exist in population estimates, and must be sufficiently robust to address the complexity of need that are tied to communities of color. 2. Implement needs-based funding for communities of color. This report illuminates the complexity of needs facing communities of color, and highlights that Whites do not face such issues nor the disparities that result from them. Accordingly, providing services for these communities is similarly more complex. We urge funding bodies to begin implementing an equity-based funding allocation that seeks to ameliorate some of the challenges that exist in resourcing these communities. 3. Emphasize poverty reduction strategies. Poverty reduction must be an integral element of meeting the needs of communities of color. A dialogue is needed immediately to kick-start economic development efforts that hold the needs of communities of color high in policy implementation. Improving the quality and quantity of jobs that are available to people of color will reduce poverty. 4. Reduce disparities with firm timelines, policy commitments and resources. Disparity reduction across systems must occur and must ultimately ensure that one’s racial and ethnic

Communities of Color in Multnomah County Coalition of Communities of Color & Portland State University 10 | P a g e

identity ceases to determine one’s life chances. The Coalition urges State, County and City governments and school boards, to establish firm timelines with measurable outcomes to assess disparities each and every year. There must be zero-tolerance for racial and ethnic disparities. Accountability structures must be developed and implemented to ensure progress on disparity reduction. As a first step, plans for disparities reduction must be developed in every institution and be developed in partnership with communities of color. Targeted reductions with measurable outcomes must be a central feature of these plans. 5. Count communities of color. Immediately, we demand that funding bodies universally use the most current data available and use the “alone or in combination with other races, with or without Hispanics” as the official measure of the size of our communities. The minor overcounting that this creates is more than offset by the pervasive undercounting that exists when outsiders measure the size of our communities. When “community-verified population counts” are available, we demand that these be used. 6. Prioritize education and early childhood services. The Coalition prioritizes education and early childhood services as a significant pathway out of poverty and social exclusion, and urges that disparities in achievement, dropout, post-secondary education and even early education must be prioritized. 7. Expand the role for the Coalition of Communities of Color. The Coalition of Communities of Color seeks an ongoing role in monitoring the outcomes of disparity reduction efforts and seeks appropriate funding to facilitate this task. 8. Research practices that make the invisible visible. Implement research practices across institutions that are transparent, easily accessible and accurate in the representation of communities of color. Draw from the expertise within the Coalition of Communities of Color to conceptualize such practices. This will result in the immediate reversal of invisibility and tokenistic understanding of the issues facing communities of color. Such practices will expand the visibility of communities of color. 9. Fund community development. Significantly expand community development funding for communities of color. Build line items into state, county and city budgets for communities of color to self-organize, network our communities, develop pathways to greater social inclusion, build culturally-specific social capital and provide leadership within and outside our own communities. 10. Disclose race and ethnicity data for mainstream service providers. Mainstream service providers and government providers continue to have the largest role in service delivery. Accounting for the outcomes of these services for communities of color is essential. We expect each level of service provision to increasingly report on both service usage and service outcomes for communities of color. 11. Name racism. Before us are both the challenge and the opportunity to become engaged with issues of race, racism and whiteness. Racial experiences are a feature of daily life whether we are on the harmful end of such experience or on the beneficiary end of the spectrum. The first step is to stop pretending race and racism do not exist. The second is to know that race is always linked to experience. The third is to know that racial identity is strongly linked to experiences of marginalization, discrimination and powerlessness. We seek for those in the

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White community end a prideful perception that Multnomah County is an enclave of progressivity. Communities of color face tremendous inequities and a significant narrowing of opportunity and advantage. This must become unacceptable for everyone. Advancing racial equity depends on eliminating the multitudes of disparities profiled in this report. We aspire to catalyze an understanding of the challenges facing communities of color and to provide us all impetus to act, to act holistically, and to act under the leadership of communities of color who have the legitimacy and the urgency to remedy many of the shortcomings that besiege Multnomah county.

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POLICYMATTERS Volume 1, Issue 5 | April 2012

POVERTY AND RACE THROUGH A BELONGINGNESS LENS By john a. powell

Policy Levers to Reduce Poverty and Build Prosperity in the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest

INTRODUCTION Prosperity is possible for all. That bold idea has opened vistas of opportunity for generations of Americans. And it lies at the core of the Northwest Area Foundation’s mission – to support organizations working to reduce poverty and build sustainable prosperity. Everything we do is rooted in our conviction that prosperity is possible for all. That spirit animates our strategies and informs our thinking as we reach out to partners with similar goals. We believe people should have the opportunity to thrive, to build the future they want for themselves and their families. What we have learned in more than 50 years of grantmaking is that achieving lasting prosperity – getting out and staying out of poverty – takes more than a steady income. It requires building assets as well: savings for homes, cars and education, and to buffer against emergencies; education and training for living-wage jobs and career advancement; and housing that’s safe and secure. Opportunities for building assets and wealth are either advanced or stymied by public policies at the city, county, state and federal levels. That’s why policy matters in people’s lives. The significance of policy is the guiding principle of PolicyMatters, a series of issue papers underwritten by the Northwest Area Foundation. Policy decisions shape the flow of the people’s resources through government expenditures, with profound consequences in our communities. Public policy touches on issues as diverse as asset accumulation, early childhood and K–12 education, college access, housing, immigration, workforce development, tax and budget policy, and retirement security. In all of these areas and many more, the people’s resources are flowing in patterns shaped not by some invisible hand but by decisions made by human beings. A critical question is: Whose perspectives inform those decisions? Our Foundation cannot achieve its mission if the organizations with which we work – or the low-income people these organizations serve – are absent from the policy debates of our time. PolicyMatters seeks to lift up voices from the field. We hope these perspectives will be useful to practitioners, advocates and decision-makers as they work toward policies to reduce poverty and build sustainable prosperity. Motivating us in this and all our endeavors is a vision for the future of the Northwest area: • We see a region known for its highly skilled, well-educated population, its living-wage jobs and its healthy, vibrant communities. • We see a region characterized by thriving local economies within thriving ecosystems. • We see a region whose strong public institutions, business community and nonprofit sector collaborate to address pressing needs and help build pathways to prosperity for all residents. • We see a region whose people are organized and empowered to lift their voices and actively shape the civic, social, political and economic life of their communities. • Ultimately, we see a region whose rich culture of engagement and opportunity makes it a prized place to visit, to invest, and to live, and where all residents have a fair chance to live free of poverty.

Innovative public policies are essential if that vision is to become a reality. Let us know whether you find PolicyMatters helpful in spurring the development of such policies. PolicyMatters is intended to spark reflection, discussion and innovation. We encourage you to add your voice in what we hope will be a vibrant, ongoing public conversation about the future of your community and our nation. You can submit your comments at feedback@nwaf.org.

Kevin Walker President and CEO

About the Northwest Area Foundation The Northwest Area Foundation is dedicated to supporting efforts by people, organizations and communities to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable prosperity. Established by Louis W. Hill in 1934, the Foundation serves a region composed of Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and the 74 Native nations that share the same geography. We seek a future for this region in which those who have been impoverished and marginalized, whether in urban, rural or American Indian reservation communities, share in real opportunity and lasting prosperity. We work toward that future by making grants and mission-related investments. We are also committed to sharing knowledge of what works, convening conversations about the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s progress, and advocating for change.

PolicyMatters April 2012

POVERTY AND RACE THROUGH A BELONGINGNESS LENS By john a. powell

INTRODUCTION This paper is about how to address poverty in the United States. It is not so much prescriptive as it is focused on how transforming the narrative and structures related to poverty can help break our complicity with it. We often misunderstand what poverty is in our society and why it seems so intractable. While there have been many insightful policy proposals and even some limited success, such as reducing poverty for the elderly, overall poverty in our society has been difficult to tackle. There also is a growing call to rethink what we mean by “poverty” that goes beyond the official definition of poverty adopted by the federal government in the 1960s. The White House has exerted significant effort to redefine poverty. Although the official poverty line will still be based on food costs and a family’s cash income, a second rate will expand costs to include such expenses as housing, utilities, childcare and medical treatment.1 Even those who find fault in this effort agree that the current thinking on poverty is flawed. In a wealthy and mature democracy, poverty is largely about social exclusion and the lack of belonging, not material inequality. As an excluded group increases in size, the realities of exclusion seriously affect not only the target group, but the overall society as well. Historically, there are different categories used for this exclusion, including nationality, religion, gender, language, ethnicity and race. In the United States, race has been one, if not the primary, category for extreme exclusion. Native Americans make up another category. We should therefore expect race to be significant in understanding and addressing poverty. I do not claim that if we addressed racialized poverty all other forms of exclusion would be addressed. Instead, I suggest that if we better understood and addressed the dynamics

and meaning of exclusion related to race, it would have much broader implications and would help us better understand the mechanism of exclusion generally. In this report, I will explore the complexities of belongingness, the racialization of exclusion and the promotion of inclusion through the policies that I recommend. There are two dominant ways of thinking about and measuring poverty: absolute and relative, or relational.2 Absolute poverty measures usually refer to some threshold of income or resources below which people should be deemed disadvantaged or poor.3 Because it is an absolute standard, it remains largely static over time in a given society. For example, if one does not have sufficient food or water, one does not thrive. This is as true today as it was 100 years ago, and it is not society specific. Relative poverty measures, on the other hand, move beyond absolute deprivation to consider an individual’s or family’s relative deprivation – economic, social and/or cultural – in relation to other people in a given society over time.4 In our society today, there is a strong assumption that, in an urban area, to be without a phone or a computer is a serious deprivation. We organize the operation of basic service organizations, such as police and fire departments, based on the assumption one will have access to phones. This form of measurement is consistent with the “capabilities approach” developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, in which deprivation is understood more broadly as encompassing the capabilities that one requires, some material and some not, to live a meaningful, flourishing life.5 One is poor if one does not have the things needed to be a respected member of society.6 One might claim that a physical structure of a home in an urban area is not necessary for a healthy life in some

In a wealthy and mature

absolute sense, but it is clear that the lack of a democracy, poverty is largely home is a deprivation of about social exclusion and well-being and standing in our modern society. the lack of belonging, not In other words, when we ask whether someone material inequality. As an is poor, we are actually excluded group increases concerned about her standing in society – in size, the realities of whether she belongs, a key factor in how exclusion seriously affect not America treats its poor only the target group, but the citizens. Although some categories of persons overall society as well. are almost always considered “deserving” of our support – children, for example7 – others are not. As a result, we often exploit, marginalize and segregate these others. We make meaning of their condition that is unflattering to them. The stories we understand or tell ourselves about why people are poor matter. One story is their poverty is attributable to their failure and an alternative story is that outside factors such as a tight labor market are the cause of their poverty. Is poverty internal or situational? The way we answer will affect the standing of the targeted poverty group as well as our response. If the assumption is that the cause of poverty is attributable to the behavior of individuals or a group, they are seen as undeserving, and any remedial claim for social resources is weakened. Many conservatives work from this assumption and are generally unsupportive of policy interventions. But when poverty is seen as caused by external circumstances that are not

PolicyMatters April 2012

attributable to the targeted group, then there is a strong claim for policy intervention. This external cause might be natural (such as a flood) or social (such as one group excluding or discriminating against another). Liberals who consider the poor unfortunate, not undeserving, are more likely to operate from these assumptions and support policy interventions. Of course, there can be a mixed attribution. For example, segregation from opportunity and belonging can contribute to behavior in the disfavored group, which makes matters worse. Consequently, neither the less favorite group nor the larger society is absolved of their duties to address these conditions. Choosing an approach to poverty is mainly motivated by how one sees the targeted group on the gradient of belonging. In fact, the sense of belonging or not will have an impact on assessment of deserving. The more distant from the center we locate the impoverished, the more likely we will attribute the cause of their condition to them. This assessment process is largely unconscious and fairly immune from facts. Rather, it is powerfully influenced by the stories that we embrace to allocate meaning, a power that can be more impactful than material conditions. And these stories can shift. Consider the role of a secretary. In the early days of industrialization, men were more likely to be secretaries and the position enjoyed higher status. But as women, the less favorite gender, came into the position, a new story relegated it to a lower status. What this signals is that to make advances in reducing poverty, we must be more deliberate about transforming the narratives that propel and accompany groups outside of the circle of human regard and belonging.

III. Anti-poverty policy recommendations as inclusions Having conceptualized racialized poverty as a lack of belongingness and explored its historical and current iterations, we now turn to three less traditional anti-poverty approaches that should increase inclusion and decrease this form of inequality. The first is “communities of opportunity.” It draws on work done at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and is a framework for connecting neighborhoods, cities and regions to the opportunity structures that contribute to individual well-being.73 The second is “targeted universalism.” It provides an alternative to both liberal and conservative rhetorics of colorblindness and false universalism through the development of policies that benefit both targeted marginalized groups and the larger community.74 The last is “widening the circle of concern.” It collects strategies for creating belongingness and full participation in society, a necessary step in the eradication of poverty.

Communities of Opportunity It bears repeating that although racialized structures may seem impossibly unwieldy, they usually operate at more manageable scales: neighborhoods, cities and regions.75 But all the entities collected within a region, including people, institutions and environments, share a linked fate embedded in “structures of opportunity” – the ingredients that add up to well-being in a particular place and success in life. These structures include schools; grocery stores that stock affordable, healthy food; health care facilities that accept new patients with a variety of insurance plans; labor markets that match willing job-seekers with meaningful, sustainable employment; green space; and much more. Unfortunately, the racialized others are too often isolated from these realities. Although it is just one kind of opportunity structure, housing is the keystone that locks families into or out of all the other opportunity

structures. It is the relational or spatial hub. This form of deprivation was exacerbated by structural changes in the economy that created an acute spatial mismatch between black workers and employment opportunities. Jobs that had previously guaranteed a middle-class existence moved to the suburbs, and black men in particular found themselves stuck in the city working low-paying service-sector jobs or no jobs at all. As opportunity fled, so did tax revenues, devastating inner-city education systems. Increasingly grim prospects for education and legal employment led many young black men to invest their time elsewhere. Illicit employment, especially selling drugs, connected them to a thoroughly racist criminal justice system, thus locking them and their communities into deeper poverty. The communities of opportunity framework proposes two primary strategies to remedy this situation: investing in the opportunity structures (in particular, communities) and moving people to opportunity through housing mobility. Broadly speaking, the first strategy is place-based, the second people-based. The place-based strategy argues that conventional community development must be focused on opportunity structures that serve the needs of the community. Particular place-based interventions range from fostering equitable investment in public infrastructure, especially transportation; supporting homeownership and mixed-income housing; and developing high-performing magnet schools that attract students from different parts of the city.76 What these interventions have in common is that they view community development through the lens of opportunity. They will be judged as successes if they connect neighborhood residents to the opportunity structures that improve well-being and pave the path to success in life. The people-based strategy recognizes that in many metropolitan areas, high-opportunity and 19

Widening the circle of

low-income areas are starkly polarized. The concern is an anti-poverty proximate cause of policy, which in turn can this polarization is the long-standing federal increase the viability of policy of building new low-income housing in other policies, including low-opportunity, innercommunities of opportunity, city neighborhoods. A variety of interventions targeted universalism and must be employed to correct this misguided more traditional ones. policy. Inclusionary The result would be a more zoning, for example, requires new-build robust and successful housing developments anti-poverty agenda. to include a certain number of affordable housing units. Other programs, modeled broadly on the federal government’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment, use vouchers or other subsidies to give African-American families who live in concentrated poverty the option to move to higher-opportunity areas. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program also incentivizes the construction of affordable housing in these areas. Targeted Universalism

As noted earlier, American policy discourse on race and poverty is dominated by two equally unhelpful frameworks: conservative race blindness and liberal post-racialism.77 Race blindness is a normative view that race should not be visible in matters of law or public policy preventing race-based interventions. Postracialism claims that race doesn’t matter much in contemporary America, and in the places where it does, a frontal, explicit attack on racism is divisive and unproductive. What both positions share is a belief that Americans are largely beyond race.78 One response to the failure of race blindness and post-racialism would be to adopt race-neutral, universal policy interventions. The animating principle behind a universal poverty-alleviation program, for example, would be that all poor people – whites and people of color – would

PolicyMatters April 2012

be lifted. I characterize this universalism as false, for two reasons. First, we have a history in this country of developing allegedly universal programs that in fact have a very targeted impact, as we saw with the New Deal, which amounted to affirmative action for white men. And second, universal programs operate on the assumption that the beneficiaries are similarly situated. They are not. As far back as Gunnar Myrdal’s time, sociologists have noted that poor blacks and poor whites exhibit different features and live in different contexts.79 I urge that we move beyond these unhelpful frameworks and instead adopt what I call “targeted universalism,” a strategy “that is inclusive of the needs of both the dominant and the marginal groups, but pays particular attention to the situatedness of the marginal group.”80 Targeted universalism moves us beyond “formal equality that would treat all people the same as a way of denying difference” to an approach that “incorporates difference and evaluates the outcome as well as the intent.”81 This approach brings all of us under the same tent, which can relieve racial resentment and anxiety, but it also helps us recognize that we don’t shed our particularities when we cross the threshold together. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, or “the stimulus plan”) is a povertyreduction strategy that provides a perfect example of a universal policy whose positive impact on marginalized populations could be enhanced through targeting. One of ARRA’s universal goals is to stimulate job growth through investment in infrastructure spending. The logic of this laudable goal is that the federal government gives money to the states, which then hire contractors, who in turn hire more workers for infrastructure projects, thus reducing unemployment. The problem with this logic is that it is blind to the racially uneven, white-dominated process of public infrastructure contracting that exists in most states and which is commonly hostile to people of color. To further aggravate matters, many courts have severely restricted the ability of state and local governments to employ affirmative-action

measures to benefit minority contractors and small firms. This racializing process compromises ARRA’s job growth because people of color are unlikely to benefit. To remedy this presumably unintended outcome, a targeted universalist approach would suggest that the federal program must take notice of racial discrimination in public contracting and specifically target minority contractors to ensure that they share in ARRA’s promise: a fair recovery for all Americans. Indeed, this approach should be taken with all poverty-reduction programs, especially those that operate on a large scale. Common goals would be to raise the minimum wage, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, increase childcare assistance and provide health care coverage to all Americans.82 It is common sense among advocates that implementing these programs helps reduce poverty, but historically the benefits from these universal programs have not trickled down toward ameliorating racialized poverty. This could be remedied with targeted universalism. It is important, however, that targeting program design be discussed from the start, not “tacked on” once the uneven impacts of programs are detected. It appears that a period of fiscal austerity is coming to America, which will hurt poor people most. Employing targeted universalism could ensure that any forthcoming poverty-reduction programs also attack the impoverished, racialized other. Unfortunately, this approach may be less effective if the targeted groups or subgroups are not too far outside the boundaries of belongingness and the circle of concern. Therefore, widening this circle is essential to the success of any anti-poverty policy.

Widening the Circle of Concern There are several approaches to widening the circle of concern that ensure that no group is demeaned, despised or decidedly excluded. The first is quite evident: exposure to the other, including the racial other. Jennifer A. Richeson and J. Nicole Shelton suggest that because interracial contact tends to become less stressful the more one experiences it, “promoting racially and culturally diverse environments whenever

and wherever possible, as early as possible, may be the best prescription for the development of positive interracial contact experience” for both majority and minority groups.83 But these experiences are far more impactful if they are accompanied by a common purpose. Interracial contact between servicemen and servicewomen is supported by their military orders and their ethic of never leaving the other behind. These types of enhanced interactions also occur in the arena of sports, where the goal of winning and the ethic of teamwork bring about mutual concern. Note, however, that episodic concern for the other, such as our empathy toward black residents of New Orleans after Katrina, is unproductive and unsustainable. In fact, this magnanimity was compromised by negative stories of the black residents that ensued: The white victim wading through the water with store goods was “fending for his family” while the black one was “looting.” More troubling was the actual narrowing of the circle of concern toward Muslims that followed 9/11. There, the despised other had greater competence (recall Fiske and Massey’s model of social cognition) than the blacks of New Orleans, so our reaction was more severe: attack and fight. We have yet to create a story to counter the current Islamophobic one. This illustrates that exposure and contact can only widen the circle of concern if the proper story and remedial structures support them. Another approach to circle widening involves humanizing the other. For example, generalizing about the segregation of the poor in a prosperous Midwestern city is somewhat incredulous and may illicit blame. But sitting next to a young woman of color who is trying to get out by joining your university becomes a transformative story. In this context, the media could play a larger role in the humanization process. The ability to imagine the civil rights activist and blacks in general as the sub-human other was greatly weakened by television pictures of civil rights workers, many of whom were children being attacked with dogs and water hoses. We can also attempt to widen the circle of concern by exemplifying higher-order love.

Dr. King had the ability to win over the oppositional other through friendship and love, not hatred.84 This was the love that the “good Samaritan” exhibited in the Christian narrative when he cared for the beaten Jew who despised him.85 His circle of concern expanded in the reverse direction. Certainly, the Christ of the Gospel stories demanded an all-inclusive belongingness: the tax collector, leper, prostitute, unclean and poor. The biblical tradition also embraces a personalism based on the belief that humankind is created in God’s image, which calls for humans to find dignity in every person.86 Dr. King noted that Gandhi was probably the first person to lift the love ethic of Jesus to a social force on a large scale. Closely related to this higher love is the concept of interbeing, or Tiep Hien, a concept developed by Thich Nhat Hanh, founder of the Buddhist order of the same name in Vietnam. Built on the notion of non-duality, the claim of interbeing is “I am; therefore you are. You are; therefore I am. We inter-are.”87 There is no such thing as an individual under this inclusive system.

PolicyMatters April 2012

Archbishop Desmond Tutu embraced a similar African concept, ubuntu, which emphasizes the relatedness of the human family: “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.”88 This circle-widening effort was largely behind South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which contributed to the dismantling of one of the most exclusionary policies in the world’s history: apartheid. These transformative approaches to expanding belongingness and widening the circle of concern certainly differ from traditional equalizing policies such as communities of opportunity and targeted universalism. But as the South African experience has shown, they are realizable and can transform the stories we tell about the racial other and the resulting structures we construct in the most dramatic and challenging ways. As such, widening the circle of concern is an antipoverty policy, which in turn can increase the viability of other policies, including communities of opportunity, targeted universalism and more traditional ones. The result would be a more robust and successful anti-poverty agenda.

CONCLUSION An anti-poverty agenda must begin with a new understanding of poverty as being primarily about belongingness. Racialization has been central to how our stories, structures and policies exclude. The racial other can be situated at different distances from the center of concern, depending on his or her group or sub-group, eliciting responses from the favorite varying from envy, pity and disgust. The situatedness of the marginalized other can also change over time, suggesting that unique strategies are needed to foster inclusion. To the extent that what is being asked of the favorite groups requires the sharing of scarce resources, the viability of anti-poverty policies will be compromised by this perceived status of the other. The very affiliation with a despised group can be seen as an untenable request. If some positive regard for out-groups exists, then the policies that focus on communities of opportunity and targeted universalism will be more likely to effect change. But where the targeted group is seen as extremely other, maybe even non-human, virtually no policy prescription will work. Therefore, the first priority of an anti-poverty agenda must be to bring the imagined other

back into the sphere of community and circle of human concern. This approach radically differs from many of the more traditional policy efforts. It focuses on deep values and the stories and images we trade. It requires looking at the work our structures and boundaries are doing as well as communicating with the unconscious. It calls upon us not just to develop good policies but to spiritualize our policies in public. We must understand that much of the work of racialization is about exclusion and meaning. Addressing racial exclusion just at the conscious level is not enough. We must also engage both the unconscious anxiety and bias as well as the work of structures. Unfortunately, much of the anxiety that our country is currently dealing with risks pushing more people and groups beyond the circleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boundary. Our efforts will succeed only if we fashion new inclusive stories while addressing issues of racialized language and structures. If successful, we will have already changed poverty and created space for the transformative policies that I have described, and for other more familiar ones. Creating belongingness will help eradicate poverty, and eradicating poverty will help create belongingness. This is what creates and sustains a true democratic community.

WORKING PAPER SERIES

Poverty, Policy and Place: How Poverty and Policies to Alleviate Poverty Are Shaped by Local Characteristics Rebecca M. Blank RPRC Working Paper 04-02 Revised version: April 2004

Rural Poverty Research Center http://www.rprconline.org/ RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center 214 Middlebush Hall University of Missouri Columbia MO 65211-6200 PH 573 882-0316

RUPRI Rural Poverty Research Center Oregon State University 213 Ballard Extension Hall Corvallis OR 97331-3601 PH 541 737-1442

I. Introduction The importance of the local environment – of “place” – regularly emerges in discussions about poverty and policy. For instance, an extended research conversation on urban underclass neighborhoods took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Wilson, 1987; Jencks and Peterson, 1991). Welfare reforms in the mid-1990s moved responsibility for the design of cash support and welfare-to-work programs back to the states, in part because states were thought to be better at judging the place-specific needs of their poor populations. A growing literature since the mid-1990s has analyzed the particular impact of welfare-to-work efforts in specific locations – in center cities (Allen and Kirby, 2000) or in rural locations (Weber, Duncan and Whitener, 2002). These literatures are often quite effective at analyzing the specific attributes of a given location and describing how these attributes interact with the causes of poverty and the effectiveness of anti-poverty policies. This paper attempts to generalize from this place-specific literature and to provide a broader theoretical structure by which to think about how local characteristics might affect the nature of poverty and the effectiveness of anti-poverty policies within the United States. In other words, this paper categorizes the key elements of place that interact with poverty and policy. Such a discussion is a bit more familiar in the development literature, where the resource, demographic, and institutional attributes of a region are often discussed as important determinants of the prospects for long-term economic development (Schultz, 1991; Venables and Kanbur, 2003). The contribution of this paper is to provide an overview of the impact of these factors in the context of U.S. (first world) anti-poverty efforts.

In the remainder of this paper I discuss the potential importance of five attributes of a particular region or locality: its natural environment, its economic structure, its public and community institutions, its existing social norms and cultural environment, and the demographic characteristics of its population. I am interested in how these attributes might affect the nature of poverty within a locality and their implications for anti-poverty policy. Throughout the discussion, I emphasize the importance of a dynamic perspective. In the short run, these different characteristics are fixed. In the long run, many of these attributes are changeable. Even more important, long-term changes in these attributes are endogenous. Changes in economic development, population characteristics, or behavioral expectations all tend to be interrelated and simultaneous. This makes formal modeling of the role of â&#x20AC;&#x153;placeâ&#x20AC;? extremely difficult, and also makes it hard to empirically measure the impact of changes in one of these variables independent of the others because of the simultaneous causality between them. This paper does not try to develop formal models, but serves as a descriptive discussion of the importance of each of these variables separately and of their potential interrelationships.

II. The Role of the Natural Environment A. Important aspects of a regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s geography and natural resources One of the most important aspects of any particular place is its unique location and the specific environmental attributes that distinguish it from other locations. Among the attributes that might be particularly important are isolation, climate, and natural resources.

Isolation is created by limited accessibility or ease of travel from a location to specific markets or nearby population centers. This may be approximated by measures of physical distance, but may include more complex metrics that take account of geographic barriers that block travel (rivers or mountains, for instance). Climate is also an element of the natural environment that can affect the economic trajectory of a location. Inhospitable climates â&#x20AC;&#x201C; too hot, too cold, too rainy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; make a place less attractive for settlement. Climate may determine the type of people and the type of businesses that are attracted to the area. Certain crops canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be grown in certain climates; some types of production are hindered by hot or cold weather. Natural resources are also important. Areas with ore reserves or rich soils may grow in population and economic wealth more quickly. Similarly, close proximity to water power, to natural beauty, or to harvestable resources (timber or fisheries) can also determine the path of economic development. By definition, cities have fewer problems related to natural environment. They are located where they are because (historically at least) these were accessible points near resources that people wanted. Hence, rural areas are rural because they lack at least some geographic advantages in comparison to more heavily settled regions. B. How does this matter for poverty? Geographic isolation creates distance from product markets. It can hinder economic development by limiting market exchange. More isolated populations are much more likely to be involved in subsistence agriculture, unable to benefit from the comparative advantage of trading for locally-hard-to-acquire commodities.

It is not only product markets that are hindered by geographic isolation, of course, but labor markets as well. Geographic isolation that keeps trade from coming in also keeps local inhabitants from leaving, particularly when geographic isolation is compounded by differences in language or custom. Fewer jobs and fewer job choices limit skills and lower wages. Greater geographic isolation is almost always associated with lower incomes and greater poverty. The climate and natural resources in an area often determine the type of industries and markets that do emerge. Communities are created because they are near particular natural resources, and the industries associated with the use of these resources arrive first. Communities with particular resources that could be used to support multiple economic enterprises (such as a natural port or available water power) are much more likely to developed mixed economies than are communities with single-use resources (such as rich prairie soil). The economic structure of a locality is closely linked with the nature of poverty in the locality, as I discuss below. To the extent that economic structure is dependent upon natural resources and particular geographic features, these two attributes interact.1 The importance of natural environment as a determinant of poverty within a community has declined over time. Modern transportation and communication methods have reduced geographic isolation as freeways, airports, and the internet make even remote areas more accessible. Similarly, the importance of climate has declined as new technologies evolve for climate control. For instance, the advent of air-conditioning has dramatically altered the relative attractiveness of the south and southwest for business

Rural Sociological Society (1993, Chapter 3) provides a longer discussion of how spatial location and economic development interact.

and residential location in the United States. In short, while the natural environment has historically been highly important in determining the relative impoverishment of some communities, its role will probably be less important in the years ahead. C. What does this mean for policy? The effectiveness of anti-poverty policies may be shaped by the different geographic advantages or disadvantages within an area. In geographically isolated communities, anti-poverty policy may be most importantly focused on reducing that isolation by building roads, subsidizing infrastructure, or other activities. Indeed, an effort to provide anti-poverty services before this infrastructure is available may fail. For instance, the implementation of effective welfare-to-work policies in both central city and rural areas of the United States required attention to home-to-job transportation issues. Work expense subsidies to transportation costs have been an important component of welfare-to-work efforts (Nightingale, 1997; Duncan, Whitener, and Weber, 2002, Chapter 16). When the primary economic base of a community relies on nearby natural resources, this can result in single-industry economies, or a predominance of particular types of industries and jobs. As discussed in the next section, the economic structure of a community can be important in determining which anti-poverty efforts are most useful or needed, and can also heavily influence the opportunities for mobility out of poverty by local residents. In short, the geographic attributes of an area set the environmental context that helps or hinders economic development. Places that are more isolated or that have fewer natural advantages are likely to have fewer economic opportunities, leading to smaller

and poorer populations. Policies designed to mitigate these environmental disadvantages and encourage greater economic growth may be more effective at reducing poverty in the long run than policies designed to address immediate income shortfalls.

III. The Role of Economic Structure A. Important aspects of economic structure The economic structure of a locality is reflected in its mix of industries and job opportunities. Economic structure determines entry level opportunities as well as opportunities for promotion, income growth, and career development. Skill demands and the opportunities for wage growth vary across industry and occupation. Economic structure and the skills of the local work force are jointly determined. Areas with few skilled workers will attract only less skilled jobs; younger workers who perceive only less skilled job opportunities will not pursue higher education. Observers are often concerned with the effect of economic structure on worker investments; in the long run, it may be just as important to pay attention to the effect of worker characteristics on industry location. The vulnerability of a local economy to business fluctuations is also linked to economic structure. Some industries, such as manufacturing, are historically more affected by the economic cycle, with greater variation in production and employment. Some industries have historically been more affected by technological change or economic restructuring due to changes in trade patterns. In general, areas that rely heavily upon only one industry for employment are much more vulnerable to major

economic disruption, should that industry experience market changes.2 Areas with a mix of industries and jobs are likely to be more â&#x20AC;&#x153;recession proofâ&#x20AC;? and less devastated by changes in any one market.3 As noted above, economic structure is closely related to natural environment. An areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s geographic isolation or its natural resource availability, will affect the types of industries that locate there and the size of the local economy. Simply because of their smaller size, rural areas or small towns typically have more limited job opportunities and are more likely to be heavily reliant upon one industry, such as agriculture, fishing, mining, or one major local employer.4 B. What Does this Mean for Poverty? The mix of job opportunities within a locality defines its wage and income opportunities. If the local economy is dominated by businesses that primarily utilize lower-skilled workers, the adult population will be less-skilled; those persons who wish to acquire more education and earn higher wages are likely to leave. Even controlling for skill mix, however, some industries have lower wages than others. Economists have long noted the presence of industry wage differentials, which appear to exist even after all differences in skill and management are controlled for (Allen, 1995; Borjas and Ramey, 2000). Within rural areas, for instance, rural wages appear to be lower both because a higher share of available jobs are low-skilled and low wage (reflecting the lower skill

Duncan (1999) provides a description of how economic restructuring in small towns with a limited economic base can perpetuate poverty. 3 One type of economic cyclicality is annual seasonality. Many areas that rely upon seasonal industries (tourism, fisheries, agriculture) experience seasonal fluctuations in job availability (Brady, et. al., 2002.) 4 Rural Sociological Society (1993, Chapter 4) summarizes research on why natural resource-dependent communities are often poor.

levels in the rural population) and because rural areas tend to attract industries with lower wage levels, even holding skill constant (Gibbs, 2002). The available jobs in an area (particularly the jobs held by parents and older siblings) create a set of expectations among children. As discussed below in the section on social norms and expectations, those who foresee only limited earning opportunities are less likely to invest in education. Young adults whose ambitions or abilities are greater are likely to move out of the area. Hence, if the local economy provides only limited job opportunities, this can reinforce lower skills both by limiting educational ambitions and by creating selectivity in who stays in town. Places with limited job opportunities are more likely to have older, less mobile, and lower-income residents. Local economic opportunities not only affect the probability that native residents will stay or leave a region, but they can also affect in-migration of non-natives. New migrants are heavily drawn from more mobile populations; for instance, they are likely to be younger. The U.S. has long been a target for international migrants from around the world. Particularly in the past few decades, immigration has been high into the U.S. These new immigrant populations are actively seeking job opportunities and areas with expanding economic opportunities are more likely to attract them. Once some critical number of persons from a particular ethnic national background have arrived, their very presence in an area will attract new migrants from that same background. Thus locations become magnets for migration among a particular ethnic or national group. As an area selectively attracts (or loses) persons with specific demographic characteristics, these population changes in turn affect future economic opportunities and the attractiveness of the area to new business location.

Because the economic structure of an area is closely linked to its overall wealth and income levels, this in turn affects the wealth available to the local public sector. Areas with more limited jobs and lower wages typically have a lower tax base as well. This can lead to poorer schools, poorer health care, or limited public services. As we discuss further in the next section on public and community institutions, more limited capacity within the public sector can also help perpetuate poverty and limit economic mobility. C. What Does This Mean for Anti-poverty Policies? Many anti-poverty programs are harder to operate effectively in areas with a limited set of industries and jobs. Programs focusing on job placement or job-finding are likely to be less successful in places where private sector job opportunities are limited. Programs that focus on raising educational attainment may be stymied if local teenagers see little opportunity for better local jobs if they invest in greater educational effort. This suggests that public sector investment in job-creating activities might have greater anti-poverty effects in some areas than in others. For instance the location of public facilities (such as prisons) in isolated rural areas with few other job options may have much greater anti-poverty effects than if such facilities are sited in urban areas already rich with a range of job opportunities. Transitional assistance to those who experience job loss due to economic restructuring may also be of more value in areas where other job opportunities are more limited. When there are fewer jobs available, it takes longer to find the next job. This is particularly true if large numbers of people are displaced from jobs when the primary

local industry experiences economic difficulties.5 It is exactly these locations that might benefit most from extended unemployment insurance payments, or targeted job loss assistance such as is provided by programs like Trade Adjustment Assistance. In rural areas with limited alternative employment options, support for unemployed and displaced workers may need to be differently designed as well as available for a longer period of time. While cash assistance programs can help subsidize incomes and may provide important anti-poverty aid to displaced workers and their families, it can also induce them to stay in their current location. In situations where economic restructuring has permanently lowered long-term employment opportunities in a region, one may want to structure assistance programs to encourage geographic mobility. In regions with limited economic opportunities the education system can play an important role in assisting economic mobility, providing information on job and career opportunities to children and adolescents beyond those they observe among the adults in their community. Access to low-cost schooling past high school (for instance, a nearby community college) may also be important. Of course, strategies to encourage educational investment in poor communities are likely to increase outmigration as well. Anti-poverty strategies that encourage geographic mobility among young or relatively more advantaged populations may raise their incomes. These strategies remain controversial, however, since they also can accelerate economic decline within the poor area itself as an older and less mobile population is left behind.6 Ideally, if the economic structure of a region provides a limited set of opportunities, one would prefer to expand 5

See Stevens (1997) for a discussion of the effects of job displacement on long-term earnings loss. For a discussion of place-based versus mobility strategies, see Hughes and Steinberg (1992) or Buss (2001).

the economic base within a region and develop a broader mix of job and wage options. This is hard to accomplish, however. In his review of the research on state and local economic development efforts, Bartik (1991) notes that “Empirical evidence…suggests that the benefits and costs of state and local economic development policies will often be close.” There is no cheap or easy way to alter an area’s economic structure in the short term through public policy. Over time, improving the skill base of local workers may be as effective in attracting a broader mix of jobs as any direct effort to manipulate industry location through tax incentives or subsidies.

IV.

The Role of Public and Community Institutions A. Important aspects of public and community institutions

Public and community institutions are those organizations that operate within the community in order to assure its effective functioning. These include the standard set of locally-operated and publicly funded institutions such as police and fire forces, the mayor’s office, the road commission, or the park commission. It also includes those public institutions in a community that may be at least partially funded and controlled from outside the community, such as the court system, the educational system, public assistance programs, or utility/communication systems. In addition, there are typically a host of not-for-profit community organizations that exist outside of both the public and the private sector but which can deeply impact a community, including churches, youth organizations (YMCA, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts), and fraternal or ethnic organizations (the American Legion, the local Italian-American club, the Lion’s club).

These public and community organizations often help a community function more effectively. They create and enforce a framework of rules about appropriate individual behavior, enforcing property rights and civil conduct codes as well as reinforcing social norms (discussed more in the next section). They “grease the wheels” within which economic institutions operate. I mention here a few of the key attributes of these organizations that can deeply affect a community and its economic opportunities. The presence of public sector institutions and community institutions is a sign of organization and order within a community. These institutions indicate a willingness among residents to work with each other on common goals. When public institutions function effectively, they can create a network of associations and connections that determine economic and social relationships among residents. When such trust breaks down – such as in situations of civil war -- these public institutions devolve into chaos and are unable to operate effectively. The openness and incorruptibility of public and community institutions is equally important. Public institutions can be highly developed and effective, yet also be highly authoritarian and controlled by a community elite (defined by wealth, by ethnic background, by race, etc). This can affect the goals of these institutions and determine whose interests they serve and how they serve them. Complete control by one particular group in the community, or corrupt operating procedures that allow bribery and sidepayments, can lead to their “capture” by special interests that have the power or the funding to subvert public activities to their own personal benefit. The extent to which local institutions are integrated with non-local institutions is also important. Integration with state or national organizations may be correlated with

geographic isolation or economic structure. The more unique the community â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the more distant from other communities or the more dominated by a particular industry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the less likely that the community has extensive voice or representation in non-local public institutions (such as the state legislature) whose rules and activities have authority within the community. Of course, even if local political institutions are not integrated into larger political structures, other local institutions may be highly integrated into larger organizations (such as a local branch of the union, or the local Catholic church). The integration of local institutions with non-local organizations can be useful when it links local institutions with outside agents and larger professional and political agendas that assist local effectiveness; under some circumstances, such linkages can be dysfunctional if the aims of the larger institutions are inconsistent with the needs of the local community. There are many factors that determine the effectiveness and impact of local governments or community organizations. Only a few are mentioned here. As discussed next, these institutions are important since they both influence the development of economic opportunities within a locality and they are responsible for the actual operation of any anti-poverty efforts. B. What Does This Mean for Poverty? Public and community organizations can have a range of effects on economic opportunities within a community. An effective public sector with well-operating local government can help attract businesses and stimulate economic development. Public and community institutions can also help create the community amenities (good schools, nice parks, family and community activities) that attract in-migration.

Furthermore, effective public and community institutions often help raise concern about problems of poverty within a community. Schoolteachers see the problems of poverty among their children; mayors court votes among low-income voters by promising improved services; churches educate their members about the needy in their city. The more that local poverty is seen as a problem, the more likely that it will be addressed through explicit policies. The role of these institutions can be negative as well as positive, however. Public and community institutions, particularly when they are less open, may reinforce class patterns and social norms. Local communities have found many creative ways (both legal and illegal) to limit political participation, economic opportunities, and community voice among disfavored groups. Community organizations often play a role in the lives of poor families, providing an alternative message to that which they receive elsewhere. Churches or youth programs may instill a sense of possibility or ambition among lower-income youth; these programs can provide mentoring and role models to young people. Some of these institutions offer opportunities for greater mixing among income and occupational groups than occurs within the workplace, providing job networks and role models. C. What Does This Mean for Anti-poverty Policies? The absence of good public services within a poor community -- poor schools, inadequate health care, bad roads, limited policing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; increases the depth and misery associated with poverty and makes it highly likely that poverty will continue. Without a public infrastructure that enforces minimum requirements for housing, health, and education, individuals and families in poverty live more desperate and dangerous lives.

These services improve the lives of all residents, but may matter more for the poor than for those who can purchase at least some of these services on the private market. The design and implementation of effective anti-poverty policies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whether job programs or cash assistance programs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; requires an effectively functioning public sector. Legislation that mandates subsidies or services to the poor is only as effective as the local governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability and willingness to implement it. In isolated rural regions where government has little presence, people may remain unaware of available services or unable to access them. In areas where government serves the interests of only a limited group of people, parts of the population may be excluded from assistance. For instance, local welfare offices in the southern states typically made it extremely difficult for African American women to receive welfare payments in the 1950s and 1960s (Lieberman, 1998), one reason why the 1967 welfare reforms gave the Federal government more authority to define and enforce eligibility rules. Well-functioning community institutions often interact closely with public institutions. They frequently impact public policy in at least two ways. First, they can raise concern about poverty and create citizen pressure to improve public services for the poor. Churches or civic improvement organizations have often played this role. Second, community institutions can provide a supplemental set of anti-poverty programs. Churches run soup kitchens or food pantries; local youth programs provide tutoring and mentoring programs; and community fraternal organizations organize donation drives to provide toys or food for needy families at the holidays. At times, these organizations run anti-poverty programs that are closely linked with the public sector. Many homeless programs, health programs, foster care programs, or other major outreach efforts by not-

for-profit organizations are run as public-private partnerships, with substantial public funding and regulation (Blank, 1997, Chapter 5). Governmental institutions often play a unique mediating role with both private sector and community organizations. They work with local businesses, helping create the regulatory and tax environment in which private sector institutions function. The public sector also helps prepare workers for jobs through the educational system. At the same time, public institutions assist populations who lack job opportunities in the private sector, operating public assistance and safety net programs for low-income families, offering job search assistance, or enforcing community health and housing standards. In this role the public sector often works closely with informal and community organizations.

The Role of Social Norms or Expectations A. What are social norms? I use the term “social norms” to discuss learned behavioral preferences. Think of

a social norm as a behavioral pattern (that is, a commonly observed behavior) whose development is based on past common experiences, such as learned economic incentives or common history within an ethnic/race/gender group, and which is enforced by informal social sanctions. Economists have historically been reluctant to use this term, preferring to assume preferences are fixed among adults, with no real model of exactly how such preferences are acquired or shaped. 7 Yet, outside economics the concept of social norms occurs frequently. Within economics, more recent attention to the overlap 7

The use of “expectations” within economics is a way to imbed learning over time into economic models of behavior, although expectations in economic models usually refer to short-term constrained knowledge about a particular fact rather than long-term imbedded preferences.

between psychology and economics has increased interest in applying the concept of “social norms” within an economic model.8 Even within older economic literatures, however, the role of social norms is recognized, although typically in a way that takes such norms as fixed constraints. For instance, the economics literature discusses the role of “stigmatized behavior.” Stigmatized behavior is costly because of the disapproval it engenders among one’s friends or family, even though there might be economic incentives to engage in this behavior. Cash welfare usage is often discussed as stigmatized (Moffitt, 1983). Discriminatory behavior may be an example of a disfavored group being stigmatized when workers or employers view it as “costly” to hire or work with someone from that group, regardless of his/her actual economic productivity on the job (Becker, 1971). In another example, empirical efforts to explain long-term changes in marriage and fertility behavior have focused on the effect of changes in the economic incentives for marriage; unfortunately, these empirical efforts tend to explain only a small fraction of the longterm marriage trends. A common explanation is that divorce, cohabitation, and single parenting have become much less stigmatized among certain populations over time (Mare and Winship, 1991). Key decisions, such as schooling choices and job choices, may be heavily affected by social norms. Girls who grow up in communities where early marriage is viewed as an attractive and expected option are much more likely to marry and have children at a young age, making them less likely to invest in schooling. Boys who live in communities

This is particularly true in studies of developing economies. For instance, see Fehr and Fischbacher (2004), or Henrich, et. al. (2004). For examples of the attention given to social norms outside economics, see Bendor and Swistak (2001) in sociology or Sober and Wilson (1997) in psychology.

with extensive gang activity are more likely to view crime and underground economic activities as socially approved options within their peer group. More isolated and rural communities may have stronger social norms. This may be because they are better able to maintain a stable class structure; those who are dissatisfied must move far away to get out. As a result, there may be strong expectations about who fits in which “place” in the community. This can influence adult behavior and expectations of children, and provides an example of how the natural environment, the economic structure and the social environment can all interact. B. What Does this Mean for Poverty? Having a sense of social “place” can provide self-identity, but it can also limit opportunities. Ethnographic research provides ample evidence of situations where children from a particular group (black children, female children, children of Appalachian miners) are taught by their parents as well as their schoolteachers that only certain life choices and job options are open to them. Greater poverty by race or ethnicity or gender is at least partially due to the self-fulfilling social norms of racism or sexism that lower children’s expectations so that they don’t protest their more limited educational or job opportunities.9 Past history matters a great deal in the development of social norms. Parents’ learned experiences may be transmitted to children (even when they are no longer accurate in a changing world). This is a reason for high correlations between parent and child outcomes, and can help explain low economic mobility among the children of poor

For instance, Duncan (1999) provides a detailed snapshot of three poor rural communities and emphasizes the role of strong class structures and different learned social norms for different groups of children and young adults. Sullivan (1989) discusses the roles of learned norms in an ethnographic look at three populations of high school males in an urban community in New York City.

families, particularly in more geographically or socially isolated communities. For instance, daughters of unwed mothers appears to be more likely to themselves become unwed mothers, even after controlling as fully as possible for all other variables (Gottschalk, 1992). The structure of the economy and of community organizations will reflect social norms; norms are shaped by economic and community structure and institutions are also shaped by social norms. Structures of class or racial segregation will be reflected not only in the social realm, but in the economic and public realm as well. In a community where heavy alcohol use is considered “normal”, cheap beer will be more readily available at local bars and liquor stores will dominate the streetcorner. Joining the group at the local bar will be a primary form of social interaction. In this situation, abstaining from alcohol means much more than just not drinking; it also means cutting oneself off from regular patterns of social interaction among friends or family. Policies designed to address behavioral issues (unwed parenting, substance abuse, engagement with crime) within low income populations must grapple with the fact that these behaviors may reflect social pressures that are not easily eliminated. C. What Does this Mean for Anti-Poverty Policy? The importance of social norms suggests that economic incentives are likely to be far more effective when they reinforce existing social norms (providing people with an even stronger reason to do something they already think is a good idea) than if they fight against social norms. For instance, many low-income persons – including single mothers – state that they consider marriage an attractive choice (Karney, Garvan and Thomas, 2003; Oklahoma State University, 2002). This finding has increased support for policies

designed to encourage marriage and discourage divorce, by suggesting that such policies are working in the same direction as social norms and preferences, and may be more likely to achieve positive effects. Programs that try to encourage behavior that goes against prevailing social norms may have small effects. When trying to break down socially undesirable social norms (gang behavior, teenage unwed pregnancy), some argue that policy should move beyond creating incentives and instead try to enforce new behavioral norms. Work mandates can be viewed as an effort to break through behavioral norms among single mothers who needed more than a gentle nudge to enter the labor market (Mead, 1986). Similarly, time-limited welfare, while clearly providing an economic incentive to leave welfare quickly, can also be viewed as an effort to “restigmatize” welfare use by sending the message that long-term welfare use is deviant and unapproved. Because social norms are based upon a history of shared experiences, when certain demographic groups are more prevalent among the poor in an area (i.e., single mothers, elderly, specific immigrant groups), then some policies may be more effective than others. This is because different groups might have different expectations about themselves and their relationship to work or to public assistance. For instance, Moffitt (1983) finds that welfare programs are more stigmatizing and “costly” to participate in for some demographic groups. Such differences in behavioral responses reinforce the need for local anti-poverty agencies to know the local population and to target their efforts effectively. If peer effects and role models matter because they help shape social norms, then socially isolated high-poverty neighborhoods are doubly dangerous. Not only should we

be concerned about those who are poor in these locations today, but we should be concerned that these areas may perpetuate poverty tomorrow through their effects on the behavior and attitudes of today’s children (Wilson, 1987). If one believes that social structures are more rigid and class divisions greater in more isolated rural communities, this suggests that poverty will be more intransigent and less responsive to policy efforts in those communities. Unvoiced assumptions about appropriate roles and expectations – on the part of the non-poor as well as the poor – may sabotage efforts at job training, job placement, or educational improvement. These concerns have led to an ongoing discussion about the value of policies designed to move people out of high-poverty socially isolated neighborhoods. Evidence from the Gatreaux program in Chicago indicates that children from high poverty areas did better when placed in mixed-income neighborhoods and higher-achieving schools (Rosenbaum, 1995). To test these results more rigorously, HUD recently launched a series of random assignment social experiments known as Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing Demonstration, designed to test the effect of relocation out of urban poor neighborhoods. Evidence from the MTO studies are still being analyzed; the interim results indicate that moving into lower poverty neighborhoods was associated with improved housing and safety, improved adult and child health, but had mixed effects on youth delinquency. There appear to be insignificant effects on adult earnings or teen educational achievement (Orr, et. al., 2003). Policies themselves provide an historical context of learned experiences and can affect social norms over time. This is the claim of Murray (1984) and others who argue that welfare policies have caused “dependence” – reduced the stigma (and the economic

cost) of unwed motherhood and created a presumption that welfare receipt is a long-term viable source of income rather than a short-term source of emergency assistance. This argument suggests there is a trade-off between a more generous social safety net and the higher social and governmental costs of long-term welfare dependence. Such claims have provoked a vigorous debate about the extent to which cash assistance results in perverse incentive effects that reduce labor force participation or increase fertility. Measuring these incentive effects is difficult to do in a completely persuasive way; different approaches result in larger or smaller effects, which means that both sides have been able to find evidence to support their viewpoint.10 If social norms and future expectations are important, this can significantly complicate the work of a policymaker. Social norms may increase the variability in response among different populations to the same program. Social norms may persuade some people that policies should be more mandatory than voluntary. And concern with changing social norms and learned â&#x20AC;&#x153;dependenceâ&#x20AC;? are a key reason why some argue against an extensive public assistance system for low-income adults who are able to work.

VI.

The Role of the Demographic Characteristics of the Population A. Are demographic characteristics unique factors? The demographic characteristics of a local population are almost entirely

dependent upon past history and hence highly responsive to the factors identified above. If local industry attracts certain migrant groups, these groups will become prevalent in the population. As noted above, locations with only lower-skilled jobs are likely to have 10

Moffitt (1992) reviews the social science evidence on these issues.

large concentrations of less-skilled and older workers, as younger workers are drawn out of the community to other opportunities. Over time, the accrued population in an area reflects its past economic and social history. Yet, the characteristics of one’s neighbors can have reinforcing effects on behavior, through role model and peer group effects. In many cases, demographic characteristics are closely linked to the issue of social norms. We care about demographic characteristics because they often signal differences in behavioral traits or in economic or social expectations. Knowing that a community has a large Hispanic population is important not because Hispanics are inherently different from all other peoples, but because specific Hispanic groups tend to have common cultural histories that make it more likely that a Hispanic community will exhibit certain patterns of language, family formation, and job connections. B. What Does this Mean for Poverty? A high share of research articles about poverty in specific locations focus on the question, “Who are the poor in this location?” For instance, there are detailed descriptions of the rural poor available (e.g., Duncan, 1992). While these are useful and interesting as descriptive pieces of work, if one believes that over time demographic characteristics in an area respond to the environment, economic opportunities, and social norms, then such research contributes little to the causal question, “Why are these people poor?” Hence, a conclusion such as “high concentrations of poverty in rural America are due to the large number of elderly who have remained in small agricultural communities” is less useful than research that seeks to understand the processes that led younger folks to flee these areas.

Because poor areas tend to be populated by those with fewer choices, demographic descriptions of these areas provide insight into which populations are least mobile or face the fewest choices in U.S. society. In rural areas, this is often older persons, who have limited access to or skills for non-farm living. In American cities, the housing segregation faced by African Americans gave them little choice about where they lived. And since limited resources can restrict the opportunity for mobility, knowing something about the demographics of long-term poor areas can tell us something about who was poor in the last generation as well. B. What Does This Mean for Anti-Poverty Policy? Even if demographic characteristics provide little causal information about why a region is poor, such information might be highly important in determining effective antipoverty policies. A characteristic such as age both relates to innate physical needs and to lifecourse needs, and tells the observer something about the services and the nature of anti-poverty programs that might be offered. Places with large poor elderly populations are likely to be in need of more health services than other locations, while job training programs are less likely to be useful. Poor places with a high birthrate are more likely to benefit from good schools and good health care programs aimed at children and pregnant mothers. It is not important to understand why a migrant population with high birthrates is living in an area, in order to determine the type of immediate services most useful to them. In short, even if demographic characteristics provide little causal information, per se, about why people are poor, they are easily measured and observed. Because demographic characteristics are correlated with specific behavioral issues, they may

provide very useful signals about what types of policy are more likely to be useful and how they should be targeted.

V. Concluding Comments This paper has provided a condensed overview of some of the key reasons why the nature and character of poverty varies across different types of locations. Rural poverty is different because rural areas are more isolated, rural economies are different, the public and community organizations in rural communities operate differently, social norms in rural areas are different, and because rural populations are different. While the natural environment is preset, all other factors in this list are endogenously determined. This typically makes it impossible to identify any â&#x20AC;&#x153;prime causeâ&#x20AC;? behind poverty in an areaâ&#x20AC;Śor any single silver bullet that will significantly lower poverty. Just as effective causal stories focus on the simultaneous role of multiple and interactive causal factors, so effective policy solutions require attention to multiple strategies. Economic development strategies aimed at bringing in a greater mix of employers should occur side-by-side with educational investment strategies. Cash or inkind assistance to low-income families should occur along with efforts to increase jobseeking and discourage long-term welfare use. Anti-corruption efforts in the public sector, road-building projects, and mentoring projects run by local community organizations can all be part of an effective anti-poverty strategy in any particular region or community. These multiple issues underscore the ongoing tension between local and more centralized anti-poverty efforts. Locally-designed efforts can take into account the

specific history, geography, and demographics that produced local poverty. But the very presence of higher poverty rates almost inevitably means that there are fewer local resources available for anti-poverty efforts. More centrally funded programs can provide anti-poverty opportunities that the local community itself could not fund, but centralized funders rightfully demand to monitor and control the use of their funds. The primary policy problem is to maintain the appropriate balance between local/central authority so that local authorities have an ability to utilize their own unique knowledge of the community and its needs in shaping programs, while central authorities have the ability to impose broad restrictions regarding effective evaluation and monitoring of program effectiveness. Because local authorities will be more competent and/or more inclusive in some communities than in others, the appropriate local/central balance is probably different in different places. The difficulties of running place-specific policies from a central public authority make this almost impossible to accomplish. This is one argument for a mixture of federally-funded program options, among which local communities can pick and choose. Hence, in the U.S., communities can choose how much they participate in subsidized housing programs, or which options they select for designing their welfare-towork programs. Those who believe local authorities are typically less competent or unrepresentative of their entire community (captured by special interests or elite racial or demographic groups) are likely to favor greater central control. There has been a recent retreat from the trend toward greater federal involvement in anti-poverty programs that began in the 1930s. In the 1990s, welfare reform legislation â&#x20AC;&#x153;devolvedâ&#x20AC;? greater control over welfare to state governments, and a number of

states have in turn passed along greater control to local authorities as well. While the long-term impact of these changes are just beginning to be understood (Blank, 2002), there continues to be a lively conversation over which services and programs should be centrally funded and operated and which ones should have variable rules in different locations. One effect of these program changes has been renewed interest in studying poverty and policy in specific locations rather than in the nation as a whole, leading to new research that focuses on poverty within a state or within similar areas (such as rural poverty or central city poverty). Ideally, one would like to move from a general discussion (as this paper provides) of how place and poverty might interact, to a body of knowledge that indicates which place-specific issues are highly important and should be taken into account in locallydesigned anti-poverty strategies and which place-specific issues are less important. Only good research can tell us about the differential effectiveness of centralized anti-poverty strategies, such as national wage subsidies or health insurance programs, in comparison to more locally designed and controlled (and more locally funded) anti-poverty efforts. For many years, economics research on poverty has largely focused on evaluating the aggregate national effects of more centralized programs, with little attention to regional variability in effectiveness. The recent policy changes, giving more authority to local and state governments in the design of programs, should be an impetus for more research that focuses on the effectiveness of locally-oriented programs or the differential effectiveness of centralized programs within different localities. The history and structure of a place is closely entwined with the needs of its residents. More attention to the role of place on poverty and anti-poverty policies is long overdue.

References Allen, Katherine and Maria Kirby. 2000. “Unfinished business: Why Cities Matter to Welfare Reform.” Survey Series, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, The Brookings Institution. Washington, D.C. Allen, Steven G. 1995. “Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Vol 48(2):305-321. January. Bartik, Timothy J. 1991. Who Benefits from State and Local Economic Development Policies? Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Becker, Gary S. 1971. The Economics of Discrimination (Second edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bendor, Jonathan, and Piotr Swistak. 2001. “The Evolution of Norms.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol 106(6): 1493-1545. May. Blank, Rebecca M. 1997. It Takes A Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Blank, Rebecca M. 2002. “Evaluating Welfare Reform in the U.S.” Journal of Economic Literature. Vol 40(4):1105-66. Borjas, George J. and Valerie A. Ramey. 2000. “Market Responses to Interindustry Wage Differentials.” NBER Working Paper No. 7799. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. July. Brady, Henry E, Mary Sprague, Fredric C. Gey and Michael Wiseman. 2002. “Seasonal Employment Dynamics and Welfare Use in Agricultural and Rural California Counties.” In Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform, Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan and Leslie A. Whitener, eds. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Buss, Terry. 2001. “Economic Development in Rural America.” In The Hidden America: Social Problems in Rural American for the Twenty-First Century, Robert M. Moore III, ed. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press. Duncan, Cynthia M. 1992. Rural Poverty in America. New York: Auburn House. Duncan, Cynthia M. 1999. Worlds Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Duncan, Greg J., Leslie A. Whitener, and Bruce A. Weber. 2002. “Lessons Learned: Welfare Reform and Food Assistance in Rural America.” In Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform, Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan and Leslie A. Whitener, eds. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Fehr, Ernst, and Urs Fischbacher. 2004. “Third Party Punishment and Social Norms.” Working Paper #106, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics. Zurich: University of Zurich. Gibbs, Robert M. 2002. “Rural Labor Markets in an Era of Welfare Reform.” In Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform, Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan and Leslie A. Whitener, eds. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Gottschalk, Peter. 1992. “The Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Participation: Facts and Possible Causes.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Vol 11(2): 254-72. Spring. Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Feht, and Herbert Gintis. 2004. Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hughes, Mark Alan and Julie E. Sternberg. 1992. The New Metropolitan Reality: Where the rubber meets the road in antipoverty policy. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Jencks, Christopher and Paul E. Peterson. 1991. The Urban Underclass. Washington, D.C.: Brookings. Karney, Benjamin, Cynthia Wilson Garvan, and Michael S. Thomas. 2003. “Family Formation in Florida: 2003 Baseline Survey of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Demographics Relating to Marriage and Family Formation.” Gainsville, FL: University of Florida. Lieberman, Robert C. 1998. Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mare, Robert D. and Christopher Winship. 1991. “Socioeconomic Change and the Decline of Marriage for Blacks and Whites.” In The Urban Underclass, Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, eds. Washington, D.C.: Brookings. Mead, Lawrence M. 1986. Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship. New York: Free Press. Moffitt, Robert. 1983. “An Economic Model of Welfare Stigma.” American Economic Review. Vol 73(5): 1023-1055. December. Moffitt, Robert. 1992. “Incentive Effects of the U.S. Welfare System: A Review.” Journal of Economic Literature. Vol 30(1):1-61. March.

Murray, Charles. 1984. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980. New York: Basic Books. Nightingale, Demetra Smith. 1997. “Transportation Issues in Welfare Reform: Background Information.” Research Report, Assessing the New Federalism Project. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute. December. Oklahoma State University, Bureau of Social Research. 2002. “Marriage in Oklahoma: A Statewide Baseline Survey on Marriage and Divorce.” Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma State University. Orr, Larry, Judith D. Feins, Robin Jacob, Erik Beecroft, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Lawrence F. Katz, Jeffrey B. Liebman, and Jeffrey R. Kling. 2003. Moving to Opportunity Interim Impacts Evaluation. Report prepared for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. Washington, D.C.: HUD. Rosenbaum, James E. 1995. “Changing the Geography of Opporunity by Expanding Residential Choice: Lessons from the Gautreaux Program.” Housing Policy Debate. Vol 6(1): 231-69. Rural Sociological Society, Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty. 1993. Persistent Poverty in Rural America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Schultz, Theodore W. 1993. The Economics of Being Poor. Oxford: Blackwell. Sober, Elliot, and David S. Wilson. 1997. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stevens, Ann Huff. 1997. “Persistent Effects of Job Displacement: The Importance of Multiple Job Losses.” Journal of Labor Economics. Vol 15(1, part1):165-88. January. Sullivan, Mercer L. 1989. “Getting Paid”: Youth, Crime and Work in the Inner City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Venables, Anthony J. and Ravi Kanbur. 2003 “Spatial Inequality and Development.” Working Paper 2003-38, Department of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University. November. Weber, Bruce A., Greg J. Duncan, and Leslie A. Whitener. 2002. Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Teens aged 13-18

Web links to primary reading: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth, Levine http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/mentor_disadvantag ed_youth_levine_1.pdf Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-‐‑Income Youth, Schwartz and Leos-‐‑Urbel http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/summer_employme nt_disadvantaged_youth_schwartz_leos_urbel.pdf Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education, Terry Long http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/higher_education_re mediation_long.pdf Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-‐‑Income Women, Sawhill and Venator http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/reduce_unintended_ pregnancy_low_income_sawhill_venator.pdf Oregon’s High School Dropouts: Examining the economic and social costs, Cascade Policy Institute http://www.edchoice.org/CMSModules/EdChoice/FileLibrary/494/Oregon-‐‑s-‐‑ High-‐‑School-‐‑Dropouts-‐‑-‐‑-‐‑Examining-‐‑the-‐‑economic-‐‑and-‐‑social-‐‑costs.pdf Web links to additional reading: Improving Employment Outcomes for Disadvantaged Students, Holzer http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/improve_employme nt_disadvantaged_students_holzer.pdf

DANIEL VEGA

Age 19 Caucasian Student at PSU From Cave Junction

Daniel Vega

When was in the sixth grade he and his father drove a converted school bus from Colorado to Cave Junction, Oregon. They lived in the bus for the next 3 ½ years. “We waited each month for a check to come from my mom. We got food stamps, but by the end of the month food would run a bit low. After a dispute, our neighbors put a gate across the easement to our land. We couldn’t get through to the bus so we had to move.” Daniel’s parents were never married. For many years his father suffered from undiagnosed mental illness and was not able to keep a job. His mother worked various jobs and sent money to Daniel and his father when she could, never more than $300/month. From the time he entered middle school in Cave Junction, teachers took notice of Daniel. He was bright, focused and seemed to relish learning. In seventh grade the band teacher handed him a saxophone and he literally took off with it. “Signing up for band changed my life. I’ve played the saxophone since seventh grade. Playing in the band gave me a reason to want to go to school. Music has kept me going.” Daniel and his father moved from one place to another, “couch surfing,” staying with friends. “I felt very anxious all the time, almost neurotic because I didn’t know where we would be next.” Daniel’s father tried to get on welfare but when they began to delve into his mother’s finances, he terminated the application process. People in the community continued to help. The high school librarian invited them to stay with her until they found a duplex to share with four others, living on the money his mother could afford to send. “The landlord let us stay there so I could finish high school.” Daniel dove headlong into school. He took honors and advanced placement classes and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. He was also very active in school government and school affairs. When the high school music program was being threatened with cutbacks, he led demonstrations and testified before the school board.

“I told them how music kept kids like me in school. A lot of kids in that community come from troubled homes. Band was why they came to school every day.” Everyone who knew him recognized Daniel’s potential. When he was a junior he was recommended for College Dreams; a college prep program for underserved youth in Josephine County. College Dreams looks for those with high academic potential. Daniel was a perfect match.

“They helped me see that college was possible. They urged me to pursue my dream of studying music.” College Dreams also connected Daniel to the Dream Savers program to help him set up a college savings account. Daniel has an Individual Development Account (IDA) under the Oregon IDA Initiative. “Every dollar I save is matched by the IDA (Initiative partners). I borrow against my own savings to pay for college. I’m trying to stay out of debt.” Daniel is in his second year of the Bachelors of Music program at Portland State University. His major is music theory and composition. He has a 4.0 GPA and hopes to pursue his PHD. Daniel plays saxophone in an ensemble; piano, viola, banjo and guitar. “I’ll play any instrument I can get my hands on.” This year Daniel is the RA in his dormitory so all his living expenses are covered. He’s on the peer conduct board and enjoys finding “creative solutions” to conflicts. “I think it’s wrong that people like my parents fall into a survival state. I’m in music because I love the messages it sends to people. It lets me express myself and at the same time reach people so they know they’re not alone.”

TEENS IN POVERTY

IN OREGON, THERE ARE ABOUT 36,100 TEENS AGES 13-18 LIVING IN HOUSEHOLDS IN POVERTY. HOUSEHOLD TYPE

RACE / ETHNICITY

58% TWO PARENTS 38% FEMALE SINGLE PARENT 4% MALE SINGLE PARENT LIVING 1% TEENAGERS INDEPENDENTLY

DISABILITY STATUS OF ADULTS ABLE BODIED COGNITIVE DISABILITY

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES

71%

15%

OTHER DISABILITY

3% ASIAN 3% AMERICAN INDIAN / ALASKA NATIVE 4% TWO OR MORE RACES 5% HISPANIC 26% WHITE 60% BLACK

ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED

60%

ECONOMICALLY 78% NOT DISADVANTAGED

14%

LIVING IN OREGON

26% RURAL

74% URBAN

WHERE THEY ARE FROM

23% IMMIGRANT

77% NONIMMIGRANT

SOURCE: ECONORTHWEST ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY, 2012, PUMS DATA; OREGON DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (4-YEAR COHORT GRADUATION RATE, 2012-13; STUDENTS ARE CONSIDERED ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED IF THEY ARE ELIGIBLE FOR FREE OR REDUCED PRICE LUNCH)

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 4: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth Phillip B. Levine Wellesley College

Introduction The need for mentoring programs is indisputable. Over 30 percent of children live in households headed by a single parent (or no parent), a rate that has doubled over the past forty-five years (see figure 4-1). Six in ten African American children live in households of this type, which actually reflects a slight decline in recent years; this rate has been as high as two-thirds. Estimates indicate that upwards of 9 million children have no caring adults in their lives (Bruce and Bridgeland 2014; Cavell et al. 2009). This policy memo reviews the evidence of success from past and current mentoring programs and proposes ways to move forward that could truly make a difference in the lives of young people by providing them with opportunities that could propel them forward in life.1 Although there are 5,000 mentoring programs in this country providing services to 3 million young people (Dubois et al. 2011)—with Big Brothers Big Sisters alone serving almost 200,000 children (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America 2012)—many youth remain unserved. Before we propose expanding mentoring programs to more youth, it is critical that we identify existing programs and the components of those programs that work best. This paper will do that, and then, based on the best available evidence, will argue that community-based mentoring programs in the vein of the traditional Big Brothers Big Sisters model are most effective. I contend that community-based programs should receive additional support of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—including nonprofits, foundations, and charitable organizations—as well as private-sector entities. Moreover,

I propose that these programs be implemented in accordance with a set of best practices and be rigorously evaluated in order to determine the key components for program success with the goal of designing the best possible interventions for improving the life outcomes of disadvantaged youth.

The Challenge A wide variety of programs aim to pair disadvantaged youth with role models in one-on-one relationships in hopes of providing these youth with advice and guidance that they may not otherwise have. As noted at the outset, there is an immense need for mentors in this country given the number of children who lack proper adult guidance (about 9 million), but determining how to establish an effective mentoring program is not entirely straightforward. A major obstacle to moving forward is sorting through the breadth of research on past and existing programs. This proposal does so and addresses this central question: What can we learn about existing mentoring programs to help design or modify them so that they alleviate poverty among young people? First, the specific focus of individual programs is important to consider in evaluating past research. Mentoring programs come in many forms, some of which may satisfy a variety of different goals but do not address poverty reduction specifically. For instance, some programs assign mentors to victims of child abuse, where the goal of the program is to limit the emotional damage done to the child. This may indirectly enable the child to be more successful in the labor The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 4: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth

FIGURE 4-1.

Percent of Children Living in Households Headed by a Single Parent or No Parent, 1968–2013 80 70

Percent of children

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1968

1972

1976

1980

1984

All children

1988

1992

1996

2000

2004

2008

2012

African American children

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau 2013; author’s calculations.

market, but that is not its specific focus. Other examples of programs in this category include those that are directed at teen-pregnancy prevention, improvement of health status, or reduction of recidivism among criminals. They may be successful in their own dimensions and should be supported accordingly, but my focus here is primarily on direct attempts to improve economic well-being as at least one of the main goals of the program.

Robert Lerman’s proposal in this series discusses these types of programs in greater detail.

Second, my focus on alleviating poverty is a major filter in evaluating past evidence. The most direct way to improve labor market success for a participant is to improve her educational outcomes. Several mentoring programs have that as an explicit goal, perhaps among many goals; these are the programs I consider. For instance, we have direct evidence that children who get better grades, score higher on standardized tests, and are more likely to complete high school also do better in the labor market. This policy memo concentrates on those measures that can be directly translated into subsequent labor market success.

One final restriction that I impose in examining previous research is to focus on those evaluations that are conducted within an experimental context. It is common in the literature to find examples of program evaluations that rely on what are often labeled quasi-experiments. Typically, in these examples, treatment and control groups are identified. The treatment group represents those members who voluntarily participated in the program, however, and the control group is created as a set of other individuals who have similar demographic characteristics (e.g., age, race, family income). Selection bias is an obvious concern in these evaluations: those who are more motivated to succeed volunteer to participate, and this differential level of motivation is not necessarily matched in the control group. These studies have an obvious bias in the direction of finding a positive effect of the program—a conclusion that may or may not be warranted. For this reason, I exclude these studies from my review.

Third, I do not consider training and career development programs that include mentoring as just a minor aspect, such as Career Academies and Job Corps. The key component of programs like these is vocational training. Mentoring services are included, but they are far from the focus of the programs.

The extensive resources provided by Child Trends, which catalogs a large array of interventions with a multitude of program goals, are beneficial to this review (Child Trends 2014). All of these interventions have been evaluated using true experimental designs. In the Child Trends database,

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Phillip B. Levine

twenty-four interventions include some form of mentoring component, but most do not satisfy the four conditions identified earlier.2 Various types of programs include a substantive mentoring component with a key focus on improving educational outcomes and subsequent labor market success. They can be categorized in a number of dimensions, distinguishing between those that are publicly or privately funded, those that are school-based versus community-based, those that offer a comprehensive set of services that include mentoring, and those that largely or exclusively focus on mentoring alone. The distinction between publicly and privately funded programs is obvious. School-based programs are those in which the mentor typically meets with the mentee after school; an important element of the meeting is frequently helping with school work. Because of the central nature of the school environment, these programs tend to meet less over the course of a typical week and for fewer weeks per year dependent on the school calendar and, particularly, with gaps during school vacations and over the summer. Community-based programs include longer meetings (perhaps on weekends) throughout the year and do not focus explicitly on academic support. Programs that offer more-comprehensive services along with mentoring can include aspects like financial incentives, community service requirements, supplemental education, and the like. Given that mentoring is a sufficiently important component of these programs, I include these programs in this review. In sum, my criteria narrow the focus to programs (1) that are primarily targeted at improving economic outcomes, (2) that include mentoring as a substantial component of the intervention, (3) that measure educational outcomes, and (4) that have been evaluated using an experimental design. Evaluations are available for five past interventions that satisfy these criteria. The features of these five programs are summarized below and in table 4-1. Two of these evaluations were conducted by Big Brothers Big Sisters, which is the largest and best-known mentoring agency in the country. It is a nonprofit organization that has been matching volunteer mentors to disadvantaged youth for over a century. More recently, it has conducted two evaluations of the programs that it runs. The first evaluation focused on its community-based mentoring programs, which follow its original model (Tierney, Grossman, and Resch 1995). In this evaluation, treatment group members were matched to mentors who were members of the community, and the pair met a few times a month for an average of four hours per meeting over the course of at least one year. The youth were

between ten and fourteen years old, largely economically disadvantaged, and almost exclusively living in single-parent households. The results indicate that the youth who received the mentoring treatment skipped school less often and felt more confident in their ability to complete schoolwork. Their grades also went up by 0.08 GPA points (on a 4-point scale).3 The second evaluation run by Big Brothers Big Sisters addressed a school-based model of mentoring. In this program, treatment-group youth, who were in Grades 4–9, were matched with volunteer mentors, and the pair met over the course of one school year, typically for one hour per week. Most of these meetings ended when the school year came to a close. Academic support was often included in these meetings, but this was not the exclusive focus. Two-thirds of the students were receiving free or reduced-price lunch (indicating they lived in lower-income households) and around half lived in single-parent households. The results of this intervention were mixed. Some academic outcomes did improve, including the number of assignments completed and teacher ratings of overall academic performance. The impact on grades, however, was half the size of that in the community-based program (0.04 GPA points) and was not statistically significant. Two other school-based mentoring programs have been evaluated using an experimental design: the Student Mentoring Program (SMP; Bernstein et al. 2009), funded by the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Study of Mentoring in the Learning Environment (SMILE; Karcher 2008). The design of both programs included meetings between students and mentors for one hour per week over the course of the school year. In practice, fewer meetings actually took place. SMP duration averaged about one meeting per week over five or six months; SMILE duration averaged only eight meetings over three months. In both programs meetings included discussions of academic activities, but were not limited to such discussions. In SMP, most of the student participants were receiving free or reduced-price lunch, almost half were living in single-parent households, and the majority were deemed academically atrisk. Most students in SMILE had family incomes under $20,000. The results from both programs were discouraging; the interventions led to no significant improvement in any academic outcome. In attempting to reconcile the results from the three student-based mentoring programs, Wheeler, Keller, and DuBois (2010) contend that the limited impact of SMP and SMILE relative to that of Big Brothers Big Sisters (which was not overwhelming in the first place) may be attributable to the fact that 17 percent of assigned student–mentor pairs never actually met in SMP and relatively few student–mentor meetings took place in SMILE.

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 4: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth

TABLE 4-1.

Overview of Mentoring Programs Reviewed Program

Type of program

Frequency

Composition of

Sample

Impact on

Cost per

and funding

and duration

sample

size

academic

participant

outcomes

per year (in

of meetings

2013 dollars) Big Brothers

Community-based

Two to four times

Ages 10 to 14; 60%

Big Sisters

mentoring

per month for at

boys; from single-

on several

Community-

(privately funded)

least one year;

parent, low-income

measures,

typical meeting

households; with some

including a 0.08

lasted four hours

history of violence or

increase in grade

substance abuse

point average

Based Mentoring

959

Significant effects

$1,530

(GPA) Big Brothers

School-based

One-hour weekly

Grades 4–9; 69% free

Big Sisters

mentoring

meetings for one

or reduced-price lunch;

effects on several

School-Based

(privately funded)

academic year

close to 50/50 gender

measures, such

(under six months

ratio; around half in

as absenteeism

in practice)

single-parent house-

and assignments

holds

completed, but

Mentoring

1,139

Significant

$1,177

no significant effects on GPA Department

School-based

One-hour weekly

Grades 4–8; 85% free

of Education

mentoring

meetings for one

or reduced-price lunch;

Student

(publicly funded)

academic year

44% in single-parent

Mentoring

(under six months

households; 60% at

Program (SMP)

in practice)

academic risk

Quantum

Comprehensive

Goal was 750

At-risk students

Opportunities

program including

hours/year, but

entering Grade 9

Program (QOP)

substantive

actual average was

mentoring

177 hours/year

2,573

No observable

$1,522

impact

1,069

No observable

$35,730

impact

component (privately funded) Study of

School-based

One-hour weekly

Mainly Latino students

Mentoring in

mentoring

meetings for one

between ten and

the Learning

(privately funded)

academic year

eighteen years of age;

Environment

(under six months

most with annual family

(SMILE)

in practice)

income under $20,000

516

No observable

No data

impact

available

Sources: Bernstein et al. 2009; Karcher 2008; Herrera et al. 2007; Schirm, Stuart, and McKie 2006; Tierney, Grossman, and Resch 1995; author’s calculations.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Phillip B. Levine

Finally, the Quantum Opportunities Project provided more-extensive services than the other programs, including homework help, tutoring, life and family skills counseling (including counseling on alcohol and drug abuse, sex, and family planning), and a significant community service requirement, along with a substantive mentoring component (Hahn, Leavitt, and Aaron 1994; Schirm, Stuart, and McKie 2006). In addition, students received financial incentives to encourage them to stay in the program. This program focused on at-risk students entering ninth grade. Of the five interventions reviewed here, the Quantum Opportunities Project is clearly the most extensive, both in terms of services provided, program length, and cost. An initial pilot of the intervention showed positive results, including a 21 percent increase in high school graduation rates. The success of the pilot led to a larger-scale evaluation, but the results could not be replicated, particularly in terms of educational attainment. The follow-up study was unable to find any effect in that dimension.4 All of this evidence suggests that a traditional mentoring program of the community-based type, such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, is the approach most likely to be successful in improving subsequent labor market earnings among disadvantaged youth. School-based approaches have yielded mixed results, at best. Several potential explanations could explain this finding. First, their organization around the school imposes administrative hurdles that may lead to fewer and shorter meetings between mentors and mentees. Second, the emphasis on schoolwork, even if it is not exclusive, may hinder the true benefit of a mentoring intervention, which is providing an adult voice of reason to adolescents who may be lacking one. Conventional community-based approaches also dominate a comprehensive approach that offers a number of services, including a substantive mentoring component. Perhaps it is no surprise based on the longevity of the program that Big Brothers Big Sisters is the type of intervention that provides the clearest benefits to its participants.

A New Approach I propose that NGOs and private-sector entities consider expanding mentoring programs of the community-based form. Having access to an adult, trusted voice of reason would likely be helpful to disadvantaged youth seeking to climb the economic ladder. Based on my discussion below regarding the public and private returns to mentoring programs, I make the case that NGOs and private-sector groups should promote these types of programs. Beyond the general support for community-based mentoring programs, I propose that these groups implement community-

based mentorship programs with a set of best practices in mind; it is useful to consider the components of those programs that would generate the greatest gains for program participants. One reason that community-based programs may have been more successful than school-based programs is the nature and the extent of interaction between the mentor and mentee. These programs had more contact hours (typically three or four meetings per month lasting, on average, four hours per meeting) over a longer period of time (about a year) than school-based programs. This aspect likely contributed to its success. School-based programs also focus directly, although not exclusively, on academic support; community-based programs do not. Apparently, providing life guidance may be more important than providing academic guidance. One other aspect of program implementation that would likely be desirable is the demographic match between the mentor and mentee. Evidence from educational research and evaluations of job-placement programs suggests that having mentors that are of the same race and perhaps of the same gender as the mentee is an important element of a successful program (see Behncke, Frölich, and Lechner 2010; Dee 2004, 2005). Interestingly, Big Brothers Big Sisters does not mandate matches by race, although it does by gender. In terms of other program components, we do not have the luxury of additional experimental evidence to provide strong recommendations regarding the specific content that should be included in model mentoring programs. What we do have, however, is the approach that Big Brothers Big Sisters used in its community-based programs that have been successfully evaluated with positive results. Tierney, Grossman, and Resch (1995) document these program elements. I propose that NGOs and private-sector entities consider the following factors when promoting mentorship programs: 1. These programs should undertake thorough screening of potential mentors. Tierney, Grossman, and Resch (1995) report that Big Brothers Big Sisters uses background checks to screen out those determined to “pose a safety risk, are unlikely to honor their time commitment or are unlikely to form positive relationships with the youth.” Only around one-third of their volunteers met that test. Big Brothers Big Sisters rejected those whom it deemed inappropriate and those who did not complete the necessary steps of the screening process. 2. Mentorship programs should undergo a thorough screening of potential mentees. Those adolescents who participate must be interviewed along with their (single) parent, pass a home assessment, receive parental permission, and have a “minimal level of social skills” (Tierney, Grossman, and Resch 1995). The Hamilton Project • Brookings

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Proposal 4: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth

3. Extensive training of mentors is recommended, although it is not mandatory. The training should address youth development, communication skills, and suggestions about how to interact with a mentee, among other priorities. 4. As mentioned earlier, matches between the mentor and the mentee should be made based on preferences and expediency. Gender, geographic proximity, and availability are common match factors, along with the interests of both the mentor and mentee. 5. Finally, mentorship programs should include an element of supervision of the mentor–mentee relationship. Case managers should routinely check in with the mentor and the mentee in order to verify that the match has been successful. These five program components have not been separately evaluated with a rigorous methodology designed to determine their role in the success of the program. Nevertheless, they do provide a starting point; their combination has been found to be effective in Big Brothers Big Sisters community-based mentoring programs. NGOs and private-sector entities should ideally combine and implement these elements in mentorship programs for disadvantaged youth. Finally, given that these program components have not been thoroughly evaluated, NGOs and private-sector entities interested in mentoring programs should support the most rigorous possible experimental evaluation. For instance, evaluations should attempt to answer questions such as the following: Is the estimated impact reproducible in other settings? What screens should be used in the selection of mentors? How often and for how long should mentors and mentees meet? What types of activities provide the greatest benefit to the mentee? We cannot answer these questions based on the available evidence, but it would be valuable to have these answers, among many others, to be able to identify the key components for program success and help design the best possible intervention. Evaluation of implemented programs would therefore be a critical aspect of continuing and expanding these types of programs. COSTS AND BENEFITS

Just because community-based mentoring programs appear to be the best approach to implement, it would be premature to judge these programs to be “worth it.” I argue that these programs are worth expanding from the perspective of an NGO or private-sector group looking to improve outcomes for at-risk youth, but whether it is worth it for the government to financially support these programs is a higher hurdle that mentoring programs would be less likely to overcome.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

A critical component of this analysis is the distinction between returns to the program that are received by the participant (private returns) and those that are received by society more broadly (social returns). If the private returns of a program are greater than its costs, then the program is worth it in the sense that investing one dollar in the program is better than simply transferring one dollar to the participant. An NGO or privatesector entity that intends to help disadvantaged youth would be better off investing in the program than simply giving away the money. If the social returns are greater than one dollar, then the program is worth it to taxpayers because they actually profit from making the transfer; the program yields benefits to them that are greater than the investment. In this case, the public sector should be willing to invest in the program. Discussions about the value of supporting a public program frequently focus on the social benefits. Programs that assist underprivileged populations satisfy this condition by increasing tax revenue, reducing expenditures for social programs, and reducing crime. A perfect example is the Perry Preschool program, which Elizabeth Cascio and Diane Schanzenbach discuss in their proposal in this series. Generating social benefits that are greater than the program’s cost, though, is very hard to do. Even when we can increase the earnings of disadvantaged individuals, it is hard to increase them enough to put them into the range of incomes where tax receipts would be substantial. Typically, when we are able to provide strong evidence of generating social benefits in excess of program costs, the key component is a reduction in crime and incarceration. This was true in the Perry Preschool program. Those outcomes are so costly to society that relatively modest effects can provide tremendous public savings. It is difficult to determine whether traditional mentoring programs reduce crime and incarceration. The outcomes most closely approximating criminal activity in the Big Brothers Big Sisters evaluation are “number of times stole something” and “number of times damaged property” (Tierney, Grossman, and Resch 1995). The treatment group was not statistically significantly less likely to engage in either of these behaviors (although the point estimates were negative). The outcome “number of times hit someone” did drop significantly, but its relationship to crime is less clear. We do see that drug and alcohol use declined for participants in traditional mentoring programs, and it is possible that this would translate into reduced criminal activity subsequently, but that is a rather substantial leap. In the end, it is possible that Big Brothers Big Sisters could pass a societal benefit–cost test, perhaps even convincingly, but it is not clear that it could do so based on the available evidence.

Phillip B. Levine

This does not mean that it is not beneficial for the government to invest in mentoring programs, but rather that the investment would need to be supported by another form of return. In particular, society may receive value simply by helping the poor improve their outcomes from a purely altruistic perspective. It makes us happier if individuals who are having difficulty getting by have an easier time of it. Of course, providing a value to altruism to incorporate into a formal benefit–cost comparison is a difficult proposition. That determination would have to result from the political process.

Questions and Concerns

For the private sector, however, altruism is the goal. The goal of the private sector is to spend its money wisely in a way that yields the greatest impact. Again, that sector can always just transfer money to targeted populations directly, so a program is only desirable if the private benefit the program generates in the form of higher incomes for its participants is greater than the dollar cost of providing these programs. To satisfy this criterion means comparing private benefits to the cost of implementation. This is the form of benefit–cost analysis I conduct here.

The simple answer to this question is that it is rare to have enough evidence to be certain of all the best elements that should be incorporated into new programs. In this case, we have evaluations that enable us to rule out certain types of programs (like those that are school-based), and one evaluation that provides strong support for advancing community-based programs. That evaluation was extensive, but there are always limitations in going forward with new programs based on the results of a single experiment. Clearly, additional experimentation should be conducted to fill some of the holes in our knowledge.

The good news for mentoring programs is that they easily satisfy this test. Levine and Zimmerman (2010) provide details of the approach that lead to this conclusion, but I summarize it here. The general idea is to obtain program effects in terms of some form of educational outcome and then use a conversion factor that translates that educational outcome into higher subsequent wages. In this case, we know from the Big Brothers Big Sisters community-based evaluation that program participants experienced a 0.08 point improvement in their GPAs. Levine and Zimmerman (2010) then used data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to generate a conversion factor between GPA and wages. This wage effect is presumed to be constant over the remainder of the individual’s life; the analysis then calculates the present discounted value of this higher-earnings stream throughout the individual’s life. The results of this analysis indicate that Big Brothers Big Sisters generates about a $7,500 expected benefit relative to the program cost of about $1,600 (where all values are measured in 2013 dollars). Benefits exceed costs by a ratio of almost 5:1.5 From this perspective, mentoring programs are a great investment. Mentoring programs thus appear to generate private returns that are considerably in excess of their costs, but it is less clear that they will generate a positive benefit–cost ratio when the focus is on social returns. The focus on altruism in justifying the intervention is better suited for those NGOs and privatesector entities that are trying to accomplish exactly that goal. On the whole, I am in full support of these groups moving fullspeed ahead in implementing community-based mentoring

programs with a set of best practices in mind. Should altruism become a recognized goal of public policy, governmental support of these programs would be desirable as well.

Have the previously conducted evaluations provided enough guidance to inform the design and implementation of new programs?

This may be an example where the best is the enemy of the good. By the standards of program evaluation, the Big Brothers Big Sisters community-based program is an effective one and it should be emulated. Certainly, future experimentation should continue to address these lingering questions and help inform subsequent program design, but based on what we know now, the Big Brothers Big Sisters community-based program model is an approach that is worthy of expansion. Is it possible to expand the scale of community-based mentoring programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters to address the size of the adolescent population in need of those services? The estimates I provided above suggest that millions of adolescents could benefit from mentoring programs. Existing programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters do serve about 200,000 individuals now, though, suggesting that it is possible to run programs like this on a large scale. It is prudent to be realistic on the ability of programs like this to satisfy existing need, however. The logistical difficulties associated with managing such a large number of mentoring relationships, let alone the recruiting and training of so many mentors, are substantial. Moreover, at approximately $1,500 per mentor, supporting just 1 million mentors would cost $1.5 billion, and the need is considerably greater than that. Despite my earlier claim that mentoring is an intervention that is better suited for NGOs and private-sector entities, the extent of the need may be beyond these groups’ means. Yet that does not lessen the importance of the policy proposal I am making here. It is better to make a The Hamilton Project • Brookings

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Proposal 4: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth

sizeable dent in an important social problem than to ignore it because it cannot be solved completely. Are there any circumstances under which the federal government should intervene to provide mentoring services? The purpose of this proposal is not to rule out federal intervention to help address the lack of adult, caring relationships in the lives of many of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s youth. The argument I am making is that the hurdle is higher for justifying a role for public-sector intervention. Since it is unlikely that mentoring programs can effectively demonstrate social benefits beyond program costs, justification for supporting them is largely based on altruism. At least some component of the private sector has that as an explicit goal, making it a more-natural fit for that sector to tackle this issue. Some government programs provide benefits for largely altruistic reasons, though; the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is an example. If mentoring programs could satisfy the altruistic goals of the public sector, then there is no reason (outside budgetary constraints) why it could not support them.

Conclusion Well-designed mentoring programs could go a long way toward giving better opportunities to the more than 9 million children growing up in America who have no caring adults

Policies to Address Poverty in America

in their lives. Valiant attempts have been made to alleviate the difficulties associated with this caring gap in the lives of disadvantaged youth. In fact, five thousand mentoring programs currently provide services to 3 million young people; Big Brothers Big Sisters alone serves almost 200,000 children. Yet many disadvantaged youth still remain without a mentor. Evaluating mentoring requires combing through extensive research on the programs and components already in play. This policy memo tackles that task. After a careful review of the best available evidence, I maintain that communitybased mentoring programs in the vein of the traditional Big Brothers Big Sisters model are effective and should receive further support of NGOs and private-sector groups, with a set of best practices in mind as well as with rigorous evaluation to determine the important components for effective mentoring. A key consideration is whether government provision of mentorship programs is justifiedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in other words, whether the social returns of the program (e.g., in terms of crime reduction and increased tax revenue) exceed its costs. I find that public spending on mentorship is not justified on these grounds, and that mentorship programs should instead be provided by NGOs and private-sector entities looking to improve outcomes for at-risk youth. Indeed, altruism is a part of the mission for these groups, and the benefit of providing mentorship to disadvantaged youth outweighs the costs.

Phillip B. Levine

Author Phillip B. Levine Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics, Wellesley College Phillip Levine is the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research affiliate of the National Poverty Center, and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He has also served as a senior economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Levine received a bachelor’s degree with honors from Cornell University in 1985 and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1990. He has been a member of the faculty at Wellesley since 1991. His research has largely been devoted to empirical examinations of the impact of social policy on individual behavior. Along with many publications in academic journals and edited volumes, he is the author of Sex and Consequences: Abortion, Public Policy, and the Economics of Fertility, coauthor of Reconsidering Retirement: How Losses and Layoffs Affect Older Workers, and coeditor of Targeting Investments in Children: Fighting Poverty When Resources are Limited.

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Proposal 4: Designing Effective Mentoring Programs for Disadvantaged Youth

Endnotes 1. Earlier this year, President Obama introduced an initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, calling for the private and philanthropic sectors to institute mentoring programs. In his remarks he credited those who “never gave up on me, and so I didn’t give up on myself” (Obama 2014). 2. To provide a couple of examples, Child Trends identifies the programs Fostering Healthy Futures and Parent Mentors for Children with Asthma. These programs are targeted at children who have suffered abuse in foster-care settings and children who need assistance dealing with their respiratory issues, respectively. Lawner, Beltz, and Moore (2013) summarizes most of these programs. 3. The impact on GPA is only statistically significant at the 10 percent level. Given the overall strength of the results indicating that academic ability improved and the ability to moreeasily translate GPA into subsequent wages, I conclude that this is a meaningful effect and take this estimate as a summary statistic of the educational impact of the intervention. The point estimates also suggest that the effect of mentoring on academic achievement in this experiment is larger for girls than for boys, although these differences are unlikely to be statistically significant (insufficient information is provided to conduct a formal hypothesis test). 4. One possible explanation for the divergence in results is that the pilot results were strongly (although not exclusively) restricted to one of the five sites in which the program was implemented (Levine and Zimmerman 2010). The ability of a single administrator to make a program work and the inability to replicate those results elsewhere is one potential weakness of any smaller-scale intervention. 5. One shortcoming of this analysis is that we have access to only the short-run effect of the Big Brothers Big Sisters intervention. An active literature exists in other areas, such as the Head Start program, that is concerned with test score fade-out and the long-term impact on economic outcomes. We do not have the ability to explore that issue more deeply in this context. Yet the benefit–cost ratio we report here is so large that the shortrun impact would have to depreciate extensively to substantively alter this result.

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Phillip B. Levine

References Behncke, Stefanie, Markus Frölich, and Michael Lechner. 2010. “A Caseworker Like Me: Does The Similarity between the Unemployed and Their Caseworkers Increase Job Placements?” Economic Journal 120 (549):1430–59. Bernstein, Lawrence, Catherine Dunn Rappaport, Lauren Olsho, Dana Hunt, and Marjorie Levin. 2009. “Impact Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Mentoring Program.” U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. 2012. “Annual Report 2011/12.” Philadelphia: Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Bruce, Mary, and John Bridgeland. 2014. “The Mentoring Effect: Young People’s Perspectives on the Outcomes and Availability of Mentoring.” Civic Enterprises with Hart Research Associates for MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, Washington, DC. Cavell, Timothy, David DuBois, Michael Karcher, Thomas Keller, and Jean Rhodes. 2009. “Policy Brief: Strengthening Mentoring Opportunities for At-Risk Youth.” National Mentoring Center, Portland, OR. Child Trends. 2014. “List of Programs.” Child Trends, Bethesda, MD. http://www.childtrends.org/what-works/list-ofprograms/. Dee, Thomas S. 2004. “Teachers, Race and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment.” Review of Economics and Statistics 86 (1): 195–210. Dee, Thomas S. 2005. “A Teacher Like Me: Does Race, Ethnicity or Gender Matter?” American Economic Review 95 (2): 158–65. DuBois, David L., Nelson Portillo, Jean E. Rhodes, Naida Silverthorn, and Jeffrey C. Valentine. 2011. “How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12 (2): 57–91. Hahn, Andrew, Tom Leavitt, and Paul Aaron. 1994. “Evaluation of the Quantum Opportunities Program. Did the Program Work?” Center for Human Resources, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Herrera, Carla, Jean Baldwin Grossman, Tina J. Kauh, Amy F. Feldman, Jennifer McMaken, and Linda Z. Jucovy. 2007. “Making a Difference in Schools: The Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring Impact Study.” Public/ Private Ventures, Philadelphia, PA. Karcher, Michael J. 2008. “The Study of Mentoring in the Learning Environment (SMILE): A Randomized Evaluation of the Effectiveness of School-based Mentoring.” Prevention Science 9 (2): 99–113. Lawner, Elizabeth, Martha Beltz, and Kristin A. Moore. 2013. “Research Brief: What Works for Mentoring Programs: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Programs and Interventions.” Child Trends, Bethesda, MD. Levine, Phillip B., and David J. Zimmerman. 2010. Targeting Investments in Children: Fighting Poverty When Resources Are Limited. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Obama, Barack. 2014. “Remarks by the President on ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ Initiative.” The White House, Washington, DC. Schirm, Allen, Elizabeth Stuart, and Allison McKie. 2006. “The Quantum Opportunity Program Demonstration: Final Impacts.” Mathematica Policy Research, Washington, DC. Tierney, Joseph P., Jean Baldwin Grossman, and Nancy L. Resch. 1995. “Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters.” Public/Private Ventures, Philadelphia, PA. U.S. Census Bureau. 2013. “Living Arrangements of Children.” U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. https://www.census.gov/ hhes/families/data/children.html. Wheeler, Marc E., Thomas E. Keller, and David L. DuBois. 2010. “Review of Three Recent Randomized Trials of SchoolBased Mentoring.” Social Policy Report 24 (3): 1–19.

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Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth Amy Ellen Schwartz New York University

Jacob Leos-Urbel Claremont Graduate University

Introduction Youth employment rates have decreased dramatically over the past decade as the economy has faltered and the youth population has grown, as shown in figure 5-1 (Bureau of Labor Statistics n.d.). Unemployment rates among youth are especially acute during the summer, as more teens temporarily enter the labor force (Morisi 2010; Sum et al. 2008). In response to this problem, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided summer jobs for low-income youth with the goal of improving workforce readiness, although this increase in the availability of summer jobs was temporary (Bellotti et al. 2010). This policy memo offers a proposal to strengthen and expand work-related summer activities with the goal of fostering the skill development, education, and economic success of low-income youth. Summer jobs should be part of a broader strategy for poverty alleviation, with the potential to benefit disadvantaged youth in multiple ways. In addition to providing work experience and an immediate income transfer to low-income youth, an emerging body of research also suggests that summer youth employment programs (SYEPs) can improve educational outcomes and social and emotional development, and decrease negative behaviors (including criminal behaviors), at least in the short term (Heller 2014; Leos-Urbel forthcoming; Sum, Trubskyy, and McHugh 2013; Walker and Viella-Velez 1992). A number of states and localities offer SYEPs on varying scales, although the availability of jobs fluctuates year to year.

We propose that the federal government make grants to state and local governments to work with local communitybased organizations (CBOs) on the expansion of summer job programs. Targeting low-income youth ages sixteen to nineteen (enrolled in or graduated from high school), these expanded programs would provide employment and training to young people who currently face many barriers to entering the workforce. EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVENESS

Emerging evidence indicates that summer jobs can do more than put a low-income youth to work. Using a rigorous lottery design, Leos-Urbel (forthcoming) finds that getting a job during the summer of 2007 through the SYEP in New York City (NYC) led to increases in school attendance in the following school year of roughly 1 percent overall and 3 percent for students who may be at greater educational risk. These effects are of a similar magnitude to some rigorously evaluated interventions that are explicitly designed to increase school attendance (Dee 2011; Riccio et al. 2010). A follow-up study by Schwartz et al. (in progress) examining the impact of the NYC program from 2006â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2009 also finds small increases in school performance. An earlier rigorous random-assignment evaluation of intensive summer jobs programs that included an academic component found that the programs increased reading and math scores in the short term (Walker and Viella-Velez 1992).1 Notably, the evaluation found no long-term academic or employment

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Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

FIGURE 5-1.

Employment-Population Ratio, Youth Ages 16 to 19, 2003–2012 Employment–population ratio (in percent)

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

Annual

2009

2010

2011

2012

July

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics various years. Note: Employment–population ratio isBureau the ratio employed youth to all years. youth in the civilian noninstitutional population. Source: of of Labor Statistics various

Note: Employment–population ratio is the ratio of employed youth to all youth in the civilian non-institutional population.

differences, which has led some to conclude that summer jobs are not a good strategy for reducing poverty.2 Another experimental evaluation found that a summer jobs program in Philadelphia increased the likelihood of youth getting a job, but did not change intermediate academic or employment outcomes (McClanahan, Sipe, and Smith 2004). This proposal builds on the lessons of these earlier programs but takes some different approaches, as we describe below. Recent research also suggests that summer jobs can help reduce violent behavior and crime. Preliminary results from an experimental evaluation of One Summer Plus—which combined summer jobs with a cognitive behavioral therapy– based program aimed at reducing youth violence—indicate that the program led to a large decrease in violent-crime arrests (Heller 2014).3 A study of a summer jobs program in Boston finds that, compared to a comparison group of eligible youth from the program waiting list, program participants were significantly more likely to reduce risky and violent behaviors, including the use of drugs and alcohol, physical fighting, damaging property, and threatening someone with a weapon (Sum, Trubskyy, and McHugh 2013).4 The program also created much-needed jobs for program participants, as just 27 percent of youth in the comparison group were able to find a summer job. Finally, an experimental evaluation of the After School Matters—an after-school apprenticeship program 2

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for high school students during the school year in Chicago— found improvements in behavior and social and emotional development, although it found no effect on academic outcomes (Hirsch et al. 2011). Importantly, 91 percent of students in the comparison group in Chicago were involved in some other after-school activity (most common) or paid work, indicating that the availability of other opportunities (i.e., the counterfactual of what they would have done without the program) may differ considerably during the school year, and suggesting that the summer may be an especially promising time for such interventions.

The Challenge High youth unemployment rates and a shrinking supply of traditional summer job opportunities for youth can have serious implications for their financial well-being and ultimate labor market success (Rees 1986). Employment during high school is linked to higher incomes as they become adults (Painter 2010; Ruhm 1995). Furthermore, from an equity perspective, the availability of work opportunities for youth often varies by race and socioeconomic status (Morisi 2010). For instance, Entwisle, Alexander, and Olson (2000) find that white youth are more likely to work, though African American youth apply for jobs more often than whites. Also, in contrast

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

to many publicly funded out-of-school programs that struggle to recruit and retain high school students, jobs programs for youth often face demand that far exceeds supply.

proposal process to encourage states and localities to innovate in providing training and services to youth, and to build on best practices.

Public policies to support summer jobs are not new, though the availability of jobs fluctuates. At the federal level, ARRA provided a temporary influx of funding for summer jobs for low-income youth that has since dried up (Bellotti et al. 2010). In particular, it provided $1.2 billion for employment and training for disadvantaged youth ages fourteen to twentyfour, and employed 345,000 youth in the summer of 2009.5 These jobs were in high demand, as indicated by an evaluation of the program’s implementation, which found that the number of applications received exceeded the number of job slots available at nineteen of the twenty job sites (ibid.). The U.S. Department of Labor, lacking funds to pay for summer jobs, coordinated the Summer Jobs+ program in the summer of 2012; this program sought pledges from companies and nonprofit organizations to provide summer work experiences for youth nationwide. The current iteration of this program is called Youth Jobs+.

Our central proposal calls for extending the program nationwide. We recognize, however, that such a rapid expansion may face severe budget and administrative constraints. An alternative to an immediate nationwide scaleup of the program is to implement a multiyear pilot program, along the guidelines presented below, to a select diverse group of cities and localities. Program outcomes would be subject to comprehensive review and evaluation, and initial funding for the pilot program would be set at one-tenth of the cost of the full-scale implementation. If the multiyear program is found to be effective at improving educational and labor market outcomes for the targeted population, the pilot program would be expanded with the goal of reaching all disadvantaged youth across the country.

Many cities and states also offer summer jobs programs. The largest is NYC’s SYEP, which operated with a budget of $45.6 million in federal, state, local, and private funds in 2013. That same year, the program received more than 135,000 applications and served almost 36,000 participants, down from more than 52,000 participants in 2009 when ARRA funds were available. In 2013 in Washington, DC, 14,000 youth participated in the summer jobs program, which was administered by the city’s Department of Employment Services. (See table 5-A1 in appendix 5-A for information on other SYEP programs in select cities across the country.) Despite these efforts, both the fluctuating availability of jobs and funding constraints have limited the number of disadvantaged youth who are able to participate in summer employment programs, presenting an opportunity within public policy to meet this important need.

A New Approach We propose expanding summer jobs programs for low-income youth—ages sixteen to nineteen, in both urban and rural communities, and who are enrolled in or have graduated from high school—through a program that will pay participants the federal minimum wage for working twenty-five hours per week for six weeks. (These eligibility parameters were chosen in an effort to keep down program costs by targeting the youth most likely to see the largest gains from a summer work program.) In addition, the jobs program will contain an education and training component, and a request-for-

We model our proposal on NYC’s SYEP—the largest program of its type in the United States—and we also borrow from and integrate best practices from programs in other localities. Based on the lessons learned from the summer jobs created through ARRA and from the NYC program, we anticipate high demand and propose allocating slots through a random lottery system. This has the dual benefits of allocating positions fairly, and of allowing for rigorous evaluation of program effectiveness by randomly creating treatment and control groups of lottery winners and losers, respectively. JOB PLACEMENTS

We propose that the federal government, through the U.S. Department of Labor, make grants to states to regulate and coordinate these jobs programs, which will then be administered by city and county governments.6 This grantbased program, in turn, will develop a request-for-proposal process to identify qualified CBOs that will administer the program locally. In the case of NYC, the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development administers the SYEP, and contracts with CBOs throughout the city to place and supervise youth in summer jobs and to provide training. Appropriate agencies could include city or county agencies responsible for youth development, workforce development, and/or education. Local agencies then contract with CBOs, which place youth in summer jobs supervise and monitor these placements, and provide the program’s education and training component. The most successful job training programs include experienced staff and close connections between the program training and work (Greenberg, Michalopoulus, and Robins 2003; Stanley, Katz, and Krueger 1998). CBOs should be selected through a competitive process to ensure they have the experience and qualifications to provide disadvantaged youth with effective The Hamilton Project • Brookings

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Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

training and mentoring. Additionally, providers should have knowledge of the local labor market to ensure that the training is relevant and necessary for participants’ success. Funds should be allocated in proportion to the number of students ages sixteen to nineteen in each state, in school or just graduated, and living in poverty. Ideally, contracts with CBOs will be fixed term and will be re-competed on a regular basis with specific performance evaluation criteria required for renewal to ensure the most qualified organizations operate the program. TRAINING

The proposed training component provides an important opportunity for innovation and collaboration between multiple youth-serving agencies and organizations to address issues specific to their target population and to the job skills important in the local labor market. To capitalize on existing expertise, the training component could be connected to the local high school curriculum, focusing on college and career readiness training aligned to state or Common Core standards. For example, NYC’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) Summer Scholars program matches students with part-time summer internships and engages students in a classroom experience to build workforce readiness skills. The program includes two full days per week of classroom training focused on career readiness skills and matches students with paid internships that are purposefully aligned to the content of their CTE track, such as information technology or media (Weinstein and Leardo 2013). MONITORING PROGRAM QUALITY

Metrics for assessing program quality for selection of CBOs to be providers and for contract renewals may include attendance and hours worked, program completion or attrition, participant and supervisor evaluations, and feedback from placement sites. These metrics are directly related to the core elements of the program and are relatively easy to measure in a standardized way across program sites, requiring a minimal administrative burden. In addition to providing guidelines and incentives for program providers, the program should offer rewards to students for successful program completion (e.g., high attendance and positive supervisor feedback).7 TARGET POPULATION AND PROJECTED TAKE UP

As mentioned above, the proposal targets youth ages sixteen to nineteen who are enrolled in or have recently graduated from high school, which we believe to be a population likely to benefit from the program. However, our proposal would not provide training and support of the intensity and duration required to put out-of-school youth on a path to educational and career success. In fact, one explanation for the perceived

Policies to Address Poverty in America

lack of success in previous programs such as the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) is that the participants did not enter the program with a baseline level of skill necessary to benefit from the work and training experience (Foster 1995). Additionally, JTPA training focused on remedial education rather than workforce-related training, a feature that moresuccessful youth employment programs tend to provide (Greenberg, Michalopoulus, and Robins 2003). In order to avoid any stigma associated with participation and to minimize the administrative burden, our proposal does not include an income requirement. Requiring documentation of income can serve as a substantial barrier to program enrollment and can distract from the implementation and monitoring of program quality (Curnan and Hahn 2010). That said, localities should be encouraged to target communities with low-income populations; it is likely that take-up will be higher among lowincome populations. As an example, although NYC’s SYEP is open to all city youth, approximately 90 percent of applicants are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which implies very low household income. To estimate the size of the target population, we begin with the fact that there are roughly 17 million youth ages sixteen to nineteen in the United States, of whom approximately 75 percent are ages sixteen to eighteen (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2013). To calculate the number of low-income youth, we assume that the number of youth ages sixteen to nineteen living close to or below the poverty level is the same as the ratio of households with five-year-olds to seventeen-year-olds living at or below 185 percent of the poverty level, which is approximately 30 percent. This implies a target population of 5 million low-income youth ages sixteen to nineteen, and 3.75 million low-income youth ages sixteen to eighteen. Both the sixteen-to-nineteen and the sixteen-to-eighteen age ranges are appropriate for SYEP, as one would target high school students and recent graduates, and the other would target only high school students. The evidence from NYC’s SYEP offers some insight into how many youth would be interested. Approximately 80,000 lowincome youth applied for a position for the summer of 2009, which is around 40 percent of the roughly 200,000 low-income youth ages sixteen to nineteen estimated to be living in NYC (estimate based on data from U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Funding constraints meant that only half of applicants were offered positions and, importantly, approximately three out of four of those accepted the offer and participated. Combining these figures yields an estimated take-up rate among the overall eligible population of 30 percent as a benchmark, which is likely a high estimate due to the relative scarcity of private sector jobs in the weak economy. Taken

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

together, this suggests that if universally implemented, 1.50 million youth ages sixteen to nineteen would be interested in participating in SYEP; again, it would be roughly threefourths of that if the program was limited to students ages sixteen to eighteen. PROJECTED EXPENDITURES

If implementing a multiyear pilot program, we propose dedicating $300 million annually for five years, at a total cost of $1.50 billion. As seen in table 5-1, we estimate that the total costs of expanding this nationwide to low-income youth ages sixteen to eighteen would be about $2.25 billion (assuming 1.50 million participants, as calculated above, at a cost of $2,000 per participant); if the program were offered to youth ages sixteen to nineteen, the estimated costs increase to about $3 billion. Importantly, the budget of our proposed program is not a social cost. About half of the estimated program budget is the wage paid directly to the youth. From a societal perspective, this is a transfer of funds to low-income youth, rather than a change in economy-wide resources. Table 5-1 breaks down the direct cost of the program, which is determined by the wage paid, number of hours and weeks of the program, number of participants, and educational and administrative costs. We estimate each of these factors drawing from the features and experiences of existing programs: national data on the size and composition of the youth population, data from the largest summer jobs program (NYC’s SYEP), and the administration of other social programs. We propose that the national SYEP pay an hourly wage of $7.25 for jobs that last twenty-five hours per week for six weeks during the summer. These program parameters generally mirror features common to existing programs. While some programs offer higher wages, most SYEPs pay the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour). Similarly, twenty-five hours per week is in the middle of the range of hours offered, which typically ranges from twenty to thirty hours a week (see table 5-A1 in appendix 5-A). There is also variation in program duration across the country from five to eight weeks during the summer, but six weeks is the most common. While administrative overhead costs will vary with program features, we use the 15 percent overhead rate that the California Department of Education allows for public afterschool programs.8 We also include $650 per participant for an educational component.9 POTENTIAL OUTCOMES

Summer jobs programs introduce participating youth to the workforce, and these early work experiences have the potential to foster noncognitive skills, which prepare youth to enter the labor force (Heckman 1998; Lillydhal 1990; Mortimer 2003).

Summer represents an especially efficient area for intervention, as it is a time when many youth lack opportunities for other formal activities. The loss by students over the summer of some of the skills learned during the school year is welldocumented in earlier and later grades (Castleman, Arnold, and Wartman 2012; Entwisle, Alexander, and Olson 2000). The benefits from this federal investment go beyond providing summer employment. Research suggests that SYEPs can also have small positive effects on school attendance and academic outcomes (Leos-Urbel forthcoming; Walker and Viella-Velez 1992). In a preliminary investigation of the short-run impacts of summer jobs programs, Leos-Urbel (forthcoming) finds that these programs produce small increases in attendance in the following school year. Increases are larger for students at greater educational risk, namely those ages sixteen and older with low baseline school attendance. For this group, participation in a summer jobs program also increases the likelihood of attempting and passing statewide high school math and English exams. In current work exploring the impact of these programs on student academic outcomes over more years, preliminary findings suggest small positive effects of the program on the number of exams students take; although impacts on scores are generally insignificant, there is a small positive effect on passing key high school exams. Furthermore, another study finds that the impacts increase with the number of years a student participates in the jobs program—with impacts being larger for second-time participants and largest for those participating for the third time or beyond (Schwartz et al. in progress). Positive effects, even small effects, are encouraging; as we have seen, numerous previous efforts have failed to produce returns.10 Moreover, these small increases may translate into meaningful gains in lifetime earnings. Rose (2005) finds that students who made test score gains in high school were more likely to be employed and have larger earnings seven years after high school compared to students whose test scores improved very little. Specifically, a one-point increase in a student’s test score gain from grade 8 to grade 12 predicted an increase of 0.62 percent in earnings. Similarly, work by Deming and colleagues (2013) examines the impact of increased student performance on high-stakes exams, postsecondary attainment, and subsequent earnings. The authors find that students in high schools that raised test scores in response to accountability pressure were more likely to attend and graduate from a fouryear university and had higher earnings at age twenty-five. Impacts were strongest for students with the lowest baseline achievement. Specifically, increased test score performance led to 1 percent higher labor market earnings at age twentyfive. Given the approximate average earnings of $30,000 at this age, this effect would translate to $300 per participant. The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

TABLE 5-1.

Program Budget Estimated costs

Ages 16 to 19

Ages 16 to 18

Total low-income population in United States (in millions)

3.75

Take-up rate

30%

Estimated participants (in millions)

1.50

1.13

Wage

$7.25 per hour

Hours per week

Duration (in weeks)

Total

$1,088

Educational cost per participant

$650

Administrative overhead

15%

$1,998

$2,997

$2,248

Target population

Average cost Participant compensation

Average other costs

Cost per participant

Total cost Total annual cost of SYEP (in millions) Sources: New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy 2014; authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; calculations.

Recent research also suggests that summer jobs programs can reduce crime and violent behavior among individuals (Heller 2014; Sum, Trubskyy, and McHugh 2013). Heller (2014) examines the impact of a program that provided youth from low-income, high-crime high schools in Chicago with a part-time summer job and cognitive behavioral therapy. The study provides credible, experimental evidence of a significant link between crime and summer jobs, thus providing a social benefit that substantially exceeds program costs.11 Finally, paying low-income youth for work reduces poverty. By offering low-income youth an opportunity to earn wages, this program would immediately increase the economic resources available to participants and their families. This increased income would bring households on the poverty margin above the poverty level and would ease the depth of poverty for all others. In addition, expanding youth employment can assist nonprofit organizations in providing services to low-income neighborhoods and communities. For example, in NYCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Policies to Address Poverty in America

SYEP, the most common job placements are in summer camps and day-care centers. COSTS AND BENEFITS

Expanding summer jobs for low-income youth would yield benefits in many dimensions, including to the individual participant and to society. Benefits to the individual participants include income received, workforce readiness, reduction in risky behavior and crime, increase of earnings over the long run, and improvements in educational outcomes. For example, as noted above, these programs have been shown to increase attendance among students in the school year following the summer intervention, especially among those students with poor attendance records. Social benefits include the services provided by participants, such as service as a camp counselor, and improvements in communities, such as reductions in crime. As noted above, prior research suggests a link between participation

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

in summer jobs programs and lower crime rates. The high social cost of each individual committed—numbering in the thousands for even low-level nonviolent crimes— suggests that even relatively small reductions in burglary or vandalism could provide sufficient benefits to offset the costs of the SYEP program. The costs of the program are measured by program outlays. As noted above, we estimate the cost of a pilot program to be $300 million annually, with the cost rising to between $2.2 billion and $3.0 billion annually if implemented nationwide. Since a large portion of the program outlays are devoted to wages paid to participants, much of these outlays can be classified as transfers of income rather than changes in economy-wide resources. Ultimately, we find that the summer youth program will have a series of relatively modest, but important, impacts on participants and society. Although the effect on any one of these dimensions may be small, taken together they suggest benefits that outweigh the relatively modest costs.

Questions and Concerns How is this different from past youth employment programs that were considered by some to be a failure? Our proposal differs from prior federal programs in a few key features. First, we propose to serve youth who are enrolled in or have just graduated from high school, a population of students whom we believe are most likely able to take advantage of the program. We recognize that this limits the potential of the program to help all disadvantaged youth. This population is in contrast to those served by JTPA, for example, which targeted out-of-school youth, a population who likely have lower skills and require support that is more intensive. Second, our program requires a regular workforce training component closely aligned to the local employment context that is provided by qualified CBOs with expertise either connecting individuals to the local job market or providing local youth with support services and mentoring. The JTPA education component for youth, in contrast, focused on remedial education.12 Why does this proposal make sense given the lack of evidence on long-term effects of summer jobs programs on education or employment outcomes? Much of the available research on youth employment focuses either on effects of employment year round or on hard-to-

reach populations, such as out-of-school youth or those involved in the juvenile justice system (see, for example, Bloom et al. 1997; Farkas, Smith, and Stromsdorfter 1983; Orr et al. 1996). In contrast, the specific evidence on summeronly programs that target in-school youth suggests that youth summer employment programs hold promise for improving youth outcomes, particularly educational outcomes, social and emotional developmental outcomes, and reduced negative behaviors (Heller 2014; Leos-Urbel forthcoming; Schwartz et al. in progress; Walker and Viella-Velez 1992). What are reasonable expectations for the effects of a program for youth of this duration, intensity, and cost? We expect small effects across a range of critical dimensions, including small increases (1 percent to 2 percent) in attendance, educational attainment, and graduation. We also expect slightly larger effects on crime and risky behaviors, particularly during the summer when students are employed.

Conclusion While there is a broad consensus that education can provide a path out of poverty for low-income youth, out-of-school time—including both summer and after-school activities— can also enrich youth development. Recognizing this, middleclass families routinely invest in travel, camps, internships, and summer jobs, providing their children with experiential learning and work experience while minimizing the amount of unsupervised idle time and the potential opportunities to engage in risky behavior. We believe summer jobs can provide some of the same benefits to low-income youth: increasing their engagement in school, providing job experience, and reducing participation in risky activities across a broad range. To be clear, our proposed SYEP is a very modest intervention. It would be naive to imagine that this sort of low-cost intervention will dramatically improve outcomes. Instead, we hope summer employment will lay a foundation on which future success can be built. While investment in early childhood education has captured the imagination of policymakers and the public alike, such interventions will not address the inequality in opportunities and life-chances of today’s youth for whom completing school; avoiding crime, pregnancy, and drug use; and other negative behaviors are critical steps on the path to future success. Summer jobs may be an effective tool in the effort to reduce inequality at the beginning of adulthood and may level the playing field for low-income youth.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The authors thank Michele Leardo and Megan Silander for outstanding research assistance on all aspects of this proposal. The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

Appendix 5-A. TABLE 5-A1.

Summer Youth Employment Programs, Select Cities Program name

Location

Description

Cleveland, OH

Y.O.U. helps match thousands of teenagers from Cuyahoga County to meaningful

Midwest Youth Opportunities Unlimited (Y.O.U.)

summer work experiences. One Summer Chicago (OSC) 2013

Chicago, IL

OSC connects young people to summer jobs, internships and training programs that are offered throughout the city. Through OSC, young adults have the opportunity to learn job skills, develop their résumés and explore career interests.

Workforce Development Board

Detroit, MI

(WDB)–Summer Youth Employment

The WDB-SYEP is introducing a program that will allow local businesses to contribute to summer work experiences for Detroit youth.

Program (SYEP) Step Up

Minneapolis, MN

The program primarily serves youth from lower-income families, or youth with significant barriers to finding a job.

Northeast Boston Summer Jobs

Boston, MA

This program provides youth with training related to job readiness and career exploration and job opportunities during the summer at a variety of private, community, faith-based and government organizations.

WorkReady Summer Youth

Philadelphia, PA

Employment

Summer employment models offer educationally-enriched work opportunities to in-school and out-of-school youth that foster the acquisition of the twenty-first century skills through work-based learning.

Summer Youth Employment

New York City, NY

Program

The program provides New York City youth with paid summer employment and provides workshops on job readiness, career exploration, financial literacy and opportunities to continue education and social growth.

Mayor's Summer Youth Employment

Norwalk, CT

Program

The program prepares youth for jobs via pre-employment workshops and matches them with employment opportunities where they can explore a profession, learn a skill, learn to navigate in a business environment, contribute to the community, and earn money.

Rensselaer County Summer Youth

Rensselaer County,

The program provides income-eligible youth with a unique opportunity to gain

Employment Program

meaningful job skills during the summer months through employment.

RochesterWorks! Summer of

Rochester, NY

RochesterWorks! is an employment and training program for youth who are still

Opportunity Program

in high school. The program is designed to provide training and employment opportunities to youth while making a direct connection to success in school.

Source: New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy 2014. Note: Information downloaded from various Internet sites.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

Ages

Program features

Youth served

Education component

Hourly wage

Hours per week

Duration (in weeks)

14–18

$7.95

4,600 in 2008

14–24

—

17,000 job opportunities

in 2013

14–21

$7.50

—

14–21

$7.25

—

1,280 in 2009

16–24

$8.00–$12.00

25–35

10,000+ in 2009

14–21

$7.25

5,144 positions in 2012

14–24

$7.25

20–25

35,957 in 2013

14–18

$8.70

—

14–19

$7.25

—

14–20

$7.25

—

6–8

845 in 2013

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

TABLE 5-A1. CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS SPREAD.

Summer Youth Employment Programs, Select Cities Program name

Location

Description

Denver, CO

This program provides career advising, mentorship, job readiness, financial

South Youth Employment Program

literacy and life skills training and work experience programs to allow students to explore long-term career interests. Workforce Partnership Summer Youth

Kansas

Employment Program (SYEP)

Funded through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, SYEP is specifically intended for low-income youth with barriers to employment. The central objective is to introduce and reinforce the demands and rewards of holding a job.

Summer Youth Employment Program

Virginia Beach, VA

The program provides jobs and workplace readiness skills to young people who often lack the skills required to obtain employment and succeed in the workplace.

Summer Youth Employment Program

Washington, DC

This program is a locally funded initiative sponsored by the Department of Employment Services (DOES) that provides District youth with enriching and constructive summer work experiences through subsidized placements in the private and government sectors.

Summer Youth Employment Program

Wilmington, DE

The Summer Youth Employment Program provides students with a summer work experience with the purpose of fostering job-related and personal skills and habits important for success in future careers.

West Hire L.A.

Los Angeles, CA

Hire L.A. is designed to emphasize real-world expectations, increase awareness of services offered by local community-based organizations, and provide opportunities for college, career, and financial literacy training.

Summer Youth Employment Program

San Francisco, CA

This program provides low-income youth with hands-on work experience, job readiness training and ongoing support through partnerships with local community-based organizations.

Seattle Youth Employment Program

Seattle, WA

During the summer, the program provides exposure to the world of work. Internships take place in a range of sectors such as health care, education, recreation, skilled trades, social services, and technology.

Source: New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy 2014. Note: Information downloaded from various Internet sites.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

Ages

Program features Hourly wage

14–21

Hours per week

Youth served

Education component

—

Duration (in weeks)

$8.00 an hour for up to 160 hours

16–24

$7.25 (in 2009)

20-30

6–8

515 in 2009

16–21

$7.25

—

14–21

$7.25

14,000+ in 2012

14–20

$7.25

150 in 2012

14–21

—

16–21

—

15–17

—

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

Appendix 5-B. Previous Youth Employment Programs Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects (YIEPP)

Summer Youth Employment Training Program (SYETP)

• Youth sixteen to nineteen, low-income, who have not yet completed high school. (Open to all teenagers in targeted communities.)

• Youth ages fourteen to twenty-one who are economically disadvantaged and of school.

• Funded by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). • 1978–81. • Program components included employment, but no training or job search assistance. • Served approximately 82,000 youth over the course of the program, 1978-1981. The YIEPP provided low-income youth age sixteen to nineteen who had had not yet graduated from high school with part-time jobs during the school year and full-time jobs during the summer in exchange for meeting academic and job-related performance standards. Specifically, to be eligible participants were required to be enrolled in high school or in a GED program. This federal program was established through the CETA, preceded JTPA, and operated from 1978 to 1981. Students participated for an average of fifty-six weeks in the program. A matched-comparison study found that the program increased employment in the short term and decreased the unemployment gap between white and African American youth, and increased school enrollment rates. The study also found that students were more likely to employed six months after the program ended (Farkas, Smith, and Stromsdorfer 1983). However, the study found no impacts on school outcomes such as high school graduation (Gueron 1984).

Policies to Address Poverty in America

• Funded by the JTPA, which repealed CETA. • 1982–97. • Program components included employment. Training in the form of remedial education was added after 1986. • Served approximately 500,000 to 700,000 youth annually. The JTPA of 1982 provided federal funds to establish programs to prepare economically disadvantaged youth and unskilled adults for employment, including funds to establish the Summer Youth Employment Training Program (SYETP). This program, operated by the U.S. Department of Labor and coordinated and regulated by states and administered by city and county governments, served youth ages fourteen to twenty-one, and was initially designed to provide shortterm financial assistance in exchange for work. Youth worked in a variety of public, nonprofit, and private sector jobs and were paid the minimum wage. In later years (after 1986), the program also included an educational component for students who were identified as needing education remediation (Doolittle et al. 1993). Although little evidence is available regarding the effectiveness of SYETP, some research suggests that the program provided jobs that would otherwise not have been available to youth (Stanley, Katz, and Krueger 1998). In addition to summer employment, approximately onethird of the population served under JTPA was economically disadvantaged out-of-school youth enrolled in year-round programs. Participants enrolled in programs for fifteen months on average, but the length of the program varied by local site. Evidence from a randomized experimental study found no effect of the program on the youth’s earnings thirty months after participants were assigned to the program Impacts also did not differ based on the type of training or job search assistance youth applicants received. The program did, however, have small positive impacts on educational attainment—obtaining a high school diploma thirty months after program assignment—for youth dropouts, particularly female youth (Bloom et al. 1997; Orr et al. 1996). An important caveat to this study is that the comparison group received nonJTPA educational services, so that the estimated impacts are not compared to receiving no program services at all.

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

Authors Jacob Leos-Urbel

Amy Ellen Schwartz

Mary Toepelt Nicolai and George S. Blair Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and Public Policy, Claremont Graduate University

Professor, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Robert F. Wagner Graduate School, New York University; Director, New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy; Daniel P. Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs, Maxwell School, Syracuse University

Jacob Leos-Urbel is the Mary Toepelt Nicolai and George S. Blair Assistant Professor in American Politics, and teaches public policy courses in the department of politics and policy at Claremont Graduate University. His research interests focus broadly on education, and on child and youth policy. Leos-Urbel’s current research evaluates the effectiveness of policies that aim to promote children’s education and development while operating outside the traditional school classroom, including after-school programs, summer youth employment, and school meals. He holds a master of public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and a doctorate in public administration from New York University’s Wagner School for Public Service. At New York University, he was an Institute for Education Sciences Pre-doctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Fellow, and conducted research at NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy. Previously, Leos-Urbel worked with the Urban Institute, Abt Associates, The After-School Corporation, and the U.S. Peace Corps.

Amy Ellen Schwartz is professor of public policy, education, and economics, and director of the New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy. She teaches courses in public finance and policy at both the Wagner School and the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Her research is primarily in applied econometrics, focusing on issues in urban policy, education policy, and public finance. Her current research in K–12 education examines the relationship between student performance and housing and neighborhood change, the role of schools and neighborhoods in shaping childhood obesity, immigration and mobility in urban schools, and the efficacy of school reforms. Her research on urban economic development has included work on Business Improvement Districts, housing investment, school choice, and investment in infrastructure, among other issues in public finance. Schwartz has published numerous articles in academic journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of Urban Economics. Her research has been supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation, National Institute of Health, Institute of Education Sciences, National Science Foundation, W. T. Grant Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, among others. Schwartz received her doctorate in economics from Columbia University.

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

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Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

Endnotes 1. The program was implemented in five cities, spanning two consecutive summers, which included summer jobs plus academic remediation and training; evaluations found short-term increases in reading and math scores, compared to a comparison group that received only jobs. 2. We address this point later in our discussion of the costs and benefits of summer jobs. 3. Seven months after the program, there were 3.7 fewer arrests per 100 participants, a 51 percent decline. 4. This study sample of youth ages fourteen to twenty-four in high crime neighborhoods included 421 participants and a comparison group of 192 eligible youth from the waiting list. 5. Funds could be spent through June 2011. The one success indicator for the program was achievement of workforce readiness goals, which was up to local sites to define (Bellotti et al. 2010). 6. An earlier SYEP was funded through the federal JTPA and administered through the U.S. Department of Labor; see appendix 5-B for more details. 7. For example, NYC’s CTE Summer Scholars summer paid internship program rewards students who have perfect attendance at the end of the program with a $500 bonus. The YIEPP improvement of school enrollment rates could be attributed to the requirement that students be enrolled in school to participate—requiring participants to be enrolled in the school year prior in order to be eligible might also provide some incentive for students to stay in school. 8. New York State also administers a 15 percent ceiling for NYC SYEP administrative costs. 9. For example, NYC’s SYEP allocates between $300 and $700 per participant for educational services, depending on the type of youth and intensity of services offered. 10. For example, NYC’s Conditional Cash Transfer program offered high school students a $600 incentive for each Regents exam passed, but yielded no significant effect (Riccio et al. 2013). 11. To give a sense of magnitudes of the costs of crime, McCollister, French, and Fang (2010) estimate the societal cost of household burglary at $6,169 in tangible costs and $321 in intangible costs, totaling $6,462; vandalism is valued at $4,860 in tangible costs, with no intangible costs.

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12. Focusing on youth still enrolled in school, summer employment only, and including training closely connected to the youth’s employment experiences separates this proposed program from prior less-effective federal youth employment programs. For example, the youth employment initiatives funded by the 1982 JTPA targeted out-of-school youth who are likely difficult to reach without intensive services and time and had limited effects on participants (Bloom et al. 1997). The YIEPP, a federal program operating under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) that preceded JTPA and targeted in-school youth, had small positive impacts on school enrollment rates (Farkas, Smith, and Stromsdorfer 1983). YIEPP did not, however, provide training or job search assistance to students, and we believe that a program that provides these connections has the potential to provide greater benefits. (More details about these programs can be found in appendix 5-B.)

Amy Ellen Schwartz, Jacob Leos-Urbel

References Bellotti, Jeanne, Linda Rosenberg, Samina Sattar, Andrea Mraz Esposito, and Jessica Ziegler. 2010. “Reinvesting in America’s Youth: Lessons from the 2009 Recovery Act Summer Youth Employment Initiative.” Mathematica Policy Research, Washington, DC. Bloom, Howard S., Larry L. Orr, Stephen H. Bell, George Cave, Fred Doolittle, Winston Lin, and Johannes M. Bos. 1997. “The Benefits and Costs of JTPA Title II-A Programs: Key Findings from the National Job Training Partnership Act Study.” Journal of Human Resources 32 (3): 549–76. Bureau of Labor Statistics. n.d. “CPS Tables.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Washington, DC. http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables. htm. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Various years. “Current Population Survey: Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population by Age, Sex, and Race, 2003–2012.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, DC. Castleman, Benjamin L., Karen Arnold, and Katherine Lynk Wartman. 2012. “Stemming the Tide of Summer Melt: An Experimental Study of the Effects of Post-High School Summer Intervention on Low-Income Students’ College Enrollment.” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 5 (1): 1–17. Curnan, Susan P., and Andrew B. Hahn. 2010. “Innovating Under Pressure: The Story of the 2009 Recovery Act Summer Youth Employment Initiative.” Center for Youth and Communities, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Dee, Thomas S. 2011. “Conditional Cash Penalties in Education: Evidence from the Learnfare Experiment.” Economics of Education Review 30 (5): 924–37. Deming, David J., Sarah Cohodes, Jennifer Jennings, and Christopher Jencks. 2013. “School Accountability, Postsecondary Attainment and Earnings.” Working Paper 19444, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Doolittle, Fred, Steve Bell, Howard Bloom, George Cave, James Kemple, Larry Orr, Linda Traeger, and John Wallace. 1993. “A Summary of the Design and Implementation of the National JTPA Study.” MDRC, New York, NY. Entwisle, Doris R., Karl L. Alexander, and Linda Steffel Olson. 2000. “Early Work Histories of Urban Youth.” American Sociological Review 65 (2). Farkas, George, D. Alton Smith, and Ernst W. Stromsdorfer. 1983. “The Youth Entitlement Demonstration: Subsidized Employment with a School Requirement.” Journal of Human Resources 28 (4) 557–73. Foster, E. Michael. 1995. “Why Teens Do Not Benefit from Work Experience Programs: Evidence from Brother Comparisons.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 14 (3): 393–414.

Greenberg, David H., Charles Michalopoulus, and Philip K. Robins. 2003. “A Meta-Analysis of Government-Sponsored Training Programs.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 57 (1): 31–53. Gueron, Judith M. 1984. “Lessons from a Job Guarantee: The Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects.” MDRC, New York, NY. Heckman, James. 1998. “What Should Be Our Human Capital Investment Policy?” Fiscal Studies 19 (2): 103–19. Heller, Sara. 2014. “The Effects of Summer Jobs on Disadvantaged Youth.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Hirsch, Barton J., Larry V. Hedges, JulieAnn Stawicki, and Megan A. Mekinda. 2011. “After-School Programs for High School Students: An Evaluation of After School Matters.” Manuscript, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Leos-Urbel, Jacob. Forthcoming. “What Is a Summer Job Worth? The Causal Impact of Summer Youth Employment on Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Large-Scale Lottery.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Lillydahl, Jane H. 1990. “Academic Achievement and Part-Time Employment of High School Students.” Journal of Economic Education 21 (3): 307–16. McClanahan, Wendy S., Cynthia L. Sipe, and Thomas J. Smith. 2004. “Enriching Summer Work: An Evaluation of the Summer Career Exploration Program.” Public/Private Ventures, New York, NY. McCollister, Kathryn E., Michael T. French, and Hai Fang. 2010. “The Cost of Crime to Society: New Crime-Specific Estimates for Policy and Program Evaluation.” Drug Alcohol Dependence 108 (1–2): 98–109. Morisi, Teresa L. 2010. “The Early 2000s: A Period of Declining Teen Summer Employment Rates.” Monthly Labor Review, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, Washington, DC. Mortimer, Jeylan T. 2003. Working and Growing Up in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy. 2014. Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University, New York, NY. http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/iesp/. Orr, Larry L., Howard S. Bloom, Stephen H. Bell, Fred Doolittle, and Winston Lin. 1996. Does Training for the Disadvantaged Work? Evidence from the National JTPA Study. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Painter, Matthew A. 2010. “Get a Job and Keep It! High school Employment and Adult Wealth Accumulation.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 28 (2): 233–49. Rees, Albert. 1986. “An Essay on Youth Joblessness.” Journal of Economic Literature 24 (1): 613–28. Riccio, James A., Nadine Dechausay, David M. Greenberg, Cynthia Miller, Zawadi Rucks, and Nandita Verma. 2010. “Toward Reduced Poverty across Generations: Early Findings from New York City’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program.” MDRC, New York, NY.

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Proposal 5: Expanding Summer Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Youth

Riccio, James A., Nadine Dechausay, Cynthia Miller, Stephen Nuñez, Nandita Verma, Edith Yang. 2013. “Conditional Cash Transfers in New York City: The Continuing Story of the Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards Demonstration.” MDRC, New York, NY. Rose, Heather. 2005. “Do Gains in Test Scores Explain Labor Market Outcomes?” Economics of Education Review 25 (2006): 430–46. Ruhm, Christopher J. 1995. “The Extent and Consequences of High School Employment.” Journal of Labor Research 16 (3): 293–303. Schwartz, Amy E., Jacob Leos-Urbel, Megan Silander, and Matthew Wiswall. In progress. “Making Summer Matter. The Impact of Youth Employment on Academic Performance.” Stanley, Marcus, Lawrence Katz, and Alan Krueger. 1998. “Developing Skills: What We Know about the Impacts of American Employment and Training Programs on Employment, Earnings, and Educational Outcomes.” Paper presented at G8 Economic Summit, Birmingham, UK. Sum, Andrew, Ishwar Khatiwada, Joseph McLaughlin, and Sheila Palma. 2008. “The Collapse of the National Teen Job Market and the Case for an Immediate Summer and Year Round Youth Jobs Creation Program.” Center for Labor Market Studies Publications, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Sum, Andrew, Mykhaylo Trubskyy, and Walter McHugh. 2013. “The Summer Employment Experiences and the Personal/ Social Behaviors of Youth Violence Prevention Employment Program Participants and Those of a Comparison Group Center for Labor Market Studies.” Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, MA. U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. “Table 2-32: New York: Total Voting-Age Population and Citizen Voting-Age Population by Sex, for Counties: 2000.” 2005–2009 American Community Survey 5 year estimates. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. Walker, Gary, and Frances Vilella-Velez. 1992. “Anatomy of a Demonstration: The Summer Training and Education Program (STEP) from Pilot through Replication and PostProgram Impacts.” Public/Private Ventures, Philadelphia, PA. Weinstein, Meryle, and Michele C. Leardo. 2013. “CTE Summer Scholars Program: Year 2 Evaluation Report.” IESP Evaluation Report, IESP, New York University, New York, NY.

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SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 6: Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education Bridget Terry Long Harvard Graduate School of Education

Introduction A postsecondary education confers numerous benefits both to the individual and to society, including higher earnings, lower rates of unemployment and government dependency, an increased tax base, and greater civic engagement. Access to higher education remains a challenge for many families, however. In 2010, approximately 82 percent of students from high-income families attended college in comparison to only 52 percent of students from low-income families (National Bureau of Economic Research n.d.).1 There are also large differences in rates of college completion by income: among students who met a minimum standard of being academically qualified for college, 89 percent of high-income students completed a bachelor’s degree within eight years, whereas only 59 percent of low-income students did so (Adelman 2006). There are many barriers to college access and success. One major barrier is affordability, as college prices and student debt levels have risen to alarming heights. For many students, however, academic preparation may be an equally formidable barrier to postsecondary education. This is not due to college selectivity—about 80 percent of four-year colleges and nearly all two-year colleges have little to no admissions requirements. Instead, students are required to pass academic placement tests and demonstrate sufficient readiness for postsecondary study. Those who do not pass are placed into remedial or developmental courses. Estimates suggest that more than one-third of all first-year students take some form of remedial coursework in either

English or mathematics, but this figure can be as high as 60 or 70 percent of students at some institutions (Bettinger, Boatman, and Long 2013; Complete College America 2012; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES] 2003).2 Students placed into remedial or developmental programs are most often held back from taking college-level courses, and as a result, remediation has effectively become the gateway (or barricade) to postsecondary-level training.3 While the aim of remedial and developmental courses is to provide academically underprepared students with the skills they need to succeed in college and in the labor market, being placed into the courses also has important implications for a student’s higher-education prospects. Students are forced to pay college-level prices for high school–level courses; there are also large government subsidies at stake given federal funding and state appropriations that subsidize college costs and operating budgets. Time spent in remediation can also delay completion of a postsecondary degree. Credits earned from remedial courses often do not count toward a student’s degree. Thus, it takes students longer to complete their studies, and this increases the chances that a disruption will derail them from progressing. The extended time needed to obtain a degree could also affect a student’s financial aid, as a student’s eligibility for aid may expire; students who need to complete significant remediation could run out of financial support before being able to finish. Unfortunately, research suggests that remediation programs do not do a good job of improving students’ outcomes. When comparing similar students in and out of remediation, some The Hamilton Project • Brookings

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Proposal 6: Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education

researchers have found small positive effects, but most of the research suggests no long-term effects—or even negative effects—from being placed into a remedial or developmental course (Bettinger and Long 2009; Boatman and Long 2010; Calcagno and Long 2008; Martorell and McFarlin 2011). While there are still unanswered questions about how the effects differ by type of student, most researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have concluded that the current remedies we have to address the fact that so many students are academically underprepared for college are not sufficient, and may in fact involve serious costs for students, institutions, and taxpayers. There is ongoing debate about the best way to address students’ academic needs. Many states are confronting questions about who should deliver remediation and how it should be offered. Some are considering ways to limit the courses, shift their locations, or pass on the costs of the courses to students or school districts. While states lament the need for remediation and debate how to manage it, however, most of the current policy efforts do not focus on how to improve programs or help students avoid remediation altogether. This policy memo offers three key recommendations for better addressing the academic preparation problem with the hope of improving rates of college success. The recommendations focus on actions that could be taken by states, university systems, and school districts. The federal government could also play an important role by creating incentives for states and institutions to address these issues or by supporting a central organization with the purpose of providing guidance on best practices to states and institutions. This proposal’s recommendations are as follows: 1. Improve placement in college remediation classes. Improving how students’ academic preparation levels are assessed is the first step in better tailoring supports for their needs. Better assessment is also necessary to reduce the number of students who are incorrectly placed into remediation due an opaque process or bad testing day. 2. Provide better college remediation services. By using technology, support services, and innovative pedagogies, remediation programs could do a much better and faster job in helping to prepare students for future success with collegelevel material. Several states are already experimenting with promising practices, including combining basicskill attainment with college-level coursework, and using learning technology to better target students’ needs. 3. Adopt measures to prevent the need for remediation. Several states are encouraging students to take college readiness assessments in high school so that they can use this early information to make better course selections 2

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and avoid remediation altogether. Working to better align curricula and strengthen links between K–12 and higher education could also improve the likelihood that students are academically prepared for college.

The Challenge BACKGROUND: POSTSECONDARY REMEDIATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Multiple studies point to the fact that high school graduates are often not academically prepared for college. Some estimates suggest that only about one-quarter of high school graduates complete a rigorous academic curriculum (NCES 2010).4 While academic preparation is a problem for many students, it is a problem that especially affects low-income and minority students. According to Greene and Foster (2003), only 32 percent of students leave high school at least minimally prepared for college, and the proportion is much smaller for African-American and Hispanic students (20 and 16 percent, respectively).5 Low levels of academic preparation are the result of poor course selection, lack of academic rigor, and a limited supply of advanced courses at some schools. In addition, the lack of alignment between the K–12 and postsecondary education systems frequently results in confusing messages about how and what students should do to enter and succeed in college (Venezia, Kirst, and Antonio 2003). Although many underprepared high school students will fail to continue their educations, the large proportion of those who enter higher education will be placed into remediation. A substantial number of adult students, including recent immigrants and workers displaced by structural shifts in the labor market, also enroll in remedial and developmental courses. Traditionally, the purpose of remedial or developmental education has been to address whatever was missed in high school (Education Commission of the States 2012). Nonselective public institutions provide the bulk of remediation, with rates being highest at two-year colleges (Bettinger and Long 2009). The need for remediation is established based on an exam or assessment taken when the student first arrives on campus. Colleges then assign students to a specific course level based on their scores on the placement test as well as, possibly, high school courses and grades. Placement into mathematics remediation is more common than placement into English (i.e., reading and/or writing) remediation, but participation in English remediation may be a more serious concern as some evidence suggests that reading and writing deficiencies have more-negative effects on a student’s college success (Bailey, Jeong, and Cho 2010; Bettinger and Long 2009; McCabe 2001).

Bridget Terry Long

The vast majority of institutions require students to complete their remedial courses before they are allowed to enroll in college-level courses (NCES 2003). For students in need of multiple remedial courses, this could mean more than a year of coursework before progressing to actual college-level material. Although remedial courses are offered for credit and count toward a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall GPA, remedial courses rarely count toward graduation requirements (Bettinger and Long 2007). As such, remediation becomes a costly investment incurred by students, institutions, and the government. Although estimates vary depending on the source, they all suggest that remediation is expensive in multiple ways and for multiple stakeholders. Alliance for Excellent Education (2006) estimated that the cost of the delivery of remediation nationwide totaled $1.4 billion in the form of direct costs to students and institutions. Further costs would result from the lost earning potential of those remedial students who drop out of college without completing a degree. Another study estimated the annual cost of remediation to be between $1.9 and $2.3 billion at community colleges and another $500 million at four-year colleges (Strong American Schools 2008), while yet another study estimates that states and students spent more than $3 billion on remedial courses in 2011 (Complete College America 2012). The most recent estimate suggests that the national direct cost of remediation is actually as high as $7 billion annually (Scott-Clayton, Crosta, and Belfield 2012). This estimate does not account for the opportunity cost of time for students enrolled.6 EVIDENCE OF THE PROBLEM AND THE CURRENT POLICY DEBATES

Most current models of remediation are not working well: students placed into remediation are far less likely to persist and graduate from college. Fewer than 50 percent of students referred to remediation actually complete the entire sequence. This percentage is even lower for men, older students, AfricanAmerican students, part-time students, and students in vocational programs. The students assigned to the lowest levels of math remediation are the least likely to advance into college-level courses, with only 10 percent of this group ever completing a college-level math course (Bailey, Jeong, and Cho 2010). While disconcerting, these statistics on completion tell only part of the story. Longer-term educational outcomes, such as total credit accumulation and degree completion, are also much lower for students placed into remediation (Adelman 2006; Bailey 2009; Bettinger and Long 2005; Complete College America 2012). This fact alone is not evidence that remedial programs do not work, however. Since students who are placed

in remedial courses have lower levels of preparation than those who are not placed into remediation, one would expect remedial students to be less likely to persist and complete a degree even in the absence of a remediation program. The key to understanding whether remedial programs work is to compare students with similar preparation levels. The results are mixed when new data sources that compare similar students are used to study the effects of remediation on student outcomes. For example, Bettinger and Long (2009) examine the effects of remediation in Ohio and conclude that remedial students at Ohio colleges were more likely to persist in college and complete a bachelorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree than students with similar test scores and backgrounds who were not required to take the courses. In contrast, focusing on Florida, Calcagno and Long (2008) suggest that remediation might promote early persistence in college, but it does not necessarily help community college students make long-term progress toward a degree. In Texas, Martorell and McFarlin (2011) find that remediation programs had little effect on persistence, degree completion, or a range of other educational outcomes. They also find no effect on labor-market earnings. It is important to note that much of this research focuses on students just on the margin of needing remedial courses (i.e., students who either need one remedial course or go directly into college-level work). Far less is known about the effectiveness of remediation in helping students with greater academic needs, though there is some suggestive evidence that more-intensive remediation can have positive effects (Boatman and Long 2010). Even with an incomplete and mixed understanding of whether remediation works or how to improve it, this is a critical time in terms of remediation policy. In several states, including Indiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee, four-year institutions are prohibited from offering remedial education and are expected to make arrangements with community colleges to handle the remediation of students accepted for admission (Long and Boatman 2013). The shifting of remediation to only community colleges could have important repercussions on student success because community colleges receive far less in funding, and transfer rates to four-year institutions are low due to numerous structural and financial barriers (Long and Kurlaender 2009). In addition, there has been a general increase in admissions standards at many institutions to screen out less-prepared students. In some cases, academic deficiencies are so severe that colleges choose to expel new students rather than remediate them.7 Other states and institutions are considering how to control the costs of remediation. Some limit the percent of students who need remedial courses that can be accepted by an institution, while others limit the amount of time students

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have to complete remediation or the number of times they can repeat a remedial course. For example, students who do not meet the minimum standards for college-level work within the University of Georgia system are placed into Learning Support classes. Students may only take one Learning Support class in English language arts and have only two attempts to pass the course. In terms of math, students can take up to two Learning Support classes and must pass these courses within three attempts, with no appeals (Georgia Board of Regents 2010). In 2012, at least seven states restricted or eliminated state funding for remedial courses at some of their four-year colleges, thereby forcing these institutions to fund remedial courses strictly through the use of tuition and fees (Smith 2012). The policy decisions of where to allow remediation and whether to limit it in some way have huge implications for access to college-level training and for whether attending college is truly an avenue out of poverty. If the goal is to improve educational attainment and skill levels, as well as reduce government dependency, then states and institutions should carefully consider how to govern and provide remediation (Long 2012). As described below, better placement policies, improved services, and initiatives to reduce the need for remediation would significantly help address this major barrier to postsecondary education.

A New Approach Given that remediation often acts as a major barrier—instead of as a gateway—to postsecondary education for many students, this memo offers three key recommendations for improving remediation services, and thus rates of college completion. States, university systems, school districts, and even the federal government could take up and encourage any or all of the following steps for improving the remediation system and for ultimately removing its need altogether. IMPROVE PLACEMENT IN COLLEGE REMEDIATION CLASSES

Improving how students’ academic preparation levels are assessed is the first step in better tailoring remediation supports for their needs. Rather than a single remediation placement exam, one alternative for determining a student’s college readiness is to use multiple measures, including information about a student’s high school GPA, courses taken, and/or years since high school graduation. Currently, there is wide variation in what colleges use to assess students and what thresholds they use to determine who should be in remediation. Most colleges and universities use some

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kind of standardized placement exam to assign students to remedial or developmental courses (Hughes and Scott-Clayton 2010).8 Typically, administrators make these designations based on hard cutoffs—students scoring below a given threshold are assigned to a remedial course. In fact, Parsad, Lewis, and Greene (2003) found that the two-year colleges where remediation is particularly concentrated almost exclusively use brief, standardized tests administered to new students just prior to registration to determine who should be placed into remediation. The strong reliance on a single exam is fraught with problems, however, and high-stakes placement exams are poor predictors of college readiness (Complete College America 2012). Moreover, misplacing students who do not actually need remediation into these courses can have a discouraging effect on college enrollment and persistence (Scott-Clayton and Rodriguez 2012). There is increasing attention to the fact that the diagnostic value of remediation placement exams may be limited. Examining multiple contexts, researchers have found repeatedly that placement tests do not yield strong predictions of how students will perform in college. For example, Scott-Clayton (2012) examines data on over 42,000 first-time students at a large, urban, community college system to determine the predictive validity of one of the most commonly used remediation assessments. Her analysis suggests that one-quarter to onethird of students assigned to remedial classes based on test scores alone could have passed college-level classes with a grade of B or better.9 Looking at two large community college systems, Scott-Clayton, Crosta, and Belfield (2012) find that approximately one in four and one in three test takers in math and English, respectively, are severely misassigned under current test-based policies. They conclude that more students are incorrectly assigned into remediation than are incorrectly passed on to college-level coursework. There is, however, an easy way to improve student placement: in addition to test scores, institutions could use information about a student’s high school GPA, courses taken, and years since high school graduation. Scott-Clayton (2012) argues that incorporating these multiple measures could reduce what she defines as “severe misplacements” by 15 percent. This could have the added effect of reducing the remediation rate by 8 to 12 percentage points while still maintaining or increasing success rates in college-level courses. Focusing on a different set of colleges, Scott-Clayton, Crosta, and Belfield (2012) come to a similar conclusion: using information from a student’s high school transcript, either instead of or in addition to placement-test scores, would substantially reduce the number of students placed into courses incorrectly. Most importantly they conclude, “If institutions

Bridget Terry Long

took account of students’ high school performance, they could remediate substantially fewer students without lowering success rates in college-level courses.” Findings like this have increasingly led states and university systems to reevaluate their placement policies. Given the importance of high school preparation in predicting college success, it is not entirely surprising that taking into account information about high school course-taking and performance would improve placement decisions, and the potential benefits are large. The surprising fact is that high school grades and coursework are not already widely utilized as screening tools for many institutions (Belfield and Crosta 2012; Scott-Clayton 2012). This is a completely feasible policy, however, as demonstrated by the fact that some schools and systems already engage in the practice. The costs, beyond some additional staff attention, are predicted to be small, especially in comparison to the potential cost savings of avoiding unnecessary classes. In addition to better placement, there are also calls to do a better job diagnosing students’ specific needs to better match them with appropriate resources. The major remediation placement exams contain multiple parts that could be used to pinpoint the exact needs of students. Using the full value of these assessments to get a better sense of a student’s specific weaknesses could result in improved matching of students with effective resources and supports, along the lines of those described in the second recommendation. PROVIDE BETTER COLLEGE REMEDIATION SERVICES

The second key step is for states and institutions to collaborate on systems that provide better remediation services and supports. Currently, the primary effect of remediation appears to be diversionary: students simply take remedial courses instead of college-level courses, but the research suggests the remedial courses are doing little to improve student skills on average (Scott-Clayton and Rodriguez 2012). Given the growing number of students in need of remediation and the small, mixed results about whether students achieve academic success from these courses, an increasing number of institutions are beginning to rethink the ways that they offer and teach their remedial and developmental courses. I propose promoting the use of innovative pedagogies, technology, and support services to better equip students academically. Such methods could also help to streamline the pathway through remediation to increase the proportion of students who complete remedial courses and progress to higher-level academic work (Edgecombe 2011; Zachry and Schneider 2011).

Redesigning developmental courses could take a number of forms. Some states and institutions have focused on interventions that accelerate progress through remedial courses by mainstreaming students into college-level courses while also providing additional supports, such as tutoring, advising, or targeted sections outside of class. Other programs combine basic-skill courses with college-level coursework in a coordinated fashion. Still other programs have focused on using technology and/or targeted teaching modules to reduce the content students are required to complete. Such programs allow for more customization and personalization based on diagnostic assessments. Table 6-1 summarizes some of the major state and system efforts. For example, the Community College of Baltimore County has the Accelerated Learning Program, which places students who placed into upper-level English developmental courses into the first college-level composition course instead. It then requires the student to co-enroll in a support section taught by the same instructor. Cho and colleagues (2012) find that the program significantly increased the rate of completion in the first and the second college-level composition classes within three years. Such programs do not appear to reduce the percent of students who pass their college-level courses. Edgecombe and colleagues (2012) find that students at another school who elected to use an accelerated pathway into collegelevel work had passage rates at or above students who first took developmental education courses. Complete College America (2012) has also concluded that this is a promising approach; they suggest that students with few academic deficiencies should be placed in college-level courses with corequisite built-in supports such as just-in-time tutoring and required self-paced computer labs. In addition to the Community College of Baltimore County, other institutions that have initiated similar programs include the University of Maryland at College Park, Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, and Texas State University–San Marcos. A program that combines basic-skills attainment with collegelevel coursework is the state of Washington’s Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program. In the I-BEST program, remedial instructors and collegelevel faculty jointly teach courses that combine basic-skills attainment with college-level material. Using this approach, the students gain their basic skills through job training. Evaluations of the I-BEST program show higher rates of credit accumulation among recipients over time, as well as higher rates of persistence to the second year (Jenkins, Zeidenberg, and Kienzl 2009). The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY) is another example The Hamilton Project • Brookings

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TABLE 6-1.

Possible Approaches to Redesigning Remediation Definition

Examples

Effects

Accelerated Learning Program, Community College of Baltimore County (Maryland): This program allows students to take the first college-level composition course and co-enroll in a support session.

Participation in the program increased the completion rate of college-level composition classes within three years.

Austin Peay State University (Tennessee): This program offers enhanced sections of two core college-level courses and linked them to Structured Learning Assistance workshops.

Students exposed to redesigned developmental courses had more positive outcomes than similar students not in remediation or in traditional remediation.

Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training Program (I-BEST) (State of Washington): Remedial instructors and college-level faculty jointly teach courses that combine basic-skills attainment with college-level material.

Recipients had higher rates of credit accumulation and higher rates of persistence to the second year.

Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), City University of New York (New York): ASAP links developmental courses with other college-level courses and provides supplemental supports to the classes; it requires students to attend full-time.

ASAP students were 66 percent more likely to complete an Associate degree.

Learning Communities, Kingsborough Community College (New York): This program organizes students into cohorts that take paired remedial and college-level courses.

Students in the learning community moved more quickly through their developmental requirements, enrolled in and passed more courses, and earned more credits in their first semester.

Mainstreaming Place students into college-level courses and provide additional supports (e.g., tutoring, special sections, and advising).

Linked remedial and college-level courses Combine remedial courses with collegelevel coursework in a coordinated fashion.

Technology-enhanced learning and modularization Use assessments to determine studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; specific needs and have targeted, short modules designed to address those needs.

Emporium Models: In this program, students move at their own pace through online tutorials with support from teaching assistants.

Descriptive trends suggest students are more likely to complete developmental and collegelevel courses.

Sources: Boatman 2012; Cho et al. 2012; Jenkins, Zeidenberg, and Kienzl 2009; Scrivener and Weiss 2013; Sommo et al. 2012; Twigg 2011.

of a promising program that links developmental courses with other college-level courses and provides supplemental supports to those classes. In their evaluation of the effects of ASAP on student outcomes, Scrivener and Weiss (2013) describe the program as requiring students to attend 6

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college full-time and providing them with a rich array of supports for three years, including tuition waivers, free use of textbooks, block-scheduled classes, enhanced advising, career services, and free subway cards for transportation. Their evaluation found that after two years, ASAP increased

Bridget Terry Long

the proportion of developmental education students who completed an Associate degree by 5.7 percentage points, an increase of 66 percent. Other redesign efforts focus on changing the traditional structure of a remediation course, which is typically a fifteenweek, semester-long lecture or seminar format in which a student takes one remedial course in a given subject before moving on to the next course in the sequence. Institutions are experimenting with incorporating learning technology such as self-directed learning labs and online-learning models, and with using high-tech classrooms (Epper and Baker 2009). These newer models of remediation attempt to better target students’ academic needs and help them to move more quickly through their remedial courses. Emporium models are an increasingly popular strategy that aims to help students complete their remediation faster. With this approach, students typically attend class in a computer lab and move at their own pace through online tutorials. Students not requiring much help might move through the material in a few weeks, while other students could take multiple semesters. Students have access to teaching assistants to help them as they complete the modules, and professors track their progress (Boatman 2014). Descriptive trends suggest students are more likely to complete developmental and college-level courses using this approach, and that they do so at a lower cost (Twigg 2011), but more research is needed. Texas is currently engaged in such an effort. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is working with the College Board to develop a diagnostic testing system that informs students not only of their placement, but also of what specifically they do not understand about the material. As profiled by Boatman (2014), students who receive the diagnostic will be required to take only the modules addressing their specific academic needs. Many of the examples noted above demonstrate what could be done at the institutional level to redesign remediation programs, yet several reform efforts involve state policies and higher-education systems. For example, in 2007–8, the Tennessee Board of Regents implemented a redesign of remediation that initially involved six campuses. While the details of each institution’s redesign effort differed, they focused on using learning technology, both in and out of the classroom, to enable students to work at their own pace and focus their attention specifically on the particular skills in which they were deficient. Boatman (2012) concludes that students exposed to these redesigned developmental mathematics courses had more positive outcomes than similar students from both nonredesign institutions and from prior cohorts at the same institutions.

Overall, these cases demonstrate that redesigning remediation programs can take many different forms. The costs of these innovations and redesigns are currently being documented, and they will depend on several factors, including the number of students served as well as the costs of instruction and supplemental supports. It will also be important to distinguish between the initial costs entailed to establish a new program, which might include investments in technology, and the longrun costs of having a new program. However, these costs must be compared to the benefits gained and to the current level of expenditure. ADOPT MEASURES TO PREVENT THE NEED FOR REMEDIATION

The final recommendation is for high schools, highereducation institutions, and states to adopt measures with the aim of preventing the need for remediation altogether. Indeed, the need for remediation in college is closely tied to a student’s high school curriculum. A study by the Ohio Board of Regents (2002) finds that students who had completed an academic core curriculum in high school were half as likely to need remediation in college compared to students without this core, and other research also emphasizes the importance of academic preparation in high school for success in college. Numerous studies link the courses students take in high school to their performance in higher education (Attewell and Domina 2008; Long, Conger, and Iatarola 2012). For example, Adelman (1999) tracked a cohort of students and found that their academic backgrounds, as measured by their high school curriculum, academic intensity, class rank, and GPA, were the most critical factors in determining college enrollment and success. In a later update, Adelman (2006) finds that students differ significantly in the types of courses they take by background. He concludes that a high school curriculum is becoming even more compelling in terms of its role in degree completion. Completion of a high school core curriculum does not ensure that a student will avoid remediation in college, however. Upon enrolling in college, students are often surprised to learn they need to take such courses. Many students and families believe that meeting high school graduation requirements will adequately prepare them for college. But to avoid remedial college coursework, students often need to take a more-rigorous and more-demanding secondary school curriculum than that required by the district or state. Poor alignment between the K–12 and postsecondary education systems results in confusion about how and what students should do to be able to enter and succeed in college (Venezia, Kirst, and Antonio 2003).

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 6: Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education

The use of college placement exams as early diagnostic tools in high school is one promising policy aimed at better connecting student high school preparation with the requirements of postsecondary courses. For example, several states administer to younger students the same remediation placement test that is ordinarily given to college freshmen. Most often this testing is done in tenth or eleventh grade. Such tests are designed to improve college-preparatory information for high school students and to encourage those who fall short to take additional coursework in their senior year. With assistance from teachers, counselors, and parents, students can then determine what courses to take while they are still in high school in order to avoid college remediation. Several states have experimented with early-testing policies, including California, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oklahoma.10 As shown by their examples, state-level early placement testing policies can take a variety of forms. The tests used range from standardized tests, (e.g., ACT’s Plan) to exams closely resembling those that colleges give to entering freshmen (e.g., Computerized Adaptive Placement Assessment and Support Systems [COMPASS] and ACCUPLACER). The timing also varies among existing programs: some policies target high school juniors, while others test high school sophomores or even eighth graders (Long and Riley 2007). The design and structure of a program, as well as the policies developed beyond the test to support the program’s intentions of giving early diagnostic information, are key dimensions that could affect whether the policy has its intended impact. For instance, a program that is not mandatory and requires a high school or teacher to opt into the program to participate may not reach many of the students who would benefit. Moreover, research suggests that taking a test and receiving a score report falls short of providing many students with a clear signal. Students must be supported after the test with counseling to encourage additional course enrollments. It may even be necessary to develop new courses and pathways to fill gaps. The experience of California with its Early Assessment Program (EAP) is informative for other states and highereducation systems. The California EAP aims to provide high school juniors with information about their academic readiness for coursework at California State University campuses. After the test in eleventh grade, interventions are developed for the student to pursue during twelfth grade. The EAP also includes professional development for teachers. An evaluation of the program found that participation in the EAP reduced a student’s probability of needing remediation in college by 6.2 percentage points in English and 4.3 percentage points in math (Howell, Kurlaender, and Grodsky 2010). The

Policies to Address Poverty in America

authors conclude that EAP increased students’ academic preparation in high school but did not discourage poorly prepared students from applying to college. This research suggests the promise of early assessment programs in reducing the need for remediation. Another state involved in a large-scale early testing initiative is Tennessee. In 2013, more than one hundred high schools in the state offered the Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support program. This program identifies high school juniors who are on track to need college remediation, and allows them, while they are still in high school, to complete the same remedial math course they would eventually have needed to take in college (Boatman 2014). The summer before college matriculation is another important time when students could try to address their academic needs and avoid remediation. Summer bridge programs can take many forms, from trying to enhance study skills to giving students the opportunity to begin their coursework. The California State University system has the Early Start policy, which requires incoming first-time freshmen who are not college-ready to begin their remediation during the summer before enrolling (Reed 2010). Similarly, the CUNY Start program has students spend the semester before beginning college taking a developmental course. Logue and Mogulescy (2013) finds that the program has been successful in helping students avoid remedial courses once enrolled in comparison to a similar group of students who did not enroll in the program. Other institutions have targeted students during the summer before registration with tips and resources to help them prepare for the remediation placement exam. For example, Santa Monica College offers an online orientation to its placement test, which explains the content and format of the test and offers tips on how to best prepare. In a similar fashion, the Community College of Denver published a workbook for students to review the material on the ACCUPLACER placement exam and offered free tutoring sessions for interested students. Still another example is Guilford Technical Community College in North Carolina, which created an online course designed to prepare students to take or retake the COMPASS placement test (Quint et al. 2013). Finally, additional ways to improve prevention include strengthening the links between K–12 and higher education. This could be done by better aligning curricula and including higher-education representatives in conversations about K–12 assessments. For instance, bringing together high school English teachers with college English professors would foster smoother transitions for students. Links between the systems could also be built into K–12 accountability systems and report

Bridget Terry Long

cards. As many districts have already started to do, college enrollment rates of recent graduates could be publicized. Taking this a step farther, statistics on the placement of recent high school graduates into college remediation would be a useful way to judge secondary-school rigor and success in preparing students for college-level material. COSTS AND BENEFITS

Strengthened remedial education has the potential to improve the effectiveness of education spending. At the high school level, improved diagnostic tests can allow schools to tailor educational curricula before students even attend college, significantly reducing the need for college-level remediation. For example, as noted above, California’s EAP reduced a student’s probability of needing remediation into 6.2 percentage points in English and 4.3 percentage points in math. In addition, improved placement into college-level remedial courses can save both student and college spending on remediation. Academic evidence suggests that a large share—between one-quarter and one-third—of remedial students are misassigned to remedial courses; assigning these students to more-appropriate courses will lower educational costs and allow students to complete courses that better improve their abilities and knowledge. Better administration of remedial courses can have important impacts on educational and labor-market outcomes. Interventions aimed at improving supports for students in remedial courses—such as the state of Washington’s I-BEST program or CUNY’s ASAP program—can lead to improved college persistence and higher graduation rates. These outcomes are particularly promising for low-income and minority students who exhibit low rates of college completion. Higher rates of college completion can then translate into improved labor-market outcomes, namely higher rates of employment and elevated earnings. Depending on the nature of the intervention, better remedial education may temporarily raise spending in the implementation phase. However, even though redesigned courses and improved remedial supports will incur initial outlays, the short-term costs of starting a new program should be measured against long-term cost savings. For example, programs that reduce the need for remedial education can lead to lower overall spending over time. In addition, programs that require an initial capital investment—such as technology-based programs that require new computers and programming—will incur costs early in the development process, but these costs are expected to decline over time. In sum, improved remediation may lead to slightly higher educational outlays in the short run, but will likely lead to

cost savings for students, institutions, and taxpayers in the long run. When considering the social benefits of college education, the rewards to improved remediation seem likely to be worth the initial investment.

Questions and Concerns Is remediation worthwhile at all? If remediation is so expensive, should we just get rid of it? To eliminate remediation would be counterproductive to the goal of increasing degree attainment. As noted by Cloud (2002), doing so would “effectively end the American experiment with mass postsecondary education.” The low levels of academic preparation inherited by higher-education systems are certainly a challenge, but solutions need to be found to address the problem if the country is going to succeed in increasing educational attainment and reducing government dependency, especially among low-income individuals who might otherwise be in poverty and lack the skills necessary for advancement. Moreover, research in recent years highlights promising practices that would improve student preparation and outcomes, as well as reduce unnecessary costs. Why not just focus efforts on improving the K–12 education system? Improving the K–12 system would have benefits, but the problems facing high schools are numerous: insufficient academic rigor, a lack of alignment with postsecondary institutions, and a limited supply of advanced courses at some schools. Even if these problems were solved, the country would still have to contend with addressing the needs of older, nontraditional students, who make up approximately 40 percent of college students today. Moreover, students sometimes make poor choices about their courses, and while improving early information about college preparedness levels would help (as recommended above), some students will not decide that they need a college education until after high school. Therefore, colleges and universities need to improve their efforts to address the needs of these students. With remediation rates being as high as 70 percent at some colleges, focusing on K–12 alone will not solve the problem.

Conclusion Remediation plays an increasingly important role in the lives of students and the colleges and universities they attend. Traditional remedial courses are costly in terms of time and resources, however, and fail to improve the chances that students will be successful in college and graduate with The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 6: Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education

a credential. As a result, remediation is a major barrier to postsecondary-level training for many students, and currently the system is not designed to help students get over that hurdle. While some states debate how to manage or limit remediation, most of the current policy efforts do not focus on how to improve programs or help students avoid remediation altogether. Improving the placement process, redesigning the courses and supports, and adopting policies to help students avoid remediation, however, are three meaningful ways to improve student outcomes and increase their educational attainment. Improving placement policies by incorporating high school course-taking and performance information would reduce the chance that students are assigned to remediation incorrectly and would help schools to better target services. In addition, redesigning remediation programs with innovative pedagogies and support services in order to streamline the pathway through remediation and enhance student progress would reduce the time needed to complete the courses and improve rates of success. Finally, we could reduce the need

Policies to Address Poverty in America

for remediation by better aligning curricula and having high school students take college readiness assessments earlier so that they can make better decisions about the courses they take before entering college. Reforming remediation and better supporting the students who need it will be essential if the country is to improve educational attainment levels. Currently, 40 percent of firstyear students are placed into remediation, and most do not complete the courses or persist until they earn a credential. As the national nonprofit Complete College America highlights in its 2012 report, “Remediation: Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere,” the “broken remedial bridge is travelled by some 1.7 million beginning students each year, most of whom will not reach their destination—graduation.” Now is the time for the federal government, states, colleges, and high schools to consider the growing number of promising practices and additional supports that could improve students’ chances for educational success.

Bridget Terry Long

Author Bridget Terry Long Academic Dean and Xander Professor of Education and Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Education Bridget Terry Long is the Academic Dean and the Xander Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is also a faculty research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research affiliate of Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment. Her current projects examine the roles of information and assistance in promoting college savings, the completion of aid applications, and college enrollment. Other work examines the effects of financial aid programs and the impact of postsecondary remediation.

The Hamilton Project â&#x20AC;˘ Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 6: Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education

Endnotes 1. Low income refers to the bottom 20 percent of all family incomes, and high income refers to the top 20 percent. 2. The terms “remedial” and “developmental” are often used interchangeably in the literature because some states favor one term over the other. In this paper, both are meant to refer to the courses and services offered to postsecondary students below college level, including basic-skills training and nontraditional coursework. 3. The question as posed by Complete College America (2012) is, “Can an ‘open access’ college be truly open access if it denies so many access to its college-level courses?” 4. In 2004, the data suggest only 27 percent of high school seniors had completed high-level academic coursework, defined as four years of English, three years of mathematics (including at least one year of a course higher than Algebra II), three years of science, three years of social studies, and two years of a single non-English language (NCES 2010). 5. Greene and Foster (2003) define being minimally college ready as (1) graduating from high school after (2) having taken four years of English, three years of math, and two years each of science, social science, and foreign language; and (3) demonstrating basic literacy skills by scoring at least 265 on the reading NAEP. 6. Those authors’ estimate is based on the number of first-time degree-seeking fall enrollees and on assumptions about the percent placed in remediation, the number of remedial courses they will take, and the costs of providing a remedial course. 7. For example, according to Rebecca Trounson writing in the Los Angeles Times on January 31, 2002 (“Cal State Ouster Rate Rises Slightly”), in the fall of 2001, a California State University campus “kicked out more than 2,200 students—nearly 7 percent of the freshman class—for failing to master basic English and math skills.” 8. The most widely used placement exams are the Computerized Adaptive Placement Assessment and Support Systems (COMPASS) and the Assessment of Skills for Successful Entry and Transfer, each published by ACT, Inc., as well as the ACCUPLACER, published by the College Board. 9. Moreover, she finds that the placement exam varies in how well it predicts success in math versus English, and it does a better job predicting who is likely to succeed rather than who is likely to fail. 10. For example, see the California Early Assessment Program, Kentucky Early Mathematics Testing Program, North Carolina Early Mathematics Placement Testing Program, Oklahoma Educational Planning and Assessment System, and the Ohio Early Mathematics Placement Testing.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Bridget Terry Long

References Adelman, Clifford. 1999. “Answers in the Toolbox: Academic Intensity, Attendance Patterns, and Bachelor’s Degree Attainment.” U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC. Adelman, Clifford. 2006. “The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School through College.” U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC. Alliance for Excellent Education. 2006. “Paying Double: Inadequate High Schools and Community College Remediation.” Issue Brief, Alliance for Excellent Education, Washington, DC. Attewell, Paul, and Thurston Domina. 2008. “Raising the Bar: Curricular Intensity and Academic Performance.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 30: 51–71. Bailey, Thomas. 2009. “Challenge and Opportunity: Rethinking the Role and Function of Developmental Education in Community College.” New Directions for Community Colleges 145: 11–30. Bailey, Thomas, Dong Wook Jeong, and Sung-Woo Cho. 2010. “Referral, Enrollment, and Completion in Developmental Education Sequences in Community Colleges.” Economics of Education Review 29 (2): 255–70. Belfield, Clive, and Peter Crosta. 2012. “Predicting Success in College: The Importance of Placement Tests and High School Transcripts.” Working Paper No. 42, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Bettinger, Eric, Angela Boatman, and Bridget Terry Long. 2013. “Student Supports: Developmental Education and Other Academic Programs.” In Cecilia Rouse, Lisa Barrow, and Thomas Brock, Eds., Future of Children: Postsecondary Education in the U.S. 23 (1, Spring). Bettinger, Eric, and Bridget Terry Long. 2005. “Remediation at the Community College: Student Participation and Outcomes.” New Directions for Community Colleges 129: 17–26. ———. 2007. “Institutional Responses to Reduce Inequalities in College Outcomes: Remedial and Developmental Courses in Higher Education.” In Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence, and Success, edited by Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Ross Rubenstein, 69–100. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ———. 2009. “Addressing the Needs of Under-Prepared College Students: Does College Remediation Work?” Journal of Human Resources 44 (3, Summer). Boatman, Angela. 2012. “Evaluating Institutional Efforts to Streamline Postsecondary Remediation: The Causal Effects of the Tennessee Developmental-Course Redesign Initiative on Early Student Academic Success.” Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA. Boatman, Angela. 2014. “Beyond Ready, Fire, Aim: New Solutions to Old Problems in College Remediation.” American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC.

Boatman, Angela, and Bridget Terry Long. 2010. “Does Remediation Work for All Students? How the Effects of Postsecondary Remedial and Developmental Courses Vary by Level of Academic Preparation.” Working Paper, National Center for Postsecondary Research, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Calcagno, Juan Carlos, and Bridget Terry Long. 2008. “The Impact of Postsecondary Remediation Using a Regression Discontinuity Approach: Addressing Endogenous Sorting and Noncompliance.” Working Paper 14194, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Cho, Sung-Woo, Elizabeth Kopko, Davis Jenkins, and Shanna Smith Jaggars. 2012. “New Evidence of Success for Community College Remedial English Students: Tracking the Outcomes of Students in the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP).” Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Cloud, John. 2002. “Who’s Ready for College?” Time, October 14. Complete College America. 2012. “Remediation: Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere.” Complete College America, Washington, DC. Edgecombe, Nikki. 2011. “Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Students Referred to Developmental Education.” Working Paper No. 30, Assessment of Evidence Series, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Edgecombe, Nikki, Di Xu, Melissa, Barragan, and Shanna Smith Jaggars. 2012. “Analysis of Chabot College’s Accelerated Developmental English course.” Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Manuscript in preparation. Education Commission of the States. 2012. “Instructional Delivery.” http://gettingpastgo.org/policy-levers/instructionaldelivery/. Epper, Rhonda M., and Elaine Baker. 2009. “Technology Solutions for Developmental Math: An Overview of Current and Emerging Practices.” Report prepared for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Georgia Board of Regents. 2010. “Board of Regents Policy Manual.” Section 4.2.1.1: Freshman Admission Requirements. University System of Georgia, Atlanta, GA. Greene, Jay, and Greg Foster. 2003. “Public High School Graduation and College Readiness Rates in the United States.” Working Paper No. 3, Manhattan Institute, New York, NY. Howell, Jessica S., Michal Kurlaender, and Eric Grodsky. 2010. “Postsecondary Preparation and Remediation: Examining the Effect of the Early Assessment Program at California State University.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29 (4): 726–48. Hughes, Katherine L., and Judith Scott-Clayton. 2010. “Assessing Developmental Assessment in Community Colleges: A Review of the Literature.” Working Paper No. 19, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY.

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

SUPPORTING DISADVANTAGED YOUTH

Proposal 6: Addressing the Academic Barriers to Higher Education

Jenkins, Davis, Matthew Zeidenberg, and Gregory S. Kienzl. 2009. “Building Bridges to Postsecondary Training for Low-Skill Adults: Outcomes of Washington State’s I-BEST program.” Brief No. 42, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Logue, Alexandra W., and John Mogulescy. 2013. “CUNY Start: Analysis of Student Outcomes.” Office of Academic Affairs, City University of New York, New York, NY. Long, Bridget Terry. 2012. “Remediation: The Challenge of Helping Underprepared Students.” In Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education, edited by Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Long, Bridget Terry, and Angela Boatman. 2013. “The Role of Remediation and Developmental Courses in Access and Persistence.” In The State of College Access and Completion: Improving College Success for Students from Underrepresented Groups, edited by Anthony Jones and Laura Perna, 77–95. New York: Routledge Books. Long, Bridget Terry, and Michal Kurlaender. 2009. “Do Community Colleges Provide a Viable Pathway to a Baccalaureate Degree?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 31 (1): 30–53. Long, Bridget Terry, and Erin K. Riley. 2007. “Sending Signals to Students: The Role of Early Placement Testing in Improving Academic Preparation.” In Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It, edited by Nancy Hoffman, Joel Vargas, Andrea Venezia, and Marc S. Miller, 105–12. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press and Jobs for the Future. Long, Mark C., Dylan Conger, and Patrice Iatarola. 2012. “Effects of High School Course-Taking on Secondary and Postsecondary Success.” American Education Research Journal 49 (2): 285–322. McCabe, Robert H. 2001. “Developmental Education: A Policy Primer.” League for Innovation in the Community College 14 (1): 1–4. Martorell, Paco, and Isaac McFarlin Jr. 2011. “Help or Hindrance? The Effects of College Remediation on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes.” Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (2): 436–54. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). n.d. “Current Population Survey (CPS) Data at the NBER.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). 2003. “Remedial Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions in Fall 2000.” U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). 2010. “Academic Preparation for College in the High School Senior Class of 2003-04: Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), Base-year, 2002, First Follow-up, 2004, and High School Transcript Study, 2004.” U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC.

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Ohio Board of Regents. 2002. “Making the transition from high school to college in Ohio 2002.” Columbus, OH: Ohio Board of Regents. Parsad, Basmat, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene. 2003. “Remedial Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions in Fall 2000.” Report No. NCES 2004-101, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC. Quint, Janet, Shanna S. Jaggars, D. Crystal Byndloss, Asya Magazinnik. 2013. “Bringing Developmental Education to Scale: Lessons from the Developmental Education Initiative.” MDRC, New York, NY. Reed, Charles B. 2010. “The Early Start Program Executive Order No. 1048.” Memorandum, June 11. http://calstate.edu/eo/ EO-1048.html. Scott-Clayton, Judith. 2012. “Do High Stakes Placement Exams Predict College Success?” Working Paper No. 41, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Scott-Clayton, Judith, Peter M. Crosta, and Clive R. Belfield. 2012. “Improving the Targeting of Treatment: Evidence from College Remediation.” Working Paper 18457, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Scott-Clayton, Judith, and Olga Rodriguez. 2012. “Development, Discouragement, or Diversion? New Evidence on the Effects of College Remediation.” Working Paper 18328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Scrivener, Susan, and Michael Weiss. 2013. “Two-Year Results from an Evaluation of Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) for Developmental Education Students.” MDRC, New York, NY. Smith, Matthew. 2012. “Choosing who Delivers: The Impact of Placing Limits on the Delivery of Remedial Education at Four-Year Institutions.” Getting Past Go Project, Education Commission of the States, Denver, CO. Sommo, Colleen, Alexander K. Mayer, Timothy Rudd, and Dan Cullinan. 2012. “Commencement Day: Six Year Effects of a Freshman Learning Community Program at Kingsborough Community College.” MDRC, New York, NY. Strong American Schools. 2008. “Diploma to nowhere.” Strong American Schools, Washington, DC. Twigg, Carol. 2011. “The Math Emporium: Higher Education’s Silver Bullet.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning (May–June): 25–34. Venezia, Andrea, Michael Kirst, and Anthony Antonio. 2003. “Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K–12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations.” Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, Stanford, CA. Zachry, Elizabeth, and Emily Schneider. 2011. “Unlocking the Gate: What We Know About Improving Developmental Education.” MDRC, New York, NY.

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women Isabel Sawhill The Brookings Institution

Joanna Venator The Brookings Institution

Introduction Children born to young, unmarried mothers in the United States face an elevated risk of poverty. More than half of births last year to women under the age of thirty were outside of marriage. In 2012, single mothers headed nearly 25 percent of families, compared to 13 percent in 1970 (U.S. Census Bureau 2012). In that same year, 47 percent of children living in single-mother families lived below the federal poverty level, more than four times the 11 percent poverty rate for children living with their married parents (U.S. Census Bureau 2013). Children of single mothers fare less well in school and in life than children of married parents (see McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn 2010). For these reasons, addressing the situation into which children are born needs to be a key component in our nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fight against poverty. Most single mothers claim that their pregnancy was unwanted or mistimed. Because births to unmarried mothers are largely unintended births, we believe that the most realistic approach to slowing the growth of single-parent families is to help women delay childbearing until both parents are ready to raise a child and prepared to make a long-term commitment to the other parent. Doing so will improve child well-being and reduce child poverty rates. To that end, we propose a social marketing campaign designed to improve knowledge and attitudes about ways to prevent unintended pregnancies so that women can make better-informed decisions. Specifically, we propose that the

U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Office of Population Affairs (OPA) use Title X monies to fund states for the purpose of launching a social marketing campaign to educate women about the safety, effectiveness, and convenience of long-acting reversible contraceptives, or LARCs. These staterun campaigns would target the population of women most vulnerable to births outside of marriage: low-income women between the ages of fifteen and thirty.

The Challenge THE GROWTH OF SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES

Since about 1980, the growth of single-parent families has been driven almost entirely by an increase in childbearing outside of marriage, often the result of people sliding into relationships and having an unplanned baby.1 As seen in figure 3-1, this growth has been concentrated among less-educated women. The result is a growing class divide in family-formation patterns. Combined with growing gaps in income and in education, this widening divide in family structure threatens social mobility (Sawhill 2012; Sawhill and Venator 2014). Pregnancies and births to unmarried women are largely unplanned. Approximately half of all pregnancies in the United States are reported by the mother as unintended, and that number increases to 70 percent among single women under thirty (Zolna and Lindberg 2012).2 Unintended pregnancy rates are highest for women that are the least economically advantaged, as seen in figure 3-2. In particular, unintended The Hamilton Project â&#x20AC;˘ Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women

FIGURE 3-1.

Percent of births that are to unmarried mothers

Percent of Births to Unmarried Mothers by Education, 1970â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2012 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1970

1976

1982

Less than a HS diploma

1988

HS diploma

1994

2000

Some college

2006

2012

College degree or more

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2014; authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; calculations.

pregnancy rates for poor women (women with incomes at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty level) and low-income women (women with incomes between 100 percent and 199 percent of the federal poverty level) are more than triple the rate for women with incomes at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty level. DELAYING CHILDBIRTH AS AN ANTIPOVERTY STRATEGY

Delaying births is no guarantee that poverty will be reduced. As noted above, most of the increase in unwed childbearing is occurring among less-educated women. Given their disadvantages, they might be poor regardless of whether or not they postponed childbearing.3 For this reason, it is important to combine our proposal with measures to improve the educational and labor-market opportunities of lessadvantaged women. But we believe that delaying pregnancy is a crucial step toward improvements in child well-being and in lowered child poverty rates. Children born to young, unmarried mothers are more likely to fare worse on many dimensions, including school achievement, social and emotional development, health, and success in the labor market. These children are at greater risk of parental abuse and neglect (especially from live-in boyfriends who are not the childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biological fathers), are more likely to 2

Policies to Address Poverty in America

become teen parents, and are less likely to graduate from high school or college (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn 2010). Because unintended births are concentrated among lowincome unmarried women, reducing the number of these pregnancies would decrease the number of children born to poor single mothers. A recent paper, based on a simulation with a variety of data sources, suggests that eliminating all unwanted (but not mistimed) births would lower the share of children born into poverty by 2 percentage points and increase the percentage of children born to college-educated mothers by 4 percentage points (Karpilow et al. 2013).

A New Approach If a large proportion of less-advantaged young adults are having children as the result of unplanned pregnancies, then one way to reduce child poverty is to prevent unintended pregnancies and births. Encouraging more young women to use effective forms of birth control, especially LARCs, can help accomplish that goal. The first step in this process is to increase awareness among young women about the availability, convenience, safety, and effectiveness of these contraceptive devices through a social marketing campaign.

Isabel Sawhill, Joanna Venator

FIGURE 3-2.

Unintended Pregnancy Rates among Unmarried Women in their Twenties Number of unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women

250

200

150

100

White

African American

Hispanic

Race/Ethnicity

Did not Graduated Had some graduate high college or high school school or more equivalent

Educational attainment

Less than 100%–199% 100%

200% or more

Income relative to federal poverty level (percent)

Source: Zolna and Lindberg 2012.

To be effective, this initiative must be combined with efforts to ensure that health providers are well-informed and prepared to provide LARCs, and that there are fewer barriers to affordable health care. More community health centers and the expansion of Medicaid to all states as called for in the Affordable Care Act would help to ensure that providers could accommodate the demands of a social marketing campaign. The Affordable Care Act—with its contraceptive mandate, subsidized premiums, Medicaid expansion, and investment in community health centers—has the potential to transform the health-care landscape. However, there will likely be some groups left uncovered and gaps in coverage for others, especially in states that have so far rejected the Medicaid expansion. In the meantime, our proposal deals with a problem that will exist regardless of any successful expansion of health-insurance coverage. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LARCS

The class of contraceptive devices referred to as LARCs includes implants and intrauterine devices (IUDs).4 These have very low failure rates (<1 percent), far lower than the two most commonly used forms of contraception: condoms (18 percent) and the Pill (9 percent). According to a study in the St. Louis area that gave women free contraception and counseling on the efficacy of different contraceptive methods, women who used the Pill, a transdermal ring, or a hormonal

patch were twenty times more likely to get pregnant than were women who used a LARC (Secura et al. 2010). A LARC is roughly forty times more effective than a condom. The greater effectiveness of LARCs compared to condoms or the Pill has less to do with their ability to prevent a pregnancy—assuming full compliance with a method—and much more to do with the fact that they change the default from being protected only when the method is used consistently and correctly, to always being protected, regardless of what the user does. They are also easy to use and reversible. Once a woman and her partner decide that they want a baby, they can choose to remove the device with a quick return to the clinic. THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Health behaviors—particularly risky ones like smoking, unhealthy eating, or unprotected sex—are influenced by social norms and individual motivation. Social marketing campaigns identify these norms and the behaviors that need to be changed, and create messages tailored to reach those people engaging in risky behaviors. An effective, well-communicated message can influence behavior in a positive way. Campaigns focused on health behavior have proved effective in the past. For example, the American Legacy Foundation’s Truth campaign, aimed at reducing smoking among teens, has been credited with changing attitudes about tobacco and

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women

BOX 3-1.

Prevention First Colorado Colorado implemented the Prevention First Colorado campaign in the Denver area in 2009. The first part of the campaign involved placing health educators in a few clinics in Denver who are responsible for contraceptive education, counseling, and patient follow-up. Doctors in these clinics typically have limited time to spend with patients so these educators allow for more one-on-one time for patients and more-extensive follow-up to reduce the number of patients who use birth control inconsistently. Health educators also automatically sign up patients who are starting a new contraceptive method for a threemonth follow-up appointment in order to help them maintain consistency in use. The second part of the campaign is a public education effort, which uses direct mail, bus ads, posters, Web sites, print ads, brochures, and community presentations about the benefits and availability of contraception. The Prevention First Colorado campaign specifically focuses on encouraging the use of the LARCs and uses messages like, “Life is full of surprises, pregnancy shouldn’t be one of them” to encourage young women to go to clinics run by Women’s Health. As this campaign is still under way, evaluations of the effectiveness of the campaign are not yet available.

reducing the number of teens who smoke by 22 percent over three years (Farrelly et al. 2005). Campaigns about sexual behaviors have been less common and, until recently, have typically focused on condom use and HIV awareness. On average, these campaigns increased positive sexual behaviors among the target population (e.g., men using a condom) by as much as 6 percentage points (Evans, Silber-Ashley, and Gard 2007; Sawhill, Thomas, and Monea 2010). While 6 percent may sound small, given the broad reach of such campaigns, their cost-effectiveness is high. One approach of social marketing campaigns is to embed messages in popular television shows. An analysis of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant suggests that the message broadcast by the show (that is, the difficult reality of becoming a teen mother) led to roughly a 6 percent reduction in teen births between June 2009 and the end of 2010 (Kearney and Levine 2014). A social marketing campaign targeting unintended pregnancy would aim to produce continuous protection against pregnancy (through LARCs) since the main cause of unintended pregnancies, almost as important as nonuse, is inconsistent use. More than half (52 percent) of unintended pregnancies are due to nonuse of contraception, 43 percent are due to inconsistent or incorrect use, and only 5 percent are due to method failure (Gold et al. 2009). Within the goal of encouraging more-consistent use of contraception, the campaign would be designed around four objectives, drawing in part on lessons learned from past or ongoing campaigns in Colorado and Iowa with similar goals (see boxes 3-1 and 3-2). The first objective is to educate young women about the risks of pregnancy and to motivate them to protect against an unplanned pregnancy. The most commonly cited reason for

Policies to Address Poverty in America

not using contraception given by women in a government survey was, “I didn’t think I could get pregnant” (Mosher and Jones 2010). Other evidence suggests that many young people who have had unprotected sex and not gotten pregnant infer (incorrectly) that they cannot or will not get pregnant from subsequent sexual encounters (Frohwirth, Moore, and Maniaci 2013). Focus group research in Colorado further suggests that many women are in denial about the risks of pregnancy (Prevention First Colorado 2009). The second objective is to educate young women on contraceptive options and dispel myths surrounding contraception, especially with regard to LARCs. Despite their effectiveness, only about 9 percent of women on contraception use IUDs (Finer, Jerman, and Kavanaugh 2012). Among sexually active women aged twenty to twenty-four, about 3 percent use IUDs as their primary form of contraception, 27 percent use the Pill, 7 percent use another hormonal method (e.g., patch, injectable, or contraceptive ring), and 15 percent rely on condoms; 42 percent of sexually active women in this age group report using no contraception (Jones, Mosher, and Daniels 2012). Young women also seem to lack knowledge about the range of birth control options available to them. One-fourth of young adults have never heard of IUDs and more than half have never heard of the implant (Kaye, Suellentrop, and Sloup 2009). Even when LARCs are readily available, women do not always take advantage of them because of spurious concerns about side effects spread through word of mouth. For example, a third of young adults still mistakenly believe that IUDs often cause infections, partially because of the continued fallout from Dalkon Shield’s faulty design in the 1970s (ibid.).

Isabel Sawhill, Joanna Venator

BOX 3-2.

Avoid the Stork The Avoid the Stork campaign in Iowa, launched in early 2010, targeted women ages eighteen to thirty through television ads, billboards, print and Web ads, college events, and giveaway promotions. The campaign used humor and created a brand around the concept of avoiding unintended pregnancy: the mascot was a large, awkward stork who would interrupt a person’s life to represent the consequences of a pregnancy. Development of the campaign took approximately a year, including time to pilot test the ads among a subsample of college students. By the end of the campaign in 2011, over 70 percent of surveyed women reported having seen or heard of the campaign; Iowa has seen a 4 percentage point decline in unintended pregnancies between 2009 and 2011. (This box is based on Pederson 2012.)5

However, the latest research suggests that LARCs are safe for women of all ages, including adolescents and both pre- and post-childbearing women (Espey and Ogburn 2011; Peterson and Curtis 2005; Tolaymat and Kaunitz 2007). Some women experience negative side effects, such as perforation and infection; the likelihood of those two issues arising from an IUD today, however, is less than 0.1 percent (Hubacher et al. 2001; Stoddard, McNicholas, and Peipert 2011). Implants have similarly been found to be efficacious and safe (Darney et al. 2009). Changing the message about contraception to encompass more than just condom use or the Pill is important, and campaigns in Colorado and Iowa have already started to enlighten young women through social marketing and educational counseling. The third objective is to convince women that LARCs are not just safe and effective, but also a low-maintenance and hasslefree form of contraception, well-suited to women with busy lives. The primary problem for some women is not access to contraception, but rather their ability to use it consistently—to always use a condom in the heat of the moment, to remember to take a Pill, or to get their prescription refilled so that there are no gaps in protection. When asked why they were not using contraception, many women who had an unintended pregnancy reply, “I simply wasn’t thinking” (Edin et al. 2007). Focus group research in Colorado showed that many women often simply forget to take the Pill (Prevention First Colorado 2009). A social marketing campaign needs to persuade women that LARCs are the “no worry” and “no hassle” way to ensure that they are effectively protected against an unplanned pregnancy. It should be noted that these campaigns would not be advocating that women use LARCs as their sole method of birth control. Rather, the campaigns would emphasize LARCs’ efficacy in reducing pregnancy while also counselling that they do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). One of the benefits of the campaign model we are proposing is that it encourages women to go to clinics

to talk to trained professionals about birth control. These trained professionals would advise women on all aspects of sexual health, including the importance of continued use of condoms and regular STD testing. A fourth objective of the campaign is to make sure that once a woman is motivated to use a LARC, she will be able to easily find a clinic or health-care provider who has a supply of LARCs on hand and whose staff is trained to provide the appropriate counseling and care. Unfortunately, many physicians are not up-to-date or trained in how to provide LARCs to their patients (Dehlendrof et al. 2010; Harper et al. 2008; Madden et al. 2010). Both the Colorado and Iowa campaigns provided training to all clinic staff, and not just to physicians. The University of California, San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health is conducting a major study (2014) testing the effects of improved training for family-planning clinicians on access to and use of LARCs. Their randomized trial has been underway since 2008 and the results are not yet available, but concern about provider knowledge and training is widespread among those in the field. Although the focus here is on the social marketing campaign, we strongly recommend that any campaign be combined with efforts to make sure that providers are well-prepared when clients show up. Expanding on this effort in detail is outside the scope of the current proposal. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

For states looking to follow the models set by Iowa and Colorado, the first step would be to secure funding for a social marketing campaign. Both of these programs were created through a private–public partnership, but past campaigns (such as the Don’t Kid Yourself campaign in the 1990s; see box 3-3) have been federally funded under Title X (Weinreich 1999). We propose that the OPA set aside $100 million per year ($500 million over five years) under Title X specifically for states that intend to create social marketing campaigns to combat unintended pregnancy. Public–private partnerships would be encouraged as well. The deputy assistant secretary The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women

BOX 3-3.

Don’t Kid Yourself In 1996, six states (Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming) implemented Don’t Kid Yourself, a campaign with the goal of reducing unintended pregnancy among low-income women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. They used radio ads, newspaper ads, posters, and drink coasters in bars, clubs, and coffee shops to spread messages encouraging the use of birth control and providing information about how to get birth control at family-planning clinics. Their pilot program in two cities was a success, but when they expanded regionally to fifty-five cities in all six states, there was a much lower exposure rate—only 15 percent of the target population reported being exposed to the campaign. However, the message was somewhat successful among those it reached. Three-fourths of those exposed initiated conversations with significant others about birth control due to the campaign, and more than 55 percent of those exposed reported calling a family planning clinic for more information. (This box is based on Weinreich 1999.)

for Population Affairs would award funds on a competitive basis, with eligibility criteria adapted from current Title X guidelines. These criteria include the size and needs of the community, the number of low-income women served by a grant, the capacity of the applicant to carry out their proposal given community resources and staffing, adequacy of the applicant’s implementation plan given past research, and the relative availability of nonfederal resources within the community to be served. Some degree of market segmentation might be allowed, involving different target groups and different messages, depending on what more-detailed research showed about the needs in a particular state or area of the country. However, the OPA would provide a template based on its research and the advice of a major marketing firm on the best messages to use. This template could serve as the default in each case, but states could request deviation from the plan based on their specific needs. During the first year of this initiative, the OPA would issue requests for campaign proposals from state governments. States applying for grants would be encouraged to consult widely with various stakeholders in the state and to evaluate the specific needs of their state or region through surveys and focus groups among the target population. For example, Colorado conducted four focus groups and forty individual, private interviews with low-income women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four to better understand the perceived barriers to consistent contraceptive use among that specific population. Iowa conducted three statewide surveys, multiple focus groups, and in-depth interviews around the state to understand how people viewed the issues surrounding contraception. Focus groups not only would help explore barriers to contraceptive use, but also would help to evaluate the ways in which the target population gets information. For example, Iowa targeted community colleges because they were able to draw large concentrations of twenty-somethings to 6

Policies to Address Poverty in America

events. Colorado used coasters in bars. Both campaigns also used television ads, billboards, print ads, and mailings. We propose that the federal government work with a private consulting firm or nongovernmental organization to develop the default brand and message for the campaign; we believe that providing this information to all grant applicants would be helpful in avoiding reinvention of the wheel each time. Iowa’s Avoid the Stork campaign worked with Worldwide Social Marketing to develop three different concepts that were then tested with a subsample of their target demographic. They eventually settled on a humorous brand with a memorable mascot, but other campaigns, such as Don’t Kid Yourself and Prevention First Colorado, used a more straightforward message about the consequences of a surprise pregnancy. Clear metrics of success should be established in evaluating the campaign; one such requirement for funding would be the willingness to submit to an independent evaluation of the campaign’s success. Many past campaigns have focused on exposure to the ads, and not on changes in attitudes toward LARCs or changes in behavior, such as the number of unintended pregnancies or births averted. Some campaigns, such as the multistate intervention Don’t Kid Yourself in the 1990s, had very poor exposure rates; however, Don’t Kid Yourself had positive effects on behavior among the 15 percent of the population that it reached. Important metrics to evaluate are exposure to the campaign, the number of women who switched contraception methods as a result of exposure to the campaign, the number of women who contacted clinics advertised through the campaign, attitudes toward LARCs, the number of pregnancies, the number of unintended pregnancies and/or pregnancies that occurred among unmarried couples, the number of users of specific contraception methods, and the number of abortions before, during, and after the campaign. Future campaigns can learn from past campaigns’ successes and failures only if the

Isabel Sawhill, Joanna Venator

evidence clearly relays who the campaigns reach and how they affect those they reach. These metrics should be collected on a state-by-state basis at the six-month, one-year, three-year, and five-year marks to capture both short- and long-term effects of the campaign and any differences based on implementation across states. COSTS AND BENEFITS

Compared to other antipoverty programs, social marketing campaigns are very cost-effective. In fact, most evidence suggests that they save money. Consider a $100 million annual investment that reaches one-fourth of unmarried women between ages fifteen and thirty in this country. Assume that 5 percent of these women shift to a LARC each year as a result of the campaign, half of them from using a condom and half from using no contraception. The resulting reduction in unintended pregnancy each year would be about 160,000 averted pregnancies. Of the 40 percent (or 67,000) of unintended pregnancies carried to term, about half of these births (approximately 34,000) are to women living below the poverty line. Monea and Thomas (2010) estimate a total taxpayer savings of $24,000 for each averted birth to a poor or low-income woman. Of the 34,000 averted births in this scenario, about 10,500 would not occur at all, resulting in savings of $253 million per year; the remaining births would be delayed on average by two years, resulting in additional savings of $280 million per year.6 This means that the savings to taxpayers would be over $500 million per year, yielding a cost–benefit ratio of about five to one. If we loosen our assumptions to include all births to women eligible for Medicaid-covered pregnancy costs (i.e., women below 200 percent of the federal poverty level) rather than just births to poor women (i.e., women below 100 percent of the federal poverty level), the cost–benefit ratio increases to eight to one. Previous studies of costs and benefits have shown a similar benefit-to-cost ratio for taxpayers. For example, Thomas (2012) finds that a social marketing campaign costing $100 million per year will result in approximately a 4 percent reduction in unintended pregnancies, roughly a 2 percent reduction in the number of children born into poverty, and savings of $431 million to taxpayers per year. The taxpayer-savings figure includes not only reduced Medicaid payouts for prenatal and pregnancy care, but also an estimate of the cost to taxpayers of publicly subsidized benefits (e.g., through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Earned Income Tax Credit) for the children until the age of five (Monea and Thomas 2011). These calculations count only the public benefits of reducing unintended pregnancies. There would be additional benefits for a mother of delaying a birth until she is ready, such as

being able to stay in school or finding a stable partner before having children (Lichter and Graefe 2001; Ng and Kaye 2012). Furthermore, the benefits to the children of being born to older parents in more-stable relationships are large.

Questions and Concerns Do social marketing campaigns really work? Some do and some do not. It is important that any campaign be well-funded and well-designed to achieve a set of specific objectives. In addition, there needs to be local buy-in, which is why we recommend that states must make an active decision to apply for grants and that the OPA evaluate applications based, in part, on whether the state has sought and obtained local buy-in. In addition, the campaign will not be effective unless funding for all forms of FDA-approved contraception is available following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in the states, and unless providers are trained to provide all forms of contraception. With these caveats, as noted in the text, campaigns can change the behavior of perhaps 5 percent of the target population and avert a large number of births to poor women. Won’t these women be disadvantaged and their babies poor no matter when they give birth? By permitting women to complete more education, to gain more work experience, and to form a stable two-parent family, the odds that any child will be born into poverty are reduced. Moreover, women who defer childbearing until they want to be parents are likely to access more prenatal care, to be better parents, and to create better life prospects for the child. Do these women who say they are having unintended pregnancies really mean it? Unintendedness is a continuum. There is no bright line between a birth that is planned and one that is unplanned. Some women (and their partners) are clearly ambivalent or simply do not plan at all. That said, the only hard data we have suggest that rates of unintended pregnancy are very high, especially among poor women. A large number will abort the pregnancy. On the other hand, the fact that so many say the pregnancy was unintended—and that mothers say this even after they have bonded with their newborn infant—tends to bias answers to this question downward, not upward. Is it politically realistic for the government to fund a social marketing campaign in such a contentious arena? Contraception is a politically contentious issue. Prior efforts to increase access to contraception have been met, at times, with The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women

substantial political opposition; in some cases this opposition has successfully derailed public programs. Still, many programs have been implemented despite this opposition. In particular, we note the success in implementing social market campaigns in Iowa and Coloradoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;two states that fall in the middle of the political spectrum. Thus, while we acknowledge that political sentiment is a formidable obstacle to universal take-up of social marketing campaigns aimed at contraception use, the successes in Iowa and Colorado suggest that this barrier will not prove insurmountable in a wide swath of states.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Conclusion Children born to young, unmarried parents are much more likely to grow up in poverty than are those born to older and/ or married parents. Many of these children are born to women who did not intend to get pregnant, and who state that the pregnancy was either unwanted or mistimed. Reducing the number of children born to these mothers would significantly reduce the number of children born into poverty. Creating greater awareness of the risks of pregnancy and how to reduce that risk will help women match their childbearing behaviors to their intentions and make it easier for women to delay pregnancy until they can give their child a stronger start in life. All the evidence suggests that this proposal to launch social marketing campaigns would reduce unintended pregnancies and births, reduce child poverty, and save the government money in the process. Family planning by itself will not eliminate child poverty, but it is an important step in the process.

Isabel Sawhill, Joanna Venator

Authors Isabel Sawhill

Joanna Venator

Cabot Family Chair and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Research Assistant, Brookings Institution

Isabel Sawhill is the Cabot Family Chair and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution where she is co-director of the Center on Children and Families. Sawhill’s areas of expertise are poverty, inequality, social mobility, education, fiscal policy, and the family. She is the author or editor of numerous books and articles. This policy memo is drawn in part from her forthcoming book, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage.

Joanna Venator is a research assistant in the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. Venator’s research focuses on complex families, unintended pregnancy and contraception, social mobility, and character and opportunity. She received a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in 2013.

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women

Endnotes 1. In an increasing number of cases these unmarried mothers are living with the father of the child at the time of the birth, but these cohabiting relationships are much less stable than marriages and typically break up before the child is age five. 2. The term “unintended” comes from the National Survey of Family Growth, which asks women to characterize the intentionality of their pregnancies and births at the time they first learned of their pregnancy. If they say the pregnancy was unintended, they are further asked whether it was “unwanted” or “mistimed.” An unwanted pregnancy is one the woman did not want ever, whereas a mistimed pregnancy is one that simply came earlier than she might have wanted—in some cases by only a year, but in other cases by many years. 3. Literature on teen pregnancies suggests that most of the correlation between having a baby as a teen and later outcomes is due to confounding factors or unobserved traits of the women involved. Quasi-natural experiments find that teenagers who miscarry their pregnancy do not have significantly better outcomes than teenagers who carry their child to term (Hotz, McElroy, and Sanders 2005). However, the broader literature on the effects of contraception shows that it has increased women’s educational and labor-market achievements quite dramatically (Bailey, Hershbein, and Miller 2012; Goldin and Katz 2002). 4. An IUD is a contraceptive device that a provider inserts into a patient’s uterus; an implant is a contraceptive device that a provider places under a patient’s skin, typically on the arm. Both procedures need to be done by a trained health-care provider, usually a physician. Both last up to three years, with some brands of IUD lasting up to twelve years. 5. This social marketing campaign coincided with Iowa’s expansion of Medicaid family planning services in 2010 and a huge increase in funding for family planning clinics starting in 2007, so we cannot conclusively attribute this whole effect to the social marketing campaign. However, it should be noted that the decline in pregnancies accelerated during the campaign. Whereas the percent of unintended pregnancies dropped from 46.1 percent to 45.2 percent between 2007 and 2009, it dropped from 45.2 percent to 40.9 percent between 2009 and 2011. 6. The estimate of taxpayer savings for mistimed births does not account for the fact that delaying a birth may result in a woman having fewer children overall or may result in an improvement of her living situation during the intermittent years. It does, however, account for the fact that the present discounted value of future benefit payouts is less than the value of payouts now. See Monea and Thomas (2010) for more information on how to derive this formula.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Isabel Sawhill, Joanna Venator

References Bailey, Martha J., Brad Hershbein, and Amalia R. Miller. 2012. “The Opt-In Revolution? Contraception and the Gender Gap in Wages.” Working Paper 17922, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 2014. “VitalStats–Births.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Washington, DC. Darney, Philip, Ashlesha Patel, Kimberly Rosen, Lena S. Shapiro, and Andrew M. Kaunitz. 2009. “Safety and Efficacy of a Single-Rod Etonogestrel Implant (Implanon): Results from 11 International Clinical Trials.” Fertility and Sterility 91 (5): 1646–53. Dehlendorf, Christine, Kira Levy, Rachel Ruskin, and Jody Steinauer. 2010. “Health Care Providers’ Knowledge About Contraceptive Evidence: A Barrier to Quality Family Planning Care?” Contraception 81 (4, April): 292–98. doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2009.11.006. Edin, Kathryn, Paula England, Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer, and Joanna Reed. 2007. “Forming Fragile Families: Was the Baby Planned, Unplanned, or In Between.” In Unmarried Couples with Children, edited by Paula England and Kathryn Edin, 25–54. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Espey, Eve, and Tony Ogburn. 2011. “Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives: Intrauterine Devices and the Contraceptive Implant.” Obstetrics & Gynecology 117 (3): 705–19. Evans, W. D., Olivia Silber-Ashley, and Jennifer Gard. 2007. “Social Marketing as a Strategy to Reduce Unintended Adolescent Pregnancy.” The Open Communication Journal 1 (1, December 26): 1–8. doi:10.2174/1874916X00701010001. Farrelly, Matthew C., Kevin C. Davis, M. Lyndon Haviland, Peter Messeri, and Cheryl G. Healton. 2005. “Evidence of a Dose–Response Relationship between ‘Truth’ Antismoking Ads and Youth Smoking Prevalence.” American Journal of Public Health 95 (3): 425–31. doi:10.2105/ AJPH.2004.049692. Finer, Lawrence B., Jenna Jerman, and Megan L. Kavanaugh. 2012. “Changes in Use of Long-acting Contraceptive Methods in the United States, 2007–2009.” Fertility and Sterility 98 (4): 893–97. Frohwirth, Lori, Ann M. Moore, and Renata Maniaci. 2013. “Perceptions of Susceptibility to Pregnancy among U.S. Women Obtaining Abortions.” Social Science & Medicine 99 (December): 18–26. Gold, Rachel Benson, Adam Sonfield, Cory L. Richards, and Jennifer J. Frost. 2009. “Next Steps for America’s Family Planning Program: Leveraging the Potential of Medicaid and Title X in an Evolving Health Care System.” Guttmacher Institute, New York, NY. Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. 2002. “The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women’s Career and Marriage Decisions.” Journal of Political Economy 110 (4, August): 730–70. doi:10.1086/340778.

Harper, Cynthia C., Maya Blum, Heike Thiel de Bocanegra, Philip D. Darney, J. Joseph Speidel, Michael Policar, and Eleanor A. Drey. 2008. “Challenges in Translating Evidence to Practice: The Provision of Intrauterine Contraception.” Obstetrics & Gynecology 111 (6, June): 1359–69. doi:10.1097/ AOG.0b013e318173fd83. Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy, and Seth G. Sanders. 2005. “Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences Exploiting a Natural Experiment.” Journal of Human Resources 40 (3): 683–715. Hubacher, David, Roger Lara-Ricalde, Douglas J. Taylor, Fernando Guerra-Infante, and Raymundo Guzmán-Rodríguez. 2001. “Use of Copper Intrauterine Devices and the Risk of Tubal Infertility among Nulligravid Women.” New England Journal of Medicine 345 (8): 561–67. Jones, Jo, William Mosher, and Kimberly Daniels. 2012. “Current Contraceptive Use in the United States, 2006–2010, and Changes in Patterns of Use since 1995.” National Health Statistics Reports 60: 1–25. Karpilow, Quentin, Jennifer Manlove, Isabel V. Sawhill, and Adam Thomas. 2013. “The Role of Contraception in Preventing Abortion, Nonmarital Childbearing, and Child Poverty.” Paper presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Annual Fall Research Conference, Washington, DC. Kaye, Kelleen, Katherine Suellentrop, and Corinna Sloup. 2009. “The Fog Zone: How Misperceptions, Magical Thinking, and Ambivalence Put Young Adults at Risk for Unplanned Pregnancy.” National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Washington, DC. Kearney, Melissa S., and Phillip B. Levine. 2014. “Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing.” Working Paper 19795, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Lichter, Daniel T., and Deborah Roempke Graefe. 2001. “Finding a Mate? The Marital and Cohabitation Histories of Unwed Mothers.” In Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, edited by Lawrence L. Wu and Barbara Wolfe, 317–43. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Madden, Tessa, Jenifer E. Allsworth, Katherine J. Hladky, Gina M. Secura, and Jeffrey F. Peipert. 2010. “Intrauterine Contraception in Saint Louis: A Survey of Obstetrician and Gynecologists’ Knowledge and Attitudes.” Contraception 81 (2, February): 112–16. doi:10.1016/j. contraception.2009.08.002. McLanahan, Sara, and Gary Sandefur. 1994. Growing up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Monea, Emily, and Adam Thomas. 2010. “The Public Cost of Pregnancy.” Working Paper, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Monea, Emily, and Adam Thomas. 2011. “Unintended Pregnancy and Taxpayer Spending.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 43 (2): 88–93.

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PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 3: Reducing Unintended Pregnancies for Low-Income Women

Mosher, William D., and Jo Jones. 2010. “Use of Contraception in the United States: 1982–2008.” Vital and Health Statistics, Series 23, Data from the National Survey of Family Growth (29) (August): 1–44. Ng, Alison Stewart, and Kelleen Kaye. 2012. “Teen Childbearing, Education, and Economic Well-Being. Why It Matters.” National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Washington, DC. Peterson, Herbert B., and Kathryn M. Curtis. 2005. “Long-Acting Methods of Contraception.” New England Journal of Medicine 353 (20): 2169–75. Pederson, Sally. 2012. “Iowa Initiative to Reduce Unintended Pregnancies.” Webinar presented at the Department of Health and Human Services. www.hhs.gov/opa/pdfs/11-2612-iowa-initiative-transcript.pdf. Prevention First Colorado. 2009. “Develop Social Marketing and Public Education Campaigns to Increase Contraceptive use and Knowledge of the Impacts of Unintended Pregnancy.” Prevention First Colorado, Denver, CO. Sawhill, Isabel. 2012. “Are We Headed to a Permanently Divided Society?” Policy Brief, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Sawhill, Isabel, and Joanna Venator. 2014. “Three Policies to Close the Class Divide in Family Formation” Social Mobility Memos (blog). http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/socialmobility-memos/posts/2014/01/21-3-policies-to-closefamily-formation-class-divide-sawhill. Sawhill, Isabel, Adam Thomas, and Emily Monea. 2010. “An Ounce of Prevention: Policy Prescriptions to Reduce the Prevalence of Fragile Families.” The Future of Children 20 (2): 133–55. doi:10.1353/foc.2010.0004. Secura, Gina M., Jenifer E. Allsworth, Tessa Madden, Jennifer L. Mullersman, and Jeffrey F. Peipert. 2010. “The Contraceptive CHOICE Project: Reducing Barriers to Long-acting Reversible Contraception.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 203 (2, August): 115.e1–7. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2010.04.017. Stoddard, Amy, Colleen McNicholas, and Jeffrey F. Peipert. 2011. “Efficacy and Safety of Long-Acting Reversible Contraception.” Drugs 71 (8): 969–80. Thomas, Adam. 2012. “Three Strategies to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31 (2, March): 280–311. doi:10.1002/pam.21614. Tolaymat, Lama L., and Andrew M. Kaunitz. 2007. “Long-Acting Contraceptives in Adolescents.” Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology 19 (5): 453–60. U.S. Census Bureau. 2012. “Data on Families and Living Arrangements.” Table FM-1. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. U.S. Census Bureau. 2013. “Poverty - Experimental Measures.” Table 6. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC. University of California, San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. 2014. LARC Project. http:// bixbycenter.ucsf.edu/research/cd_and_fp/larc.html.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Waldfogel, Jane, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. 2010. “Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing.” The Future of Children 20 (2): 87–112. Weinreich, Nedra Kline. 1999. “The ‘Don’t Kid Yourself’ Campaign Case Study.” In Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide, edited by Nedra Kline Weinreich. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zolna, Mia R., and Laura Lindberg. 2012. “Unintended Pregnancy: Incidence and Outcomes Among Young Adult Unmarried Women in the United States, 2001 and 2008.” Guttmacher Institute, New York, NY.

The Foundation for Educational Choice

www.edchoice.org

state research

Oregonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s High School Dropouts Examining the economic and social costs March 2010 Emily House

Released by:

Cascade Policy Institute the FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL CHOICE

Executive summary This analysis presents the public costs of high school dropouts in Oregon. It examines how dropouts in the state dramatically impact state finances through reduced tax revenues, increased Medicaid costs, and high incarceration rates. This study describes how much high school dropouts cost Oregon’s taxpayers each year, and how much could be saved by increasing the state’s graduation rate. The educational attainment gap in Oregon, though seemingly small relative to other states, is still troubling. While 89 percent of white students earn high school diplomas, only 79 percent of African American students graduate. More concretely, African American students are twice as likely to drop out as white students. A single cohort (e.g., class year) of dropouts costs Oregon hundreds of millions of dollars each year. It is important to note that this analysis uses both the graduation rate and dropout rate when calculating the costs to the state when students do not complete high school. For the purposes of this analysis, graduation rate is defined as the percentage of students who complete high school in a given year, while the dropout rate refers to the percentage of students who withdraw from high school in a given year. Key findings include: • Over 5 percent of high school seniors did not complete high school during the 2007-08 school year. Estimates of Oregon’s total high school graduation rate differ greatly – ranging from 96 percent to about 66 percent – depending on the time frame being considered. • On average, working-age dropouts in Oregon earn $10,000 less each year than those who graduate from high school, reducing the overall earnings of the state significantly each year. • At 9.2 percent, the unemployment rate (prior to the recent economic downturn) of high school dropouts in Oregon is more than twice the rate of those who have graduated from high school. • Approximately $173 million in tax revenues is lost each year due to the decreased earnings of high school dropouts. • Oregon’s dropouts are significantly more likely than high school graduates to require Medicaid assistance. Over 40 percent of high school dropouts receive Medicaid benefits, costing the state more than $200 million in annual Medicaid costs. • High school dropouts are twice as likely to be incarcerated as high school graduates. African American male dropouts are five times more likely to be incarcerated than African American males who have graduated from high school.

Oregon’s High School Dropouts

• The gap in incarceration leads to more than twice as many inmates as there would be if Oregon’s graduation rate were 100 percent. For each year that graduation rates could be brought up to 100 percent, over $37 million could be saved in incarceration costs of that year’s dropouts alone. Over time this could lead to significant savings to the state. • Compared to other states, Oregon spends a much larger proportion of money on the provision of Medicaid for high school dropouts, and loses a larger share of tax revenue than many other states.1

Oregon’s High School Dropouts Examining the economic and social costs

Reforming K-12 education is a critical issue in Oregon, as it is throughout the rest of the nation. During the 2009 legislative session, various bills were proposed in an attempt to improve the outcomes of students throughout the state, including bills to promote dropout prevention and student retention programs.2 Since increases in funding have in the past not resulted in dramatic growth in student retention, legislators and activists have sought more innovative, non-fiscal approaches to keep students in school. Improving K-12 education in Oregon is vital to ensuring stability and prosperity for future generations of residents. While the personal consequences of dropping out of high school are clear (e.g., lower wages and higher unemployment), less public debate and media attention focus on the public costs of decreasing graduation rates. High school dropouts have direct and indirect fiscal effects on taxpayers throughout Oregon. Lower rates of labor force participation, higher rates of unemployment, and lower earnings and salaries are all consequences of the failure to earn a high school diploma. These consequences have a detrimental effect on all residents living in Oregon, negatively impacting overall wage and job growth while imposing a fiscal drag on state expenditures allocated to social programs. Higher levels of educational attainment lead to positive social effects in the form of reduced need for public welfare programs, better health, and lower crime rates. This study focuses on the public financial costs of high school dropouts in Oregon, and we conclude by recommending policy action to improve student retention and graduation rates. Following a review of relevant empirical literature, the size and scope of the dropout problem in Oregon will be outlined.

Oregon’s High School Dropouts

Households with children and a first-generation immigrant parent Web links to primary reading: Stepping Stone or Sink Hole? Immigrants, Poverty, and the Future of Metropolitan America, Manuel Pastor https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/files/2014/06/Pastor-‐‑Stepping-‐‑Stone-‐‑or-‐‑Sink-‐‑ Hole.pdf Characteristics of the Foreign-‐‑Born Population Working in Oregon, Oregon Employment Department http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/ArticleReader?itemid=00009408 In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-‐‑Born Residents in Oregon, Population Research Center, PSU http://mkn.research.pdx.edu/2012/06/in-‐‑search-‐‑of-‐‑opportunity-‐‑foreign-‐‑born-‐‑ residents-‐‑in-‐‑oregon/ Investing in English Skills: The Limited English Proficient Workforce in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Wilson http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/09/english-‐‑skills#/M38900 The Health and Well-‐‑Being of Children in Immigrant Families, Reardon-‐‑Anderson, Capps, and Fix http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/310584_B52.pdf Web links to additional reading: Hispanic Nativity Shift, Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/04/29/hispanic-‐‑nativity-‐‑shift/ A Profile of the Foreign-‐‑born in the Portland, Oregon Tri-‐‑county Area, Lotspeich, Fix, Perez-‐‑Lopez, and Ost http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/410917_portland_or.pdf “Portland metro area has fewer non-‐‑citizen immigrants, more naturalized citizens”, The Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/09/portland_metro_area_ha

s_fewer.html Children of Immigrants Data Tool, Urban Institute http://datatools.urban.org/features/childrenOfImmigrants/chart/coi.html# Immigration Explorer (interactive maps), New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-‐‑immigration-‐‑ explorer.html?hp&_r=0 “Diversity in the Classroom,” Oregon, New York Times http://projects.nytimes.com/immigration/enrollment/oregon

YOLANDA MORALES

Age 50 Mexican, U.S. citizen Married, 3 children Lives in Ontario, Oregon

Yolanda Morales was a 25-year-old mother of two

when she traveled from Mexico to visit her sisters in Nevada. It was there that she was in a car accident that left her barely able to walk. Her husband Gustavo drove from Guanajuato to join her and got a job in a feed lot to support the family while she recovered. “I had surgery on my legs, but the doctor said I would need more surgery, so when Gustavo’s boss told him about an opening in Nyssa, Oregon, he took it. That’s how we came here.” Unable to walk well or even carry groceries, Yolanda was mostly confined to the house with her children. Gustavo worked long hours -- 6am to 11pm. She wanted to go home to Mexico. They did. But when the doctors in Guanajuato told her there was nothing more they could do, the Morales decided to come back to Ontario where the doctors were familiar with her case.

was one of only two teachers with her associate’s degree. Gustavo was employed as a truck driver for a paving company while Yolanda continued to push herself and to “keep a finger in the children’s backs.” She applied and got a full scholarship to Pacific Oaks College in Seattle to work on her master degree. Yolanda commuted back and forth to Seattle each month for 2 ½ years, finding help for her children while she was away. Her earliest mentors, Jane Luther and Joyce Davis at TVCC kept telling her she could do it. In 2004 she earned her Masters in Human Development and Education and the following year got a position at TVCC as an instructor in adult education. “I work with high school drop-outs and adults going back to school – anywhere from 16 to 70 years old. I like to work in human development and help people to believe in themselves. I give them a push.”

“By this time we’d had our third child so there were five of us living in a one room apartment. One day at the store a woman asked me ‘are there five of you living in that place?’ She told me about the Sierra Vista housing development.”

When the recession hit in 2008 and business slowed, Gustavo was laid off from the paving company. The Morales’ decided to buy their own truck and start their own trucking business; G y Y Trucking (Gustavo y Yolanda) “It was hard! The price of diesel kept going up and we had bills … the truck, the house, the family.”

Gustavo had two jobs; seasonally in an onion farm and construction during the winter months. Yolanda worked part-time in the Head Start childcare center her children attended. After months of negotiation and “lots of paperwork,” the Morales’ were able to get a subsidized loan through USDA Rural Development Housing for their first home.

In the Morales family everyone pitches in. The boys all help with the business in addition to going to school. They all participate in the Ford Leadership Programs that foster community involvement and service. Yolanda stands proudly in front of the home and property they bought last year. Braces still keep her legs straight.

“I had been working with infants and toddlers when my boss said ‘we can’t let you keep this job because you can’t get down to the floor with the little ones.’ I got a letter from my doctor saying I could do the job. I looked around and saw how migrants were being treated. People didn’t believe that Latinos can do more. But I wasn’t in a position to make any changes. I needed a degree.” Yolanda enrolled at Treasure Valley Community College (TVCC) to get her GED in Spanish, followed in 2001 by her associate’s degree in bilingual education. She got a full time job with Head Start and

“It took us eight years to find this property where we can have our trucking business. We came here with nothing and started a life here. I know if we had to, we could do it again.”

FIRST-GENERATION IMMIGRANT FAMILIES IN POVERTY

THERE ARE ABOUT 99,700 OREGONIANS IN SINGLE- OR TWOPARENT HOUSEHOLDS IN POVERTY WHERE AT LEAST ONE PARENT IS A FIRST-GENERATION IMMIGRANT. MORE THAN HALF OF THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE CHILDREN OR TEENS. EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF ADULTS

54% EMPLOYED

RACE / ETHNICITY

1% BLACK 2% OTHER 3% ASIAN 5% WHITE 7% HISPANIC 81%

TWO OR MORE RACES

IN LABOR 33% NOT FORCE

13% UNEMPLOYED

ENGLISH-SPEAKING ABILITY OF ADULTS

HOUSEHOLD TYPE

14% FEMALE SINGLE PARENT

46%

DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH WELL

2% MALE SINGLE PARENT 85% TWO PARENTS 54% DISABILITY STATUS OF ADULTS ABLE BODIED

OTHER DISABILITY

SPEAK ENGLISH WELL

LIVING IN OREGON

77%

17% RURAL

15%

COGNITIVE DISABILITY

SOURCE: ECONORTHWEST ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY, 2012, PUMS DATA

83% URBAN

Innovating to End Urban Poverty March 27 & 28, 2014

Stepping Stone or Sink Hole? Immigrants, Poverty, and the Future of Metropolitan America By Manuel Pastor Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration Program for Environmental & Regional Equity University of Southern California Draft: May 10, 2014

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Introduction While analysts and pundits often note the dramatically changing face of America, there is a bit of constancy in what is imagined to be the face of urban poverty: largely African-American, frequently jobless, and often struggling with the social and economic obstacles that confront parents raising children on their own. While this is certainly a key feature of the poverty challenge – and it is one sure to rightly receive attention in this symposium – it is also the case that the poor in America increasingly hail from the ranks of newer and non-citizen immigrants. Figure 1 illustrates this shift by charting the foreign-born share of the population, both naturalized and non-citizen, and the foreign-born share of the poor, again naturalized and noncitizen, for the period 1970 to 2009.1 Two trends become immediately clear. The first is that the shares of the foreign-born in the overall and poverty populations were roughly similar in 1970 but have diverged sharply since – immigrants are now well overrepresented among America’s poor. The second trend to note is that this divergence is particularly acute for the nonnaturalized; indeed, naturalized immigrants are actually significantly underrepresented in the poverty population, pointing to the gains that citizenship and secure immigration status can bring. Of course, the fact that immigrants, particularly the non-naturalized, tend to be poorer could just be a function of the recency of arrival -- immigrants expect to start at the bottom rungs of the labor market and then climb the ladder over time. This would conveniently suggest that a “wait and see” approach is the best course of action, since time might, in this view, heal all (economic) wounds. However, this bit of rosy optimism does not square with the data. As noted above, non-citizen immigrants have become increasingly poor over time – and, as Figure 2 illustrates, this happened as the immigrant population became much more settled (less recentlyarrived) in the last two decades. What this suggests is that addressing immigrant poverty is an important part of addressing overall poverty. We cannot assume that a low-income status for a migrant is a temporary stepping stone to an inevitably better life – as mobility has stagnated in the United States, the immigrant as well as the non-immigrant populations have been impacted. Moreover, a large share of our children have at least one immigrant parent – up from around 6 percent in 1970 to around 23 percent today – and the poverty rate for that next generation is, as we will see, quite high.

Unless noted in the text, all figures are calculated from a pooled data set consisting of the Public Use Microdata Samples from 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000, and a pooled five-year sample of the American Community Survey (2007-2011, which we designate as representing the mid-year 2009). The 1970 PUMS is a 1 percent sample and so somewhat less reliable; the others are 5 percent samples. All samples taken from Ruggles et al. (2011).

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Immigrants, Mobility and Poverty Traditional perspectives have tended to see immigrants as inevitably slated for better times. After all, those who choose to cross borders may be more educated, more urban and more motivated than those who remain in their home country. While we expect them to receive subpar rewards in the labor market upon arrival to the U.S., acquiring English language skills, local work experience, and country-specific education should move immigrants to higher incomes over time. Moreover, we certainly expect their children – the second generation – to improve their economic and social fortunes as they are able to more fully integrate into the social fabric of the United States and take advantage of widespread educational opportunities. This notion of economic and social mobility has its geographic component, too: the so-called “spatial assimilation” perspective suggests that immigrants and their offspring will generally leave central city entry points and move on to suburban and, presumably, more middle-class locales (Massey and Denton 1985). While there are some who suggest that intergenerational assimilation is still ongoing – or at least that concerns about it are overstated (Park and Myers 2010) – there seems to be a general consensus that it may be harder for immigrants to rise out of poverty now than it was for previous immigrants. Perlmann (2005), comparing Mexican immigrants of today to low-skilled European immigrants from the last major migration experience (1890-1914), primarily looks at educational attainment and wage ratios in the context of shifting education premiums and wage inequality. Perlmann (2005:117) suggests that for today’s immigrants, it will take “four or five generations rather than three or four to reach parity with the native-white mainstream” (see also Clark and King 2008; Raijman and Tienda 1999). Part of the reason is that immigrants themselves seem to be spending a longer time in poverty, something not quite accounted for in Park and Myers (2010) in which the comparison is between immigrants in 1980 with their likely offspring in 2005 (more nuance on that periodization later). Figure 3 shows that the share of recent migrants of working age living below 150 percent of the poverty level has increased steadily and dramatically over the last three decades; the share of U.S-born residents in the same poverty category started at around 17 percent in 1970, fell to around 14 percent by 2000 and was back up to 17 percent in 2009, remarkably low given the Great Recession.2 How are their children faring? In 1970, children who had either both parents or a single parent who was U.S.-born had a poverty rate of around 15.5 percent; those who had at least one parent who was a non-citizen immigrant had a poverty rate at roughly the same level (15.7 2

We use 150 percent of the poverty level because it is a somewhat more reasonable marker of poverty.

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percent). However, in 2009, the poverty rate for those with either both parents or a single parent who was U.S.-born was about 18 percent; for those with at least one parent who was a non-citizen immigrant, the poverty rate was around 31 percent (and nearly half of those children were living below 150 percent of the poverty rate). All this suggests that past progress may be an uncertain predictor of the future. Moreover, previous models of spatial mobility and spatial assimilation may be poor guides to the future. While much has been made of new immigrant gateways, particularly in the South (Singer 2004; Winders 2013), the existing within-metro pattern is changing as well. It is certainly the case that some immigrants are moving up and out – but it is also the case that immigrants are now landing directly (and more quickly) into the suburbs (e.g. Bohn 2009; Gouveia, Carranza, and Cogua 2006; Marcelli 2004; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008). Unfortunately, this rise in immigrant suburbanization is not necessarily the sign of progress it may have signaled in the past: while the suburbs certainly include some ethnically diverse up-scale communities as well as an emerging mix of well-off “ethnoburbs,” one of the fastest growing categories of suburbs is distressed inner-ring areas whose economic conditions can be worse than central cities they border (Li 1998; Pastor 2012, 2013; Singer et al. 2008). So while the new suburbanization might be seen as an opportunity – immigrants are fleeing the challenges of central cities – the suburbs “of choice” seem to be more distressed and generally lack the social services, civic, and community organizing infrastructure often viewed as necessary to raise immigrant concerns (de Graauw, Gleeson, and Bloemraad 2013; JonesCorrea 2008). Meanwhile, within the central cities, the geographic expansion of immigrant communities has often been into historically Black areas, again not a place with significant preexisting infrastructure to facilitate immigrant integration (Pastor 2012). What explains the high levels of poverty and constrained economic and geographic opportunities? One key factor is education but it is important to recognize the bifurcated educational profile of immigrants: as Figure 4 indicates, Asian immigrants have long boasted rates of college completion that are even higher than those of non-Hispanic native-born whites but Latino immigrants have been bringing up the rear in terms of educational achievement. While there has been a slight improvement in the last decade, nearly 60 percent of non-citizen Latino immigrants of working age lack a high school degree. Given the shifting economy, the penalty paid for this lower level of educational achievement is higher than ever – and this is exacerbated by a shift in the nation’s social welfare regime in a way that disadvantages and/or excludes non-citizen immigrants (Fix 2009). Another key factor, more difficult to quantify but one to which we return in the conclusion, is the racialization of immigrants. In 1970, roughly 85 percent of both the U.S.-born and naturalized immigrants were non-Hispanic white, with 52 percent of non-citizen immigrants being non-Hispanic white. By 2009, 71 percent of the U.S.-born were non-Hispanic white, a 4  Papers

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drop of 14 percentage points – but non-Hispanic whites comprised only a quarter of the naturalized immigrants and less than 15 percent of the non-citizen immigrants. Indeed, of the non-citizen immigrants, nearly 60 percent were Latino and the ability to see immigrants as the “other” has had, we think, a significant impact on the public will to make the investments necessary for immigrants and their offspring to make progress (Myers 2008). A final factor impacting economic and social outcomes of immigrants is their legal status. To investigate this, we utilized a procedure pioneered by our colleague, Enrico Marcelli, to estimate a likelihood of being undocumented for every Latino non-citizen immigrants in the Census data we have for California for the year 1990, 2000, and 2009.3 As Figure 5 shows, the poverty experience of working age Latinos in California is significantly worse for those lacking documentation as compared to those who may be lawful permanent residents, naturalized citizens, or U.S.-born – and the gradient has been worsening over time (the economic outcomes for Latino naturalized citizens increasingly approximate those of U.S.-born Latinos while those of undocumented Latinos hold roughly constant with about 50 percent living below 150% of the poverty level). A lack of formal status is surely a problem – and it is a widespread dilemma since approximately 38 percent of all Latino immigrants of working age in California are not documented, according to our estimates. On the other hand, this share has fallen sharply from a figure of nearly 50 percent in California in 1990. This suggests that a simple argument about individual undocumented immigrants overcrowding the labor market and thus dragging down collective outcomes for all other undocumented immigrants may not suffice as an explanation of what seems to be a high level of working poverty; there are also characteristics of the market which may have changed, are negatively affecting the immigrant experience and may make mobility harder now than it was for prior generations (Borjas 2006). Of course, the raw differences in the experiences between those who are documented and those who are not are also driven by other factors: those without documentation are also younger, less educated and less English-fluent workers. Improving outcomes therefore requires moving the needle on multiple fronts, a topic we take up in the policy recommendations. Still, legalization with a path to citizenship could yield an economic boost on the order of 15 percent –

The basics of the method are explained in Pastor and Marcelli (2013) and involve taking coefficient estimates from small sample surveys and applying those to the underlying individual answers in the Public Use Microdata Sample and the pooled American Community Survey. We use coefficients from appropriate vintage surveys for each year, reflecting the fact that the characteristics of those who are undocumented shift slightly over time. Recall that when we say 2009 here, we mean the pooled 2007-2011 sample.

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and it would also open access to training programs, health care, and many other factors that could improve human capital.4 Moreover, the ripple effect from legalization could go far past the adults that might be directly affected. For the most recent time period, we have been able to estimate population characteristics of non-Latino undocumented immigrants as well for California: we find that roughly two-thirds of the state’s children with at least one undocumented parent are living below 150 percent of the poverty line. Perhaps most significant: While the children of the undocumented comprise about 16 percent of the state’s total children, they comprise nearly onethird of those children living below 150 percent of the poverty line.5 Comparing the mobility paths of two Mexican-origin second-generation members, Zhou and colleagues note that “legal status upon migration is perhaps the single most powerful structural difference” that distinguished them even as parents in both cases had little formal education and worked low-paying jobs (2008:51). Yoshikawa (2011) suggests that the tenuous position of undocumented parents harms their children’s development, including cognitive skills in early childhood. Problems accrue partly because of the usual problems of poverty, long work hours, and limited social networks but also because of the stress of possible deportation as well as lack of access to and sometimes fearful avoidance of government programs for which the children, the vast majority of whom are U.S.-born, are actually eligible. In short, addressing immigrants in general and undocumented immigrants in particular would help immigrants help themselves – and it could also have a big impact on reducing child poverty and spurring intergenerational mobility.

That was the approximate gain after the previous mass legalization conducted as part of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (Cooper and O’Neil 2005), and recent estimates suggest that such a ballpark figure remains reasonable (Pastor et al. 2010). For a perspective that suggests that gains would be less, primarily because such workers are already more or less fully blended into the market, see Hill et al. (2010). In our view, that work, while technically proficient for what it investigates, may not represent the potential gains from mass legalization. This is partly because the authors look at individuals who obtained legal status in 2003 after either crossing the border or overstaying their visa; this may be different than a legalization which fundamental lifts up the entire bottom end of the labor market in which individuals compete. Moreover, Hill et al. (2010) are only able to look at short-term impacts because the data they use on economic and occupational mobility is from interviews conducted only 4 to 13 months after obtaining legal status. Where we do concur is that while there may be a legalization effect, most of the gains come from shifts in human capital – something that legalization may make easier and that might not be detected in the very short term.

The method for calculating all undocumented in the state is reported in Pastor and Marcelli (2013). There, we utilized a three year pooled sample of the ACS. Here, we apply the method to a pooled five year sample of the ACS. The estimates are nearly identical but differ slightly at the margins.

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What is to Be Done? To summarize the discussion above: immigrants are an increasing share of the poor, past mobility may not predict future mobility, there is a spatial reconfiguration of immigrants that may make service delivery more challenging, education is a key factor (for both immigrants and their children), racialization has been an impediment to progress, and insecure immigration status is a major problem. So what policies flow out of this analysis? Let us begin with a few important caveats and contexts. First, our recommendations below do not focus on the children of immigrants per se; like many other participants in this seminar, we believe than expanded pre-K, improved schooling, and increased opportunities for college or other forms of post-secondary education will improve life chances. However, it will be hard to get there if immigrant parents remain poor, live in challenged neighborhoods, and fail to participate in parent engagement activities because of long hours at low-pay jobs or fear of inadvertently becoming known to a system in which deportations have reached an all-time high. In short, we focus below – and we think policy should focus as well – on immigrant adults. Second, while we think family formation has important impacts on economic outcomes, we do not emphasize strategies like the promotion of marriage. The reason why can be discerned by examining the shifting nature of poor U.S.-born and immigrant families over time. We do this in Figure 6 for children living in poor (below 150% of the poverty level) households with at least one parent present: here, the takeaway is that the share of poor children in households with U.S.-born single-parents has been steadily increasing over time while nonnaturalized immigrants living below poverty seem to have more successfully held the line in terms of dual parent households for the first few decades but have most recently begun to follow the pattern of their U.S.-born counterparts. This suggests that the shifting household pattern may be less a cause of poverty than a consequence; while encouraging families to stay together is important in its own right and can have economic benefits, we spend no time on it here since it does not seem to be a main driver of immigrant poverty (and also lands us into a whole other set of debates and prescriptions). Finally, it is important to note that many poor immigrants are actually working but do not receive good pay. Figure 7 shows the work experience for household heads living below 150 percent of the poverty line by nativity for 1980 and 2009. The takeaway is that for U.S.-born residents, one is increasingly likely to be poor if one is not working or hardly working (note that the line is downward sloping in both periods, and much more so in the second). For nonnaturalized immigrants, the pattern was more or less flat – that is, that the share of poor householders who worked full-time was just below the share not working or hardly working –

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but the pattern has now flipped contrary to that for the U.S.-born: the most common experience in poverty in 2009 for a non-naturalized immigrant was that of being a full-time worker.6 Looked at another way: in 1980, the (150%) poverty rate for householders who were U.S.-born full-time year-round workers was nearly identical in 1980 and 2009, actually falling slightly from 6.6 % in the first period to 6.4% in the ending period. However, for nonnaturalized immigrant householders, the poverty rate for full-time, year-round workers rose dramatically, from 14.9 % in 1980 to 24.2 % in 2009. Insuring that work is decently rewarded, as well as charting new paths of labor market mobility, is clearly a major gainer for immigrants who seem to be attached to the labor force, keeping families intact, and still not making it. So what do we recommend? We include a series of potential policies under several categories: 

Make Work Pay: Part of the secret of past mobility was that low-skill work paid decently enough that parents could provide for children in a way that allowed for intergenerational mobility. The widening income divide in America is now wellknown (Stiglitz 2012) – including absolute slippage for those in the lower deciles, with immigrants overrepresented in those income categories. With decent pay being more of the problem than labor force participation, a series of policies could be helpful here: raising the minimum wage (which would also have a benchmarking impact on the informal markets in which some undocumented immigrants work), reforming labor law to facilitate unionization (to which immigrants have proved remarkably open, see Milkman 2006), targeting the elimination of wage theft (to which the undocumented are particularly susceptible), and generally enforcing labor rights.



Make Mobility Possible: Simply lifting up the bottom of the labor market is not enough – we need to facilitate immigrant progress over time. As noted, it is not enough to concentrate on intergenerational mobility; while that might have its political appeal (little kids are generally considered cuter than day laborers), potential upward trajectories can and should be enhanced for adults as they create and support the households in which children live.

We define “hardly working” as employment for less than three months and at less than 20 hours a week in that period in the previous year. We start the analysis at 1980 because of some issues with the work variable in 1970; moreover, the 1970 sample is smaller, as noted earlier, and finer and finer cuts at that data reduce the reliability of our calculations. Finally, there is a shift in the ACS in 2008 to a categorical measure of weeks worked rather a specific number of weeks worked. Since this is necessary to define full-time year round work (full-time is 35 hours a week or more), we have to blend the series with slightly different cut-offs or there is a dramatic shift in the series which does match the parallel movements in the Current Population Survey (which continues to ask actual weeks).

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In this regard, the single largest boost for immigrant income (and also helpful for parent engagement in schools) is a very specific form of education: English language skills acquisition. So then, the widespread underfunding of ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for adults is a major problem. Likewise, workforce development programs need to be rethought: they are often aimed at the jobless but immigrants are often working full-time and need training opportunities that are available in the evening, include childcare, and are closer to mass transit. 

Serve the New Geography: As noted above, one of the dramatic shifts in recent years has been the migration of immigrants to new states and metros as well as to new locations within metros. In some states, such as Arizona, this has resulted in a significant political backlash while other areas, including the unexpected state of Utah, have been relatively more welcoming. In general, the suburbanization of the immigrant population has been little appreciated, particularly the reconfiguration of services that is now necessary. Groups like Welcoming America help metro areas experiencing large immigrant influxes to more gracefully address change – and lessons from metros across the nation have started coming in (Pastor and Mollenkopf 2012). However, very little attention is being paid to the suburban dimension and there is a need for more philanthropic and other dollars to address the growing social challenges, including immigrant poverty, in our older suburbs (Kneebone 2014). Immigrant groups can help by developing new suburban outreach programs as well, particularly to organize immigrants to lobby for local services.



Legalize Undocumented Immigrants: Park and Myers (2010) have offered an important, influential and optimistic vision of intergenerational progress based on a careful cohort analysis of immigrants and their children. But the timing of the cohort group is, we think, important: they look at immigrant parents in 1980 and then their kids in 2005. A lot happened in that period but one policy shift was critical: the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that legalized millions of (particularly Mexican-origin) immigrants and gave them a path to both stability and eventually citizenship. Remarkably, in 2013, right after a hard-fought election, a polarized Senate was able to agree on a comprehensive reform of the immigration system – before sending a bill to the House of Representatives where progress has stalled. It is hard to understate what a transformative effect legalization and citizenship would have on immigrant economic outcomes – and not just for those who are

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undocumented but also for those legal immigrants in most direct competition for employment (Lynch and Oakford 2013). Since this last recommendation is so crucial, it is worth noting one proposal that has been part of the political debate: legalization without a path to citizenship (Skerry 2013). Such a strategy is likely to reduce the possible economic benefits as well as create a permanent second class of U.S. residents (see Pastor and Scoggins 2012). Another alternative, just passing some version of the so-called DREAM Act, which focuses on undocumented children brought to the U.S. at an early age, would unleash potential mobility for the next generation – but, again, the parents should not be left behind. It is likely that the national effort for immigration reform will remain stuck. In the meanwhile, we will have an interesting set of natural experiments as places like California back away from local implementation of federal immigration enforcement, work to provide mobility by licensing drivers, and otherwise ease the conditions negatively impacting the daily lives of undocumented immigrants. Studies that compare the results of these experiments with more restrictive approaches in other states could be useful in the years ahead.7

Conclusion This paper has focused on the intersection between immigrants and urban poverty. Before offering a few final thoughts, we should stress that we do not mean for this focus to take away from other efforts targeted at other populations also experiencing poverty. In particular, some authors have sought to contrast an immigrant (or Latino) agenda with that of African Americans (Vaca 2004). This is not only unwise politically; it also ignores the increasing proximity of Black and immigrant populations in our major urban areas as well as shared economic and other interests (Pastor and Carter 2009). That said, an immigrant lens on poverty reduction does point to a different set of emphases: more stress on addressing low wages, training for those already working, and achieving broad reforms in legal status for those who are undocumented. These sorts of policies could not only significantly improve the lives of adults but they could have huge impacts on the next America, particularly given the high share of children who have at least one immigrant parent. They would restore some of the stepping stones out of poverty.

By way of a parallel, the cross-state comparison of changing minimum wage laws by Card and Krueger (1995) took advantage of that “natural” experiment to demonstrate that there was no significant negative employment from modest wage hikes. The study launched several others and fundamentally shifted the policy viability of increasing the minimum wage. Demonstrations about whether states do better when they ease the lives of undocumented residents could have a similar impact, one way or the other, on both state and national policy.

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What’s holding us back? One factor we think is important has been the racialization of immigrants, a process that casts recently-arrived immigrants as a sort of permanent “other.” Of course, we who operate in the rational worlds of public policy and university research like to suppose that such passions can be set aside in the spirit of designing more effective interventions. But consider the fact that while young, healthy adults are considered the key to making the Affordable Care Act successful, one group of such adults – undocumented immigrants – have been explicitly prohibited from even buying insurance (even at full price) on the new exchanges. The result is higher costs both in the insurance pool and at the emergency rooms – and it’s hard to explain this outcome without taking into account the heated emotions that seems to surround the debate about immigrants and immigrant integration. The truth is that policy is political in both the narrow and broad sense. Moving society to pay attention to immigrant poverty – or really anything to do with poverty – will require a combination of communicative framing, social movement organizing, and electoral change. Fortunately, a fundamental shift seems to have occurred in the confidence of at least one set of actors – immigrants themselves. Previously accustomed to operating at the margins of policy, mass marches and Congressional lobbying have instead become the order of the day. Indeed, undocumented youth – those you would think would be the most voiceless given their age and immigration status – have managed to mainstream the DREAM Act, and persuade the President to adopt a Deferred Action strategy at a time when Congress refuses to act. Immigrant rights activists, often led by the DREAMers, have worked with allies in faith, business, labor and social service communities to set a new agenda for immigration reform. They will likely be critical in setting a new table for addressing poverty and workforce development in ways that will include all our urban populations. In so doing, together we will work to restore the immigrant and intergenerational mobility that have long been thought to be an essential part of the American story.

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References Bohn, Sarah. 2009. New Patterns of Immigrant Settlement in California. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California. Retrieved (http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=812). Borjas, George J. 2006. Making It in America: Social Mobility in the Immigrant Population. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved February 5, 2014 (http://www.nber.org/papers/w12088). Card, David E., and Alan B. Krueger. 1995. Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Clark, Rebecca L., and Rosalind Berkowitz King. 2008. “Social and Economic Aspects of Immigration.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1136(1):289–97. Cooper, Betsy, and Kevin O’Neil. 2005. Lessons from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Washington D.C.: The Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved (http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/PolicyBrief_No3_Aug05.pdf). Fix, Michael, ed. 2009. Immigrants and Welfare: The Impact of Welfare Reform on America’s Newcomers. New York, N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation. Gouveia, Lourdes, Miguel A. Carranza, and Jasney Cogua. 2006. “The Great Plains Migration: Mexicanos and Latinos in Nebraska.” in New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States, edited by Victor Zuniga and Ruben Hernandez-Leon. New York, N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation. De Graauw, Els, Shannon Gleeson, and Irene Bloemraad. 2013. “Funding Immigrant Organizations: Suburban Free Riding and Local Civic Presence 1.” American Journal of Sociology 119(1):75–130. Hill, Laura E., Magnus Lofstrom, and Joseph M. Hayes. 2010. Immigrant Legalization: Assessing the Labor Market Effects. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California. Retrieved (http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=869). Jones-Correa, Michael. 2008. “Immigrant Incorporation in the Suburbs: Differential Pathways, Arenas and Intermediaries.” Pp. 19–47 in Immigration and Integration in Urban Communities: Renegotiating the City, edited by Lisa M. Hanley, Blair A. Ruble, and Allison M. Garland. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Kneebone, Elizabeth. 2014. Confronting Suburban Poverty in America. [S.l.]: Brookings Institution Pr. 12  Papers

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Li, Wei. 1998. “Anatomy of a New Ethnic Settlement: The Chinese Ethnoburb in Los Angeles.” Urban Studies 35(3):479–501. Lynch, Robert, and Patrick Oakford. 2013. The Economic Effects of Granting Legal Status and Citizenship to Undocumented Immigrants. Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress. Retrieved (http://www.americanprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/EconomicEffectsCitizenship-1.pdf). Marcelli, Enrico A. 2004. “From the Barrio to the Burbs? Immigration and the Dynamics of Suburbanization.” Pp. 123–50 in Up Against The Sprawl: Public Policy And The Making Of Southern California, edited by Jennifer Wolch, Manuel Pastor Jr, and Peter Dreier. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1985. “Spatial Assimilation as a Socioeconomic Outcome.” American Sociological Review 50:94–106. Milkman, Ruth. 2006. L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Myers, Dowell. 2008. Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America. New York, N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation. Park, Julie, and Dowell Myers. 2010. “Intergenerational Mobility in the Post-1965 Immigration Era: Estimates by an Immigrant Generation Cohort Method.” Demography 47(2):369–92. Pastor, Manuel. 2012. “Spatial Assimilation and Its Discontents: The Changing Geography of Immigrant Integration in Metropolitan America.” Pp. 340–70 in The Oxford Handbook of Urban Economics and Planning, edited by Nancy Brooks, Kieran Donaghy, and GerritJan Knaap. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Pastor, Manuel. 2013. “Maywood, Not Mayberry: Latinos and Suburbia in Los Angeles County.” in Social justice in diverse suburbs: history, politics, and prospects, edited by Christopher Niedt. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pastor, Manuel, and Vanessa Carter. 2009. “Conflict, Consensus, and Coalition: Economic and Workforce Development Strategies for African Americans and Latinos.” Race and Social Problems 1(3):143–56. Pastor, Manuel, and Enrico A. Marcelli. 2013. What’s at Stake for the State: Undocumented Californians, Immigration Reform, and Out Future Together. Los Angeles, CA: USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity. Retrieved October 29, 2013 (http://csii.usc.edu/undocumentedCA.html).

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Pastor, Manuel, and John Mollenkopf. 2012. “Struggling Over Strangers or Receiving with Resilience? The Metropolitics of Immigrant Incorporation.” in Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects, Vol. 4: Building Resilient Regions, edited by Nancy Pindus, Margaret Wier, Howard Wial, and Harold Wolman. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Pastor, Manuel, and Justin Scoggins. 2012. Citizen Gain: The Economic Benefits of Naturalization for Immigrants and the Economy. Los Angeles, CA: Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, University of Southern California. Retrieved (http://csii.usc.edu/CitizenGain.html). Pastor, Manuel, Justin Scoggins, Jennifer Tran, and Rhonda Ortiz. 2010. The Economic Benefits of Immigrant Authorization in California. Los Angeles, CA: USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. Retrieved (http://csii.usc.edu/documents/economic_benefits_immigrant_authorization.pdf). Perlmann, Joel. 2005. Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immigrant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890 to 2000. New York; Annandale on Hudson, N.Y.: Russell Sage Foundation ; Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Raijman, Rebeca, and Marta Tienda. 1999. “Immigrants’ Socioeconomic Progress Post-1965: Forging Mobility or Survival?” Pp. 239–56 in The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, edited by Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh Dewind. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Ruggles, Steven J. et al. 2011. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [MachineReadable Database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Singer, Audrey. 2004. The Rise of New Immigrant Gateways. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution’s Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. Singer, Audrey, Susan W. Hardwick, and Caroline B. Brettell, eds. 2008. Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America. First Edition. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Skerry, Peter. 2013. “Splitting the Difference on Illegal Immigration.” National Affairs, 3–26. Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2012. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. W. W. Norton & Company. Vaca, Nicolas C. 2004. The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Blacks and What It Means for America. New York, NY: Rayo.

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Winders, Jamie. 2013. Nashville in the New Millennium: Immigrant Settlement, Urban Transformation, and Social Belonging. Russell Sage Foundation. Yoshikawa, Hirokazu. 2011. Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Children. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Zhou, Min, Jennifer Lee, Jody Agius Vallejo, Rosaura Tafoya-Estrada, and Yang Sao Xiong. 2008. “Success Attained, Deterred, and Denied: Divergent Pathways to Social Mobility in Los Angeles’s New Second Generation.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 620(1):37–61.

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Figures and Charts

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Figure 1.

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Figure 2.

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Figure 3.

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Figure 4.

Educational Profile for Workforce Age U.S.-born Whites and Blacks, Compared to Immigrant Non-citizen Asians and Latinos, 1970-2009, US

40%

65%

30%

37% 18% 67%

32%

31% 26%

1980

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Latino, Immigrant Non-Citizen

Asian, Immigrant Non-citizen

1990

33%

57%

some college high school grad < high school

2000

BA or better

16%

28%

10% Black U.S.-born

White U.S.-born

Latino, Immigrant Non-Citizen

Asian, Immigrant Non-citizen

Black U.S.-born

White U.S.-born

Latino, Immigrant Non-Citizen

Asian, Immigrant Non-citizen

Black U.S.-born

White U.S.-born

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66%

22% 21%

15%

1970

14%

15%

29% 24%

23%

10%

32%

17% 66%

32%

25%

16%

43%

38%

55% 34%

32%

31%

67%

48% 17%

31%

18%

17%

31%

29%

31%

11%

15%

15% 15% Latino, Immigrant Non-Citizen

35%

50%

20%

27%

20%

70% 60%

39% 16%

11%

33%

Asian, Immigrant Non-citizen

16%

11%

30%

18%

Black U.S.-born

40%

12%

25%

18% 39%

14%

White U.S.-born

23%

10%

12%

Latino, Immigrant Non-Citizen

14%

9% 20%

Asian, Immigrant Non-citizen

80%

Black U.S.-born

90%

5% 13% 7%

White U.S.-born

100%

2009

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Figure 5.

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Figure 6.

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Figure 7.

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OLMIS - Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Population Working in Oregon

Oregon Labor Market Information System

Characteristics of the ForeignBorn Population Working in Oregon by Gail Krumenauer Published Oct202014

Roughly 10 percent (or 376,000) of Oregon's population consists of people born outside the U.S. Of the foreignborn population in Oregon, roughly 351,000 are age 16 or older, and about 221,000 are employed. Foreignborn workers make up 13 percent of the state's civilian employed population. Almost half (47%) of Oregon's foreignborn population is native to Latin America, while more than onefourth (29%) comes from Asia, another 15 percent is native to Europe, and 9 percent were born elsewhere outside the U.S. Foreignborn workers tend to be more concentrated in the agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry, as well as manufacturing. One out of 10 foreignborn workers can be found in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, or mining, and about onefifth (18%) work in manufacturing (Table 1). By comparison, 3 percent of the employed nativeborn population work in agriculture and related industries, and 11 percent work in manufacturing. Those born outside the U.S. are slightly less likely to be found in educational services or health care (16%) than Oregon workers born in the States (22%). Table 1 Employment by Population Nativity and Industry, Oregon Statewide, 20082012 Industry Nativeborn Foreignborn Manufacturing 11% 18% Educational services, and health care and social assistance 22% 16% Arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and 10% 13% food services Professional, scientific, and management, and administrative 10% 11% and waste management services Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining 3% 10% Retail trade 12% 9% Construction 6% 6% Other services 5% 5% Finance and insurance, and real estate and rental and 6% 4% leasing Transportation and warehousing, and utilities 4% 3% Wholesale trade 3% 3% Public administration 5% 2% Information 2% 1% All Employed 100% 100% Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 20082012 fiveyear estimates

ForeignBorn Workers Earn Relatively Lower Wages Oregon workers born outside the U.S. tend to be more concentrated in lower earnings categories than their U.S.born counterparts. Almost twothirds (64%) of those born in the States and working fulltime, yearround in Oregon earned $35,000 or more in the past 12 months (Graph 1). At the same time, less than half (45%) of the state's foreignborn workers earned at least $35,000 at fulltime, yearround jobs. http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/ArticleReader?itemid=00009408

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Some of the earnings difference can be attributed to the industries where foreign and nativeborn workers tend to be employed. Oregon's average wage in agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, and mining came in at $31,200 in 2012, while the wages in educational services and health care and social assistance averaged $43,200. More information about the foreign and nativeborn populations in Oregon can be found through the U.S. Census Bureau's American FactFinder ( http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtm). Graph 1

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Metropolitan Knowledge Network | In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-Born Residents in Oregon

In Search of Opportunity: ForeignBorn Residents in Oregon Jason Jurjevich and Ryan Dann Population Research Center June 2012

Highlights Important highlights specific to the foreign-born population include: • Since 1970, foreign-born persons, as a percent of the total U.S. population, have increased from 4.7 to 12.9 ( /- 0.04) percent; • In 2010, Oregon’s proportion of foreign-born persons is 9.8 percent ( /- 0.3 percent); • Slightly more than one-half (53.2 percent; /-0.2 percent) of immigrants to the United States were from Latin America, compared to 46.6 percent ( /-1.9 percent) of immigrants to Oregon; • Almost half of foreign-born individuals in the Portland metro area are naturalized U.S. citizens; • In the Portland metro area, foreign-born persons in Washington County have the highest level of educational attainment at 38 percent ( /- 3.2 percent) (measured as the number of persons with a bachelor’s degree or higher); • Because naturalized U.S. citizens have higher levels of formal job training and higher levels of educational attainment than non-citizens, employment occupation among foreign-born persons differs considerably [see Table 2]; • Households headed by foreign-born naturalized persons earn roughly $10,000 more than their native-born counterparts and about $24,000 more than households headed by foreign-born non-citizens. Introduction From our earliest beginnings and to present day, the social fabric of the United States continues to be shaped by immigration. Americans are generally aware of their families’ personal stories and the inextricable link to immigration, but they are likely less familiar with historical and current trends. Focusing in Oregon and more specifically, the Portland metropolitan area, we provide a statistical portrait of the foreign-born population by examining recent growth patterns, identifying geographic origins, and describing individual-level characteristics. Historical and Recent Growth Trends Figure 1 shows that during the late 1800s, foreign-born persons comprised around 13 percent of the U.S. population, and peaked at 14.6 percent in 1890. Beginning with the implementation of more restrictive immigration policies in the 1920s, the share of the foreign-born population dropped precipitously through 1970 to around 5 percent. Figure 1: Foreignborn as a Percent of U.S. Population (18502010)

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Metropolitan Knowledge Network | In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-Born Residents in Oregon

Source: Decennial U.S. Census (18502000) and American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 1year estimates

During the most recent period, 1970 to 2010, foreign-born persons are again making up a greater proportion of the total U.S. population—from 4.7 to 12.9 percent ( /- 0.04 percent), during the 40-year period. Similar to national trends, foreign-born individuals are increasingly calling Oregon and the Portland metropolitan area home. As Figure 2 shows, the number of foreign-born individuals in Oregon increased from just over 50,000 in 1970 to almost 375,000 (with a /- 10,484 margin of error) in 2010. The largest relative increase in Oregon’s foreign-born population occurred during the 1990s, when the state saw a 108 percent increase. In the most recent decade, 2000 to 2010, Oregon’s foreign-born population increased by 30 percent. Figure 2: Foreignborn as a Percent of Oregon”s Population (19702010)

Sources: Decennial U.S. Census (19702000) and American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 1year estimates

Oregon’s proportion of foreign-born persons (9.8 percent; /- 0.3 percent) was lower than the U.S. average (12.9 percent; /- 0.04 percent) in 2010. http://mkn.research.pdx.edu/2012/06/in-search-of-opportunity-foreign-born-residents-in-oregon/

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Metropolitan Knowledge Network | In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-Born Residents in Oregon

However, sizable foreign-born populations in California, New York, and New Jersey skew the U.S. average. Oregon has a larger foreign-born population than most states, both in relative and absolute terms, at 9.8 percent ( /- 0.3 percent) (18th) and 375,743 ( /- 10,484) (21st), respectively. Counties within Oregon have considerably different shares of foreign-born persons. According to the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS), Washington County had the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the three-county Portland metro area, at 16.4 percent ( /-0.9 percent), followed by Multnomah County (14.2 percent; /-1.1 percent) and Clackamas County (8.8 percent; /-1.2 percent). Much of the difference in the size of the foreign-born population across counties is driven by fundamentally different immigration patterns. For example, Figure 3 shows that between 2000 and 2010, about 90 percent of net migration to Multnomah County was attributable to international migration, compared to nearly 50 percent in Washington County and only 20 percent in Clackamas County. However, immigration patterns have changed considerably following the recent economic recession. Between 2010 and 2011, only 30 percent of net migration in Multnomah County was attributable to international migration. Figure 3: Components of Net Migration for Oregon and Selected Counties (20002010)

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates (20002010)

A number of factors explain the variability of foreign-born populations across Oregon counties; but to a large degree, the most significant factors driving migration patterns of the foreign-born, include: low- and high-skill employment opportunities; size of established communities; housing access and affordability; and access to transportation. Also, the primary factors influencing initial settlement are often replaced by other factors after residents gain familiarity with their surroundings. Geographic Origins Table 1 compares the geographic origin of immigrants, by continental area, in 2010 for the United States and Oregon. Slightly more than one-half (53.2 percent; /-0.2 percent) of immigrants to the United States were from Latin America, compared to 46.6 percent ( /-1.9 percent) of immigrants to Oregon. An important difference, however, is that compared to the U.S., few Caribbean and South American immigrants settle in Oregon. The state however, attracts a higher share of immigrants from Central America compared to the United States as a whole. Table 1: Geographic Origin (by Continent Area) of the ForeignBorn Population, United States and Oregon, 2010

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Metropolitan Knowledge Network | In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-Born Residents in Oregon

Note: ACS data contain corresponding margins of error (MOE), which are not reported in the above table. Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 1year estimates

As demonstrated in Figure 4, in both the nation and Oregon, a large share of recent immigrants are from Mexico. Given that Oregon has a greater share of foreign-born immigrants from Central America, it is little surprise that Mexican immigrants represent 40.5 ( /-1.9 percent) percent of all immigrants to Oregon, which is considerably higher than the U.S. average of 29.5 percent ( /-0.2 percent). Foreign-born immigration flows from Vietnam and Canada are the second and third highest relative flows, respectively, to Oregon. However, Vietnamese and Canadian immigrants rank lower among relative U.S. immigration flows. Figure 4: Geographic Origin (by Country) of ForeignBorn Persons, United States and Oregon (2010)

*Figure Excludes Hong Kong and Taiwan Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 1year estimates

Shares of Chinese and Korean immigrants in the U.S. and Oregon are comparable. Oregon has greater shares of immigrants from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Ukraine, and lower shares of immigrants from the Philippines and India compared to the U.S. average. Citizenship

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Metropolitan Knowledge Network | In Search of Opportunity: Foreign-Born Residents in Oregon

While the size of the foreign-born population varies across individual counties, Figure 5 underscores an important point: Almost half of foreign-born individuals in the Portland metro area are naturalized U.S. citizens. As we explain below, individuals born abroad often have radically different levels of job training and educational attainment, which has important implications for employment occupation and income. Figure 5: ThreeCounty Portland Metro Area ForeignBorn Population by Citizenship Status (2010)

Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 1year esitmates

Individual Level Characteristics Age and Sex In the United States in 2010, foreign-born residents were 6 years older than native-born persons with median ages of 41 and 35 years, respectively. In Oregon, however, native-born persons are more than 3 years older than the national average, while foreign-born Oregon residents are 2.3 years younger. Figure 6 represents the age and sex structure for Oregon’s native-born (bars) and foreign-born (dashed line) population in 2010. Most interesting is that while the native and foreign-born populations have similar median ages, their age and sex structure vary considerably. Figure 6: ForeignBorn as a Percent of Oregon Population (2010) [NativeBorn indicated by bars and Foreign Born indicated by dashed line]

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Source: American Community Survey (ACS) (20062010) 5year estimates

Beginning at birth and continuing through age 44, each five-year cohort of male and female native-born Oregonians represents approximately 7 percent of the total native-born population. The largest percentage of population is among ages 45-64, which represents the Baby Boom cohort. Foreign-born persons, on the other hand, are disproportionately represented in ages 20-54, with the largest shares in the 30-to-44 year old age groups. Educational Attainment A key indicator of Oregon’s long-term economic competitiveness is educational attainment, which represents the levels of formal training and individual skills. As illustrated in Figure 7, there are significant disparities in educational attainment according to nativity. The largest disparity is among individuals with less than a high school education. In Oregon, 8 percent ( /-0.4 percent) of native-born persons have less than a high school education, compared to more than one-third of the foreign-born population. The share of foreign-born persons with only a high school diploma is marginally lower than for native-born persons, but foreign-born persons are at a disadvantage in terms of post-high school education. Here, more than one-third of native-born persons have some college education, compared to 20 percent ( /-1.8 percent) of the foreign-born population. In terms of persons with a bachelor’s degree and higher, the native and foreign-born population have comparable attainment rates at 30 ( /-0.6 percent) and 24 ( /-1.2 percent) percent, respectively. One of the major limitations of the statewide data shown in Figure 7, however, is that it does not reveal how immigrants differ in terms of geographic origins. These differences almost always lead to fundamentally different social and economic indicators of foreign-born persons across counties. Figure 7: Oregon Educational Attainment* by Nativity (2010)

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*For the population 25 years and older Source: American Community Survey (ACS) (2010) 1year estimates

Consider then, Figure 8, which shows the educational attainment of the foreign-born population in the three-county Portland metro area. On balance, foreign-born persons in Multnomah County are more likely to have less than a high school education (33 percent, /- 5.2 percent). However, the lowest share with only a high school education is among foreign-born persons in Washington County (17 percent, /- 4 percent). The highest level of educational attainment among the foreign-born population in the Portland metro area is in Washington County, where 38 percent ( /- 3.2 percent) of foreign-born persons have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Clackamas and Multnomah county foreign-born residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher have slightly lower rates of achievement at 27 ( /- 7.3 percent) and 24 percent ( /- 2.9 percent), respectively. Employment While county-specific metrics such as those shown in Figure 8 provide additional insight relating to the educational attainment of foreign-born individuals, further disaggregation of foreign-born persons by citizenship status reveals more detailed information. More often that not, naturalized U.S. citizens have higher levels of formal job training and higher levels of educational attainment, both of which are represented in Figure 9. Figure 8: ThreeCounty Portland Metro Area Educational Attainment* for the ForeignBorn Population (2006 2010)

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*For the population 25 years and older Source: American Community Survey (ACS) (20062010) 5year estimates

Figure 9: Educational Attainment* for Portland Metro Area ForeignBorn Residents (2010)

*For the population 25 years and older. Source: American Community Survey (ACS) (2010) 1year estimates

Because of the differences in formal training, naturalized U.S. citizens are more likely to work in primary labor markets, which provide higher-paying jobs and greater long-term employment security. Alternatively, foreign-born non-citizens are more likely to be employed in secondary labor markets. Jobs in secondary labor markets, in contrast, are lower-paying, less-secure, and provide workers with little upward mobility. Table 2 illustrates the differences in employment for Oregon residents by nativity for the 2006-2010 period. Where approximately one-quarter of foreignhttp://mkn.research.pdx.edu/2012/06/in-search-of-opportunity-foreign-born-residents-in-oregon/

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born non-citizen Oregonians are employed in Farming, Fishing, and Forestry or Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Operations occupations, only 8.5 and 4.9 percent of foreign-born naturalized citizens and native-born citizens worked in these industries, respectively. Table 2: Employment Occupation for Oregon Residents by Nativity (2010)

Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 1year estimates

Conversely, occupations requiring formal education, such as Management, Business, Science, and Arts occupations, employ a small number of foreignborn non-citizens (2.8 percent, /- 0.7 percent), but a much higher percentage of naturalized citizens (6.8 percent, /- 0.9 percent). These differences in employment are not only strong predictors of personal and household income, but also represent the ability to achieve upward social mobility. Household Income Educational attainment is a strong predictor of income—both per capita and household income — so Figure 10 might come as no surprise. Across Oregon in 2010, both native and foreign-born households achieved a median household income of around $60,000. Of critical importance, however, is the difference in income among foreign-born persons by citizenship. As Figure 10 illustrates clearly, households headed by foreign-born naturalized persons earn roughly $10,000 more than their native-born counterparts and about $24,000 more than households headed by foreign-born non-citizens. Figure 10: Median Household Income (MHI) for Oregon Residents by Nativity

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Source: American Community Survey (ACS) (2010) 1year estimates

Michael Burnham, Charles Rynerson, Lisa Yarbrough, and Sheila Martin also contributed to this report.

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Report | September 24, 2014

Investing in English Skills: The Limited English Proficient Workforce in U.S. Metropolitan Areas By: Jill H. Wilson

Download the full report Download the press release Download the data An analysis of the labor market characteristics of the working-age limited English proficient (LEP) population in the United States and its largest metropolitan areas reveals that: Nearly one in 10 working-age U.S. adults—19.2 million persons aged 16 to 64—is considered limited English proficient. Two-thirds of this population speaks Spanish, but speakers of Asian and Pacific Island languages are most likely to be LEP. The vast majority of working-age LEP adults are immigrants, and those who entered the United States more recently are more likely to be LEP. Working-age LEP adults earn 25 to 40 percent less than their English proficient counterparts. While less educated overall than English proficient adults, most LEP adults have a high school diploma, and 15 percent hold a college degree. LEP workers concentrate in low-paying jobs and different industries than other workers. Most LEP adults reside in large metropolitan areas, but their numbers are growing fastest in smaller metro areas. Eighty-two percent of the working-age LEP population lives in 89 large metropolitan areas, and 10 metro areas account for half of this population. Large immigrant gateways and agricultural/border metro areas in California and Texas have the largest LEP shares of their working-age populations. Smaller metro areas such as Cape Coral, Indianapolis, and Omaha experienced the fastest growth in LEP population between 2000 and 2012. Los Angeles was the only metro area to experience a decline. Educational attainment and the native languages of LEP adults vary considerably across metro areas. The share who have completed high school ranges from 33 percent in Bakersfield to 85 percent in Jacksonville. Spanish is the most commonly spoken non-English language among LEP adults in 81 of the 89 large metro areas, but the share varies from a low of 5 percent in Honolulu to 99 percent in McAllen. Most working-age LEP people are in the labor force. A majority across all 89 large metro areas is working or looking for work, and in 19 metro areas, at least 70 percent are employed. Workers proficient in English earn anywhere from 17 percent to 135 percent more than LEP workers depending on their metro location. English proficiency is an essential gateway to economic opportunity for immigrant workers in the United States. Yet access to acquiring these skills is persistently limited by a lack of resources and attention. Increasing investment in adult English instruction—through more funding, targeted outreach, and instructional innovations—would enhance the human capital of immigrants that could lead to more productive work and better outcomes for their children. Given the large number of LEP workers in the United States and the fact that virtually all of the growth in the U.S. labor force over the next four decades is projected to come from immigrants and their children, it is in our collective interest to tackle this challenge head on.

Metro Area Data AUTHORS

Jill H. Wilson Jill H. Wilson is a senior research analyst and associate fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program. Her work focuses primarily on immigration and other demographic trends, and the changing geographical settlement of metropolitan areas. @JillHWilson

This interactive feature provides data describing the limited English proficient (LEP) population in 89 metropolitan areas for which data are available. The data are based on tabulations of microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2012 American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS asks respondents how well they speak English—very well, well, not well, or not at all. For the purposes of this report, anything less than very well qualifies a person as limited English proficient. To get started, select a metro area by clicking on the "Change Location" button. To view an overview for the U.S., click here.

Profile for: Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

Number of LEP individuals, 2012

Size and Growth of the Working Age Limited English Proficient (LEP) Population

125,611

Portland Metro Area

U.S.

Rank: 29th

+19.8%

LEP share of the total working age population, 2012

In the Portland metro area Persons aged 16 to 64 are considered working age

+22.2%

8.1%

Rankings are out 89 metro areas;; a rank of 1 indicates the largest value.

+0%

+5%

+10%

+15%

+20%

+25%

Rank: 38th

Rank: 62nd

Home Languages Languages Spoken by the Working Age LEP Population in the Portland metro area, 2012 Portland Metro Area

Change, 2000 to 2012

U.S.

Educational Attainment of the LEP Population Aged 25 to 64 In the Portland metro area, 2012 Portland Metro Area

100.0%

U.S.

100.0% 66.3%

50.0%

51.1% 50.0%

30.9%

0.0%

Spanish

14.7% 11.9%

18.4%

Other Indo- European Languages

Asian and Pacific Island Languages

35.6%

40.1%

46.6% 45.0% 17.8% 14.9%

3.3% 3.4% Other

More detail The top languages spoken are: Spanish (51.1% of the working age LEP population);; Vietnamese (9.2%);; Russian (7.0%);; Chinese (4.1%);; and Korean (3.4%)

0.0%

Less than High School

High School/Some College

Bachelor's or Higher

Labor Market Snapshot of the Working Age LEP Population In the Portland metro area, 2012 Labor market participation of the working age LEP population Portland Metro Area

INDUSTRY

U.S.

71.3% 73.7% 0.0%

25.0%

50.0%

75.0%

100.0%

Median annual earnings of the employed working age LEP population Portland Metro Area

U.S.

$26,000 $29,000 $0

Top industries and occupations employing the largest shares of the working age LEP population

21.4%

Accommodations and Food Services

14.5%

Construction

9.7%

Retail Trade

9.4%

Administrative and Waste Management Services

9.0%

OCCUPATION

13.4%

Food Preparation and Serving Occupations

12.8%

Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations

11.9%

Transportation and Material Moving Occupations

8.0%

Construction and Extraction Occupations

8.0%

Map: Characteristics of the Working Age LEP Population in 89 U.S. Metro Areas Percent Change in the LEP Population, 2000 to 2012

SHARE (%)

Production Occupations

$5,000 $10,000 $15,000 $20,000 $25,000 $30,000

INDICATOR

SHARE (%)

Manufacturing

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA +22.2% Rank (1 implies largest value): 62nd

-3.9% +23.9% +41.0% +61.3% +116.8%

Note: Values of "N/A" indicate cases where the computed values and ranks are not statistically reliable.

Access to the ACS data underlying this analysis was provided by the Minnesota Population Center, through its Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) website. Brookings is a non-profit institution and the charts above were created using Highsoft software under a non-commercial license, the terms of which can be found here. Please note that Highsoft software is not free for commercial use.

Introduction The United States is a polyglot nation and has been for most of its history.[1] More than one in five working-age adults in the United States—some 45 million people—speak a language other than English at home. More than half of them also speak English very well. But 19.2 million are considered limited English proficient (LEP), comprising almost 10 percent of the working-age population. English proficiency is a strong predictor of economic standing among immigrants regardless of educational attainment. Numerous studies have shown that immigrants who are proficient in English earn more than those who lack proficiency, with higher skilled immigrants reaping the greatest advantage. [2] Conversely, high-skilled immigrants who are not proficient in English are twice as likely to work in “unskilled” jobs (i.e. those requiring low levels of education or training) as those who are proficient in English.[3] This underemployment represents a loss of productivity that yields lower wages for individuals and families and lower tax revenues and consumer spending for local areas. LEP immigrants also have higher rates of unemployment and poverty than their English proficient counterparts.[4] Moreover, higher proficiency in English among immigrants is associated with the greater academic and economic success of their children.[5] English skills also contribute to immigrants’ civic involvement and social connection to their new home.[6] Immigrants who arrive in the United States without knowing English do, by and large, improve their proficiency over time;; those who arrive at younger ages learn English faster than those whose age at arrival is higher, and the children of immigrants fare even better.[7] But mastering a new language— especially without formal instruction—takes years. Assuming that immigrants will “pick up the language,” while proving true in the long run, is not an efficient strategy for improving labor market outcomes in the shorter term. Rather, increasing the investment in adult English instruction now would

enhance the human capital of immigrants that could lead to more productive work, and benefit their children, sooner. Given the high number of LEP workers in the United States and the fact that virtually all of the growth in the U.S. labor force over the next four decades is projected to come from immigrants and their children, it is in our collective interest to tackle this challenge head on.[8] National, state, and regional leaders have an opportunity to enhance the human capital and economic mobility of their current and future workforce by investing in adult English instruction.[9] A 2011 report by the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation quantified the return on investment in adult education for the nation and for some states. It found that not only do adult education and workforce development programs boost human capital and individual employment prospects, but they also reduce spending on healthcare, public assistance, and incarceration.[10] Scholars at the Migration Policy Institute point to the potential improvements in labor market outcomes as a result of investments in English instruction for immigrants: higher productivity, earnings, and income tax payments;; lower poverty and use of public benefits;; and better educational and labor market outcomes for the children of immigrants.[11] They also acknowledge the need for improvements in the quality of instruction and programming to enhance outcomes.[12] High levels of immigration to the United States during the 1990s and early 2000s boosted the size of the LEP population. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of working-age LEP individuals grew 57 percent, slowing in the 2000s to a growth rate of 20 percent. Because not all immigrants are LEP and because English proficiency often improves over time, the LEP population has not grown as quickly as the overall foreign-born population (Figure 1). In fact, as the share of the working-age population that is foreign-born continued to climb from 1980 (7 percent) to 2012 (16 percent), the LEP share plateaued after 2005, remaining under 10 percent. Nevertheless, the size of the working-age LEP population is more than two-and-a-half times what it was in 1980, and the LEP share of the U.S. working-age population has increased from 4.8 to 9.3 percent. Figure 1. Foreign-Born Versus Limited English Proficient Population in the United States, Ages, 16-64, 1980-2012

Source: Author’s analysis of data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial census PUMS and the 2005 through 2012 ACS PUMS data Infrastructure and public funding for adult English instruction has not kept pace with this growth.[13] The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), enacted as Title II of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998, is the primary source of federal funding for adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) instruction. Although it technically expired in 2003, Congress continues to appropriate funds for WIA Title II ($575 million in FY2013 with a $71 million set-aside for English language and civics training).[14] Since 2000, funding from the U.S. Department of Education for adult ESOL instruction has hovered at around $250 million per year, with another $700 million provided by states.[15] The number of adults served by programs receiving federal funding dropped from about 1.1 million earlier in the decade to about 700,000 in 2011, a tiny fraction—about one-half of a percent—of the adult LEP population in the United States.[16] Meanwhile, states, which have typically contributed about three quarters of the funding for adult ESOL instruction, faced growing deficits after the recession and many slashed adult education and ESOL budgets.[17] This decline in funding was not accompanied by a decline in the adult LEP population. It is not surprising, then, that individuals wishing to enroll in English classes face access difficulties. A 2006 study of 187 providers across the country found that 57 percent had waiting lists, with wait times ranging from a few weeks to over three years.[18] In 2007, the National Adult Education Professional Development Consortium estimated that nationwide, there were 93,480 people on waiting lists for adult education and literacy classes, including adult ESOL.[19] A 2010 survey of 1,368 adult education providers found that 72 percent (in all 50 states) had waiting lists, representing some 160,000 individuals who had a desire to access services but could not. Moreover, wait times had doubled since the survey two years prior.[20]

Over the past two decades, the growth in the LEP population has been felt most acutely in places without a recent history of receiving newcomers from abroad. The new geography of immigration means that many cities and suburbs across the country are facing the challenges of a sizeable LEP population for the first time, both in their schools and in the workforce. Insufficient funding, combined with a lack of infrastructure and experience working with LEP populations in more recent destinations, has resulted in uneven and inadequate access to adult English instruction. Adding to the challenge is the diversity of this population. While 65 percent of the U.S. LEP population speaks Spanish, this proportion varies greatly in different parts of the country. Likewise, in some regions, a high proportion of LEP speakers have low levels of literacy in any language, whereas in other areas, many have college degrees. Workers without full proficiency in English are found in a variety of occupations and industries, represent a wide swath of origin countries and cultures, and have varying levels of income. These factors shape whether and how LEP workers succeed in increasing their English proficiency over time and how this impacts their labor force trajectories. These characteristics should also inform the policies and programs designed to help LEP workers enhance their English skills. This report examines the metropolitan geography of the working-age limited English proficient population and their labor force characteristics. It offers evidence for the economic benefits of investing in adult English instruction and presents data useful for tailoring interventions to the specific characteristics of an area’s LEP population. It concludes with some options for enhancing investment in adult English instruction through increased funding, targeted outreach, and instructional innovations.

Methodology The main data source for this report is the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is an ongoing survey of approximately 3 million U.S. households. Data are released annually covering demographic, social, economic, and housing topics, including language use and English ability. This analysis makes use of the ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), accessed via the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) website.[21] PUMS data allow for customized cross-tabulations which provide detailed characteristics of the LEP population including country of birth, age, period of entry to the United States (for immigrants), language spoken at home, educational attainment, labor force participation, occupation, industry, and earnings. In addition to the ACS, data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses are used to examine broad changes over time, including growth in the working-age LEP population. This analysis focuses on the working-age limited English proficient (LEP) population, defined as persons aged 16-64 who speak English less than “very well.”[22] (See sidebar, “Defining the LEP Population.”) Of the almost 25 million LEP individuals (aged 5 and older) counted in the United States in 2012, the vast majority—77 percent—were of working age (16-64). Almost 9 percent were children between the ages of 5 and 15, and 15 percent were 65 and older. Immigrants make up the vast majority (87 percent) of the working-age LEP population, but 13 percent are native born. In this analysis, the terms “immigrant” and “foreign born” are used interchangeably to refer to anyone born outside the United States to non-U.S.-citizen parents. Educational attainment data are for those aged 25-64. The Census Bureau collects data on language spoken at home for the population who do not speak English at home (see sidebar, “Defining the LEP Population.”) Respondents write in their home language, and the Census categorizes these responses into 382 single languages or language families. [23] (See Sidebar, “Language Classifications.”) Due to small sample size and confidentiality concerns, however, Census does not regularly tabulate data for all 382 categories;; rather, they collapse them into 39 groups and, more broadly, into four groups (Spanish, other Indo-European languages, Asian and Pacific Island languages, and Other languages). This paper presents data on languages spoken at home using the four broad categories and, in some instances, the most detailed categories, which are available from the PUMS. (See sidebar, “Language Classifications,” for which languages fall into which categories.) This report provides data on industry and occupation for persons aged 16–64 who had worked in the previous five years. Industry data were recoded from the 2007 Census industry classification scheme to closely align with the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2-digit categories. A few exceptions were made to isolate the private households sector (where LEP workers are concentrated) and to collapse real estate with finance, and management of companies with professional, scientific, and technical services (where very few LEP workers concentrate). For the occupation variable, data were recoded into 25 occupational categories following the 2010 ACS classification system. Data on earnings are for persons who worked at least 35 hours/week and at least 50 weeks over the last 12 months, and include wage income and income earned from a person’s own business or farm. This report presents data both at the national level and for 89 metropolitan areas. These 89 metro areas were selected because they were among the 100 most populous metropolitan areas in the United States and had a working-age LEP population sample size of at least 100 in the PUMS.[24] The Census Bureau provides summary data at the metropolitan level, but some manipulation is necessary to use microdata for this geography. The lowest level of geography for PUMS data is the Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) which is built from census tracts and counties and contains roughly 100,000 people. Because PUMAs do not necessarily align precisely with metro area boundaries, this analysis uses PUMA-based metropolitan area

New Federalism

National Survey of America’s Families THE URBAN INSTITUTE

An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies Series B, No. B-52, November 2002

The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families Jane Reardon-Anderson, Randy Capps, and Michael Fix

Children of immigrants are substantially more likely to be low-income despite the fact that they live in families with full-time workers.

Children of immigrants are the fastestgrowing segment of the U.S. population under age 18 (Van Hook and Fix 2000). One in five children in the United States is the child of an immigrant, evidence of the demographic impact of recent rapid immigration. In addition, one in four lowincome children is an immigrant’s child (Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001). But despite their demographic and policy significance, children of immigrants and their well-being are rarely studied on a national scale. In this brief, we present a number of key indicators—both positive and negative—of child well-being. The measures fall within three areas: (1) family environment, (2) physical and emotional health, and (3) access to needed services. To gauge well-being, we compare children in immigrant families with those in native-born families. We define “children of immigrants” as those with one or more foreign-born parents, regardless of whether the child was born abroad or in the United States. “Children of natives” are defined as those with no parent born outside the United States. Because income affects wellbeing, we often compare children of immigrants who are low-income (i.e., in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level [FPL]) with their native counterparts. And in some cases we compare foreign-born children with U.S.-born children of immigrants. Because U.S.-born children of immigrants are citizens, they have broader access to benefits than the foreign-born. Our findings are based on the 1999 National Survey of America’s Families

(NSAF), a nationally representative survey of households with persons under age 65 that includes data on 11 million children of immigrants. The NSAF makes this analysis possible because it is one of the few national surveys with a large number of immigrant families that include broad, detailed measures of child and family well-being. The results, then, represent some of the first national estimates comparing children in immigrant families with those in native families on these measures of well-being. We combine both native and foreignborn children in immigrant families for several reasons. In the first place, our research has found that policies such as the 1996 welfare reform law that disadvantage noncitizen adults are felt by both foreignborn and U.S.-born children in immigrant families (Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001). Moreover, most children in immigrant families (78 percent) are citizens (Capps 2001). In addition, child success in immigrant families is heavily influenced by the acculturation rates and legal status of immigrant parents (Coll and Magnuson 1997). Hence policies (such as welfare reform) that may affect the pace of immigrant parents’ integration will be felt by native and foreign-born children alike. Congress is currently deliberating the reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform law, which severely restricted noncitizens’ access to a wide range of federal public benefits. Despite significant restorations in 1997 and 2002, most legal immigrants admitted to the United States after 1996 are ineligible for welfare, public health insur-

ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM

An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies

FIGURE 1. Share of Children in Low-Income Families

72 Single-parent families 61

44 Two-parent families Children of immigrants

Children of natives

40 Percent

Source: Authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; calculations based on the 1999 National Survey of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Families. Note: Low-income families are those with income below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. All differences between children of immigrants and those of natives are statistically significant at p = 0.05.

ance, and other major federal benefits (National Immigration Law Center 2002). While our findings of unmet need are relevant to the ongoing debate over restoring benefits to immigrants, we believe they hold broader policy implications as well. Key assumptions on which policy has been premised apply less well to immigrant than native families. As a result, the design of social welfare policy and the needs of the growing number of children of immigrants continue to be mismatched.

Family Income and Environment Family Income and Structure Children of immigrants live in families that are poorer than those composed solely of native citizens. In 1998, children of immigrants lived in families with substantially lower median annual incomes ($35,900) than those living in native-born families ($46,200).1 Over half (52 percent) of children of immigrants lived in families with incomes below 200 percent of FPL, compared with 37 percent of children of 2

natives. Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of all children of immigrants lived in families with incomes below FPL, compared with only 15 percent for children of natives. Living in a single-parent family has been linked to poor outcomes in test scores, educational attainment, and behavioral and psychological problems (Vandivere, Moore, and Brown 2000). The NSAF reveals that children of immigrants are more likely to live in two-parent families (80 percent) than are children of natives (70 percent). However, children in two-parent, immigrant families are twice as likely to be low-income as children in two-parent, native families (44 percent versus 22 percent; see figure 1). These findings indicate that the presence of a second parent does not lift incomes in immigrant families to the same extent that it does in native families.

Employment and Wages Employment levels and, to a greater extent, wage differences among parents appear to account for many of the income disparities

An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies

cited above. With regard to employment, children of immigrants are somewhat less likely than those of natives to live in families with at least one full-time worker (77 percent versus 81 percent) or with two full-time workers (20 percent versus 24 percent). Equal shares (6 percent) of children of immigrants and of natives live in families where no parent works. However, when we consider only lowincome families, differing employment patterns emerge. Children of low-income immigrants are more likely to live in families with full-time workers than children of low-income natives (64 percent versus 58 percent). And children of low-income immigrants are less likely to live in families where no parent works than their counterparts in native families (11 percent versus 15 percent). Income disparities between immigrant and native families with full-time workers are especially pronounced. Forty-three percent of children of immigrants—versus 26 percent of natives’ children—live in low-income families with at least one fulltime worker. Eighteen percent of children of immigrants live in low-income families with two full-time workers, a rate twice that for children of natives. Presumably, low incomes in these working families can be ascribed to low wages.

Parent-Child Involvement How often parents read to their children and take them on outings help measure parent-child interaction, which in turn bears on children’s cognitive stimulation and development (Ehrle and Moore 1999). Differences between children in immigrant and native families are modest: 85 percent of natives’ children age 5 and younger are taken on outings several times per week compared with 77 percent of immigrants’ children. Children of natives are slightly more likely to be read to by their parents three or more times a week (81 percent versus 70 percent).

Parental Community Involvement Children of immigrants are less likely than those of natives to have parents engaged in social activities outside of the family. This may mean that immigrants are less able to advocate for their children in school or to

ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM

navigate other complex social institutions. Children of immigrants are less likely to have parents who volunteer at least a few times a month through a religious, school, or community group (24 percent versus 40 percent). Low-income children are also consistently less likely to have parents who volunteer.

Parent Mental Health and Aggravation Parent mental health is a critical feature of the family environment, affecting child behavior, social and academic competence, and child physical health (Downey and Coyne 1990). Parental aggravation is linked to poor cognitive and socioemotional development in young children (McGroder 1996). Overall, there is no difference between the share of children of immigrants and those of natives whose parents report being in poor mental health (18 percent versus 16 percent) or feeling aggravated (11 percent versus 10 percent). Children of low-income natives, however, are more likely than those of immigrants to have parents who are aggravated (15 percent versus 11 percent).

Child Physical and Emotional Health

Children of immigrants are more than twice as likely as children of natives to be in fair or poor health.

Child Physical Health Children of immigrants are more than twice as likely as children of natives to be in “fair” or “poor” health (9 percent versus 4 percent).2 (These responses are to be contrasted with reports that children are in “good,” “very good,” or “excellent” health.) Moreover, the health of children of immigrants declines more rapidly as they age than does the health of natives’ children. Seven percent of immigrants’ children under age 11 are reported to be in fair or poor health, but among 12- to 17-year-olds this share rises to 13 percent for children of immigrants. By contrast, the difference between younger and older children of natives is only 2 percentage points (see figure 2). Differences in health outcomes between children of natives and those of immigrants widen when we focus on the low-income population: 12 percent of immigrants’ children age 5 and younger are in fair or poor health, compared with 3

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ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM

that hold for children in low-income families. Moreover, children of immigrants are somewhat more likely to “do their homework most of the time” (88 percent versus 81 percent).

FIGURE 2. Share of Children in Fair or Poor Health

13 12–17 yrs

Skipping School, Suspensions, and Expulsions

7 6–11 yrs 3

7 0–5 yrs

Children of immigrants Children of natives

Percent Source: Authors’ calculations based on the 1999 National Survey of America’s Families. Note: All differences between children of immigrants and those of natives are statistically significant at p = 0.05.

only 5 percent of children of natives, and for age 12 to 17, these figures are 19 and 9 percent, respectively. These results may be explained by factors other than income, for instance, segregation within poor neighborhoods, high levels of overcrowding in immigrant households, and noncitizens’ more limited access to Medicaid and other forms of health insurance (Capps 2001; Ruiz-de-Velasco and Fix 2002).

Low-income children of immigrants age 6 to 11 are substantially less likely to exhibit high behavioral problems than children of natives (5 percent versus 10 percent). However, these advantages appear to erode over time, as there is no difference in behavioral problems among lowincome children age 12 to 17.

Involvement in School School Engagement

Child Behavioral and Emotional Problems Child behavioral problems have been linked to lower literacy scores and poorer outcomes in later development (Baydar, Brooks-Gunn, and Furstenberg 1993). The NSAF reveals that children of immigrants are no more likely to have behavioral problems than are children of natives. The share of children of immigrants who exhibit high behavioral problems (6 percent)3 is almost exactly the same as for children of natives (7 percent).

Overall, immigrants’ children are more likely to skip school than natives’ children (19 percent versus 15 percent), but they are not more likely to be suspended or expelled than children of natives (12 percent versus 14 percent). These patterns shift, however, when we focus on the low-income population; children of immigrants are no more likely to skip school than those of natives, and they are substantially less likely to be suspended or expelled.

Engagement in school leads to better school performance and has been found to be the product of stable parental employment. As Moore, Vandivere, and Ehrle (2000) write, school engagement can be seen as “a miner’s canary”—a measure “that might change rapidly in response to changes in societal incentives and norms.”4 Children of immigrants are no more likely than children of natives to demonstrate low school engagement (19 percent for both groups), results

Participation in Extracurricular Activities Participation in extracurricular activities such as sports and clubs helps children build social and skill competencies and has been linked to later childbearing (Moore and Halle 1997). Immigrants’ children age 12 through 17 are substantially less likely than their counterparts in native families to participate in extracurricular clubs (46 percent versus 65 percent; see figure 3). When we focus on low-income children, these wide differences between children of immigrants and those of natives persist (38 percent versus 52 percent, respectively). Thus, unlike school engagement and poor behavior, significant differences in extracurricular activity participation remain between children of immigrants and those of natives, even when controlling for income. A different picture emerges regarding after-school lessons. Overall, there is no statistical difference between immigrants’ children age 12 through 17 and those of natives in the share that take after-school lessons (35 percent versus 31 percent; see figure 3). But low-income children of

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barriers, lack of outreach, parental concerns about the immigration consequences of applying for benefits, and restrictions on noncitizen eligibility for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Capps, Ku, and Fix 2002; Hagan, Rodriguez, and Capps forthcoming).

FIGURE 3. After-School Activities for Children Age 12–17

14 Children of immigrants Children of natives

Jobs 33

ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM

Health Care and Mental Health Access for Parents

Lessons 31

48 Sports 57

46 Clubs 65

40 Percent

Source: Authors’ calculations based on the 1999 National Survey of America’s Families. Note: All differences between children of immigrants and those of natives are statistically significant at p = 0.05 except for participation in lessons.

immigrants are more likely to take lessons than natives (32 percent versus 22 percent). It might be expected that children of immigrants—especially those who are low-income—would be more likely to work than children of natives. NSAF data show that work is more common among natives’ children, however, and it is also more common among families with higher incomes. Thirty-three percent of children of natives have a job, compared with 14 percent of children of immigrants. For the low-income population, the shares fall to 21 percent for children of natives and 13 percent for children of immigrants. Thus, paid work among older children may be more a byproduct of greater social capital (i.e., parental networks and resources) than a response to financial need. Here, as in the case of extracurricular activities, children of immigrants appear to be relatively

isolated and disadvantaged, regardless of income.

Access to Needed Benefits and Services Health Care Access for Children Overall, few children who are in fair or poor health either lack health insurance or turn to hospital emergency rooms for their usual source of medical care. Foreign-born children, however, are much more likely than U.S.-born children of immigrants or the children of natives to have limited access to health benefits. That is, they are substantially more likely to be in poor or fair health and at the same time lack insurance or a usual source of care. These differences persist when only low-income children are considered, suggesting that access among foreign-born children may be limited by a number of factors beyond income, including language

Children of immigrants and those of natives have parents with equivalent levels of fair or poor physical health, poor mental health, and feelings of aggravation.5 Children of immigrants, however, are more likely to have parents who are aggravated but do not know a place to go for help. They are also more likely to have parents in poor mental health who receive no mental health services, or who are in fair or poor health and lack insurance (figure 4). However, when we look only at low-income families, there is less variation in access to care between immigrants and natives, suggesting that income does partly explain the discrepancy between the groups.

Housing and Food Assistance for Families Children in immigrant families are also more likely than those in native families to experience economic hardship but receive no benefits. Children of immigrants are more likely to live in families with problems affording food but receiving no food stamps (22 percent versus 16 percent) and to live in crowded housing or in families with trouble paying rent but receiving no housing assistance (24 percent versus 9 percent; see figure 4).

Conclusion Even though children of immigrants are more likely to live in two-parent families than children of natives, they are still poorer than natives’ children. In fact, one of this brief’s most strik-

An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies

ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM

FIGURE 4. Unmet Needs for Parents and Families, All Children

Family either lives in crowded house or has trouble paying rent but receives no housing assistance

Family has trouble paying for food, but receives no food stamps

Parent is in poor mental health but receives no mental health services

Parent is in fair or poor health but uninsured

Children of immigrants Children of natives

10 Percent

ing findings is that children of immigrants living in two-parent families are substantially more likely to be low-income than their native counterparts. The prevalence of these lowincome, two-parent families suggests that antipoverty policies intended to promote marriage—including those being discussed within the context of welfare reform’s reauthorization— may be less successful for immigrant than for native families. The data also indicate that wages, not employment levels, account for much of the income disparity between immigrant and native families with children. These findings suggest that policies intended to promote work may be less successful in eliminating poverty among immigrants than among natives. Policies intended to boost wages through work supports (such as food stamps 6

of immigrants fare as well or better than their native counterparts. These positive indicators may reflect the family values and other resources that immigrant families contribute to U.S. communities. At the same time, though, our results reveal that, with a few exceptions, the families of immigrant children appear less able to draw on community resources than natives. Children of immigrants participate in fewer extracurricular activities, and they are less likely to work after school. Their parents are less involved in community activities, and their families are less able to draw on food, health, mental health, and housing assistance in times of need. These unmet needs are particularly pronounced among the foreign-born who are the most likely to remain ineligible for public benefits—in part as a result of the immigrant exclusions that are now being debated as part of welfare reform’s reauthorization.

or the Earned Income Tax Credit) and the development of post-employment language, literacy, and job skills may hold greater promise. NSAF data also reveal that children of immigrants are more likely to be in poor health than children of natives. Even when we control for the greater likelihood of family poverty, we see worse health among children of immigrants. Moreover, our results indicate that the health of children of immigrants declines more rapidly as they age than does the health of children of natives. The picture is brighter, however, when we look inside immigrant families at other indicators of well-being. On NSAF measures of behavioral problems, parental aggravation, school engagement, lessons taken after school, and the likelihood of being disciplined at school, children

Notes 1. In the text, all comparisons between children of immigrants and those of natives are statistically significant at p = 0.05 unless noted otherwise. 2. There may be, however, some bias in the measure, as Latinos tend to be more likely than other groups to report fair or poor health, even when they have similar outcomes on objective health measures (Shetterly et al. 1996). 3. The NSAF measures child behavior using scales with separate scores for age 6 to 11 and age 12 to 17, based on questions regarding how well the child gets along with other children; how well the child can concentrate or pay attention; and whether the child feels unhappy or depressed. Caregivers for 6- to 11-year-olds were also asked whether the child feels worthless or inferior; has been nervous, high-strung, or tense; or acts too young for his or her age. Caregivers for 12to 17-year-olds were asked whether the child has trouble sleeping, lies or cheats, or does poorly on schoolwork (Ehrle and Moore 1999). 4. NSAF’s school engagement scale (for children age 6 to 17) is based on questions probing how often the child cares about doing well in school; only works on schoolwork when forced to; does just enough school-

An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social Policies

work to get by; and always does homework (Ehrle and Moore 1999). 5. Parent aggravation is measured by a scale of four items: (1) how often in the past month the parent felt the child was much harder to care for than most; (2) how often the child did things that really bothered the parent; (3) how often the parent was giving up more of his or her life to meet the child’s needs than expected; and (4) how often the parent felt angry with the child. Parent mental health is assessed with a five-item scale based on how often the respondent (1) felt calm or peaceful, (2) was a happy person, (3) was a very nervous person, (4) felt downhearted, and (5) felt that nothing could cheer him or her up (Ehrle and Moore 1999).

References Baydar, Nazli, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and Frank F. Furstenberg. 1993. “Early Warning Signs of Functional Illiteracy: Predictors in Childhood and Adolescence.” Child Development 64: 815–29. Capps, Randy. 2001. “Hardship among Children of Immigrants: Findings from the 1999 National Survey of America’s Families.” Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Assessing the New Federalism Policy Brief B-29. Capps, Randy, Leighton Ku, and Michael Fix. 2002. “How Are Immigrants Faring After Welfare Reform? Preliminary Evidence from Los Angeles and New York City.” Final report to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Coll, Cynthia Garcia, and Katherine Magnuson. 1997. “The Psychological Experience of Immigration: A Developmental Perspective.” In Immigration and the Family, edited by Alan Booth, Ann C. Crouter and Nancy Landale (91–131). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Downey, Geraldine, and James C. Coyne. 1990. “Children of Depressed Parents: An Integrative Review.” Psychological Bulletin 108: 50–76.

Ehrle, Jennifer, and Kristin Moore. 1999. “1997 NSAF Benchmarking Measures of Child and Family Well-Being.” Assessing the New Federalism National Survey of America’s Families Methodology Report No. 6. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Fix, Michael E., Wendy Zimmermann, and Jeffrey S. Passel. 2001. “The Integration of Immigrant Families in the United States.” Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Hagan, Jacqueline, Nestor Rodriguez, and Randy Capps. Forthcoming. “The Effects of Recent Welfare and Immigration Reforms on Immigrants’ Access to Health Care.” International Migration Review. McGroder, Sharon. 1996. “Parenting among Single, Low-Income, African-American Mothers with Preschool-Age Children: Patterns, Predictors, and Developmental Correlates.” Doctoral diss., Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pa. Moore, Kristin, and Tamara Halle. 1997. Positive Youth Development. Washington, D.C.: Child Trends, Inc. Moore, Kristin, Sharon Vandivere, and Jennifer Ehrle. 2000. “Turbulence and Child WellBeing.” Child Trends. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Assessing the New Federalism Policy Brief B-16. National Immigration Law Center. 2002. Guide to Immigrant Eligibility for Federal Programs, 4th ed. Los Angeles: National Immigration Law Center. Ruiz-de-Velasco, Jorge, and Michael Fix. 2002. “Limited English Proficient Students and High-Stakes Accountability Systems.” In Rights at Risk: Equality in an Age of Terrorism, edited by Dianne M. Piché, William L. Taylor, and Robin A. Reed (245–61). Washington, D.C.: Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights. Shetterly, S. M., J. Baxter, L. D. Mason, and R. F. Hamman. 1996. “Self-Rated Health among Hispanic vs. Non-Hispanic White Adults: The San Luis Valley Health and Aging Study.” American Journal of Public Health 86(12): 1798–801. Van Hook, Jennifer, and Michael Fix. 2000. “A Profile of the Immigrant Student Population.” In Overlooked and Underserved: Immigrant Children in U.S. Secondary Schools, edited by Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco, Michael

ASSESSING THE NEW FEDERALISM

Fix, and Beatriz Chu Clewell (9–33). Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Vandivere, Sharon, Kristin Moore, and Brett Brown. 2000. “Child Well-Being at the Outset of Welfare Reform: An Overview of the Nation and 13 States.” Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Assessing the New Federalism Policy Brief B-23.

About the Authors Jane ReardonAnderson is a research assistant in the Urban Institute’s Population Studies Center. Her research interests include immigration policy, welfare reform, and family policy.

Randy Capps is a research associate in the Urban Institute’s Population Studies Center. His research interests include immigration policy, immigrant settlement, welfare reform, and workforce development.

Michael Fix directs the Immigration Studies Program in the Institute’s Population Studies Center. His research interests include immigration and immigrant integration policy, civil rights, and federalism.

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This series presents findings from the 1997 and 1999 rounds of the National Survey of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Families (NSAF). Information on more than 100,000 people was gathered in each round from more than 42,000 households with and without telephones that are representative of the nation as a whole and of 13 selected states (Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin). As in all surveys, the data are subject to sampling variability and other sources of error. Additional information on the NSAF can be obtained at http://newfederalism.urban.org. The NSAF is part of Assessing the New Federalism, a multiyear project to monitor and assess the devolution of social programs from the federal to the state and local levels. Alan Weil is the project director. The project analyzes changes in income support, social services, and health programs. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies child and family well-being. The ANF project has received funding from The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund, the Stuart Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, The Fund for New Jersey, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

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The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Urban Institute, its board, its sponsors, or other authors in the series. Permission is granted for reproduction of this document, with attribution to the Urban Institute. The authors would like to thank Jennifer Ehrle and Katherine Kortenkamp for their help with the data analysis, and Alan Weil for his thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Households with at least one disabled adult aged 18-64

Web links to primary reading: Costs, Cuts, and Consequences, Center for Studying Disability Policy http://www.mathematica-‐‑ mpr.com/~/media/publications/pdfs/disability/working-‐‑agepeople_ib.pdf

Why Taking Disability into Account is Essential to Reducing Income Poverty and Expanding Economic Inclusion, Fremstad http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/poverty-‐‑disability-‐‑2009-‐‑09.pdf Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System, Autor and Duggan http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2010/12/disability%20i nsurance%20autor/12_disability_insurance_autor.pdf Restructuring Disability Insurance to Support Work Opportunities and Econmic Self-‐‑ Sufficiency, Bergman and MacDonald http://wid.org/news/2011%20Restructuring%20Disability%20Insurance.pdf Long-‐‑term Poverty and Disability Among Working-‐‑Age Adults, She and Livermore http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1224&context=e dicollect Participant-‐‑Identified Leading Practices that Could Increase the Employment of Individuals with Disabilities in the Federal Workforce, Government Accountability Office http://www.gao.gov/assets/210/204277.pdf Web links to additional reading: Understanding Asset Development for Individuals with Disabilities, Assets for Independence Resource Center http://idaresources.acf.hhs.gov/page?pageid=a047000000AsH85 “With Disability Benefits Running on Fumes, What to Do?”, Aaron http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/10/28-‐‑disability-‐‑benefits-‐‑ aaron

The State of 21st Century Financial Incentives for Americans with Disabilities, National Council on Disability http://www.ncd.gov/publications/2008/Aug2008 “Material Hardship, Poverty, and Disability Among Working-‐‑Age Adults,” Social Science Quarterly, She and Livermore http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-‐‑6237.2007.00513.x/abstract “Disability is a cause and consequence of poverty”, Vallas and Fremstad http://talkpoverty.org/2014/09/19/disability-‐‑cause-‐‑consequence-‐‑ poverty/?elq=~~eloqua..type-‐‑-‐‑emailfield..syntax-‐‑-‐‑ recipientid~~&elqCampaignId=~~eloqua..type-‐‑-‐‑campaign..campaignid-‐‑-‐‑ 0..fieldname-‐‑-‐‑id~~

MCKENZIE STAMP

Age 36 Caucasian Married with 3 children ages 1, 5 and 8 Live in Bend

McKenzie

The mobile home is baking in the afternoon sun. balances her infant on her hip as she reaches for snacks to appease her five and eight year olds. Her husband is waiting for his medication. Just over a year ago, McKenzie Stamp and her husband Les were in the throes of launching a Kirby Vacuum distributorship in central Oregon. McKenzie was managing the field training and the books. Les was selling door to door until one afternoon when everything changed. Les collapsed on a customer’s front porch, suffering a massive stroke. He was left partially paralyzed with impaired cognitive function. Since that day, the family of five has had no income, lives in Neighborhood Impact transitional housing and depends on the Aging & People with Disabilities program for support. “I had been working really hard until then. I’d leave for the office at 6:00am one morning and get home 2:00am the next. In this business you get out of it what you put in because it’s all commission. It was a huge sacrifice because I didn’t get time to spend with my family. But we were finally in a position to pay the bills.” McKenzie grew up in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Her parents divorced when she was four. Her mother worked a lot and McKenzie “got in trouble.” In high school she moved in with her older sister and eventually came to stay and take care of her grandmother in Redmond, Oregon. She worked in various restaurant jobs which is where she met Les who was then a chef. In their twenties, they got married, had a child, then a second child before deciding to go back to school. “We took out loans and enrolled in Central Oregon Community College, me in business, and Les in automotive repair. But we knew college would just put us further into debt so we had to let school go.” In 2012 McKenzie took a job at Kirby vacuums in Redmond selling door to door. “I was good at it. I like to make people feel good about themselves. In six months I was running my own office and training to be a distributor.” Les took care of their children and sold vacuums on commission.

When McKenzie became pregnant with their third child, Les began gradually taking over the sales force training. They knew it would be some time before the business would be solvent, but they had a plan. Today McKenzie can only take things one day at a time. The family depends on Dept. of Human Services (DHS) Aging & People with Disabilities who send in help several times a week, but only with household chores, not with Les or the children. “My sister helps when she can and my mother came for a while after Les’ stroke. But we need to hire someone so I can get some relief from caregiving.” In Oregon, as a spouse, McKenzie can only be paid as a caregiver if the family meets certain criteria. She plans to apply to the DHS Independent Choices program so they can hire a caregiver for Les. This will require they hire a CPA to monitor their finances. “Without food stamps and TANF we couldn’t make it at. We use every dime to get by. Next month we’ll have been in transitional housing for one year which is the limit. Rents have gone up in this area by 50% in the last few years. We may have to move. But I moved a lot as a kid. It was really challenging for me and I don’t want that for my kids.” For McKenzie, getting back to work is critical both financially and for her own well-being.

“I have to stay positive and focused for my family. I still want a career. My goal? I’d like to see Les in a vocational training program and me back in sales. If I won the lottery… and I don’t play… I’d give money to create a program just for people like us; impoverished families who suddenly find themselves disabled.”

HOUSEHOLDS WITH DISABLED ADULTS IN POVERTY

THERE ARE ABOUT 123,500 OREGONIANS IN POVERTY LIVING IN A HOUSEHOLD WITH A DISABLED ADULT AGES 18-64. EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF ADULTS

RACE / ETHNICITY OTHER

ASIAN

TWO OR MORE RACES

19% EMPLOYED 16%

UNEMPLOYED

AMERICAN INDIAN / ALASKAN NATIVE BLACK

IN LABOR 65% NOT FORCE

HOUSEHOLD TYPE

46% CHILDLESS ADULTS 44% TWO PARENTS

9% FEMALE SINGLE PARENT

4% 4%

HISPANIC

16%

WHITE

69%

DISABILITY TYPE INDEPENDENT LIVING DIFFICULTY

37%

34%

PHYSICAL DIFFICULTY

29%

COGNITIVE DIFFICULTY

2% MALE SINGLE PARENT LIVING IN OREGON

WHERE THEY ARE FROM

32% RURAL

68% URBAN SOURCE: ECONORTHWEST ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY, 2012, PUMS DATA

17% IMMIGRANT

83% NON-IMMIGRANT

SEPTEMBER 2011 • NUMBER 11-03

Costs, Cuts, and Consequences: Charting a New Course for Working-Age People with Disabilities1 By David Stapleton and Gina Livermore

The federal government spends a great deal to assist working-age people with disabilities. In 2008 (the most 2

recent data available), an estimated $357 billion (nearly 12 percent of all federal spending) went to support these individuals. Substantial state funds—an estimated $71 billion in 2008 from four federal-state programs— also supported this group. But these funds are spread across multiple agencies and programs with varying goals, disguising total government spending. This brief looks at our nation’s spending on programs for workingage people with disabilities, a population that seeks greater independence but is commonly misperceived as unemployable. The size of the expenditures and the current fiscal crisis present policymakers with a unique opportunity to change modes of delivery and realign programs with the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which calls for “maximizing self-sufficiency” of these individuals. Policymakers should focus on structural changes that would make programs more efficient and benefit our nation’s economy, rather than tightening eligibility and reducing benefits—a path bound to create disproportionate harm for this vulnerable group. Adding It Up: Federal and State Spending In 2008, the federal government spent more than $357 billion to support working-age people with disabilities (Figure 1), allocated over a patchwork of 63 federal programs. During that same period, states spent $71 billion on joint federal-state programs. More than 90 percent of those funds went to Medicaid. Of the total $429 billion in state and federal spending for this population in 2008, 95 percent covered health care and income maintenance, with only part of the remainder allocated to improving employment and economic independence (Figure 2).

Growth from 2002 to 2008 From 2002 to 2008, state and federal spending for working-age people with disabilities grew faster than the gross

Figure 1. Estimated Federal, State, and Combined Expenditures for Working-Age People with Disabilities, Fiscal Years 2002 and 2008

Federal Expenditures for Working-Age People with Disabilities

$228,652 $357,356

State Expenditures for Working-Age People with Disabilities Under Selected Federal-State Programs

$51,198 $71,190

$279,850

Combined Federal and Selected State Expenditures

$428,546

$100,000 $200,000 $300,000 $400,000 $500,000

In Millions

2002

2008

Source: Livermore et al. (2011). Estimates for 2002 were adjusted to 2008 dollars using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.

Mathematica’s Center for Studying Disability Policy provides rigorous, objective disability policy research, collects data from the people disability policy aims to serve, and supplies the nation’s policymakers with the information they need to navigate the transition to 21st-century disability policy. For more information, visit our website at www.DisabilityPolicyResearch.org.

Figure 2. Percentage of Estimated Federal and State Expenditures for Working-Age People with Disabilities by Major Expenditure Category, Fiscal Year 2008

Income Maintenance 40.6%

Health Care 54.9%

Other Sevices 0.6% Education, Training, and Employment 1.2%

Housing and Food Asistance 2.7%

Source: Livermore et al. (2011).

domestic product, all federal outlays, and all federal revenues (Table 1). High spending growth in programs for working-age people with disabilities between 2002 and 2008 was partly fueled by increases in the numbers servedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;increases that substantially exceeded the growth rate of the working-age population. Several factors contributed to the increase in people served by these programs. As baby boomers age, the prevalence of disability rises and helps to swell the disability program rolls. Disabled veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, coupled with aggressive government efforts to meet their needs, also increased the number of disability beneficiaries. Finally, the severe recession of 2007, which exacted a toll on all workers, produced particular employment hardships for people with disabilities (Kaye 2010). Many laid-off workers with disabilities applied for and obtained Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Expenditures also increased per beneficiary served, even after adjusting for

inflation. For instance, federal and state expenditures on Medicare, Medicaid, and income support for those receiving SSDI or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) rose from an estimated $29,450 per capita in 2002 to $31,922 per capita in 2008. Rapid growth in per capita health care costs contributed substantially to overall growth of expenditures for this population. Health care expenditures alone grew 34 percent over six years after adjustment for inflation.3 Rising income support per beneficiary for the SSDI program also contributed to overall growth; the per capita increase reflects the fact that SSDI benefits for new awardees increase with a national wage index that usually grows more rapidly than consumer prices. In sum, federal, state, and combined government spending to support programs for working-age people with disabilities increased substantially. Federal expenditures rose by $129 billion, more than 30 percent above 2002

levels. State government spending rose as well, increasing by 16.2 percent from 2002 figures. Combined federal and state spending increased by 28.2 percent from 2002 to 2008. Most of this combined state and federal spending went toward direct assistance for people with disabilities. Health care spending comprised 55 percent of total expenditures in 2008, and income support claimed nearly 41 percent of all dollars spent. These spending levels rose nearly 30 and 28 percent from 2002 figures, respectively. Spending for education and vocational services remained a small share of all expenditures and fell by 3 percent from 2002 levels. All trends indicate that expenditures for members of this population will continue to rise rapidly for the next several decades under current law. The severe economic recession and anticipated slow recovery, the aging of the baby boom generation, and a growing number of disabled veterans will continue to swell the disability program rolls. In addition, implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) promises to increase federal expenditures in the short term, with a disproportionate but small share likely going to services for working-age people with disabilities. Even if the ACA is not fully implemented, increases in health care costs, a significant driver of expenditure growth from 2002 to 2008, show no sign of abating.

Costs, Cuts, and Consequences The sheer amount of spending devoted to programs for working-age people with disabilities, coupled with the multitude of programs that serve them, reflect our

Table 1 ESTIMATED FEDERAL EXPENDITURES FOR WORKING-AGE PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AS A SHARE OF GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT, FEDERAL OUTLAYS, AND FEDERAL REVENUES

Total federal disability expenditures

FY 2002

FY 2008

% Change

$229 billion

$357 billion

56.3

Percent of gross domestic product

2.1

2.5

15.8

Percent of federal outlays

11.4

12.0

5.4

Percent of federal revenues

12.3

14.2

14.7

Source: Livermore et al. (2011). Estimates for 2002 were adjusted to 2008 dollars using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.

society’s strong commitment to their well-being. Such rapid expenditure growth is unlikely to be sustained in the current fiscal climate. Nevertheless, policymakers faced with an impending fiscal crisis are in a dilemma. Cutting programs will harm the health and economic well-being of one of our society’s most vulnerable populations. But cutting other crucial social programs and raising taxes are also unpopular policy options. Tightening eligibility and reducing benefits would slow expenditure growth—at least in the short term—but at great cost to some working-age people with disabilities. Further, such cuts would likely be followed by a return to rapid growth in the future, as they have in the past.4 As the nation faces a perfect storm of rising health care costs, prolonged recovery from the great recession, and the continued aging of the baby boomers, what else can policymakers do to address these issues? Take steps to spend available funds more wisely.

A New Vision for Disability Programs As we have argued elsewhere, U.S. disability policy is at a crossroads.5 The foundations of existing policy are embodied in programs created during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Under these programs, the government largely serves a caretaker role. This complex, many-program model devotes far more spending on a safety net than on programs to directly advance the goals of “equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic selfsufficiency” for people with disabilities as articulated in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The result is an array of highly fragmented programs with counterproductive incentives that create a poverty trap for many people with disabilities: they can struggle to support themselves through work, or they can stop working and live on the meager benefits available. In short, the labor market has always been problematic for people with significant medical conditions or impairments. Past policies have sought to help such

individuals almost entirely outside of the labor market. We need to move toward policies that support the goals of the ADA by helping people with disabilities maximize their self-sufficiency. Other developed countries are also making this transition, and a few are making more progress than the United States.6 Advances in technology and medicine make it possible for many individuals with significant impairments to work, increasing the effectiveness of policies designed to help them do so. For instance, although SSDI and SSI continue to provide benefits to any person who is unable to walk, see, or hear, if they are not gainfully employed and meet non-medical eligibility criteria, many such individuals take advantage of technologies that allow them to work instead.7 We need a shift in the balance of funding away from income and inkind supports toward economic self-sufficiency support, creating opportunities for greater success while maintaining protections for the many individuals who will not succeed at work, even with extensive help. Thoughtful policy proposals that embody these ideas exist and deserve greater attention.8 Several would help workers who experience the onset of a serious medical condition stay in the workforce rather than entering SSDI, reversing the circumstances that often drive such workers onto SSDI. As growth in the numbers of SSDI beneficiaries has been a major driver of public expenditure growth, and other countries have achieved some success with similar policies, these proposals are particularly promising. Initiatives to integrate and coordinate the health care of people with disabilities, along with other efforts to reform care delivery and provider payments, might substantially reduce health care costs and improve the lives of those served.9 Reorienting support for youth and young adults with disabilities away from programs that confine them to a lifetime of poverty, isolation, and dependence and toward programs that have as their goal promoting a lifetime of economic success, 3

inclusion, and independence (such as supported employment and incentives that reward work and building assets) might also reduce expenditure growth.10 Successful structural changes cannot be implemented overnight—partly because we do not know enough about what works and what doesn’t work, and partly because it takes time to transition from an old structure to a new one. Hasty policy changes could risk harming this vulnerable population and could fail to reduce expenditure growth. It might easily take a decade to agree on designs for better programs and another decade to implement them. But a commitment to intensively restructuring disability policy should be part of any plan to address our nation’s long-term fiscal problems. Instead of tightening eligibility and reducing benefits, policymakers could seize this opportunity to fundamentally modernize and restructure our nation’s disability infrastructure and offer people with disabilities and our economy a more secure future.

Endnotes 1

This issue brief is largely based on Livermore et al. (2011). The study was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, U.S. Department of Education, through its Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Statistics and Demographics grant to Hunter College, CUNY (No. H133B080012-09A). The contents of this brief do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education or any other federal agency (Education Department General Administrative Regulations, 75.620 (b)).

All expenditure estimates in this brief are for fiscal years 2002 and 2008. Estimates for 2002 have been adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars, using the annual Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.

Unless otherwise noted, all expenditure growth rates from 2002 to 2008 are adjusted for inflation.

Growth in the SSDI program during the 1970s led to a series of policy changes intended to tighten eligibility criteria. Although these changes reduced the number of beneficiaries, they were subsequently replaced due to public backlash

and growth in the disability rolls resumed. See Stapleton and Wittenburg (2011). 5

See Stapleton et al. (2007).

See Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010).

Maestas et al. (2010) provide convincing evidence that 18 percent of SSDI beneficiaries could engage in substantial employment (currently $1,000 per month) by their second year on SSDI, but only 5 percent do. See also French and Song (2011). See Stapleton and Wittenburg (2011) and Bergman and MacDonald (2011) for discussions of multiple proposals. Specific proposals appear in MacDonald and O’Neill (2006), Autor and Duggan (2010), and Burkhauser and Daly (2011), See also Social Security Advisory Board (2006). See Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (2010) and Esposito et al. (2008). See Bond et al. (2008) on supported employment and National Council on Disability (2008) on earnings and tax incentives.

is directing an evaluation of the Ticket to Work program for the Social Security Administration. Her work focuses on issues related to improving the economic well-being and self-sufficiency of working-aged people with disabilities and has included research on the prevalence of long-term poverty and material hardship among people with disabilities. Her work also focuses on improving the quality of national disability data and has included describing limitations and suggesting improvements in the national disability data system. For more information, contact David Stapleton at dstapleton@mathematica-mpr.com or Gina Livermore at glivermore@mathematicampr.com.

About the Authors Senior fellow David Stapleton directs Mathematica’s Center for Studying Disability Policy. He is also the area leader for the firm’s studies of Social Security Administration (SSA) programs. Since 1991, his research has focused on the impacts of public policy on the employment and income of people with disabilities. Stapleton, who joined Mathematica in 2007, is a principal investigator for the HHS Center of Excellence for Comparative Effectiveness Research on Disability Services, Coordinated Care and Integration; SSA’s Benefit Offset National Demonstration; SSA’s Ticket to Work Evaluation; and the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center Disability Statistics and Demographics. Senior researcher Gina Livermore is an expert in health insurance and employment policy issues for people with disabilities. Her expertise includes evaluation research and design. Livermore, who joined Mathematica in 2007,

References Autor, David, and Mark Duggan. “Supported Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System.” Washington, DC: The Center for American Progress, Hamilton Project, 2010. Bergman, Allan I., and Bryon MacDonald. “Restructuring Disability Insurance to Support Work Opportunities and Economic Self-Sufficiency.” Berkeley, CA: World Institute on Disability, September 5, 2011. Bond, Gary, Robert Drake, and Deborah Becker. “An Update on Randomized Controlled Trials of Evidence-Based Supported Employment.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, vol. 31, no. 4, spring 2008, pp. 280–290. Burkhauser, Richard V., and Mary C. Daly. Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities: What Went Wrong and a Strategy for Change. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2011. Esposito Dominick, Randall Brown, Arnold Chen, Jennifer Schore, and Rachel Shapiro. “Impacts of a Disease Management Program for Dually Eligible Beneficiaries.” Health Care Finance Review, vol. 30, no. 1, 2008, pp. 27–45. French, Eric and Jae Song. “The Effect of Disability Insurance Receipt on Labor Supply.” WP 2009-05. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Retirement Research Center, 2010.

Kaye, H. Stephen. “The Impact of the 2007-2009 Recession on Workers with Disabilities.” Monthly Labor Review, October 2010, pp. 19–30. Livermore, Gina, David C. Stapleton, and Meghan O’Toole. “Health Care Costs are a Key Driver of Growth in Federal and State Assistance to Working-age People with Disabilities.” Health Affairs, vol. 30, no. 9, 2011. MacDonald, Bryon R., and Megan O’Neil. “Being American: The Way Out of Poverty: The Discussion to Transform Social Security, Medicare and Disability Tax Law. Strengthen What Works. Fix What’s Broken.” Oakland, CA: World Institute on Disability, 2006. Maestas, Nicole, Kathleen Mullen, and Alexander Strand. “Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate the Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt.” WP 2010-241. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Retirement Research Center, 2010. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. “Coordinating the Care of Dual-Eligible Beneficiaries.” In Report to the Congress: Aligning the Incentives in Medicare. Washington, DC: MPAC, 2010. Available from http://www.medpac.gov/documents/Jun10_ EntireReport.pdf. Accessed August 5, 2011. National Council on Disability. “The State of 21st Century Financial Incentives for Americans with Disabilities.” Washington, DC: NCD, 2008. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. “Sickness, Disability and Work: Breaking the Barriers.” Paris, France: OECD, 2010. Social Security Advisory Board. “A Disability System for the 21st Century.” Washington, DC: SSAB, 2006. Stapleton, David C., Bonnie L. O’Day, Gina A. Livermore, and Andrew J. Imparato. “Dismantling the Poverty Trap: Disability Policy for the 21st Century.” Milbank Quarterly, vol. 84, no. 4, 2006, pp. 701–732. Stapleton, David, and David Wittenburg. “The SSDI Trust Fund: New Solutions to an Old Problem.” Issue Brief #11-02. Washington, DC: Center for Studying Disability Policy, June 2011.

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Half in Ten Why Taking Disability into Account is Essential to Reducing Income Poverty and Expanding Economic Inclusion

Shawn Fremstad September 2009

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Introduction and Summary The relevance of disability in the understanding of deprivation in the world is often underestimated …. –Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Allan Lane, 2009), p. 258 The links between disability and poverty remain so strong that unless specific action is taken to tackle disability poverty, the goal of ending child poverty will simply not be met .… –Guy Parckar, “Disability Poverty in the United Kingdom” (2008), p. 3 If there has been a direction to [the 20th] century’s struggle, it seems to have been mainly a question of expanding presumptions of inclusiveness, of assuming that more people matter and that they matter as equals in aspirations for social welfare. –Hugh Heclo, “The Social Question” in Poverty, Inequality and the Future of Social Policy (Russell Sage Foundation, 1995), p. 668 Disability is both a fundamental cause and consequence of income poverty. Disability can result in job loss and reduced earnings, barriers to education and skills development, and a myriad of other challenges that can, in turn, lead to economic deprivation and hardship. Income poverty can limit access to health care and preventative services, and increase the likelihood that one lives and works in an environment that may negatively impact health. As a result, it comes as no surprise that the income-poverty rate for persons with disabilities is between two to three times the rate for persons without disabilities. Yet, contemporary policy debate and research about income poverty in the United States is largely silent about disability. The most important Census Bureau publications related to income poverty— the annual reports detailing income poverty, other income trends, and health insurance coverage in the United States—include estimates of income poverty by race and Hispanic origin, age, family status, nativity, work experience, and various other factors, but no information on income poverty by disability status.1 Similarly, books and papers by leading income-poverty experts and researchers only rarely discuss disability, if at all. A recent prominent example, a set of nine papers on “high-priority poverty strategies for the next decade” presented by leading income-poverty experts at a Brookings Institute forum last year, includes no paper focusing on the link between disability and poverty and only a smattering of references to disability.2 The words disability/disabilities were mentioned only 10 1 The most recent such report is Carmen Devas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007,” Census Bureau, August 2008, http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf. The annual report for 2008 will be released by the Census Bureau on September 10, 2009. 2 Papers presented at “Poverty Reduction Strategies for the Next Decade,” Brookings Institution, September 29, 2008, http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/0929_poverty.aspx. Other recent books that aim at providing a comprehensive overview of poverty and anti-poverty policy in the United States, but have no or very limited discussion of disability include: Kevin Lang, Poverty and Discrimination (Princeton University Press 2007); John Iceland, Poverty in America: A Handbook (University of California 2003); and Rebecca Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty (Russell Sage Foundation, 1997). I note these particular books not because they’re exceptionally deficient in their treatment of the relationship between poverty and disability, but rather because they’re among the most useful academic overviews of poverty and anti-poverty policy published in the United States during

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times in the papers taken as a whole; by comparison, the words marriage/married/marriages/marital were mentioned 136 times. As this paper will show, disability is a considerably more important factor in income poverty than such limited attention suggests. In fact, research published earlier this year finds that about half of all working-age adults who experience income poverty have a disability, and that almost two-thirds of such adults experiencing long-term income poverty have a disability. People with disabilities account for a larger share of those experiencing income poverty than people in any single minority or ethnic group (or, in fact, all minority ethnic and racial groups combined); they also, despite the recent fixation on all matters marital in certain anti-poverty policy circles, account for a larger share of the income poor than single parents. Of course, disability is experienced by all of these groups—the point here isn’t that disparities between those with disabilities and those without are more important than racial, ethnic, or gender disparities, but rather that they deserve the same kind of attention as other important forms of disparity have received in anti-poverty research circles. Although some earlier research has noted linkages between poverty and disability, this new research is particularly notable because it uses more sophisticated data sources, defines disability in a way that is more consistent with the modern consensus definition, and finds higher rates of disability over the life cycle and among persons experiencing poverty than earlier research. Among the key findings: • •

•

Almost half of working-age adults who experience income poverty for at least a 12-month period have one or more disabilities. Nearly two-thirds of working-age adults who experience consistent income poverty—more than 36 months of income poverty during a 48-month period—have one or more disabilities. Male household heads reaching their mid-50s have a 53-percent chance of having been disabled at least once and a 19-percent chance of having begun a chronic and severe disability. People with disabilities are much more likely to experience various forms of material hardship—including food insecurity, not getting needed medical or dental care, and not being able to pay rent, mortgage, and utility bills—than people without disabilities, even after controlling for income and other characteristics. Measures of income poverty that fail to take disability into account likely underestimate the income people with disabilities need to meet basic needs.

the last decade and a half, a fact which makes the absence from them of any significant discussion of disability particularly striking. Disability has not always been absent from poverty discourse in the United States. Robert Hunter’s classic 1904 book Poverty—which includes one of the first estimates of the number of Americans living in poverty, and played an important role in distinguishing poverty from pauperism—includes extensive detail on the links between disability, illness, and poverty. Nor is disability absent from poverty discourse in other wealthy nations. For example, contemporary discussions of poverty in the United Kingdom often view disability as a key factor (although not necessarily one that is adequately addressed by policy). The United Kingdom’s counterpart to our annual Census Report on poverty and income includes estimates of poverty by disability status. See, e.g., United Kingdom Department of Work and Pensions, “Households Below Average Income: An Analysis of the Income Distribution 1994/95 – 2007/08,” (2009). Similarly, Peter Townsend’s classic Poverty in the United Kingdom (Penguin Books, 1979) includes separate chapters on “Disabled People and the Long-Term Sick” and “Handicapped Children” and Peter Alcock’s more recent Understanding Poverty (Palgrave Macmillion, 1997) includes a chapter on disability.

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There is a second important linkage between poverty and disability, one that is also little remarked upon in contemporary anti-poverty discourse, namely the extent to which jobs that involve providing care to people with disabilities—a field known as direct care work—are one of the largest categories of bad jobs in the United States, ones that pay very low wages, rarely provide retirement benefits, and often lack health insurance and paid sick leave and vacation. The linkages between disability and income poverty have far-ranging implications for contemporary anti-poverty research and advocacy in the United States. As a starting point, any serious state- or national-level agenda to reduce income poverty needs to take disability into account as both a cause and consequence of poverty. A particularly important and immediate implication is the fundamental importance of health care reform, especially the provision of universal coverage, to anti-poverty efforts. Similarly, policies that would guarantee paid sick leave and paid family leave to workers as well as improvements to the Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs should be seen as central to anti-poverty policy. A related immediate implication concerns debates over how to overhaul the official U.S. poverty measure. The alternative most actively being considered—a measure developed by a National Academy of Sciences panel in the mid 1990s—would likely undercount poverty among people with disabilities relative to those without disabilities. This is because the NAS measure would count certain benefits that people with disabilities are more likely to receive, without taking into account some of the additional costs of having a disability. A more fundamental reworking of the current poverty measure—one that draws on important advances in poverty measurement over the last decade and a half since the NAS measure was developed—is needed. The multi-dimensional poverty measure recently adopted by the United Kingdom—one that defines poverty as a combination of low income and material hardship—provides the best starting point for this reworking. Finally, anti-poverty advocates and researchers, who in the United States have defined poverty narrowly in terms of income, should consider adopting the kinds of broader frameworks and concepts for anti-poverty research and advocacy that have become commonplace in nearly all other wealthy nations, including the United Kingdom and Australia. The most important of these frameworks are social inclusion and the capabilities approach.

Workers Who Provide Care to People with Disabilities Among the Lowest Paid Workers who provide assistance with daily activities to people with disabilities and the elderly are commonly referred to as direct care workers, and include certified nursing assistants, home health aids, personal care assistants, and related jobs. Direct care work is generally low-wage work that provides limited benefits. More than three million workers are employed in direct-care occupations, making it one of the largest low-wage occupations in the United States (the first and second largest low-wage occupations are retail sales and cashiers, employing 4.3 million and 3.5 million workers respectively). The median wage for nursing aides (including orderlies and attendants) was $11.46 an hour in May 2008 ($23,850 if working full time, year round); for home health aids, it was $9.84 an hour ($20,460 if working full-time, year-round).* In 2007, the median annual earnings for all direct care workers was just $17,000, less than the official poverty threshold that year for a family of three.** * Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2008, 31-1012 Nursing Aides, Orderlies, and Attendants and 31-1011 Home Health Aides.” ** Paraprofessional Health Institute, “Who are Direct-Care Workers?, Fact Sheet 3,” January 2009.

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Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System David H. Autor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Mark Duggan, University of Maryland and NBERâ&#x20AC;&#x192; December 2010

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strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

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offers a strategic vision and produces innovative policy proposals about how to create a growing economy that benefits more Americans. The Hamilton Project’s economic strategy reflects a judgment that long term prosperity is best achieved by fostering economic growth and broad participation in that growth, by enhancing individual economic security, and by embracing a role for effective government in making needed public investments. The Hamilton Project is an economic policy initiative at The Brookings Institution.

Introduction and Summary

A wealthy, compassionate nation should have a fair and efficient disability insurance program that protects workers and their families from poverty and loss of medical care in the event of work-limiting disability. In the United States, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has played this role since its inception in 1956. Currently providing disability insurance to 152 million nonelderly Americans and paying monthly disability insurance benefits to 8.1 million workers with disabilities, the program has become a crucial piece of the U.S. safety net. Without this protection, the country would be substantially worse off.

not be expected to work in the future, as determined by the Social Security Administration (SSA). The Social Security definition of disability may have been suitable five decades ago, when a substantial fraction of jobs involved strenuous physical activity, assistive technologies FIGURE 1

Percentage of individuals receiving SSDI disabled worker benefits, ages 25-64, 1957-2009

However, SSDI is ineffective in assisting workers with disabilities to reach their employment potential or maintain economic self-sufficiency. Instead, the program provides strong incentives to applicants and beneficiaries to remain permanently out of the labor force, and it provides no incentive to employers to implement cost-effective accommodations that enable employees with work limitations to remain on the job. Consequently, too many work-capable individuals involuntarily exit the labor force and apply for, and often receive, SSDI. When Congress created SSDI in 1956, disability and employability were viewed as mutually exclusive states. As a result, the 1956 law defines disability as the “inability to engage in a substantial gainful activity in the U.S. economy”—in other words, the inability to work. The SSDI program still uses this definition, providing income support and medical benefits exclusively to workers who are out of the labor force and can-

Source: Social Security Administration (SSA), Table 5d3, available at http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ statcomps/supplement/2010/5d.html; Bureau of the Census, Census Population Estimates, available at http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.html

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Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System

were limited and crude, and medical interventions rarely significantly prolonged life or improved its quality. But today, individuals with work-limiting disabilities often can participate in the labor force and maintain economic self-sufficiency if given appropriate support. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) forcefully articulates this contemporary view of disability: “Physical or mental disabilities in no way diminish a person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society… The Nation’s proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals.” The SSDI program’s failure to support the ongoing employment and economic self-sufficiency of workers with disabilities is, unfortunately, only one of two major policy challenges presented by the program. It also faces mounting expenses that it cannot sustain. Between 1989 and 2009, the share of adults receiving SSDI benefits doubled, rising from 2.3 to 4.6 percent of Americans ages twenty-five to sixty-four (Figure 1). In the same interval, real annual cash transfer payments to SSDI recipients rose from $40 to $121 billion, and Medicare expenditures for SSDI recipients rose from $18 to $69 billion (Figure 2). Due to its rapid growth, SSDI has come to encompass an ever-larger share of the Social Security system budget. In 1989, approximately one in ten Social Security dollars was spent on SSDI. By 2009, this number had risen to almost one in five Social Security dollars (18 percent), as shown in Figure 3. SSDI expenditures currently exceed the payroll tax revenue the program collects, and analysts project that the SSDI trust fund will be exhausted in 2018, twenty-two years ahead of the trust fund for Social Security retirement (the so-called OldAge and Survivors Insurance, or OASI).1 The rapid expansion of SSDI contributes significantly to the deteriorating financial health of the overall Social Security system since both depend on the Social Security payroll tax. The expanding size and cost of the SSDI program would not be inherently problematic if this expansion reflected a rising rate of disability among working-age adults and if the program’s mounting expenditures enabled these individuals to maintain employment and self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, neither is the case. Figure 4 shows that the fraction of middle-age adults reporting a disability has been roughly stable

2 Center for American Progress | www.americanprogress.org

over the last two decades, averaging approximately 10 percent among both men and women. What has changed greatly, however, is the fraction of individuals who receive disability benefits. Figure 5 shows that between 1988 and 2008, the fraction of middle-aged men and women ages forty to fiftynine receiving SSDI benefits rose by 45 percent among males (from 3.9 to 5.6 percent) and 159 percent among females (1.9 to 5.0 percent).2 This steep increase has coincided with a substantial decline in the employment rates of working-age individuals with disabilities. As documented in Figures 6a and 6b, the employment rate of males in their forties and fifties with a self-reported disability fell from 28 percent in 1988 to 16 percent in 2008 (approximately a 40 percent decline). The employment rate of comparably aged males without a disability held roughly constant at 87 to 88 percent. For females in this same age range with disabilities, the employment rate declined slightly (from 18 to 15 percent) while the employment rate of their counterparts without a disability rose from 66 to 76 percent. The simultaneous occurrence of these two trends—declining employment among working-age people with disabilities and rising SSDI receipt—underscores that the two key policy challenges of the SSDI program are two sides of the same coin. The SSDI program is growing in size and cost because it is supporting a rising rate of dependency and a declining rate of labor force participation among adults with disabilities. In our assessment, addressing the twin policy challenges of poor incentives and mounting expenses will require amending the flawed incentive structure at its core. Unless and until the program’s incentives are realigned to discourage dependency and support work, SSDI is likely to continue expanding in size while reducing the employment of workers with disabilities.

Two non-explanations for the falling employment of individuals with disabilities Is a rise in the incidence or severity of disability causing the declining employment rate of working-age people with disabilities? We see little evidence that the underlying health of the working-age population in the U.S. is deteriorating. For example, one of the most common and rapidly expanding diagnoses for individuals receiving SSDI awards is mental illness, which comprised more than 20 percent of SSDI awards over the past decade. A recent study in the New England

Summary Introduction and summary

FIGURE 3

Real annual expenditures for SSDI Recipients, 1979-2009

SSDI expenditures as a share of total OASDI expenditures, 1979-2009

FIGURE 2

Note: CPI Used to adjust to 2009 dollars. Source: SSA, Office of the Actuary, available at http://www.ssa. gov/OACT/ProgData/funds.html; Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Source: SSA, Office of the Actuary, available at http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/funds.html

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 5

Percentage of people reporting a work-limiting health condition or disability, ages 40-59

Fraction of individuals receiving SSDI benefits, ages 40-59, 1988-2008

Source: Current Population Survey (CPS), Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), available at http://www.nber.org/data/current-population-survey-data.html

Source: SSA, Annual Statistical Supplement; U.S. Census Data

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Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System

FIGURE 6A

Employment rates of men with and without disabilities, ages 40-59, 1988-2008

Source: CPS, Census and BLS, available at http://www.nber.org/data/current-population-survey-data. html

FIGURE 6B

Employment rates of women with and without disabilities, ages 40-59, 1988–2008

Source: CPS, Census and BLS, available at http://www.nber.org/data/current-population-survey-data. html

4 Center for American Progress | www.americanprogress.org

Journal of Medicine reports that the prevalence of mental disorders in the U.S. population was unchanged between 1990 and 2003. In the same interval, the rate of treatment of mental illness substantially increased—which in turn should have contributed to improved work-readiness among individuals coping with mental illness.3 Using self-reported health data from the National Health Interview Survey, Mark Duggan of the University of Maryland and coauthor Scott Imberman of the University of Houston find a substantial improvement between 1984 and 2004 in the average health of U.S. adults between the ages of fifty and sixty-four.4 This age group is especially relevant because it accounted for 62 percent of all SSDI recipients in 2004. Reinforcing these conclusions, demographers Kenneth Manton and XiLiang Gu of Duke University find that the share of the population age sixty-five and older suffering from a chronic disability fell by one third between 1982 and 1999 (from 26.2 to 19.7 percent), with the largest drop between 1994 and 1999.5 Thus, there is little reason to believe that the work capacity of adults with disabilities has declined in recent decades. Nor are the adverse trends in the employment rates of Americans with disabilities due to mismanagement of the SSDI program by the SSA. The unfortunate interaction between the SSDI program structure and the employment rates of workers with disabilities is endemic to a program that legally only can provide income support and medical benefits to workers with disabilities who exit the labor force. Moreover, the recent deep recession and the secular deterioration in labor market prospects for non-college workers exacerbate these challenges. These job market trends have made it particularly challenging for workers employed in declining industries to obtain and retain employment. Previous research has established that workers are most likely to apply for SSDI benefits following job loss, a fact underscored by the pronounced positive relationship between the national unemployment rate and the SSDI application rate (Figure 7).6 Thus, it is paramount that the United States’ disability insurance system be reoriented toward supporting employment—opposite its current configuration.

Introduction and and summary Summary Introduction

FIGURE 7

SSDI applications per 1,000 adults and U.S. unemployment rate, ages 25-64, 1985-2010

Three-part “front-end” package to accommodate workers with disabilities in the workplace In brief, the systemic change that we propose is to add a “front end” to the SSDI system offering the following key provisions: • workplace accommodations, rehabilitation services, partial income support, and other services to workers who suffer work limitations, with the goal of enabling them to remain in employment; • financial incentives to employers to accommodate workers who become disabled and minimize movements of workers from their payrolls onto the SSDI system; Our proposed reform does not seek to replace SSDI. We conceive of the current SSDI program as providing the long-term disability component (the “back end”) of a far more flexible and responsive disability assistance process. The structure of this proposed program would not affect current beneficiaries.

Source: SSA Annual Statistical Supplement, various years; 2010 data from SSA Office of the Actuary; BLS

A proposal to modernize the SSDI program structure This paper proposes a mechanism for modernizing the structure of the SSDI program to better support individuals with disabilities in the workplace, encourage their self-sufficiency, and reduce the dual wastes stemming from too few societal resources spent on assisting individuals with disabilities to remain employed and too many societal resources spent on supporting unnecessary long-term dependency. Even if this proposal does not succeed in reducing program expenditures, we believe it would still provide a net benefit to U.S. workers—both those who pay into the SSDI system and those who draw benefits from it.

We model this three-part package of direct assistance to workers with disabilities and appropriate incentives for employers and employees on the U.S. workers’ compensation (WC) and unemployment insurance (UI) systems. These two programs support workers in the event of workplace injury and job loss, respectively, while discouraging workers from overusing benefits via appropriate screening. They also discourage employers from passing high costs onto the system by charging lower rates to employers that have a history of low claims costs— a practice known as experience rating. Our proposal would incorporate these features.

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Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System

Harnessing the private disability insurance system Building this front-end capacity onto the large and overtaxed SSDI system would appear a daunting task. Rather than suggesting to create it by scratch, we propose to harness an existing, private-sector institution that currently provides large-scale employment support and work incentives to workers with disabilities as well as their employers. This institution is private disability insurance (PDI), which is sold to employers by private insurance carriers and provides a long-term disability policy for workers with disabilities. Our proposal envisions extending PDI coverage to the vast majority of U.S. workers, in much the same way that UI and WC benefits are universally provided to workers who participate substantially in the labor market. PDI coverage under our proposal would form the first line of defense in the U.S. worker disability system. Its primary goal would be supporting work. Thus, in contrast to the traditional SSDI system—but similar to the PDI plans numerous employers purchase—it would treat disability and gainful employment as potentially compatible conditions rather than mutually exclusive states. The proposed policy would support workers from 90 days to 2.25 years following onset of disability, providing partial income replacement and supports geared toward helping individuals maximize work readiness and self-sufficiency. After receiving PDI benefits for twenty-four months, individuals who are unable to engage in substantial gainful employment would transition into the SSDI system. The screening criteria for SSDI would be unchanged. It is instructive to consider the average amount paid for private long-term disability coverage in the market at present. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the average hourly cost of PDI coverage ($0.04) and the fraction of workers with long-term disability coverage (32 percent), we estimate that the average policy costs approximately $250 per year—about $20 per month. This is likely an upper bound on the average cost of policies under our proposal, as current PDI policies are, on average, significantly more generous than the one we propose. For

6 Center for American Progress | www.americanprogress.org

example, the median maximum monthly benefit of these policies is $7,500, which is three times greater than the corresponding maximum in our plan. Additionally, our proposed coverage would pay benefits for a maximum of just two years, while existing policies are typically long-term and may provide at least partial benefits to the worker until he or she reaches full retirement age.

Specifics of the PDI policy We quickly summarize the nuts-and-bolts of the proposed universal PDI policy and follow with substantially more detail in subsequent sections: • What is the goal of the PDI policy? The PDI policy would assist workers with work-limiting disabilities to remain in their current jobs or to transition to more suitable jobs and would assist employers to accommodate workers to perform their jobs in accordance with the guidelines of the ADA. • What conditions qualify? Benefits under the policy would be triggered when sickness or injury limits a worker from performing the material and substantial duties of her regular occupation. Benefits would commence within ninety days of disability onset at the discretion of the employer and/ or insurer. • What benefits are provided?

1. Vocational rehabilitation services.

2. Workplace accommodations mandated by the ADA.

3. Partial wage replacement equal to 60 percent of monthly salary and capped at $2,500 monthly.

4. Wage replacement at the state’s UI replacement rate for workers who develop work-limiting disabilities while unemployed.

Introduction and and summary Summary Introduction

Note that PDI will not pay medical costs of disability. Under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, all workers will hold health insurance policies that cover medical costs. • How long can a worker receive benefits? Benefits under the PDI plan would be limited to twenty-four months (twentyseven months following onset of the disability). • When does traditional SSDI kick in? Workers whose conditions continued to prevent employment in month twentytwo following onset would be permitted to apply for SSDI. This would allow a six-month period in which PDI benefits are paid while the worker awaits an SSDI determination. • What about severe disabilities? SSDI would provide benefits almost immediately for medical conditions that are severe and readily diagnosed. Specifically, conditions covered by the SSA’s List of Compassionate Allowance Conditions would be eligible for immediate SSDI application at the onset of the disability. The PDI policy would not shoulder claims costs except during the relatively brief Compassionate Allowance determination period. • What would a PDI policy cost? Using data on the average hourly cost of PDI plans currently sold ($0.04), we estimate that the policy would cost approximately $20 per worker per month. This is less than 5 percent of the cost of a typical employer-provided individual health insurance plan. At present, workplace PDI policies cover 32 percent of U.S. workers, and these policies are almost invariably more generous than the policy outlined above. In these cases, the PDI plan would not have any cost implications. The PDI policy proposal should ultimately reduce total employee and employer disability insurance costs by assisting some workers with work-limiting disabilities to remain in the labor force rather than becoming long-term beneficiaries of the SSDI system. • Would all employers have to buy insurance? The PDI policy would take the form of a disability policy carried by and paid by employers. Employers would be allowed to require employees to pay up to 40 percent of the cost of their coverage. Policies would be competitively sold, and employers would have the option to self-insure. Premiums would be experience-rated for firms with fifty or more full-time equivalent employees. Premiums for smaller firms would be industry-rated. Insurers would be allowed to vary the

premium with the average age of employees at a firm as well as with firm industry.

Is the proposal realistic? Such coverage would of course not come for free, and readers will naturally be concerned that the policy proposal would impose substantial costs on employers and employees. Several considerations assuage this concern: • The universal PDI plan that we envision would offer more limited—and hence less expensive—coverage than most PDI plans private-sector employers currently purchase. For employers offering more generous coverage, our policy proposal would be entirely non-binding. • The proposed universal PDI coverage would shield employers from catastrophic insurance costs. Under our proposal, PDI policies would hand off responsibility for ongoing disability coverage to the traditional SSDI program two years following the onset of disability. While employers will face a financial incentive to reduce PDI claims, they will not be exposed to the long-term costs of a permanent, work-limiting disability. • Five U.S. states already mandate that employers provide temporary disability insurance to their workers.7 Although little studied, the available data on these mandates suggest that they have not substantially hindered labor market operation but have provided valuable insurance to workers. While our proposal is more expansive than these state programs, it has a similar flavor. There are also international precedents. Faced with a disability system that was growing inordinately large and expensive, the Netherlands implemented a programmatic change that is similar to what we envision. While it is too early to render a final judgment, inflows into the Dutch disability system have fallen substantially since this reform.8 • Alongside lost income, medical care is one of the most costly aspects of disability. Private-sector disability policies do not pay for medical care. Instead, they serve to partially insure lost earnings as well as reimburse workplace accommodations and certain rehabilitation services that a traditional health insurance plan would not cover. Our proposed PDI coverage likewise would not cover medical care. Such

The Hamilton Project | www.hamiltonproject.org 7

Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System

coverage is unnecessary because health insurance is slated to become nearly universal and much more affordable for American workers over the next several years as a result of the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.9 • We anticipate that reduced demands on the traditional SSDI program ultimately will counterbalance the upfront costs of providing universal PDI coverage, in part or in full. The present value of an average SSDI award, including the Medicare coverage that comes with it, is approximately $270,000 in 2009 dollars.10 If universal PDI coverage successfully enabled individuals with work-limiting disabilities to remain in the labor force, this would avert very large expenses elsewhere in the disability system. It bears emphasis that we believe workers with disabilities would be better served by such a system. • The expected per-worker policy cost of universal PDI coverage is surprisingly modest, in the range of $150 to $250 annually. As a reality check, we have benchmarked this number against current PDI premium costs a leading PDI insurer charges. The cost estimate that we offer is in line with current private-sector policy costs.

How much might employment among nonelderly workers with disabilities rise? Currently about 80 million Americans are between the ages of forty and fifty-nine. Based on the survey data tabulated in Figure 4, we estimate that about 10 percent of these individuals have a work-limiting medical condition. Relative to individuals of the same age without a work-limiting medical condition, their employment rate fell by approximately 11.5 percentage points between 1988 and 2008 (Figures 6a and 6b).11 If, hypothetically, the proposed policy returned the employment rate of work-limited individuals in this age group to its 1988 level, close to one million working-age individuals would return to the workforce. If work-limited individuals in their thirties and early sixties, who have contemporaneously seen similar relative declines in employment, were included in the calculation, the numerical employment gains would be higher still—in excess of 1.5 million.

8 Center for American Progress | www.americanprogress.org

In our view, an intervention that allowed 1 million–1.5 million work-limited individuals to remain in the labor market would represent a substantial welfare gain for these individuals as well as their families, employers, and society it large. It would also potentially generate considerable savings for the SSDI program. Let us assume, plausibly, that half these work-limited individuals would otherwise be receiving SSDI benefits—between one-half and three-quarters of a million individuals. This represents between 6 and 10 percent of the current SSDI beneficiary population (representing between 12 and 18 billion dollars in annual SSDI expenditures). While this calculation is speculative, there are a number of reasons to think it is conservative. First, we see no reason to believe that merely reversing the employment losses of the last two decades among adults with work-limiting disabilities presents an upper limit on what is achievable. The proposed policy would offer substantial assistance to work-limited individuals who remain employed; such supports have never been broadly available to Americans with disabilities. In addition, the universal health care coverage extended by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 should make it feasible for worklimited individuals with costly medical conditions to obtain and retain health insurance. This reduces their incentive to seek SSDI benefits to obtain Medicare. Finally, we anticipate that ongoing advances in assistive technology, made available to workers with disabilities through the ADA accommodation component of the PDI policy, will reduce the share of workers whose work-limitations become disabling. These considerations suggest that there is considerable headroom for increasing the fraction of work-limited individuals who are able to enjoy the benefits of employment.

Proposal strengths should outweigh complexities and unknowns Numerous complexities and unknowns will affect the implementation, operation, and cost of this proposal. We do not claim to have addressed all these complexities, though we do hope to refine our proposal as these complexities come into focus. Nevertheless, we believe the proposal has five strengths that make it worth pursuing:

Introduction Summary Why is employment polarizing? Facts andand hypotheses

• It supports work and thereby has the potential to slow inflows into the SSDI program. Slowing these inflows, in our view, is the only way to reduce the growth and expense of the SSDI program over the medium and long run. • It builds on an extant, commercially successful, and widelyused capacity for supporting workers with disabilities in ongoing employment as well as providing employers with the incentive to accommodate otherwise work-capable workers and reduce the societal costs of disability. • It preserves the key elements of the SSDI program that work well—specifically, providing long-term wage replacement and medical benefits to individuals who cannot be expected to reenter the labor force. Similarly, the proposal does not seek to shrink the SSDI system by terminating benefits to incumbent beneficiaries. We believe that such an approach would be unwise and infeasible. • It profoundly reshapes the public assistance offered to workers with disabilities to make their treatment consistent with the values that we believe the vast majority of Americans hold and that federal law articulates: “The Nation’s proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals.”

• It reduces the adverse selection problem that employers currently face when considering whether to offer PDI coverage to their workers. An employer that offers PDI coverage at present faces some risk that this coverage will differentially attract workers with disabilities, which will in turn lead to correspondingly higher claims rates and policy premiums. This adverse selection may be one reason that employer-based PDI coverage is only offered to one-third of U.S. workers at this time. Requiring all employers to offer such coverage, as is currently the case with unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation insurance, will eliminate this adverse selection problem. The policy proposal proceeds as follows. We begin by explaining why we believe the current SSDI program structure encourages escalating disability expenditures and reduced labor force participation among adults with disabilities. We next discuss why prior reforms to the SSDI program that were intended to raise labor force participation of beneficiaries and slow program growth have been almost wholly unsuccessful. We then lay out our proposal in detail and discuss numerous practical design considerations, including cost estimates, implementation challenges, and areas of uncertainty that pilot studies potentially can address.

The Hamilton Project | www.hamiltonproject.org 9

Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System Summary of findings

Fast facts

The SSDI program has failed to support the ongoing employment and economic self-sufficiency of workers with disabilities, leading to rapid growth in program expenditures and declining employment of Americans with disabilities. This proposal offers a blueprint for reversing this needless employment decline and stemming the dramatic growth of the SSDI program.

• Since its inception in 1956, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has grown rapidly. Approximately one in ten Social Security dollars was spent on the program in 1989; by 2009, the SSDI program accounted for almost one in five dollars.

When enacting the SSDI program in 1956, Congress defined disability as the “inability to engage in a substantial gainful activity in the U.S. economy”—in other words, inability to work. While this definition arguably made sense five decades ago, when many jobs involved strenuous physical activity and assistive technologies were limited, today, individuals with work-limiting disabilities can often participate in the workforce and enjoy the many benefits of employment if given appropriate, cost-effective supports. This proposal aims to provide early support for individuals with work-limiting disabilities by building on an existing private-sector institution, the private disability insurance (PDI) system. The proposal would extend private sector PDI coverage to the entire workforce in much the same way that Unemployment Insurance and Workers Compensation benefits are universally provided to workers. Such coverage would provide expert vocational assistance, cost-effective workplace accommodations, and partial income replacement to workers with work-limiting disabilities. Recent reforms to the SSDI, such as the Ticket to Work program, have focused on improving the incentive for SSDI recipients to rejoin the workforce. While laudatory, these return-to-work inducements arrive many months or years after individuals with disabilities have left the labor force—long after the best opportunity for their retaining or regaining employment has been lost. By refocusing the SSDI program towards assisting individuals with disabilities to remain employed, and away from supporting unnecessary long-term dependency, this plan would improve the economic security and well-being of individuals with disabilities, as well as their families, employers, and society at large. It would slow the growth of the SSDI program by reversing the needless decline in the employment rates of work-capable adults, thereby improving the long-term solvency of the Social Security system.

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• The system is broken: To even be considered for SSDI benefits, a worker must not be working to any significant extent. Those awarded SSDI benefits wait an average of 12 months for an award, and almost 40 percent of awards are made on appeal. • This proposal extends coverage of private disability insurance (PDI) to all workers, adding a “front end” to the SSDI system. PDI policies would come into force within 90 days of the onset of disability, when the prospects for successful intervention are highest, to provide workplace accommodations, rehabilitation services and partial income support, with the goal of enabling workers who suffer limitations to remain in employment. • Because firms will purchase PDI policies in the private marketplace, they will face appropriate incentives to minimize avoidable movements of workers onto the SSDI system and to cost-effectively accommodate those who become disabled, as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. • To shield employers from catastrophic insurance costs, responsibility for ongoing disability coverage will be handed off to the traditional SSDI program two years following the onset of a disability. • The cost of the proposed policies would be modest—on the order of $250 per worker per year—and would ultimately increase economic security for Americans with disabilities while promoting a more fiscally sound Social Security program.

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Restructuring Disability Insurance to Support Work Opportunities and Economic Self-Sufficiency

Labor Day 2011

Prepared by Allan I. Bergman HIGH IMPACT Mission-based Consulting & Training and Bryon MacDonald World Institute on Disability Edited by Kendra Scalia-Carrow, M.P.P.

This report is provided in response to:

Employment Summit in the Great Recession April 7-8, 2011 Washington, D.C. Sponsored by The World Institute on Disability Mathematica Policy Research and The National Council on Independent Living

Executive Summary Increased economic equity was a primary goal of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights era, driven by African Americans, other ethnic minorities, and women. While by no means complete, economic parity in these groups has improved. This is not true for Americans with disabilities, however, even after President George H.W. Bush signed the international gold standard for disability civil rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Persons with disabilities, especially ethnic minorities and women living with long-term disabilities, remain among the largest groups of people living at or below the poverty line, often minimally sustained by disability benefits and meager earned income, if any. The percentage of Americans ages 40 to 59 reporting a work-limiting health condition or disability has remained stable over a 20-year period beginning in 1988; yet â&#x20AC;&#x153;their employment rate fell by approximately 11.5 percentage points" during this period.1 Persons with disabilities with work experience who want to work are underemployed for a variety of reasons or issues. Federally funded programs that provide benefits and services to these people typically lack coordination and are not synchronous with increasing work participation, and often discourage wage-earning. Federal disability insurance programs, while addressing their essential goal of wage replacement for many who cannot work, are not producing acceptable return to work results for those who can and want to work. The return to work provisions of the public insurance programs do not adequately allow for transition to employment and many critics say do not reflect the policy goals set out in the ADA. Solutions to increasing work participation of persons with disabilities are not a matter of increasing expenditures, but increasing the cost effectiveness and cost benefit of current expenditures for the benefits and services. A bewildering array of public programs for civilians and veterans confounds the desires of people who experience disability to fully participate in our society. Major proposals from experts since the 1980s posit that restructuring disability programs and policies toward early interventions aimed at employment could lead to reasonable income levels and thus reduce growth in public spending on benefits. On April 7 and 8, 2011, the World Institute on Disability, Mathematica Policy Research, and the National Council on Independent Living convened an invitational Employment Summit in the Great Recession at the Mathematica offices in Washington, D.C. Nearly 45 policy analysts, advocates, government and private sector researchers, insurance representatives, along with Congressional and Administration staff, accepted the invitation to participate in the Summit (see Appendix A). The Summit focused on plausible, concrete policy changes and resource realignment at the state and federal levels that would help workers with disabilities, or workers who first experience disability while working, remain in the labor force rather than enter the rolls of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The structure of SSDI makes it ineffective in assisting work-capable individuals with disabilities to achieve re-employment and career development; and the precarious solvency of the Social 1

Autor and Duggan, 2010.

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Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund remains. One item on which there was consensus among Summit participants was the immediate sense of urgency in Washington for something to occur that “bends the cost curve” for SSDI. One way to do this is to reposition expenditures to avoid the need for SSDI by increasing work participation, using proven interventions to keep persons with disabilities at work or return them to work. Participants identified policy options on which pivotal stakeholders could take lead; those being employers, the Administration, Congress, and other parties with authority to effect change.2 The following actionable policy recommendations are consistent with the objectives of the Summit and, ultimately, those of many disability employment incentive programs. In sum they frame the post-integrationist view that Americans who experience disability are presumed active participants in social, cultural, political, faith based, and business activities. Employers  Support employees who leave work due to accident, injury, illness, surgery, and potential work disability through a new work policy that expands and promotes wellness, health and productivity, Disability Management, stay at work and return to work policy and practices in a context of workplace flexibility programs for all employees. The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)  Initiate a National Economic Imperative (NEI) to Hire and Retain Americans with Disabilities in the U.S. Workforce and take steps to implement policy options presented in this report by convening a White House Stakeholder Group.  Conduct federally sponsored webinars and other forums by agencies who have studied relevant issues that include analysis of how to better integrate and eliminate duplicative programs; and realign program incentives resources and performance objectives to address NEI goals.  The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should take the lead to authorize, plan and fund test pilot projects in states that have state mandated short-term disability insurance programs (California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island). The pilot projects would use those states‟ established, short-term disability insurance infrastructures to test a variety of early intervention design elements.  Conduct an analysis of the one million most recent SSDI awards on demographics, onset of disability, and the industries these individuals had worked in prior to applying for SSDI. Use the data in targeting industries to improve current practices with early intervention and stay at work or return to work programs. Identify the study as part of the proposed National Economic Imperative (NEI).  Establish a working group to test various strategies and to conduct data analysis among employers.

The authors make no claim to the following policy options nor imply that all Summit participants agreed to support these options in part, in whole, or in the order prioritized.

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 Support accessible real-time information via collaborative IT services in federal benefits and employment support programs that ensure real-time and virtual information services are accessible to initial applicants and post-entitlement disability beneficiaries going to work. Congress  Convene Hearings by appropriate committees of jurisdiction to increase stakeholder dialogue and expand the features that could be included in Social Security‟s Work Incentive Simplification Proposal (WISP).  Authorize asset building initiatives that change current law, such as the Achieving Better Life Experiences (ABLE) Act (S.493 and H.R. 1205 in the 111th Congress), and the SSI Savers Act (H.R. 2103), with amendments to include wounded warriors and veterans with disabilities.3 Be proactive in providing pretax investment vehicles for individuals with disabilities and their families to be able to save for education, employment, and independent living without jeopardizing access to needed public benefits.  Increase funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to publicize and train individuals with disabilities on the use of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), underutilized to date by Americans with disabilities as a means of providing fiscal incentives that make work pay.  Develop a new work policy that expands and shares promising practices of wellness, health and productivity, stay at work and return to work policy and practice for those who leave work because of accident, injury, illness, surgery, and potential work disability.  Conduct a thorough analysis of current state Medicaid Buy-Ins (MBIs) via the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The analysis should also include: a workgroup of diverse nongovernmental stakeholders to develop specifications and policy options for a national Medicaid Buy-In (MBI) for U.S. workers with disabilities; analysis and policy options for a national MBI that improves or integrates Medicaid with provisions in the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) to increase employment outcomes of Americans with disabilities; insights on how Medicaid and the ACA can provide necessary and appropriate wrap-around services and longterm supports as secondary payer to employer-sponsored health coverage in all states; and policy options to adjust the Medicaid Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) to states that incentivize employment first and supported employment services using Medicaid-funded home and community based services.  Bipartisan champions in Congress should request the GAO to assess what lessons can be learned from corporate Disability Management (DM) programs that could be included in any revisions to the SSDI program from such practices.  Request SSA to convene a meeting of key representatives from Disability Management programs to meet with a select group of disability researchers, advocates, and Congressional staff for a one-day briefing on successful practices and potential applications to a postintegrationist policy of employment. 3

The Employment Summit policy option discussed was to improve asset building strategies; the SSI Savers Act (H.R. 2103) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives after the April Employment Summit took place.

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Social Security Administration (SSA) ď&#x201A;§ Test work-centric early intervention strategies from among several of the states that have mandatory short-term disability insurance programs that provide partial income replacement support. Department of Labor (DOL) ď&#x201A;§ Conduct a study to identify best and promising practices on a range of the states with Workers' Compensation programs that are most successful in returning employees to work via the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). Suggested states to consider include Washington and West Virginia. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ď&#x201A;§ Provide a current analysis of all disability-related employer tax credits. Current employer tax credits are underutilized. An analysis of these programs will assist in identifying industries and employers to target for outreach.

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Appendix B. Historical Context of the Disability and Work Definition Problem From the 1930s to the 1950s, Congress hotly debated the inclusion of a disability program in Social Security. The all-or-nothing definition of disability originated with the definition from the Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled program of public assistance (welfare) from 1950. This definition was incorporated into the first Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) legislation and later retained in the 1972 legislation establishing the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The SSDI program was amended into the Social Security Act in 1956 (P.L.84-880), for individuals 50 years of age and over who had mental or physical impairments of a long lasting nature and with a severity sufficient to preclude them from engaging in any substantial gainful activity. Subsequent amendments broadened the scope of the program to include younger workers and to add benefits for disabled widows and for individuals who became disabled prior to age 22 whose working parent died or became eligible for Social Security benefits. The original requirement for the disability to be long lasting and of indefinite duration was modified to allow benefits for impairments that are expected to last 12 months or longer. Health insurance under Medicare became an added SSDI benefit for those receiving SSDI cash benefits for at least two years. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) 1996 report “SSA Disability: Return-to-work Strategies from Other Systems May Improve Federal Programs” (GAO/HEHS-96-133) recommended that the Social Security Administration (SSA) place more emphasis on return to work efforts. The principle findings of the report are:  Intervene early to return to work  Identify and provide necessary return to work services and case management  Provide incentives for the employee to engage in return to work efforts A major result of this GAO report, along with a string of other reports and grassroots activity at the time, was the enactment of the Ticket to Work and Work Incentive Improvement Act (Ticket Act) of 1999, P.L. 106-170. The purposes of the law are: “1. To provide health care and employment preparation and placement services to individuals with disabilities that will enable these in individuals to reduce their dependency on cash benefits programs. 2. To encourage States to adopt the option of allowing individuals with disabilities to purchase Medicaid coverage that is necessary to enable such individuals to maintain employment. 3. To provide individuals with disabilities the option of maintaining Medicare while working. 4. To establish a return to work ticket program that will allow individuals with disabilities to seek the services necessary to obtain and retain employment and reduce their dependency on cash benefit programs.” In 2000, the GAO provided testimony that made the following key points:  SSA does not integrate efforts to return individuals to work into either its initial or continuing eligibility assessment process Page | - 45 -

 

The Social Security Act‟s definition of disability – where the person must be unable to engage in any substantial work in society – is a very restrictive definition The “all-or-nothing” definition and work rules within the SSDI program are strong disincentives to test or demonstrate capacity to work

The 2006 Social Security Advisory Board report “A Disability System for the 21st Century” stated, in response to programs such as SSDI being viewed as “programs of last resort”: The first alternative to be explored must be how to enable persons with work incapacities to avoid, postpone, or minimize their need for dependence on the programs of last resort… The first question should be, “What type of assistance do you need in order to achieve your maximum possible contribution to your own well being and to the good of the community?” If we do not find a way to make that the first question, we will be endorsing and fostering a culture of pessimism and dependency. A 2008 evaluation of the Ticket to Work program by David Stapleton, Mathematica Policy Research, “Ticket to Work at the Crossroads: A Solid Foundation with an Uncertain Future,” concluded that although the program did increase beneficiary use of employment services in 2002 and 2003, the increase did not produce a corresponding increase in earnings or reduction in benefits as had been expected from the 1996 GAO report. In May 2010, Jody Schimmel of Mathematica reported out that Social Security disability beneficiaries using their Ticket to Work did retain employment longer than those who did not. She reported that Ticket to Work (TTW) participants are more likely to leave the rolls because of work than nonparticipants. Schimmel reports that the numbers of SSA disability beneficiaries finding work by using the Ticket to Work program remains small. “… In 2006, TTW participants represented less than one-half of one percent of all SSA disability beneficiaries.”26

Schimmel, May 2010

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Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities

Research Brief

Long-Term Poverty and Disability Among Working-Age Adults

Peiyun She Gina A. Livermore Cornell University Institute for Policy Research

1 J une

20 06

For further information about this paper contact: Peiyun She Cornell University Institute for Policy Research 1341 22nd Street, NW Washington, DC 20037-3010 tel (202) 223-7670 ext. 105 email ps74@cornell.edu web www.cuipr.cornell.edu

This paper is being distributed by the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center for

February Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities at Cornell University. 2006 This center is funded to Cornell University, in collaboration with The Urban Institute (Washington, DC), by the U.S. Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research). The contents of this paper do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government (Edgar, 75.620 (b)).

The RRTC Co-Principal Investigators are: Susanne M. Bruyère— Director, Employment and Disability Institute, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Extension Division, Cornell University Richard V. Burkhauser— Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor and Chair, Department of Policy Analysis and Management, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University David C. Stapleton— Director, Cornell University Institute for Policy Research

Long-Term Poverty and Disability Among Working-Age Adults Previous studies have shown that people with disabilities experience higher rates of poverty than those without disabilities, but most studies have used short-term measures of poverty and disability. As longterm poverty is a better indicator of the well-being of a population and long-term measures of disability are also likely to be better predictors of long-term poverty than short-term indicators, it is of interest to examine the relationship between long-term poverty and disability. In She and Livermore (2006), we find that the relationship between long-term poverty and long-term disability is much stronger than the relationship between disability and poverty in a single year. We used longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) spanning the 1996 to 1999 period to construct various short- and long-term poverty and disability measures and estimated the prevalence of short and longterm poverty among working-age people with and without disabilities. We also find that a majority of those in the working-age population who experience long-term poverty have a disability. This brief summarizes our key findings. Annual Poverty by Current Year Functional/Activity Limitation Status Annual poverty rates (the percent of individuals living in households with annual income below the federally-established poverty threshold, based on a householdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s size and composition) increase with severity of the functional/activity limitation(s). As shown in Exhibit 1, 1997 annual poverty rates are six percent among those reporting no functional/activity limitations, 12 percent among people experiencing difficulties with at least one activity, and 23 percent among those who are unable to perform or require personal assistance for at least one activity. When a work limitation measure of disability is used, annual poverty rates ranged from 10 percent among people indicating being work limited at some point during 1997 to 32 percent among those reporting being prevented from working during all months of the year.1

Statistics not shown. Work limitation status was based on responses to a question about whether the individual has a physical, mental, or other health condition that limits the amount or kind of work he/she can do, and if so, whether the condition prevented them from working at a job or business. 1

Exhibit 1. Annual Poverty Rates by Functional/Activity Limitation Status in 1997, Persons Ages 25-61

No Limitations

Difficulty with at Least One Activity but No Personal Assistance Required

12%

Inability to Perform/Needs Personal Assistance with at Least One Activity

23%

Note: Functional/activity limitation status based on responses at 1997 interview about difficulties and the ability to perform the following activities without assistance due to a health condition: seeing, hearing, speaking, lifting/carrying something as heavy as 10 pounds, pushing/pulling large objects, standing for one hour, sitting for one hour, stooping, crouching, or kneeling, reaching over his/her head, using hands and fingers hold or grasp objects, walking up a flight of stairs, walking a quarter of a mile, preparing meals, doing light housework, going outside the home, using a telephone, keeping track of money, taking the right amount of prescribed medicine at the right time, eating, dressing, getting around inside the home, getting in and out of bed or a chair, taking a bath or shower, and using or getting to the toilet. Source: She and Livermore (2006).

Long-term Poverty by Long-Term Work Disability Status Poverty rates increase with the period of time that individuals experience work disability or limitation, regardless of the poverty measure used. Among those with no work limitations over the four-year period studied, nine percent were poor for more than 12 months, compared with 19, 26, and 40 percent among those experiencing work limitation for 1-12 months, 13-36 months, and more than 36 months, respectively (Exhibit 2). Working-age adults who experience work limitations for longer periods are also much more likely to experience poverty for long periods than those with no work limitations or short-term limitations (Exhibit 2). While long-term poverty is relatively rare for all groups, the relative prevalence of longterm poverty among those with and without limitations is much greater than the relative prevalence of short-term poverty. For example, the likelihood of being in poverty for more than 12 months among those with work limitations lasting more than 36 months is about 4.5 times the likelihood for those with no work limitations (40 percent versus 9 percent), and the likelihood of being in poverty in every month of the 48 month period studied is about 14 times the likelihood for those with no work limitation (7 percent versus 0.5 percent). 2

Exhibit 2. Long-term Poverty Rates by Long-Term Work Limitation Status, Persons Ages 25-61, 1996 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1999 45 40 40 35 29

Percent

15 10

10 7 5

0 1

0 >12 Months

>24 Months

>36 Months

48 Months

Months in Poverty 1996-1999 No Work Limitation

Work Limitation 1-12 Months

Work Limitation 13-36 Months

Work Limitation 37-48 Months

Note: Work limitation status was based on responses to a question about whether the individual has a physical, mental, or other health condition that limits the amount or kind of work he/she can do. Source: She and Livermore (2006).

Disability Prevalence in the Working-Age Poverty Population In Exhibit 3, we show estimates of disability prevalence among those in poverty using a functional/activity limitation measure of disability. Disability prevalence in the general working-age population is also shown for reference. People with disabilities make up a very large share of the working-age poverty population, especially when a long-term measure of poverty is used. People with disabilities represented about 38 percent of those in poverty in 1997 when an annual measure of poverty is used; 51 percent of those in poverty for at least 36 months of the 48-month period have a disability.

Exhibit 3. Functional/Activity Limitations Status of Those in Poverty, Based on Annual and Long-Term Measures, Persons Ages 25-61 % of Those in Poverty 100.0

% of All Persons Ages 25-61 7.9

Functional/Activity Limitations at 1997 Interview No limitation at 1997 interview Limitation at 1997 interview

62.4 37.6

81.5 18.5

Percent in Poverty >36 Months During 1996-1999

100.0

4.1

Functional/Activity Limitations at 1997 and 1999 Interviews No Limitation at either 1997 or 1999 interview Limitation at either 1997 or 1999 interview, but not both Limitation at both 1997 and 1999 interviews

48.9 16.1 35.0

75.7 13.9 10.4

Percent in Poverty in 1997

Note: Functional/activity limitation status based on responses at the 1997 and 1999 interviews about difficulties and the ability to perform the following activities without assistance due to a health condition: seeing, hearing, speaking, lifting/carrying something as heavy as 10 pounds, pushing/pulling large objects, standing for one hour, sitting for one hour, stooping, crouching, or kneeling, reaching over his/her head, using hands and fingers hold or grasp objects, walking up a flight of stairs, walking a quarter of a mile, preparing meals, doing light housework, going outside the home, using a telephone, keeping track of money, taking the right amount of prescribed medicine at the right time, eating, dressing, getting around inside the home, getting in and out of bed or a chair, taking a bath or shower, and using or getting to the toilet. Source: She and Livermore (2006).

Discussion Despite the fact that disability is an extremely important risk factor for long-term poverty among working-age adults, it often receives little attention in the poverty literature and policy efforts to alleviate poverty. One reason may be that most statistics are based on short-term poverty and disability measures, which partially mask the strong relationship between long-term poverty and long-term disability. Another reason may be outdated perceptions about the relationship between disability and the ability to work. The presumption that people with disabilities cannot work is still inherent in the design of the major assistance programs serving people with disabilities, and this presumption limits the ability of these programs to promote employment and reduce poverty among people with disabilities. Recent changes implemented under the 1999 Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act and other legislative initiatives have attempted to address some of these issues, and have also raised expectations that, with the appropriate incentives an supports, people with disabilities participating in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs can work and achieve greater levels of economic well-being. Much improvement is still needed, however. Acknowledging disability as an important risk factor for long-term poverty that can be addressed by public programs and policies is an important and necessary step. Reference She, P. and G. Livermore (2006). Long-Term Poverty and Disability Among Working-Age Adults. Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

October 2010

HIGHLIGHTS OF A FORUM Accountability â&#x20AC;˘ Integrity â&#x20AC;˘ Reliability

Participant-Identified Leading Practices That Could Increase the Employment of Individuals with Disabilities in the Federal Workforce Highlights of GAO-11-81SP, a report to the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate

Why GAO Convened This Forum The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Rehabilitation Act) requires agencies to take proactive steps to provide equal opportunity to qualified individuals with disabilities, but their rate of employment with the federal government remains low. GAO was asked to identify barriers to the employment of people with disabilities in the federal workforce and leading practices that could be used to overcome these barriers. On July 20, 2010, GAO convened a forum to identify leading practices that federal agencies could implement within the current legislative context. In preparation for the forum, GAO surveyed a wide range of knowledgeable individuals to identify barriers and leading practices. Forum participants were selected from among respondents (or their representatives) to reflect varying expertise and views concerning the employment of individuals with disabilities. The survey results formed the basis for the initial forum agenda, and were refined by participants to focus on actions they deemed most important. Comments in this report do not necessarily represent the views of any individual participant or the organizations that these participants represent or with which they are affiliated, including GAO.

View GAO-11-81SP or key components. For more information, contact Laurie E. Ekstrand at (202) 512-6806 or ekstrandl@gao.gov.

What Participants Said Participants said that the most significant barrier keeping people with disabilities from the workplace is attitudinal, which can include bias and low expectations for people with disabilities. According to participants, there is a fundamental need to change the attitudes of hiring managers, supervisors, coworkers, and prospective employees, and that cultural change within the agencies is critical to this effort. Participants identified practices that agencies could implement to help the federal government become a model employer for people with disabilities. Participants reached the following conclusions: 1. Top leadership commitment is key to implementing and sustaining improvements. Unless top agency officials are committed, improvements will not happen. 2. Accountability is critical to success; goals can help guide and sustain efforts and should be reflected in human capital and diversity strategy plans. 3. Regular surveying of the workforce on disability issues provides agencies with important information. Participants suggested that surveying be implemented at all stages of the employment life cycle. 4. Better coordination could help improve employment outcomes, as coordination within and across agencies is critical. 5. Training for staff at all levels can disseminate leading practices throughout the agency. This provides agencies the opportunity to communicate expectations regarding the implementation of policies and procedures related to improving employment of people with disabilities. 6. Career development opportunities inclusive of people with disabilities could facilitate advancement and increase retention. Participants suggested that agencies offer details, rotational assignments, and mentoring programs that are fully accessible to all employees. 7. A flexible work environment can increase and enhance employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Participants emphasized telework as a key component, as well as flexible work times and job sharing. 8. Centralizing funding at the agency level can help ensure that reasonable accommodations are provided. Participants stated that effective centralized funds should include accountability, flexibility, and universal availability. Although forum discussion focused on practices agencies could implement, participants also noted the need for model policies and guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This is consistent with the July 2010 executive order that directs OPM to work with other agencies to design model recruitment and hiring strategies for individuals with disabilities.

United States Government Accountability Office

Households with children aged 0-4

Web links to primary reading: How Much Could We Improve Children’s Life Chances by Intervening Early and Often? Sawhill and Karpilow http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/07/improve_child _life_chances_interventions_sawhill/improve_child_life_chances_interventions_s awhill.pdf Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children, Cascio and Schanzenbach http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/expand_preschool_a ccess_cascio_schanzebach.pdf Two Policies to Boost School Readiness, Duncan, Kalil, Magnuson and Murnane https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/files/2014/03/Duncan-‐‑Two-‐‑Policies-‐‑to-‐‑Boost-‐‑ School-‐‑Readiness.pdf Using Executive Function and Related Principles to Improve the Design and Delivery of Assistance Programs for Disadvantaged Families, LaDonna Pavetti https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/files/2014/06/Pavetti-‐‑Executive-‐‑Function.pdf Child Care and Education in Oregon and Its Counties, Oregon Child Care Research Partnership http://health.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/occrp/pdf/state-‐‑profile-‐‑child-‐‑care-‐‑ and-‐‑education-‐‑in-‐‑oregon-‐‑and-‐‑its-‐‑counties-‐‑2012.pdf Web links to additional reading: Addressing the Parenting Divide to Promote Early Childhood Development for Disadvantaged Children, Kalil http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/parenting_divide_ea rly_child_development_kalil.pdf PBS Frontline: Poor Kids (video) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poor-‐‑kids/ State Strategies to Reduce Child and Family Poverty, NGA Center for Best Practices http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/0806POVERTYBRIEF.PDF

JOVAN YOUNG

Age 38 African American Married with 4 children ages 10-17 Lives in Gresham

Jovan Young grew up in NE Portland, the daughter of an

interracial couple. In the 1970s, she felt like she was straddling two worlds. “There was the outside world where I spoke in the street vernacular. Then there was the inside world where my mother only allowed proper English. We lived in a black neighborhood. My mother was the only white woman.” Jovan’s father worked in a steel mill but it wasn’t enough to support a family of five. He grew marijuana in the house to supplement their income; adding to the feeling that the world inside her home was a secret. Her parents fought frequently. “When it got bad, my mom would take us away. She pawned family jewelry until the money ran out. Then we’d move back in with my dad.” When Jovan was in seventh grade, she and her mother and sisters moved out for good. Her mother cleaned houses while Jovan took care of the kids. When there wasn’t food for dinner her mother served popcorn because it “expands in your stomach and will make you full all night.” Jovan’s mother eventually got a job traveling around the state to preform hearing tests for OSHA. She was away a lot. Over time a rift developed between Jovan and her mother. Jovan dropped out of high school sophomore year and moved out. “I was desperate. I went to the Green House for Homeless Youth. That’s where I heard about Job Corps. I went to a program in Idaho where I learned a trade and skills to be self-sufficient. Ten months later I came back to Portland as a Certified Nursing Assistant.” Jovan’s success was short lived. That year, at 18, she was caught stealing and lost her CNA license. With no income she applied for transitional housing with Outside In. She lived in the Danmoore Hotel in downtown Portland and became pregnant with her first child. “I managed to get a job but motherhood just does something to you. I wanted to be with my baby so I quit and applied for rental assistance, then TANF. I was on welfare for about two years and during that time I had a second child.”

Jovan tried beauty school before landing a job in phone sales at US West. She worked long days and a quarter of her income went to daycare. She hated that her kids spent more time in daycare than they did with her. When she was 23 Jovan met Edwin Young. Ed grew up in north Portland the son of steelworkers. After high school he went to work at a steel foundry. Not long after they met, he and Jovan got married, got an apartment with her two children and had a child together. Jovan left her job. “Times were tough. We had no assistance and were just slightly above the range for food stamps. We shared a winter coat and a bus pass. And then we got evicted.” Jovan and Ed qualified for Section 8 housing. Ed worked as a day laborer and Jovan got a job as a cashier at Dollar Tree. “But I knew I wanted something more.”

With the help of housing assistance, Jovan could finally afford to go to school. She got her AA from PCC, BA from PSU and plans to go on for a master’s degree in community development. She is working to pay off her student loans and Ed continues to seek better, living wage employment. They are determined to provide the kind of life for their children they didn’t have growing up. Jovan is gregarious, outspoken and politically active. She’s a manager at a residential treatment home, serves on the Centennial school board and is involved in the Committee for Sustainable Portland. “I’m there to give a voice to those least heard. Right now I feel more stable than I ever have, but we’re still teetering on the threshold. I’ll feel stable when I can pay my bills, save some money and not worry about spending. The boat is tippy but I can see the dock.”

FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN IN POVERTY

THERE ARE ABOUT 164,900 OREGONIANS IN SINGLE- OR TWOPARENT HOUSEHOLDS IN POVERTY WITH CHILDREN AGES 0-4. MORE THAN HALF OF THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE CHILDREN OR TEENS. EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF ADULTS EMPLOYED

NOT IN LABOR FORCE

48%

38%

UNEMPLOYED

RACE / ETHNICITY

78% TWO PARENTS 20% FEMALE SINGLE PARENT 2% MALE SINGLE PARENT

LIVING IN OREGON

ASIAN

AMERICAN INDIAN / ALASKAN NATIVE

TWO OR MORE RACES

BLACK

14%

HOUSEHOLD TYPE

OTHER

HISPANIC

40%

WHITE

46%

DISABILITY STATUS OF ADULTS ABLE BODIED

80%

10% OTHER DISABILITY 11%

COGNITIVE DISABILITY

WHERE THEY ARE FROM

31% RURAL

69% URBAN SOURCE: ECONORTHWEST ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY, 2012, PUMS DATA

61% NON-IMMIGRANT

39% IMMIGRANT

Center on Children and Families at BROOKINGS July 2014

CCF Brief # 54

How Much Could We Improve Children’s Life Chances by Intervening Early and Often? Isabel V. Sawhill and Quentin Karpilow This brief is an update of an earlier paper by Kerry Searle Grannis and Isabel Sawhill, originally published in October 2013, “Improving Children’s Life Chances: Results from the Social Genome Model.”

Summary Children born into low-income families face barriers to success in each stage of life from birth to age 40. Using data on a representative group of American children and a life cycle model to track their progress from the earliest years through school and beyond, we show that wellevaluated targeted interventions can close over 70 percent of the gap between more and less advantaged children in the proportion who end up middle class by middle age. These interventions can also greatly improve social mobility and enhance the lifetime incomes of less advantaged children. The children’s enhanced incomes are roughly 10 times greater than the costs of the programs, suggesting that once the higher taxes and reduced benefits likely to accompany these higher incomes are taken into account, they would have a positive ratio of benefits to costs for the taxpayer. The biggest challenge is taking these programs to scale without diluting their effectiveness.

Disadvantage at Birth Persists Throughout Lifecycle There’s ample evidence that children born to poorer families do not succeed at the same rates as children born to the middle class. On average, low-income children trail their more affluent peers on almost every cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and health measure. These gaps start early and persist throughout childhood and into adulthood. What’s more, the trend has been worsening over time: despite improvements in closing gender and race gaps over the last half century, the difference between average outcomes by socio-economic status has widened for test scores, college enrollment rates, and family formation patterns. Our own research delves into the determinants of these widening gaps by looking at the life trajectories of more and less advantaged children. At the Brookings Institution, we have developed a framework for measuring children’s life chances, called the Social Genome Model (SGM). 1 The SGM combines real-world data with sophisticated simulation techniques in order to track the academic, social, and economic experiences of individuals from birth through middle age. Using the model, we hope to identify the most important paths to upward mobility. The SGM divides the life cycle into five stages and specifies a set of outcomes for each stage that, according to the literature, are predictive of later outcomes and eventual economic success. These outcomes were chosen not only for their predictive power, but also because they reflect widely-held norms of success for each life stage (Figure 1). Figure 1. Definitions of Success at Each Life Stage of the Social Genome Model

At each stage in the life cycle, low-income children succeed at much lower rates than their more advantaged peers (Figure 2). 1

The Social Genome Model, originally developed at the Brookings Institution and based at the Urban Institute, is a collaborative effort of the Brookings Institution, Child Trends, and the Urban Institute.

Figure 2. Success Rates at Each Life Stage, by Family Income 80%

71%

67%

70%

69%

65%

64%

60% 50%

45%

49%

46%

44%

37%

40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Early Childhood Middle Childhood

Adolescence

Transition to Adulthood

Adulthood

Born to poor (Family Income< 200% FPL) Born to non-poor family (Family Income >= 200% FPL) These gaps, however, are not immutable. Results from the SGM show that success at each stage of life greatly enhances the chances of success at the next stage. For example, a child who is ready for school at age five is nearly twice as likely as one who is not to complete middle school with strong academic and social skills. These findings underscore the cumulative nature of skill development and support the idea that earlier interventions in the life cycle are likely to be more effective than later ones for promoting opportunity among the disadvantaged.

The Impact of Early Intervention Using the SGM, we can ask what the world might look like if we could successfully eliminate the income-based gap in early childhood. In this “what-if” experiment, we simulate what would happen if we improved the average chances of school readiness at age five for low-income children so they matched the levels of higher-income children. The good news is that there’s evidence that existing programs have a chance of closing much of the gap in school readiness. A meta-analysis of rigorously evaluated preschool programs found a range of effects on children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes. When we use average effect sizes to simulate the long-term impact of providing high quality preschool, we see lowincome children’s early childhood success rate rise to nearly the levels of higher-income children (Figure 3). The less encouraging news is that, under such a scenario, the impact fades over time. The gap that was nearly closed at age five reopens by the end of elementary school, and then continues to widen, with only a modest impact on the chances that a child will reach the middle class by middle age.

Figure 3. Success Rates by Income at Birth, After Implementing Universal Preschool Program for Low-Income Children 80% 70%

50%

71%

67%

60% 14%

68%

40%

44%

43%

Early Adulthood

Middle Age

30% 20%

64%

59%

45%

49% 31%

10% 0% Early Childhood

Middle Childhood

Adolescence

Success rate for higher-income children (family income >= 200% FPL) Effect of early childhood intervention on success rate Success rate for low-income children (family income < 200% FPL)

Multiple Interventions for Larger, Longer-Lasting Effects Impact It seems clear that early childhood intervention alone is not enough to improve outcomes for adults at middle age. If we want to see larger and longer lasting effects on adult outcomes, we may have to combine early childhood initiatives with interventions in elementary school, adolescence, and beyond. To test the impact of this multi-stage intervention strategy, we simulated the combined effects of programs with strong empirical track records of improving outcomes for lower-income participants (Table 1). We assume the programs are targeted on children living in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line. In early childhood, we chose to model the effects of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program, one of seven parenting programs identified by the Department of Human and Health Services (DHHS) as an evidence-based model. Offered to lower-income families with children ages 3 to 5, HIPPY seeks to effectively train parents to be their childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first teacher, and rigorous evaluations of the HIPPY model in New York found that the program significantly improved child reading scores. With parenting skills strengthened, we then assume that these children go on to attend high quality preschools, using mid-point estimates of preschoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impact on cognitive and behavioral measures. Following the completion of preschool, we assume that children will attend elementary schools that offer effective reading programs, such as Success for All (SFA). SFA is a school-wide reform program, primarily for high-poverty elementary schools, that focuses on early detection and prevention of reading problems. The model has undergone thorough evaluation, and SFA was recently awarded a Scale-Up grant through the Obama administrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Investment in Innovation (i3) initiative. In addition to SFA, we also simulate the impact of a strong Social Emotional Learning (SEL) program. SEL programs include a broad range of interventions that approach teaching and learning as more than a purely academic endeavor, but rather as something that engages behavioral and emotional competencies. There is growing evidence that SEL programs improve both behavioral and academic outcomes, and an SEL proposal was ranked as one of the highest-rated i3 development applications in 2013.

Finally, in adolescence, we intervene again and assume that the children attend high schools that have benefited from the Talent Development (TD) initiative. The TD model is a comprehensive high school reform program that targets schools with high student dropout rates. Rigorous programmatic evaluations conducted by MDRC have shown promising effects on high school reading and math test scores, and a version of the TD model was awarded an i3 validation grant in 2010. Table 1: Summary of Post-Birth Interventions Life Stage

Intervention Model

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters

Description

Level of Evidence

Biweekly home visits and group meetings to instruct and equip parents to be effective teachers for their children

Meets the DHHS criteria for an evidence-based program model

Adjusted Variable

Effect Size

Reading

0.75 SD

Hyperactivity

-0.68 SD

Reading

0.45 SD

Math

0.45 SD

Antisocial Behavior

-0.20 SD

Reading

0.36 SD

Math

0.27 SD

Antisocial Behavior

-0.22 SD

Reading

0.32 SD

Math

0.65 SD

Early Childhood

Preschool

Social Emotional Learning Middle Childhood Success for All

Adolescence

Meta-analysis of quasiHigh-quality center-based experimental and randomized studies of preschool programs that provide educational services early childhood centerbased interventions to children directly (Camilli et al., 2010). A broad range of Highest-rated i3 interventions that focus on development application improving behavioral, (2013) emotional, and relational competencies A school-wide reform program with a strong Highest-rated i3 scaleemphasis on early detection up application (2010) and prevention of reading problems

A comprehensive high school reform initiative aimed at Talent Development reducing student dropout rates

Highest-rated i3 validation application (2010)

SGM Target Population: Low-income children (family income < 200% FPL)

Armed with well-evaluated programs at each stage of childhood, we then simulated how a sustained approach to intervention would impact the gap between lower- and higher-income individuals at each life stage. This multi-stage simulation assumes that intervening at different points in the life course has an additive effect. For example, if an early childhood intervention improves middle childhood reading scores by half a standard deviation, and we then also simulate a middle childhood intervention that improves reading by half a standard deviation, the total increase in middle childhood reading would be one standard deviation. It could be the case, however, that multiple interventions have a synergistic effect, where intervening in early and middle childhood improves middle childhood reading by more than a standard deviation. Alternatively, multiple interventions could hit diminishing returns, meaning that, once weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve improved middle childhood reading by a certain amount, additional improvements are harder to induce; in this case the effect on middle childhood reading would be less than a standard deviation. Without good evidence on which scenario is most realistic, we assume the simplest additive effect. What began as a 20 percentage point gap in those reaching middle class by middle age shrinks to 6 percentage points when intervening in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Success Rates by Income at Birth, After Intervention at Multiple Stages for Kids Born Low-Income

80% 70% 60%

18%

24%

15%

50%

15%

40%

20%

71%

67%

30%

68%

49%

45%

64%

59% 44%

43%

31% 10% 0% Early Childhood

Middle Childhood Adolescence

Early Adulthood

Middle Age

Success rate for higher-income children (family income >= 200% FPL) Effect of multiple interventions on success rate Success rate for low-income children (family income < 200% FPL) When we target this same set of programs on low-income children but then measure the impact on racial gaps in success rates later in life, the results are less dramatic but still encouraging. White-Black gaps in success are narrowed by the multi-stage intervention, although large disparities still persist, especially in adolescence and adulthood (Figure 5). Figure 5. Percentage Point Gap in White-Black Success Rates After Multi-Stage Intervention 40%

35%

35% 29%

30% 25%

25%

28%

23% 22%

21%

20% 14%

15% 10%

5% 0% Early Childhood

Middle Childhood

Adolescence

Early Adulthood

Middle Age

Pre-intervention white-black success gap Post-intervention white-black success gap

Effects on Social Mobility Successful implementation of these multiple interventions would substantially increase rates of upward mobility among low-income children (Figure 6). For example, under the baseline scenario, less than one in ten children born into the bottom income quintile climb into the top quintile by age 40; post-intervention, this figure jumps to nearly one in five. In addition, the proportion of low-income children who remain stuck in the bottom quintile drops from 34 to 23 percent. Figure 6. Mobility Matrices for Kids Born Low-Income, Pre- and Post- Multiple Interventions 100%

90% 80% 70%

18 34

Top quintile at age 40

Middle quintile at age 40

16 22 21 19

40% 20

30% 20%

60% 50%

15 19

20 16

34 23

10%

pre

post

Bottom Quintile

pre

post

Second Quintile

pre

Bottom quintile at age 40

post

Middle Quintile

Costs and Benefits These interventions also appear to pass a simple cost-benefit test. As shown in Table 2, we estimate the total cost per child for all of these programs combined coming in at just over $20,000. The lifetime income of the average individual benefitting from these programs would increase by more than $200,000. While we have not yet analyzed the benefits to taxpayers, these would likely be positive as well, since society would gain from extra taxes paid on the affected individualsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; extra income, from savings on benefits those individuals might otherwise receive, and from lower costs for crime, poor health, and related social problems.

Conclusion Existing evidence-based programs can provide opportunity-enhancing supports at every life stage, and this need not cost more than what we are spending now, at least as measured over a child's life cycle. While we have yet to find a single intervention that will dramatically improve childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life chances, our research suggests that we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to wait for one to be invented in order to begin making real progress.

Authors Isabel V. Sawhill is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at Brookings. Quentin Karpilow is a senior research assistant at the Center on Children and Families at Brookings. The views expressed in this policy brief are those of the author and should not be attributed to the staff, officers, or trustees of The Brookings Institution or the other sponsors of this policy brief.

Additional Reading Barnett, W.S. 2011. "Effectiveness of Early Educational Intervention." Science 333.6045: 975978 Bloom, Howard and Rebecca Unterman. 2012. “Sustained Positive Effects on Graduation Rates Produced by New York City’s Small Public High Schools of Choice.” New York: MDRC. Borman, Geoffrey D., Robert Slavin, Alan Cheung, Anne Chamberlain, Nancy Madden, and Bette Chambers. 2007. "Final Reading Outcomes of the National Randomized Field Trial of Success for All." American Educational Research Journal 44.3: 701-731. Camilli, Gregory, Sadako Vargas, Sharon Ryan, and W. Steven Barnett. 2010. “Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Early Education Interventions on Cognitive and Social Development.” Teachers College Record 112.3: 579-620. Cunha, Flavio, James J. Heckman, and Susanne M. Schennach. 2010. "Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation," Econometrica 78.3:883-931. Durlak, Joseph A.. Roger P. Weissberg, Allison B. Dymnicki, Rebecca D. Taylor, and Kriston B. Schellinger. 2011. "The Impact of Enhancing Students' Social and Emotional Learning: A MetaAnalysis of School-Based Universal Interventions." Child Development 82.1: 405-432. Halle, T., Forry, N., Hair, E., Perper, K., Wandner, L., Wessel, J., and Vick, J. 2009. Disparities in

Early Learning and Development: Lessons from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Washington, DC: Child Trends. Landry, Susan, Karen Smith, and Paul Swank. 2006. “Responsive Parenting: Establishing Early Foundations for Social, Communication, and Independent Problem-Solving Skills.” Developmental Psychology 42.4: 627-642. Reardon, Sean. 2011. "The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations" in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, edited by Greg J. Duncan and Richard Murnane, 91-116. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Sawhill, Isabel. 2013. “Family Structure: The Growing Importance of Class.” Washington, DC: Brookings. Sawhill, Isabel, Scott Winship, and Kerry Searle Grannis. 2012. “Pathways to the Middle Class: Balancing Personal and Public Responsibilities.” Washington, DC: Brookings. Winship, Scott and Stephanie Owen. 2013. “The Brookings Social Genome Model.” Washington, DC: Brookings.

To learn more about the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, please visit our website, www.brookings.edu/ccf.

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children Elizabeth U. Cascio Dartmouth College

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach Northwestern University

Introduction Poverty has little association with the cognitive abilities of nine-month-old children (Fryer and Levitt 2013).1 By the start of kindergarten, however, not only do poor children perform significantly worse on tests of cognitive ability than children from higher-income families, but teachers also report that these children have much more difficulty paying attention and exhibit more behavioral problems (Duncan and Magnuson 2011).2 The poverty gap in school readiness appears to be growing as income inequality widens (Reardon 2011). THE POLICY LANDSCAPE

One popular proposal to narrow this gap is to expand formal educational opportunities to poor children under the age of five. Stark gaps in preschool participation by family socioeconomic status mirror the achievement gaps described above. The most recent data available show that only about 50 percent of four-year-old children in families in the lowest income quintile are enrolled in preschool. Among families in the top income quintile, on the other hand, the preschool enrollment rate of four-year-olds is considerably higher, at 76 percent. Nearly all (88 percent) of preschool participants in the lowest-income families are enrolled in public programs.3 Poor children can currently attend preschool for free through two programs: the federally funded Head Start program, which targets children in families with incomes less than 130 percent of the federal poverty level; and state-funded public programs, which may also serve middle-class children. As

shown in figure 1-1, only about 10 percent of four-year-old children nationwide participate in Head Start, a rate that has stayed roughly constant for the past twenty years. Essentially all the growth in public preschool enrollment over time has come from the expansion of state-funded programs, which grew from four states in 1980 to forty states today. Even so, many state programs have weak standards, as shown in figure 1-2. During the 2011–12 school year, only 9 percent of all four-year-olds nationwide—roughly 31 percent of those enrolled in state-funded preschools—were enrolled in programs that met at least eight common quality benchmarks related to curriculum, teacher education, class size, and support services.4 The average Head Start program meets only five of these benchmarks (Espinosa 2002). In this context, President Obama proposed to expand access to preschool education while simultaneously leveling up preschool quality nationwide (Office of the Press Secretary 2013). The White House proposal would provide block grants to states to offer free preschool education to four-year-old children from low- and moderate-income families, provided that these preschool programs score highly on the quality standards checklist presented on the vertical axis in figure 1-2.5 State and local governments are not waiting for federal action. Most notably, New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio campaigned on the promise of funding universal pre-kindergarten (pre-K), and in March 2014 New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature agreed to a five-year, $1.5 billion plan to offer high-quality full-day pre-K—not just in New York City, but across the state. The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children

FIGURE 1-1.

Number of states

Percent of four-year-olds

Percent of Four-Year-Olds Enrolled in Public Preschool Programs and Number of States Funding Preschool Programs, 1965–2011

0 1965

1970

1975

1980

Public preschool enrollment rate

1985

1990

1995

Head Start enrollment rate

2000

2005

2010

Number of states funding preschool

Sources: Barnett et al. 2012; The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) n.d.; Martin et al. 2013; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) n.d.; Office of Head Start (OHS) various years; National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) 2005; authors’ calculations. Note: Data on the public preschool enrollment rate come from the Current Population Survey, October supplement. For 1968–1992, data are derived from ICPSR (n.d.). For 1993–2011, data are derived from NBER (n.d.). The Head Start enrollment rate is the Head Start enrollment of four-year-olds (calculated as total national Head Start enrollment multiplied by the share of enrollment comprising four-year-olds) in a given year divided by the number of children born in the United States four years prior. Data on Head Start enrollment come from the OHS (various years). Data on the number of children born for 1990–2007 (corresponding to the number of children age four for 1994-2011) come from Martin and colleagues (2013). Data on the number of children born for 1974–1989 (corresponding to the number of children age four for 1978-1993) come from NCHS (2005). Data on the number of states funding preschool come from Barnett and colleagues (2012).

Evidence on the impacts of early education is broadly supportive of policy efforts in early education. The research on early education has shown it improves participants’ outcomes across a variety of dimensions: higher school attendance rates, fewer failing grades, less grade retention, a higher likelihood of graduating from high school, and less involvement in criminal activity. Improvements in these areas account for many of the economic benefits of preschool programs. However, important questions remain regarding access—the benefits versus the costs of expanding public preschool options beyond lower-income children—and exactly how quality would be best defined from a policy perspective. This policy memo is directed primarily toward state and local policymakers who want to strengthen the public preschool options in their area while considering budgetary trade-offs.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

The Challenge Given that there are several ways to expand preschool access, the policy challenge is to design an expansion program that is cost-effective. Cost-effectiveness requires that policymakers consider the likely benefits of a particular intervention in a given setting. A useful organizing framework for the policy evidence is to consider the quality of a possible preschool intervention against the quality of the environment in which a child would otherwise be placed. A preschool program with a developmentally appropriate curriculum, nurturing student–teacher interactions, and parental support might be beneficial in preparing disadvantaged children for school, but less beneficial for children from an already otherwise enriched environment. Even a lower-quality preschool program can have an impact on children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

FIGURE 1-2.

Relationship between Quality and Access in State-Funded Preschool Programs, 2011–12 School Year

Score on quality standards checklist

12 10

6 4 2 0 0

100

Percent of four-year-olds in state-funded preschool Source: Barnett et al. 2012. Note: Bubble size represents the number of children born in the state four years prior. The dashed line represents the regression fit, weighting by this figure; the unweighted fit is substantively similar. The quality standards checklist gives equal weight to each of ten factors: (1) program has comprehensive early learning standards; (2) teachers are required to have a bachelor’s degree; (3) teachers are required to have specialized training in preschool; (4) assistant teachers are required to have a Child Development Associates (CDA) degree (or equivalent); (5) teachers are required to attend at least fifteen hours per year of in-service; (6) the maximum class size is twenty students; (7) staff to child ratios are 1:10 or better; (8) program offers vision, hearing, health, and one support service; (9) program offers at least one meal; (10) program offers site visits.

This organizing framework is illustrated graphically in figure 1-3. On the horizontal axis is an index measure of a child’s socioeconomic status, which can be thought of as a combination of family income, educational attainment of the adults in the home, and so on. On the vertical axis is the quality of the child’s learning environment. Considering home inputs alone, as shown by the purple line, there is a positive relationship between the child’s socioeconomic status and the quality of the child’s learning environment.6 One line of evidence on the longer-run impacts of preschool participation derives from programs of the first variety— programs that are very high quality and serve very disadvantaged populations. Arguably the most famous of these is the Perry Preschool program, drawn in light green in figure 1-3. Perry Preschool was a two-year intervention in the early 1960s involving half-day school attendance and weekly home visits for extremely disadvantaged three- and four-yearold African American children living in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Perry (along with other high-quality, targeted preschool interventions, such as the Abecedarian and Nurse-Family Partnership) provides excellent evidence because it was a randomized controlled experiment that collected follow-up data on participants for decades. Early findings from Perry showed initial increases in IQ scores for the treatment group, although these gains faded to zero by the time participants reached age ten (Gramlich 1986; Schweinhart et al. 2005). Despite no difference in measured IQ by late childhood, the Perry treatment students performed statistically significantly better in school: they were absent fewer days, were less likely to have been assigned to special education, had fewer failing grades and higher high school grade point averages, were more likely to graduate from high school, and generally reported more-positive attitudes toward schooling. These improvements persisted into adulthood, when the treatment group was statistically significantly more likely to be employed and less likely either to have been arrested or to have received transfer payments such as cash welfare or Supplemental

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children

FIGURE 1-3.

Quality of learning environment

Framework for Considering the Impact of Preschool, Historic Context

Perry preschool Head Start (historic)

Home inputs (no preschool)

Socioeconomic status

Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program).7

and are more likely to complete high school and attend college (Deming 2009; Garces, Thomas, and Currie 2002).8

Considering the improvements in long-term outcomes from a monetary standpoint, every $1.00 spent on the program translated into $8.00 worth of benefits (Heckman et al. 2010). The high rate of return to Perry Preschool may represent an upper bound on the return to preschool investment today, because (as illustrated in figure 1-3) it represented such a large increase in the quality of the participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learning environments.

One criticism of Head Start is that it is low quality on average, and exhibits variable quality across locations. While it is considered lower quality than the Perry program, figure 1-3 illustrates that Head Start is nonetheless a higher-quality environment than what the participant would experience in the absence of the program, either at home or in the type of child care that is typically available to low-income parents (Currie 2001). Since Head Start represents a less dramatic increase in the quality of a childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environment than Perry Preschool, its long-term impacts are more muted but still positive.

Another line of evidence derives from Head Start, the longstanding federal preschool program. Head Start is considered to be lower quality than Perry Preschool, and although it is targeted to low-income children, it serves a large number of children who are not subject to such extreme levels of disadvantage. As represented by the blue line in figure 1-3, the long-term Head Start evidence spans cohorts of preschoolage children between 1968 and 1990, a period of expansion in other preschool opportunities for low-income children (see figure 1-1). Although experimental evidence is not available from this period, there are several careful quasi-experimental studies that demonstrate impressive impacts of Head Start on both short- and long-term outcomes. For example, Head Start has been shown to have a substantial positive effect on vocabulary test scores during elementary school and to cause a child to be less likely to repeat a grade (Currie and Thomas 1995; Deming 2009). While test score gains fade to a fraction of their initial levels by ages eleven to fourteen, there is evidence that some Head Start participants are less likely to have ever been charged with a crime or to be a teenage parent, 4

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Figure 1-1 shows that more children across the income distribution are attending preschool today than ever before. However, preschool quality varies across socioeconomic status, as illustrated in the conceptual diagram in figure 1-4. Against the backdrop of increasing preschool enrollment, the first randomized evaluation of Head Start was conducted in 2002; the results sharply differ from the earlier quasi-experimental research. While four-year-old Head Start participants in the Head Start Impact Study saw faster improvements in language and literacy skills over the course of their Head Start year, these relative gains were gone by the end of kindergarten; by the end of third grade, there remained only suggestive evidence of a positive impact of Head Start on reading scores. Furthermore, in no follow-up year did the Impact Study treatment students outperform the control students in math skills, grade retention, or teacher reports of student behavior (Puma et al.

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

FIGURE 1-4.

Quality of learning environment

Framework for Considering the Impact of Preschool, Current Policy Context

Preschool today (public and private) High-quality public program (Oklahoma, Georgia)

Home inputs (no preschool)

Socioeconomic status

2012). While it is possible that the prior nonexperimental Head Start research yielded upward-biased estimates, it may also be the case that the continued growth in state-funded programs and in maternal employment (and use of other nonparental child care) has diminished Head Start’s potential impact. In other words, Head Start may not represent the same increase in the quality of a child’s environment today as it did in the past when there were fewer preschool alternatives. Indeed, the majority (roughly 60 percent) of children in the Head Start Impact Study control group attended some other formal education or child-care setting (Puma et al. 2012).9 A recent experimental evaluation of the state-funded pre-K program in Tennessee—where preschool or center-based child-care participation rates at age four in the control group were lower (27 percent) and program quality was higher—has yielded results that are slightly more positive.10 The Tennessee program, which was primarily targeted toward youth from low-income households, yielded higher scores for participants on tests of literacy, language, and math at the end of the pre-K year; participants were rated by their kindergarten teachers as being more ready for school (Lipsey et al. 2013a). While the difference in measured cognitive abilities of the treatment and control groups disappeared by the end of kindergarten, former pre-K participants were much less likely to have been retained in kindergarten and had slightly stronger school attendance records subsequent to the pre-K year (Lipsey et al. 2013b). As was the case with Head Start, the only evidence on longer-term outcomes of state-funded preschool programs is nonexperimental. Much of this research has to date focused

on programs in two states—Georgia and Oklahoma—that meet essentially all of the same standards as the Tennessee program but serve much higher shares of the four-year-old population (see box 1-1). The introduction of a high-quality, universal preschool program is illustrated in figure 1-4 by the light green dashed line. In this framework, enrolling in the high-quality public preschool improves the quality of the learning environment experienced by low–socioeconomic status children, albeit by less than the full distance from no preschool, because many of these children would be enrolled in some preschool program even in the absence of the new, high-quality option. Yet for higher– socioeconomic status children the improvement in learning environment represented by the introduction of high-quality preschool is smaller, and in some cases may even be negative. 11 The empirical results of the high-quality programs in Oklahoma and Georgia line up well with the conceptual framework illustrated in figure 1-4. By comparing children just old enough to enter preschool to those who just miss the entry age cutoff (a regression discontinuity approach), studies have found that the Oklahoma preschool program raises short-term test scores (Gormley and Gayer 2005; Wong et al. 2008).12 Where reported, effect sizes for disadvantaged students (minorities and lowincome children) are in the range of those found in the Tennessee study (Gormley and Gayer 2005). Subsequent analyses find that the positive impacts of the Georgia and Oklahoma preschool programs on disadvantaged children are still measurable when the students reach fourth and eighth grades (Cascio and Schanzenbach 2013; Fitzpatrick 2008). Students in Georgia and The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children

Oklahoma who are more advantaged, however, do not display sustained test score improvements from access to high-quality, universal preschool. The lack of test score impacts for more-advantaged students in Georgia and Oklahoma, and the similarity of initial impacts in these states and in Tennessee, suggest that a universal, high-quality program may yield no academic gains above and beyond a targeted one, though it comes at an additional cost.13 Consequently, one might wonder what the optimal mix should be between quality and access. For example, could some of the gains from high-quality targeted programs, like that in Tennessee, be achieved for disadvantaged students at a similar cost in higher-access, lower-quality programs, such as through positive spillovers from the presence of higher-income children?

Unfortunately, though quality and access matter considerably for the cost of operating a pre-K program, we have limited policy evidence to address questions about their impacts on potential benefits. For example, there is limited evidence of short-term benefits from higher-access, lower-quality programs. Likewise, while the regression discontinuity design has now been applied in multiple states to estimate the short-term cognitive impacts of preschool, and effect sizes do not appear to be strongly related to quality (see Wong et al. 2008), state-specific estimates are somewhat uncertain, and states differ along other dimensions—most importantly in terms of how nonparticipants spent the year in the absence of preschool.

BOX 1-1.

Case Study on Universal Pre-Kindergarten in Georgia and in Oklahoma Georgia was the first state to offer free pre-K for all four-year-olds. Georgia’s program, which began in fall 1995, is funded by state lottery proceeds and serves the four-year-old population through a combination of half-day and full-day programs operated out of both public schools and private centers. In fall 1998 Oklahoma became the second state to offer universal public pre-K. Oklahoma’s pre-K program differs from Georgia’s in several respects: it is funded through not just state, but also local and federal tax revenues; it operates almost exclusively out of public schools; and it serves a higher share of the four-year-old population (74 percent to Georgia’s 59 percent, according to the most recent estimates). These differences aside, both programs meet most common quality benchmarks, scoring high (8 or 9) on the National Institute for Early Education Research scale (figure 1-3). There is a growing body of evidence on the impacts of these programs on children’s readiness for kindergarten. When tested at age five, children who attended Oklahoma pre-K for a full academic year outperformed their counterparts who just missed being able to attend the program given their birthdays (Gormley and Gayer 2005; Wong et al. 2008). Comparable estimates do not yet exist for Georgia, but Fitzpatrick (2008) found that cohorts of children eligible to attend Georgia’s pre-K program (those aged four in fall 1995 and later) performed better on tests in fourth grade than did ineligible cohorts, both in absolute terms and relative to cohorts of children aged four before and after fall 1995 in other states. However, the positive impacts of the Georgia program on fourth-grade test scores were confined to disadvantaged children. Using a similar approach to estimate the test score impacts of both the Georgia and Oklahoma programs, Cascio and Schanzenbach (2013) similarly find a positive impact on fourth-grade scores for children from lower-income families. They also find a positive impact on eighthgrade test scores for lower-income children, but it is smaller than the impact on fourth-grade scores. The apparent successes of the Georgia and Oklahoma programs in improving children’s school readiness have fueled recent calls for government-funded preschool expansion. However, we think that research findings do not necessarily support universal programs in all scenarios. The impacts on test scores are largest for economically disadvantaged children, particularly in later grades. This pattern of findings is sensible given that children from higher-income families will have more and better options for school enrollment at age four (figure 1-4). Indeed, evidence suggests that for every ten children from higher-income families who enrolled in the Georgia or Oklahoma programs, four or five would otherwise have been enrolled in a private preschool program. There is little research evidence to suggest that children from higher-income families or the families themselves benefit in any way beyond saving on child-care expenses (Cascio and Schanzenbach 2013). While worthy, the goal of reducing the child-care costs for middle-class families could potentially be achieved in a lower-cost way. Thus, given the policy evidence, only if state or local budget conditions permit would we recommend consideration of a widely accessible program, and even then we urge policymakers to learn as much as possible about the alternatives to the proposed program for any newly targeted children.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

THE ROLE OF SUBSTITUTION

It is challenging to design a state preschool program—even one targeted toward low-income children—that does not induce a lot of switching from another preschool to the public program. The largest impact per unit cost comes from moving low-income children from attending no preschool to attending some preschool. Many low-income children would otherwise attend another program such as Head Start or center-based care; the additional educational impact of attending a highquality state preschool program will be more muted for these children. As a high-quality program becomes less targeted toward low-income children and enrolls more middle-income children, the share of new enrollees who otherwise would have attended preschool grows. The additional educational impact of switching from a high-quality, private preschool to a high-quality, public preschool is likely to be close to zero. The number of switchers and the cost of the program can be limited somewhat by charging tuition to higher-income families who enroll in the program. ENSURING HIGH QUALITY

While “high quality” is a concept easily understood in theory, it is more difficult to measure and enforce in practice. One way to judge a state’s overall preschool quality is to use the criteria established by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER); NIEER measures how many of ten benchmarks regarding the level of inputs are met by a state’s preschool policy. (This index is represented on the vertical axis of figure 1-2.) There are drawbacks to this approach because these benchmarks are only rough proxies for the classroom practices that are thought to make a high-quality program. For example, a state’s policy meets two benchmarks if it has a class-size cap of twenty and a maximum student– teacher ratio of 10:1. The state policy meets three more benchmarks based on the training level of teachers: one if the head teacher is required to hold a bachelor’s degree, a second if the teacher is required to have specialized pre-K training, and a third if assistant teachers are required to hold at least an Associate degree in child development. While on average these characteristics may be positively associated with higherquality programs, they are not necessarily the causal pathway to a high-quality classroom experience. For example, it may not actually improve preschool classrooms to replace teachers who have no bachelor’s degrees but years of experience with teachers who have bachelor’s degrees but no experience. Thus, changing a policy to meet the NIEER benchmark may not actually result in an improved classroom experience for preschool children. In a similar spirit, many states have adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems

that rates individual programs within a state along a variety of dimensions, most of them having to do with input measures. While such measures are only rough proxies for the classroom environment, they do provide important information to families deciding among various preschool options. A 2013 review of the evidence by a panel of experts for the Society for Research in Child Development concluded that the most important aspects of quality in preschool education are stimulating and supportive interactions between teachers and students, and effective use of a developmentally focused, intensive curriculum (Yoshikawa et al. 2013). There are promising methods to identify the programs and classrooms that perform well on these measures, such as classroom observations using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), which measures the degree to which teachers interact with their students in a manner that stimulates learning in an emotionally supportive environment. Recent work by Sabol and colleagues (2013) has shown that preschool classroom observations of the interactions between teachers and students using CLASS are more predictive of test-score gains than are other inputs measures such as teacher education or class size. A drawback of this approach is that it is relatively costly to implement.

A New Approach Since the impact of preschool expansions hinges on both the level of quality of the preschool program and on how much preschool improves the quality the child’s experience relative to what the child would be doing otherwise, policymakers must carefully consider the existing context in order to design and implement an effective preschool program. NO PROGRAM: START A HIGH-QUALITY, TARGETED PROGRAM

In states where there is currently no public preschool, the evidence suggests a targeted high-quality program may yield a strong return. Therefore, a better investment may be in a smaller, higher-quality program rather than in a larger, lowquality program, especially if there are substantial numbers of low-income children who are not currently enrolled in a preschool program. If substantial numbers of children are already enrolled in Head Start, switching into a higherquality state program may still improve children’s educational outcomes. Though we expect these gains to be lower for Head Start children than for children who would not otherwise have attended any preschool, there is evidence that Head Start has shifted its emphasis toward children ages three and under as state-funded preschool programs have expanded (Bassok 2012). Some children newly enrolled in state programs may The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children

then be attending Head Start at age three instead of age four, and thus be receiving two years of government-funded early education instead of just one. For states with strong Head Start programs, it would be useful to work closely with the existing Head Start program to ensure the highest possible return on the overall public investment. EXISTING LOWER-QUALITY PROGRAM: IMPROVE QUALITY

In states with programs that score poorly on quality measures—such as California, Florida, Ohio, and Texas— the best plan may be to increase the quality of the program before expanding access to more students. Adopting state standards in line with the NIEER quality benchmarks may be a first step to increasing quality. For example, requiring head teachers to have a bachelor’s degree, providing health screening and referrals, introducing site visits to monitor quality, and requiring a student-teacher ratio of 10:1 or higher are all markers of quality used by NIEER. It is important to note that these quality benchmarks are only rough proxies for the learning environment experienced by the child. As a result, meeting more of the NIEER quality benchmarks may not substantially improve a child’s classroom experience. In other words, meeting the benchmarks might be necessary—but perhaps not sufficient—to achieve a highquality program. Another promising approach would be to ensure that preschools have implemented a developmentally focused, intensive curriculum with integrated, in-classroom professional development as recommended in the Society for Research in Child Development report (Yoshikawa et al. 2013). EXISTING HIGHER-QUALITY PROGRAM: EXPAND ACCESS

In states with existing high-quality programs that reach only a small share of four-year-olds, efforts should focus on expanding access to the programs. It is important to understand that while the state’s cost of expanding access is the same for all children, the potential educational impacts of the expansion will depend on what the newly enrolled children would have been doing otherwise. To the extent that new enrollees are moving from lower-quality Head Start programs, day care, or no preschool, the impacts would be expected to be larger. However, we would expect the education impacts on new enrollees switching from highquality private preschools to be more muted. Some of this substitution (and cost) could be offset by charging tuition to higher-income families. Nonetheless, there are documented benefits of program expansion even when a high fraction of children switch from private to public preschool. For example, public preschool expansions decrease families’ out-of-pocket spending on child care.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

WINNERS AND LOSERS

As described above, the largest gains will be expected when low-income children are moved from no preschool to a highquality preschool. From an academic perspective, the gains will be expected to be smaller (or even zero) for higher-income children who switch into a public program from a comparable private preschool program. Nonetheless, for reasons that include the importance of peer interaction and political popularity, the best policy may be a universal program. The social benefits to enhancing public preschool options may far outweigh the costs of investing in both the expansion costs and quality improvements. For example, beyond any academic benefits the available evidence suggests that high-quality preschool can have longer-term benefits for society through reductions in crime, teenage pregnancy, and dependence on public assistance. Narrowing the early educational gap between low-income and higher-income children is an important step toward reducing income inequality over time.

Questions and Concerns Should we take money away from Head Start to invest in state preschool instead? The existing evidence on preschool is all drawn relative to a baseline with the existing Head Start program. We don’t know whether the impacts would be similar if resources were shifted from Head Start to state programs. State expansions of preschool programs would be better combined with a national effort to improve the effectiveness of Head Start. Gordon and Mead (2014) outline policies to improve Head Start. What are the benefits of expanding the program to threeyear-olds? There are several reasons to think that expanding a preschool program to the most disadvantaged three-year-olds would have a larger impact on learning than expanding a preschool program to the more advantaged four-year-olds for the same price. For example, the strong results found in the Perry Preschool program described in the text were from a twoyear intervention starting at age three. The Head Start Impact Study finds positive short-term impacts on achievement levels of three-year-olds; similar to the impact findings for fouryear-olds, however, the impacts are substantially diminished by third grade.

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Do we get a large gain from expanding from a half-day to a full-day program?

Conclusion

There is limited evidence on the impact of moving from a half- to a full-day preschool program. There appears to be a persistent, positive impact of full-day preschool; because evidence of that impact is largely drawn from an intervention that also increased the length of the school year, it needs to be interpreted with some caution (Robin, Frede, and Barnett 2006). There is also evidence from the Head Start Impact Study that full-day programs have a larger impact on cognitive skills than half-day programs (Walters 2014). Experts in this area caution that the impact does not come from additional time alone, but stress the importance of ensuring that the curriculum and instruction is aligned to make the most of the extra time.

By the time they reach kindergarten, disadvantaged children already show an achievement gap relative to their higherincome peers. In an attempt to level the playing field for lowincome youth, some have called on policymakers to invest in early childhood education by expanding high-quality preschool access to a greater number of American families. Indeed, research has shown that expanding access to high-quality preschool programs can be a cost-effective way to narrow the achievement gap and help low-income children build skills. However, the impact of the program depends critically on a child’s education in the absence of the intervention. Children with ample developmental and educational support—such as those enrolled in private preschool programs—will benefit far less from expanded access to preschool relative to those without access to high-quality preschool.

Besides academic achievement, what other areas are affected by preschool programs? There are a variety of outcomes that have been shown to be positively impacted by preschool. Children have had better school outcomes across a variety of dimensions: higher attendance rates, fewer failing grades, less grade retention, a higher likelihood of graduating from high school, and less involvement in criminal activity. Improvements in these areas account for many of the economic benefits of preschool programs. Do we expect a large impact on mothers’ employment? Another benefit to free preschool that is often mentioned is that it may enable more mothers to become employed by reducing the opportunity cost to working. Nonetheless, the best estimates are that this impact will be relatively small. For example, if free preschool reduces the cost of child care by around $5,000 per year, and if a mother with a high school diploma or less would earn about $25,000 per year, then preschool reduces the cost of working by about 20 percent. Based on labor supply estimates, this would imply a relatively modest 0.8 to 1.6 percentage-point increase in labor supply.

In this policy memo we provide guidelines for policymakers seeking to maximize the impact of investment in early childhood education. Our framework calls for the establishment of a high-quality program in areas where programs do not exist, improved preschool quality in those states and localities with subpar programs, and expanded access in areas where high-quality programs already exist. The available evidence suggests that expansion of early education programs along these lines will lead to improved educational outcomes for disadvantaged children, in addition to a host of other social benefits such as lower crime, reduced teenage pregnancy, and a lessened reliance on the social safety net.

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children

Authors Elizabeth U. Cascio

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College

Associate Professor, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University

Elizabeth Cascio is an associate professor of economics at Dartmouth College; a research associate in the programs on Education, Development of the American Economy, and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor. Her research is on the economics of education. A central goal of her research to date has been to understand the implications of a series of historic policy changes that began in the 1960s, including the large wave of state subsidization of early education and the introduction of progressive federal funding for K–12 education. She has also studied early education policy in the modern era. Her work has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and the National Science Foundation and has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, The Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Urban Economics, among other outlets. She received her doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003.

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is an associate professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty. She studies issues related to child poverty, including education policy, child health, and food consumption. She graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and religion, and received a doctorate in economics in 2002 from Princeton University. Much of her research investigates the longer-run impacts of early life experiences, such as the impacts of receiving SNAP benefits during childhood, the impacts of kindergarten classroom quality, and the impacts of early childhood education. She recently served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Examination of the Adequacy of Food Resources and SNAP Allotments.

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Endnotes 1. See Fryer and Levitt (2013). That paper’s primary goal is to explore the emergence of achievement gaps by race rather than by income. 2. Duncan and Magnuson (2011) estimate a 1.3 standard deviation difference in math and reading test performance at the start of kindergarten between children in the lowest and highest quintiles of the family income distribution. The corresponding gaps in teacher ratings of attention and behavior are 0.75 and 0.25 standard deviations, respectively.

choose to enroll their children in the public program experience a reduction in out-of-pocket preschool spending that offsets the decline in the learning environment. 12. To our knowledge, similar estimates for Georgia do not exist. 13. Recent results from a high-quality prekindergarten program in Boston does find substantial short-term impacts on the test scores of higher-income children (Weiland and Yoshikawa 2013).

3. These are the authors’ calculations from the 2011 October Current Population Survey School Enrollment supplement (NBER n.d.). The lowest family income quintile has a maximum annual income of $17,500, while the top family income quintile has a minimum annual income of $125,000. 4. The 2011–12 school year is the most recent with data available; data are from the NIEER. 5. The proposal defines low- and moderate-income families as those with income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The Preschool for All initiative has other elements as well, including incentives for states to implement full-day kindergarten, a shift in the focus of Head Start toward threeyear-olds, and an expansion of the Early Head Start program, which serves younger children. 6. For illustrative purposes this is drawn as a straight line, but the actual relationship may be curved. 7. Recent work by Heckman, Pinto, and Savelyev (2013) finds that the Perry program induced changes in personality skills, which in turn explain a large portion of the improvement in adult outcomes. In a re-analysis of the Perry data, Anderson (2008) finds that the positive impacts were found for girls but not boys. Heckman et al. (2010) dispute the finding, and contend that the positive benefit-to-cost ratios found in Perry are for both boys and girls. 8. Ludwig and Miller (2007) take a different approach, comparing children in counties that barely qualified for and barely missed qualifying for special grant-writing assistance for Head Start at the program’s inception. They find evidence that Head Start reduces child mortality, and they find suggestive evidence that it increases educational attainment. 9. In terms of benefit-to-cost ratios, the two programs appear to be roughly equivalent, resulting in about $8.00 worth of benefits for each $1.00 spent (Deming 2009; Heckman et al. 2010). The reason is that Head Start is relatively low cost. 10. In particular, the Tennessee program meets nine of the quality benchmarks represented in figure 1-2, whereas the average Head Start program meets only five (Espinosa 2002). Below we discuss the potential limitations of using inputs to proxy for quality. 11. This is not to suggest that preschool makes some children worse off overall. High–socioeconomic status families who

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

PROMOTING EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Proposal 1: Expanding Preschool Access for Disadvantaged Children

References Anderson, Michael L. 2008. “Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 103 (484): 1481–95. Barnett, W. Steven, Megan E. Carolan, Jen Fitzgerald, and James H. Squires. 2012. “The State of Preschool 2012: State Preschool Yearbook.” National Institute for Early Education Research, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, Rutgers, NJ. Bassok, Daphna. 2012. “Competition or Collaboration? Head Start Enrollment during the Rapid Expansion of State Prekindergarten.” Educational Policy 26 (1): 96–116. Cascio, Elizabeth, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. 2013. “The Impacts of Expanding Access to High-Quality Preschool Education.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall, 127–92. Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Currie, Janet. 2001. “Early Childhood Education Programs.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 15 (2, Spring): 213–38. Currie, Janet, and Duncan Thomas. 1995. “Does Head Start Make a Difference?” American Economic Review 85 (3, June): 341–64. Deming, David. 2009. “Early Childhood Intervention and LifeCycle Skill Development: Evidence from Head Start.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1 (3): 111–34. Duncan, Greg, and Katherine Magnuson. 2011. “The Nature and Impact of Early Achievement Skills, Attention Skills, and Behavior Problems.” In Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, edited by Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, 47–69. New York: Russell Sage Foundation and Spencer Foundation. Espinosa, Linda M. 2002. “High-Quality Preschool: Why We Need It and What It Looks Like.” NIEER Preschool Policy Matters 1, National Institute for Early Education, New Brunswick, NJ. Fitzpatrick, Maria D. 2008. “Starting School at Four: The Effect of Universal Pre-Kindergarten on Children’s Academic Achievement.” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 8 (1). Fryer, Roland G., and Steven D. Levitt. 2013. “Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children.” American Economic Review 103 (2): 981–1005. Garces, Eliana, Duncan Thomas, and Janet Currie. 2002. “LongerTerm Effects of Head Start.” American Economic Review 92 (4): 999–1012. Gordon, Robert, and Sara Mead. 2014. “How to Fix Head Start.” Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Gormley, William T., and Ted Gayer. 2005. “Promoting School Readiness in Oklahoma An Evaluation of Tulsa’s Pre-K Program.” Journal of Human Resources 40 (3): 533–58. Gramlich, Edward M. 1986. “Evaluation of Education Projects: The Case of the Perry Preschool Program.” Economics of Education Review 5 (1): 17–24. 12

Policies to Address Poverty in America

Heckman, James J., Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev, and Adam Yavitz. 2010. “The Rate of Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program.” Journal of Public Economics 94 (1): 114–28. Heckman, James J., Rodrigo Pinto, and Peter Savelyev. 2013. “Understanding the Mechanisms through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes.” American Economic Review 103 (6): 2052–86. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). n.d. “Current Population Survey Series.” The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ icpsrweb/ICPSR/series/24. Lipsey, Mark W., Kerry G. Hofer, Nianbo Dong, Dale C. Farran, and Carol Bilbrey. 2013a. “Evaluation of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program: End of Pre-K Results from the Randomized Control Design.” Research Report, Peabody Research Institute, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. ———. 2013b. “Evaluation of the Tennessee Voluntary Prekindergarten Program: Kindergarten and First Grade Follow-Up Results from the Randomized Control Design.” Research Report, Peabody Research Institute, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Ludwig, Jens, and Douglas L. Miller. 2007. “Does Head Start Improve Children’s Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (1): 159–208. Martin, Joyce A., Brady E. Hamilton, Michelle J. K. Osterman, Sally C. Curtin, and T. J. Mathews. 2013. “Births: Final Data for 2012.” Table 1. National Vital Statistics System, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_09.pdf. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). n.d. “NBER CPS Supplements.” National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. http://www.nber.org/data/currentpopulation-survey-data.html. National Center for Health Statistics. 2005. Vital Statistics of the United States, 2003, Volume I, Natality. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Hyattsville, Maryland. Office of Head Start (OHS). Various years. “Head Start Program Fact Sheets.” Office of Head Start, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC. http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs. gov/hslc/mr/factsheets. Office of the Press Secretary. 2013. “Fact Sheet President Obama’s Plan for Early Education for all Americans.” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Washington, DC.

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Puma, Mike, Stephen Bell, Ronna Cook, Camilla Heid, Pam Broene, Frank Jenkins, Andrew Mashburn, and Jason Downer. 2012. “Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study Final Report.” OPRE Report # 2012-45b. Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC. Reardon, Sean. 2011. “The Widening Academic-Achievement Gap between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations.” In Whither Opportunity?: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances, edited by Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, 91–116. New York: Russell Sage Foundation and Spencer Foundation. Robin, Kenneth B., Ellen C. Frede, and W. Steven Barnett. 2006. “Is More Better? The Effects of Full-Day vs. Half-Day Preschool on Early School Achievement.” NIEER Working Paper, National Institute for Early Education Research, New Brunswick, NJ. Sabol, Terri J., Sandra L. Soliday Hong, Robert C. Pianta, and Margaret R. Burchinal. 2013. “Can Rating Pre-K Programs Predict Children’s Learning?” Science 341 (6148): 845–46. Schweinhart, Lawrence J., Jeanne Montie, Zongping Xiang, W. Steven Barnett, Clive R. Belfield, and Milagros Nores. 2005. “Lifetime Effects: The HighScope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40.” HighScope Press, Ypsilanti, MI. Walters, Christopher. 2014. “Inputs in the Production of Earlychildhood Human Capital: Evidence from Head Start.” White Paper, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. Weiland, Christina, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa. 2013. “Impacts of a Prekindergarten Program on Children’s Mathematics, Language, Literacy, Executive Function, and Emotional Skills.” Child Development 84 (6): 2112–30. Wong, Vivian C., Thomas D. Cook, W. Steven Barnett, and Kwanghee Jung. 2008. “An Effectiveness-Based Evaluation of Five State Pre-Kindergarten Programs.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 27 (1): 122–154. Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, Christina Weiland, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Margaret R. Burchinal, Linda M. Espinosa, William T. Gormley, Jens Ludwig, Katherine A. Magnuson, Deborah Phillips, and Martha J. Zaslow. 2013. Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education. Policy Monograph, Society for Research in Child Development.

The Hamilton Project • Brookings

Innovating to End Urban Poverty March 27 & 28, 2014

Two policies to boost school readiness Greg J. Duncan University of California, Irvine Ariel Kalil University of Chicago Katherine Magnuson University of Wisconsin Richard Murnane Harvard University Poor children begin school well behind their more affluent peers and regain little if any ground during the school years. Based on data presented in Duncan and Magnuson (2011), Figure 1 shows differences in reading and math scores and “externalizing” (anti-social) behavior problems across socioeconomic groups in both first and eighth grades. On average, students in the bottom socioeconomic status quintile (with average family income of about $15,500) scored well over one standard deviation – nearly a full year of learning – below children in the top SES quintile (average family income of $100,000) in both reading and math. SES gaps are roughly half as large for children within the same schools as for children overall, suggesting that SESbased family selection into schools accounts for some but by no means all of the achievement gaps. By eighth grade, children from low-SES families have fallen further behind high-SES children on both academic skills and social behaviors.

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There are many reasons (reviewed below) for believing that preventative investments early in childhood targeting these school-entry achievement and behavior gaps may be more beneficial for promoting socioeconomic mobility among low-income children than remedial investments in adolescence or early adulthood. We consider two possible investment policies. First: scale up the highly successful Boston Pre-K program. Although costing about two thousand dollars more than full-day Head Start, the Boston program combines proven math and literacy curricula, provides extensive professional development and coaching for teachers, and in other ways provide a much higher quality education experience for children than what is found in most early childhood education (ECE) programs. Second: reallocate child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) payments so that payments to families with children under age 6 are twice as large as payments to families with older children. Not only are the incomes of families with the youngest children substantially lower than the incomes of families with older children, but evidence indicates that income matters at least as much, if not more, in early childhood relative to later. Why Focus on Early Childhood? Emerging evidence from human and animal studies highlights the critical importance of early childhood for brain development and for setting in place the structures that will shape future cognitive, social, emotional, and health outcomes (Sapolsky, 2004; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Studies in psychology and social epidemiology illustrate that both in-utero environments and early childhood experiences have long-run impacts on adult physical and mental health (Barker, Eriksson, Forsen, & Osmond, 2002; Danese, Pariante, Caspi, Taylor, & Poulton, 2007; Poulton & Caspi, 2005). Epidemiologists have suggested that early childhood stressors related to low income could alter or dysregulate biological systems, with adverse implications for future health (Godfrey & Barker, 2000). In animal models, optimal “mothering” behavior in critical periods of early development is associated with lifelong stress reactivity and cognitive strength (Sapolsky, 2004). Cunha and Heckman (2007) posit a cumulative model of the production of human capital that allows for the possibility of differing childhood investment stages as well as roles for the past effects and future development of both cognitive and socio-emotional skills. Their model highlights the interactive nature of skill building and investments from families, preschools and schools, and other agents. It suggests that human capital accumulation results from “selfproductivity” – skills developed in earlier stages bolster the development of skills in later stages – as well as the dynamic complementary process that results when skills acquired prior to a given investment increase the productivity of that investment. These two principles are combined in the hypothesis that “skill begets skill.” This model predicts that poor-quality home environments and economic deprivation in early childhood creates disparities in school readiness and early academic success that widen over the course of childhood. Early Childhood Interventions Most early childhood interventions seek to improve the quality of the learning and social interactions that children experience. Some attempt to enhance the skills of parents in hopes that parents will better teach, nurture, or in other ways provide for their children and in so doing 2  Papers

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enhance their children’s well-being. Child-based interventions seek to provide enriching experiences to children directly, as with preschool education programs. Early childhood interventions also differ in the types of children’s skills and behavior they seek to influence. Some aim to improve children’s early cognitive, literacy or numeracy skills. Others focus on development children socioemotional behaviors by, for example, reducing anti-social and other disruptive problem behaviors. As is well-known, two intensive early childhood education programs – Perry Preschool and Abecedarian (described below) – generate long-term benefits well in excess of their costs. Scaling up more affordable versions of programs such as these has proven more difficult. Our first policy idea selects a program that has been scaled up across an entire urban school system and has shown considerable signs of success. By and large, programs that attempt to enhance the skills and resources of parents in hopes that parents will do a better job teaching, nurturing, or in other ways providing for their children have a disappointing record (Furstenberg, 2011). There are two noteworthy exceptions, however. First is the nurse home-visitation program developed by David Olds, in which nurses pay repeated visits to high-risk first-time mothers in their homes (Duncan, Ludwig, and Magnuson 2010). Second, evidence from a number of experimental and quasi-experimental studies suggests that boosting the incomes of the poor, either through direct payments or by raising the effective earnings of the working poor, has positive, albeit modest, impacts on the achievement of younger children (Morris, Duncan, and Clark-Kauffman 2005). Policy 1: Scale up the Boston pre-K system Background We begin our discussion of our Boston pre-K proposal by setting the stage for our preschool education policy. Focusing on evaluations of preschool programs that are based on strong experimental or quasi-experimental methods and provide impact estimates for cognitive or achievement-related outcomes,1 Figure 2 shows the distribution of 75 program-average treatment effect sizes for cognitive and achievement outcomes measured at the end of each program’s treatment by the calendar year in which the program began. Reflecting their approximate contributions to weighted results, “bubble” sizes are roughly proportional to the number of children in each evaluation study. The figure also includes a weighted regression line of effect size by calendar year.

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Taken as a whole, ECE impacts on cognitive and achievement scores averaged .28 standard deviations at the time of program completion, an amount equal to nearly half of race differences in kindergarten achievement gap but only one-quarter of the size of the income gap. Programs beginning before 1980 had significantly larger average effect sizes (.37 sd) than those beginning after (.21 sd). Declining effect sizes over time are disappointing, as we might hope that lessons from prior evaluations and the science of child development would have led to an increase in program quality over time. The likely reason for the decline is that counterfactual conditions for children in the control groups in these studies have improved substantially. Low-income children are much more likely to be attending some form of center-based care now relative to 40 years ago (Duncan and Magnuson, 2013). This matters because although children attend a mix of programs with varying degrees of educational focus, research suggests that general center-based care is associated with better cognitive and achievement outcomes for preschool age children (NICHD and Duncan, 2003). Even more impressive are gains in the likely quality of the home environment provided by low income mothers, as indexed by their completed schooling. In 1970, some 71% of preschool age children in the bottom 20% of the income distribution had mothers with less than a high school degree, while only 5% of the mothers had attended at least some post-secondary schooling.2 By 2000, the percent of children with mothers who had completed less than a high 4 ď&#x201A;&#x; Papers

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school degree had dropped by nearly half (to 37%), while the percentage with mothers who had completed some post-secondary schooling increased five-fold (to just over 25%). Thus today, even when they are at home rather than in non-maternal care settings, children are benefiting from much higher quality home environments than was the case four decades ago. Perry and Abecedarian Despite the hundreds of ECE evaluation studies that have been published over the past 50 years, only a handful of programs have figured prominently in policy discussions about early childhood investments – in particular Perry Preschool, the Abecedarian program, Head Start, and more recently, some state pre-kindergarten programs. It can be seen in Figure 2 that average endof-treatment effect sizes for Perry (1.1 standard deviations) and Abecediarn (.90 sd) are more than three times larger than the weighted mean effect size for all studies shown in Figure 2. Perry provided one or two years of part-day educational services and weekly home visits to 58 low-income, low-IQ African American children aged three and four in Ypsilanti, Michigan, during the 1960s. Per pupil costs amounted to about $20,000 per child (in 2011 dollars). Perry’s large impacts on cognitive ability at the point of school entry had all but disappeared by third grade (Schweinhart et al., 2005). Nevertheless, the program produced lasting improvements through age forty on employment rates and substantially reduced the chances that participants had been arrested. Heckman et al. (2010) estimate that the program generated a social rate of return between 7 and 10%. The Abecedarian program, which served 57 low-income, mostly African American families from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, provided even more intensive services than Perry Preschool. Expressed in 2011 dollars, Abecedarian’s five-year duration led to costs that totaled about $80,000 per child, and is estimated to have produced $160,000 in net present benefits for its participants and their parents (Barnett & Masse, 2007; Currie, 2001). It is difficult to extract policy lessons from these model programs for ECE programs that states or the federal governments might offer today. Both were designed and evaluated by researchers and each served only several dozen children – conditions that scaled-up programs cannot match. Moreover, as mentioned above, counterfactual conditions three decades ago set a very low bar for these programs. Head Start Impacts Policy lessons might be gleaned more reliably from studies of Head Start, since it now provides services to almost a million three and four year olds. The Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) sampled Head Start centers nationally and used waitlist lotteries to randomly assign children to enrollment opportunities. Begun in 2002, it found that, after one academic year in the program, four-year old Head Start participants made significantly greater gains in six language and literacy areas than control children, with intent to treat effect sizes ranging from .09 to .31 standard deviations (US DHHS, 2005) and treatment on the treated effect sizes roughly 50 percent larger (Ludwig and Phillips, 2007).3 In contrast, there were few program impacts on math skills or on children’s attention, externalizing or mental health outcomes. By the end of first grade and continuing through third grade, both achievement levels and behavioral ratings of treatment group children were essentially similar to achievement levels of control-group children (US DHHS, 2010).

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As with Perry and Abecedarian, disappearing test score impacts for recent cohorts of Head Start children appear to be at odds with long-term impacts on important young adult outcomes found in analyses of older Head Start cohorts. Some of these studies use strong quasiexperimental methods and find noteworthy long-run program impacts. Deming’s (2009) siblingbased fixed effect analysis found that, compared with siblings who did not attend Head Start or other preschool programs, children who attended Head Start scored .23 sd higher on a composite of positive early adult outcomes (high school graduation, college attendance, idleness, crime, teen parenthood, and health status) produces an impact estimate of +.23 sd. Ludwig and Miller’s (2007) regression discontinuity study of Head Start attendees in the late 1960s found that efforts to increase the likelihood that poor counties established Head Start programs by providing federal grant writing assistance yielded increases of 3-4 percentage points in high school graduation rates and post-secondary schooling in these counties in the 1990 census data, although such effects were attenuated by 2000. Taken together, these studies suggest that despite the decline in program impacts on achievement test scores as children progress through elementary school, there may be measureable important effects of Head Start on children’s life chances. On the other hand, the confound between when the program started and the length of the follow-up period may just mean that the long-term effects found in these earlier studies will never happen in today’s much better counterfactual conditions. The absence of detectable effects beyond kindergarten in the Head Start Impact Study hardly supports a prediction of longer-run success. Pre-K Impacts Some promising evaluations of pre-K programs were completed too recently to have been included in the data base used to produce Figure 2. The most comprehensive is Wong et al. (2008), who use regression discontinuity methods to examine five state-initiated pre-K programs. They find short-run effects on achievement test scores that are somewhat larger than those estimated in the National Head Start Impact Study, although the size of the impacts varies considerably across states and type of test. And in a head-to-head comparison of Head Start and pre-K programs in Tulsa, Gormley et al. (2008) found that pre-K students outperformed Head Start students on early reading and writing but not early math skills. The absence of longer-run results on pre-K programs suggests caution in drawing strong policy conclusions from these otherwise promising results. Boston We focus one of our policy recommendations on the Boston pre-K system. During the 2005–2006 school year, Boston pre-K was serving one-quarter of the four-year-olds whose parents applied for admission. At the same time Dr. Jason Sachs was recruited to head a newlyformed Department of Early Childhood (DEC). Sachs and his colleagues chose the Opening the World of Learning (OWL) literacy curriculum and the Building Blocks mathematics curriculum (Weiland and Yoshikawa, 2013). The OWL focuses on developing children’s early language and literacy skills and includes a social skills component within each study unit. The Building Blocks curriculum develops children’s knowledge of simple arithmetic, geometry, measurement, and spatial relationships. Both curricula specify that children should spend considerable time at activity centers, playing in groups at activities designed to teach critical skills. The DEC team further enriched the

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curriculum by adding a “Building Communities” component aimed at teaching children the negotiation skills essential for constructive play and learning. Recognizing that implementing these curricula well would pose a substantial challenge for most Boston public school pre-K teachers and require significant preparation for each lesson, DEC embarked on a multiyear strategy to increase the quality and consistency of instruction in pre-K classrooms. This included providing teachers with manuals on how to prepare for and teach each of the many daily lessons in the curriculum and the staffing necessary to implement the curriculum appropriately. Key here was a full-time paraprofessional in each pre-K classroom to assist a licensed teacher as well as intense coaching and professional development aimed at providing all pre-K teachers and aides with the skills and knowledge to implement the demanding curricula. Part of the challenge was to convince teachers and aides that four-year-olds learn by doing, not by listening to teachers talk. Classroom management skills were also critical if children were to thrive in a cooperative learning setting. Yet another concern was to help teachers assess children’s mastery of the skills and knowledge that provided the focus for the day’s activities. Weiland and Yoshikawa (2013) conducted a regression-discontinuity study of the impacts of the Boston pre-K system and found that the mathematics, literacy, and language skills of children who participated in the pre-K program were considerably more advanced than those of similarly-aged children who spent the year in other child care settings (Weiland and Yoshikawa, 2013; Figure 3). Moreover, the evaluation also found improvements in various components of executive functioning – working memory, inhibitory control and attention shifting (Figure 4). All in all, the sizes of the pre-K impacts were sufficient to close more than half of the gap at kindergarten entry between the academic skills of children from low-income families and those from relatively affluent ones.

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A huge unanswered question is whether these promising impacts of the Boston pre-K system will persist beyond the pre-K year. A regression discontinuity design such as the one used for the Boston evaluation cannot provide the needed evidence. The lack of evidence on longerrun outcomes suggests that the best strategy for scaling up the Boston pre-K system is a gradual one in which random-assignment evaluations (which can provide longer-run impacts) are embedded. Reallocate child tax credit and EITC payments to families with younger children Poverty is associated with a cluster of disadvantages that may be harmful to children, including low levels of parental education and living with a single parent. We argue below that evidence indicates that childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s well-being would be helped by a policy that increased family incomes but did nothing else and that the income impacts are at least as large, if not larger, for families with young children. At the same time, it is important to note how much lower income levels are for families with younger as opposed to older children. Using poverty data from the Current Population Survey, Figure 5 show rates of poverty for various poverty lines separately for preschool and older children. Rates are consistently 3 to 5 percentage points higher for families with young as opposed to older children. Using the convention (100% of) poverty line, it can be seen that more than one in four children under the age of 6 lived in poor families, while one in eight lived in families with income below 50 percent of the poverty line.

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The importance of income and the generally lower incomes for families with young children leads to our policy recommendation: reallocate child tax credit and EITC payments so that payments to families with children under age 6 are twice as large as payments to families with older children. Background What are the consequences of growing up in a poor household? Economists, sociologists, developmental psychologists, and neuroscientists emphasize different pathways by which poverty may influence childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development. The two main theoretical frameworks describing these processes are: family and environmental stress, on the one hand and resources and investment on the other. Family and Environmental Stress Perspective. Economically disadvantaged families experience higher levels of stress in their everyday environments than more affluent families, and these disparities may affect childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development. The family stress model was first developed by Glen Elder to document the influence of economic loss during the Great Depression (Elder, 1974). According to this perspective, poor families face significant economic pressure as they struggle to pay bills and purchase important goods and services, and these economic pressures, coupled with other stressful life events that are more prevalent in the lives of poor families, creates high levels of psychological distress, including depressive and hostile feelings, in poor parents (Kessler and Cleary, 1980; McLeod and Kessler (1990).

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This perspective has been broadened by recent behavioral economics work showing that conditions of poverty and scarcity not only create psychological distress, but also deplete important cognitive resources (Spears, 2011). Studies, most of which have been conducted in developing countries, find that making economic decisions under conditions of scarcity reduces adults’ subsequent behavioral self-control and renders them less able to regulate their own behavior in order to pursue less immediate goals. Psychological distress spills over into marital and co-parenting relationships. As couples struggle to make ends meet, their interactions tend to become more hostile and conflicted, and this leads them to withdraw from each other (Brody 1994; Conger and Elder, 1994). Parents’ psychological distress and conflict, in turn, are linked with parenting practices that are on average more punitive, harsh, inconsistent, and detached, as well as less nurturing, stimulating, and responsive to children’s needs. Such lower-quality parenting is likely to elevate children’s physiological stress responses, and ultimately harms children’s development (Conger et al., 2002; McLoyd (1990). Although the biological links between low income and stress are compelling, no methodologically strong studies have linked poverty and elevated and prolonged stress reactions in children. Some strong studies have examined these connections in mothers. One of these linked expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit to data from the National Health Examination and Nutrition Survey and found that when compared with mothers with just one child, low-income mothers with two or more children experienced larger reductions in risky biomarkers and self-reported better mental health (Evans and Garthwaite, 2010). A study of the impacts of increases in the Canadian Child Benefit also found improvements in maternal mental health. Studies of the impacts of other welfare and anti-poverty programs that increased both income and maternal employment did not show similar improvements in mental health (Milligan and Stabile, 2009; Duncan et al., 2009). Resource and Investment Perspective. Household production theory has played a central role in how economists conceive of family influences on child development. Gary Becker’s A Treatise on the Family (1991) posits that child development is “produced” from a combination of endowments and parental investments. Endowments include genetic predispositions and the values and preferences that parents instill in their children. Parents’ preferences, such as the importance they place on education and their orientation toward the future, combined with their resources, shape parental investments. Economists argue that time and money are the two basic resources that parents invest in their children. For example, investments in high-quality child care and education, housing in good neighborhoods, and rich learning experiences enhance children’s development, as do investments of parents’ time. Links among endowments, investments, and development appear to differ by the domain of development under consideration (e.g. achievement, behavior, health). Household production theory suggests that children from poor families lag behind their economically advantaged counterparts in part because their parents have fewer resources to invest in them. Compared with more affluent parents, poor parents are less able to purchase inputs for their children, including books and educational materials at home, high-quality child care settings and schools, and safe neighborhoods. Economically disadvantaged parents may also have less time to invest in their children, owing to higher rates of single-parenthood, nonstandard work hours, and less flexible work schedules (Smolensky et al., 2003). This too may have

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negative consequences for children. Evidence suggests that the amount of cognitive stimulation in the home environment varies with changes in family income (Votruba-Drzal, 2006). Table 1 provides recent evidence, based on recent Consumer Expenditure Surveys, of the nature of child enrichment expenditures such as books, computers, high-quality child care, summer camps, and private school tuition. Shown are total expenditures per child, enrichment expenditures per child and per-child expenditures in selected categories for different income groups and for families with either only preschoolers or children age 6 or more. All amounts have been adjusted for family size and composition.4 Child enrichment expenditures are highly income elastic, constituting only 3 percent of total expenditures for families in the bottom expenditure quintile, and 9 percent of total expenditures for families in the top expenditure quintile. Trips and child care expenditures are most important for the high-income families, while expenditures are spread more evenly across categories for low-income families. Since we focus our policy recommendation on the age of children, it is of interest to know whether it is normative for families to spend much more on older relative to younger children. Table 1 also shows expenditures separately for families with exclusively preschool children or exclusively school-aged children. Enrichment expenditures and expenditure shares are slightly higher for families with younger than older children. Child care expenditures are the dominant expenditure category for families with younger children, while no single expenditure category dominates for families with older children. As to the causal impacts of income, the strongest evidence in the literature relates income increases to children’s school achievement and attainment. The only large-scale randomized interventions to alter family income directly were the U.S. Negative Income Tax Experiments, which were conducted between 1968 and 1982 with the primary goal of identifying the influence of guaranteed income on parents’ labor force participation. Three of the sites (Gary, Indiana, and rural areas in North Carolina and Iowa) measured impacts on achievement gains for children in elementary school; two of the three found significant impacts (Maynard and Murnane, 1979; Maynard, 1977). In contrast, no achievement differences were found for adolescents. Impacts on school enrollment and attainment for youth were more uniformly positive, with both the Gary and the New Jersey sites reporting increases in school enrollment, high school graduation rates, or years of completed schooling. Second- through eighth-grade teachers rated student “comportment” in the two rural sites; results showed income-inducted improvements in one of the sites but not the other. Taken together, these studies appear to suggest that income is more important for the school achievement of pre-adolescents than adolescents but may also matter for the school attainment of adolescents. None of the results from the Negative Income Tax experiments bear on the “early is best” hypothesis, because none tracked the possible achievement impacts for children who had not yet entered school when the income “treatment” was being administered. Experimental welfare reform evaluation studies undertaken during the 1990s incentivized parental employment by providing income supports to working-poor parents through wage supplements. Moreover, some measured the test scores of at least some children who had not yet entered school when the programs began. Morris et al. (2005) analyzed data from seven random-assignment welfare and antipoverty policies, all of which increased parental employment, while only some of them increased family income (Morris et al., 2005).

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The combined impacts of higher income and more maternal work on children’s school achievement varied markedly by the children’s age (Figure 6). Treatment-group children between the ages of four and seven when the programs took effect, many of whom made the transition into elementary school during the programs, scored significantly higher on achievement tests than their control group counterparts. A sophisticated statistical analysis of the data on these younger children suggests that a $3,000 annual income boost is associated with a gain in achievement scores of about one-fifth of a standard deviation (Duncan et al., 2011). In contrast, there were no impacts on either teacher- or parent-reported behavior problems (Duncan et al., 2009).

The achievement of children age eight to nine did not appear to be affected by the programs, and, if anything, the achievement of children who were 12 and older during the programs seemed to be hurt by the programs’ efforts to increase family income and parental employment. Another study using these same data examined very young children and found positive impacts for some ages but not others (Hill and Morris, 2008). Along the lines of the maternal stress study discussed above, another recent study took advantage of the increasing generosity of the U.S. EITC between 1993 and 1997 to compare children’s test scores before and after it was expanded (Dahl and Lochner, 2012). Most of the children in this study were between the ages of 8 and 14 and none was younger than 5. The authors found improvements in low-income children’s achievement in middle childhood that coincided with the EITC expansion.

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A second study, conducted in Canada, took advantage of variations in the generosity of the National Child Benefit program across Canadian provinces to estimate income impacts on child achievement (Milligan and Stabile, 2009). Among children age 6 to 10 residing in lowincome families, policy-related income increases had a positive and significant association with math scores and a negative link with the likelihood of a child receiving a diagnosis of a learning disability. For 4- to 6-year-olds, the income increases were associated with higher scores on a test of receptive vocabulary for boys, but not for girls. Turning to behavior, higher benefits led to less aggression among 4- to 10-year-olds, but did not appear to affect other behavioral dimensions assessed in the study. Several lessons emerge from these experimental and quasi-experiment studies. First, achievement gains are selective and depend at least in part on the children’s age when income gains were received. Children in their preschool years or making the transition to school and elementary school students generally enjoyed the most consistent achievement increases. For adolescents, the achievement changes were mixed, with various studies finding positive, null, and even negative impacts. Second, in the case of adolescents, income appears to affect educational attainments such as high school graduation and completed years of schooling rather than test scores. Given the high costs of post-secondary education, the effect of family income on completed schooling is not surprising. Third, we know far more about how poverty reduction affects achievement and schooling outcomes than we do about its effects on behavior problems including childbearing and criminal activity. Virtually none of the experimental literature on income effects has been able to estimate the impacts of changes in family income during the very earliest years of a child’s life – the time when children are developing rapidly and may be very sensitive to family and home conditions. Nor have these studies been able to examine the consequences of income changes during childhood for outcomes measured in adulthood. This is particularly unfortunate, since the goals of policies directed at children are often couched in terms of lifetime impacts – a middle-class standard of living or higher labor market earnings. Two recent nonexperimental studies have linked early childhood income to adult outcomes (Duncan et al., 2011; Ziol-Giuest et al., 2012). Both use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) on children born in the early years of the study, for whom adult outcomes were collected when these children were in their 30s. The PSID measures income in every year of a child’s life from the prenatal period through age 15, making it possible to measure poverty experiences and family income early in life (prenatal through the fifth year of life in one study, prenatal through the first year in the other) as well as later in childhood and in adolescence. The study found that for families with average early childhood incomes below $25,000, an annual boost to family income during this time (birth to age 5) is associated with increased adult work hours and a rise in earnings, as well as with reductions in receipt of food stamps (but not AFDC/TANF for females). Family income in other childhood stages was never significantly related to the adult earnings and work hours outcomes. For the most part, behavior problems (arrests and incarcerations for males; nonmarital births for females) were not predicted by increments to low family income in any of the three childhood stages. Reallocating Benefits by Age of Child Given the high rates of poverty (including deep poverty) for very young children, the scope of child enrichment expenditures (particularly for child care) in the budgets of families

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with preschoolers, and the research evidence pointing to consistent achievement gains for young children in response to poverty reduction, it makes sense to consider income transfer policies that provide more income to families with young children. In the case of work support programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, this would mean extending more generous credits (or reallocating existing credits) to families with young children. In the case of refundable child tax credits, this would mean providing larger credits to families with young children. Several European countries gear time-limited benefits to the age of children in their assistance programs. In Germany, a modest parental allowance is available to a mother working fewer than 20 hours per week until her child is 18 months old. France guarantees a modest minimum income to most of its citizens, including families with children of all ages. Supplementing this basic support is the Allocation de Parent IsolĂŠ (API) program for lone parents with children under age three. In effect, the API program acknowledges a special need for income support during this period, especially if a parent wishes to care for very young children and forgo income from employment. The state-funded child care system in France beginning at age three alleviates some of the child care problems associated with a parentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transition into the labor force. Our specific proposal recognizes the importance of early childhood and the generally lower incomes of young families structuring child tax credit and EITC payments by specifying that payments to families with children under age 6 are twice as large as payments to families with older children. This could be done by supplementing existing programs with additional payments to families with children under the age of 6 or by reallocating existing funds in a way that established a 2-to-1 benefit ratio for families with younger vs. older children. Acknowledgment Portions of the chapter were drawn from a more general review of early childhood education programs (Duncan and Magnuson, 2013) and from a review chapter on socioeconomic status that the authors and Elizabeth Votriuba-Drzal wrote for the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science (Duncan, Magnuson, and Votruba-Drzal, forthcoming). We are grateful for support from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, through grant HD065704 to the University of California, Irvine (Greg Duncan, PI.) Other portions are drawn from the Duncan and Murnane book Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Schools, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2013. We are grateful to the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation for supporting the production of that book.

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Table 1: Annual Enrichment Expenditures (Equivalized), Families with Children, Consumer Expenditure Survey 1997-2006 Total expenditures (equivalized)

Total enrichment expenditure

% of total expen diture

Books & magaz ines

Computer

Sport

Trips

Electronics

Non-college tuition & private bus

Child care

School supplies & books

Full sample

36065

2871

271

330

713

277

254

539

Quintile 1 Quintile 2 Quintile 3 Quintile 4 Quintile 5

13118 21507 29372 40337 75994

430 1134 2055 3527 7207

3 5 7 9 9

9 26 44 78 138

55 139 226 361 572

85 179 281 407 700

70 214 440 845 1998

78 163 249 348 546

19 68 131 246 806

64 201 410 753 1266

16 32 51 78 154

36201

3231

235

346

576

280

1438

40026

3135

334

333

897

303

375

240

Preschool only School-age only

Source: Kaushal, Magnuson and Waldfogel (2011). Smaller expenditure categories have been omitted.

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REFERENCES Barker D., Eriksson J. Forsen T and Osmond C. (2002). Fetal origins of adult disease: Strength of effects and biological basis. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31, 1235-1239. Barnett, W. Steven and Leonard N. Masse. 2007. Comparative cost-benefit analysis of the Abecedarian program and its policy implications. Economics of Education Review 26 (1): 113-125. Becker, G. S. (1991). A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brody. G. et al. (1994), “Financial Resources, Parent Psychological Functioning, Parent Cocaregiving, and Early Adolescent Competence in Rural Two-Parent African-American Families,” Child Development 65 no. 2 (1994): 590 – 605; Conger, R. and Elder, Jr. G. H. (1994), Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America (New York: Aldine de Gruyter,). Conger. R. et al. (2002), “Economic Pressure in African American Families: A Replication and Extension of the Family Stress Model,” Developmental Psychology 38 no. 2: 179 – 193 Cunha, F. and Heckman, J. (2007). “The technology of skill formation,” Working Paper 12840 (National Bureau of Economic Research) Currie, Janet. 2001. Early Childhood Education Programs. Journal of Economic Perspectives 15 (2): 213-238. Dahl, G. and Lochner, L. (2012), "The Impact of Family Income on Child Achievement: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit," American Economic Review 102: 19271956. Danese, A., Pariante, C., Caspi, A., Taylor, A., & Poulton, R. (2007). Childhood maltreatment predicts adult inflammation in a life-course study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 1319-1324. Deming, David. 2009. Early Childhood Intervention and Life-Cycle Skill Development: Evidence from Head Start. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(3): 11134. Duncan, G., Gennetian, L. and Morris, P. “Parental Pathways to Self-Sufficiency and the WellBeing of Younger Children,” in Making the Work-based Safety Net Work Better: Forward-looking Policies to Help Low-Income Families, Carolyn Heinrich and John Karl Scholz (eds.) (New York: Russell Sage, 2009), 117-148. Duncan, Greg, Jens Ludwig, and Katherine Magnuson. 2010. Child development. In Targeting investments in children: Fighting poverty when resources are limited., eds. Phillip Levine, David Zimmerman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Duncan, G. and Magnuson, K. (2011). The Nature and Impact of Early Achievement Skills, Attention and Behavior Problems. in Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (eds.), Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, New York: Russell Sage, 2011, pp. 47-69. 16  Papers

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Duncan, G., Morris, P. and Rodrigues, C. (2011), “Does money matter? Estimating impacts of family income on young children’s achievement with data from random-assignment experiments,” Developmental Psychology 47, no. 5 (2011): 1263–1279. Duncan, G. and Magnuson, K. (2013) Investing in Early Childhood Education Programs, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Duncan. G. and Murnane, R. (2014) Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis and Inequality and the Challenge for American Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Duncan, G., Ziol-Guest, K. and Kalil, A. (2010), "Early-Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, and Health," Child Development 81: 306-325; Evans, W. and Garthwaite, C. (2010) “Giving Mom a Break: The Impact of Higher EITC Payments on Maternal Health,” Working Paper 16296 (National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA). Elder, G. H. (1974) Children of the Great Depression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Elder, G. H., Nguyen, T. and Caspi, A. (1985). “Linking Family Hardship to Children’s Lives,” Child Development 56, no. 2: 361–375. Furstenberg, F. (2011) The Challenges of Finding Causal Links between Family Educational Practices and Schooling Outcomes, in Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (eds.), Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, New York: Russell Sage, 2011, pp. Godfrey, K. M., & Barker, D. J. P. (2000). Fetal nutrition and adult disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 71, 1344S-1352S Gormley, W., Gayer, T., Phillips, D.A., & Dawson, B. (2005). The Effects of Universal Pre-K on Cognitive Development,” Developmental Psychology, 41, 872-84. Gormley, W., Gayer, T., & Phillips, D.A. (2008). Preschool Programs Can Boost School Readiness. Science, 320, 1723-24. Heckman, James J., Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter Savelyev, Adam Yavitz. 2010. A New Cost-Benefit And Rate Of Return Analysis For The Perry Preschool Program: A Summary, NBER Working Paper 16180. Hill, H. and Morris, P. (2008) "Welfare policies and very young children: Experimental data on stage-environment fit," Developmental Psychology 44, no. 6: 1557. Kaushal, N., Magnuson, K., & Waldfogel, J. (2011) How is Family Income Related to Investments in Children's Learning? In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances(pp. 187-206). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Kessler, R. and Cleary, P. (1980) “Social Class and Psychological Distress,” American Sociological Review 45, no. 3: 463–478 Ludwig, Jens, and Miller, D. 2007. Does Head Start Improve Children’s Life Chances: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122 (1): 159208. Ludwig, Jens, and Deborah Phillips. 2007. The Benefits and Costs of Head Start. Social Policy Duncan et al., School Readiness Policies

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Report, 21 (3): 3-20. Maynard, R. and Murnane, R. (1979) “Effects of a Negative Income-Tax on School Performance - Results of an Experiment,” Journal of Human Resources 14, no. 4: 463-476; Maynard, R. (1977) “The effects of the Rural Income Maintenance Experiment on the school performance of children,” The American Economic Review 67 no. 1: 370-375 McLeod, J. and Kessler, R. (1990) “Socioeconomic Status Differences in Vulnerability to Undesirable Life Events,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 31, no. 2: 162–172 McLoyd, V. (1990) “The Impact of Economic Hardship on Black Families and Children: Psychological Distress, Parenting, and Socioemotional Development,” Child Development 61, no. 2: 311 - 346. Milligan, K. and Stabile, M. (2009) "Child Benefits, Maternal Employment, and Children's Health: Evidence from Canadian Child Benefit Expansions," The American Economic Review 99, no. 2: 128-132; Morris, P., Duncan, G. and Clark-Kauffman, E. (2005) “Child Well-Being in an Era of Welfare Reform: The Sensitivity of Transitions in Development to Policy Change,” Developmental Psychology 41, no. 6: 919-932. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Childcare Research Network, and Greg J. Duncan. 2003. Modeling The Impacts of Child Care Quality on Children’s Preschool Cognitive Development. Child Development, 74 (5): 1454-1475. Poulton, R. & Caspi, A. (2005). Commentary: How does socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood damage health in adulthood? Testing psychosocial pathways. International Journal of Epidemiology, 34, 344-345. Sapolsky, R. (2004). Mothering style and methylation. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 791-792. Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z., Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R., & Nores, M. (2005). Lifetime effects: The High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40. (Monographs of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 14). Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. (2000). From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Smolensky, E. and Gootman, J. eds. (2003) Working Families and Growing Kids: Caring for Children and Adolescents (Washington, DC: National Academies Press). Spears, D. (2011) “Economic Decision-Making in Poverty Depletes Behavioral Control,” B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 11 no. 1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. (May 2005). Head Start impact study: First year findings. Washington, DC. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (January 2010). Head Start impact study: Final report. Washington, DC. Weiland, Christina & Yoshikawa, Hirokazu (2012). The impacts of an urban public prekindergarten program on children’s mathematics, language, literacy, executive function, and emotional skills: Evidence from Boston. Harvard Graduate School of Education. 18  Papers

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Votruba-Drzal, E. (2006) “Economic Disparities in Middle Childhood: Does Income Matter?” Developmental Psychology 42 no. 6: 1154–1167. Wong, Vivian, Cook, C., Barnett, S., & Jung, K. (2008). An Effectiveness-Based Evaluation Of Five State Pre-Kindergarten Programs. Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, 27, 122-154. Ziol-Guest, K. M., Duncan, G. J., Kalil, A., & Boyce, W. T. (2012). Early childhood poverty, immune-mediated disease processes, and adult productivity. Proceedings of the National

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These data are drawn from a meta-analytic data base of studies published between1960 and 2007 and compiled by the National Forum on Early Childhood Programs and Policies. This is described at http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/forum/ Programs selected for our analysis had both treatment and control/comparison groups, included at least 10 participants in each condition, incurred less than 50% attrition and measured children’s cognitive development close to end of their “treatment” programs. Studies had to have used random assignment or one of the following quasi-experimental designs: change models, fixed effects modes, regression discontinuity, difference in difference, propensity score matching, interrupted time series, instrumental variables and some other types of matching. Studies that used quasi-experimental designs must have had pre- and post-test information on the outcome or established baseline equivalence of groups on demographic characteristics determined by a joint-test. When a program evaluation reported more than one end-of-treatment impact on cognitive ability or achievement measures, we calculated a weighted average impact and pooled standard error, using the inverse of the squared sampling error as the weight. Cross-program averages reported in this article are also weighted by the inverse of the squared sampling error. Since results proved somewhat sensitive to large weight values, we truncated weight values from above at 100. 2

The data in this paragraph are based on authors’ calculation of the October Current Population Survey data. 3

Because they failed to track families who declined to take up ECE program services, the vast majority of ECE evaluations provide only estimates of impacts on treated children. 4

To take account of differences in family size and composition, Kurshal et al. (2011) adjust expenditures using an equivalence scale, which assigns a weight of 0.67 to the first adult, 0.33 to all other persons in the household over 17, and 0.2 to children 17 or under.

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Using Executive Function and Related Principles to Improve the Design and Delivery of Assistance Programs for Disadvantaged Families

LaDonna Pavetti, Ph.D. Vice President, Family Income Support Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Washington, DC

Paper Prepared for Innovating to End Urban Poverty Sol Price Center for Social Innovation

March 27-28, 2014 Revised May 5, 2014

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Introduction At the start of the millennium, the National Academy of Science released a report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: the Science of Early Childhood Development which significantly changed the way we think about early childhood development – and started a conversation about how to develop policies and programs for disadvantaged children that are rooted in science, with a special focus on early brain development. Since then, our knowledge of how the brain develops and the important role the environment plays in shaping early and later life experiences has expanded exponentially, paving the way for an expanded conversation about how to use this knowledge not only to develop effective early childhood policies and programs but also to consider the implications for policies and programs aimed primarily at parents and other caregivers. This expanded view is illustrated by the following passage from a recent article by Jack Shonkoff (a lead author of From Neurons to Neighborhoods) and Philip A. Fisher, Science Director for the National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs at Harvard University (emphasis added): “…science suggests that significantly greater impacts on the healthy development and life prospects of vulnerable young children could be achieved by focusing greater attention on strengthening the capabilities of their caregivers, improving the economic stability of their families, and building stress-buffering resources in their communities rather than by continuing to focus primarily on the provision of child-focused enrichment, parenting education, and informal support. With this objective in mind, the challenge for policymakers and practitioners is to move beyond the simple coordination of separate childand adult-focused programs and to combine the best of both domains within a fully integrated, intergenerational strategy that is grounded in developmental science, aligned at the program, community, and policy levels, and committed to the pursuit of breakthrough outcomes in lifelong learning, behavior, and health.”1 This work has been significantly influenced by brain science, of which executive function skills -cognitive processes required to execute routine and complex tasks, solve problems, sustain attention, follow rules, make plans, monitor actions, control impulses, delay gratification and set and achieve short and long-term goals—are a key component. These skills are critical for success in many aspects of life, including school performance, parenting and work. These cognitive and social skills make it possible for adults to care for themselves and their children, run households, and find and keep jobs.2 Executive function skills are controlled by a part of the brain – the prefrontal cortex-that takes many years to develop, making them especially susceptible to negative environmental influences, including poverty and many of the adverse circumstances that often accompany living in poverty or in poor neighborhoods such as exposure to high levels of violence.3

Jack P. Shonkoff and Philip A. Fisher. Rethinking evidence-based practice and two-generation programs to create the future of early childhood policy. Development and Psychopathology, 25 (4, part 2), 1635–1653. Copyright Cambridge University Press, 2013. 2 Adele Diamond. “Want to Optimize Executive Functions and Academic Outcomes? Simple, Just Nourish the Human Spirit. In Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. Developing Cognitive Control Processes: Mechanisms, Implications, and Interventions, Philip David Zelazo and Maria D. Sera, eds., Wiley & Sons, Inc. 3 Philip Zelazo and Jacob E. Anderson. “What Is Cognitive Control?” Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. Developing Cognitive Control Processes: Mechanisms, Implications, and Interventions. Ed. Philip David Zelazo and Maria D. Sera. Minneapolis, MN: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014. 1

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Adults with executive function deficits often have difficulties meeting deadlines, prioritizing and following through on tasks, arriving on time, organizing their work and following a conversation in a group setting or meeting. They also are easily distracted and have difficulty seeing new ways of doing things. Executive function skill deficits are not only found in disadvantaged adults, but because the disadvantaged have greater exposure to adverse circumstances and are impacted daily by the stress associated with making ends meet, a better understanding of executive function skills and how they develop could potentially help us to implement better strategies to reduce poverty’s adverse impacts and improve programs designed to move families out of poverty (such as workforce development programs). In this paper, I focus on executive function skills from the perspective of disadvantaged adults, recognizing that in many cases, adults are applying for or receiving assistance for the benefit of themselves and their children and that interventions designed to improve opportunities for adults may also have a significant impact on their children. I first provide a description of executive function skills, focusing on what they are, how they develop and the factors that influence their development. I then discuss the implications of this information --which is rooted in findings from neuroscience, developmental science and behavioral economics -- for policies and programs targeted to disadvantaged adults and families and provide concrete examples of strategies that have already been put into place that build on this knowledge (sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly). I conclude with suggestions for how this knowledge potentially could be applied more broadly to achieve better outcomes for disadvantaged families.

Executive Function Skills: What They Are and Why They Are Relevant to Poverty Policy and Programs An Introduction to Executive Function Skills There are many analogies used to describe executive function skills and the role they play in our dayto-day lives. A common analogy is that of a highly controlled air traffic control system that manages the arrival and departures of dozens of planes on multiple runways. This is because executive function skills play a critical role in helping us to focus on multiple streams of information at the same time, and revise plans as necessary.4 There are many skills that contribute to this “air traffic control system” and scientists and clinicians have developed different schemes for organizing them into clusters. A widely accepted construct focuses on three key cognitive processes:5 

Working memory is the capacity to mentally store and process information over short periods of time. It is the skill that allows us to retain information from one situation and use it in another context, follow multi-step directions and temporarily stop doing something and then come back to it later. Research shows that individuals can store and retrieve between two and four chunks of information in their working memory at any given time.

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. 2011. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu 5 Russell Carlock. “Executive Functions: A Review of the Literature to Inform Policy and Practice.” Cambridge, MA: Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University. 2011. 4

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

Inhibitory control is the skill we use to master and filter our thoughts and impulses so we can resist temptations and distractions and not act prematurely. It is the skill that we use to stay focused and to pause and reflect on consequences before taking action. Activities that require sustained attention such as changing habits and achieving long-term goals require considerable inhibitory control. (Inhibitory control is also sometimes referred to as selfcontrol and impulse control). Cognitive flexibility is the capacity to nimbly switch gears and adjust to changed demands, priorities, or perspectives. It is the skill that allows us to multi-task, apply different rules or social skills in different settings (e.g., to act differently at work than at a neighborhood social gathering) and change our approach based on feedback.

Exhibit A provides a more expansive list of executive function skills that is sometimes preferred by clinicians who work on developing concrete strategies to help build executive function skills.

Exhibit A Executive Function Skills (Expanded List) Skills Involving Thinking (Cognition) • Working memory: Ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks; incorporates ability to draw on past learning or experience to apply to current situations • Planning/prioritization: The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task; making decisions about what’s important to focus on • Organization: The ability to create/maintain systems to keep track of information or materials • Time management: The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it, and how to stay within time limits and deadlines • Metacognition: The ability to monitor oneself; ability to ask oneself: how am I doing/did I do? Skills Involving Doing (Behavior) • Response Inhibition: Capacity to think before you act • Emotional control: The ability to manage emotions to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behavior • Sustained attention: The capacity to keep paying attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue or boredom • Task initiation: The ability to begin a task or activity without undue procrastination and to independently generate ideas, responses, or problem-solving strategies. • Goal-directed persistence: The capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal, and not be distracted by competing interests • Cognitive flexibility: The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes Source: Peg Dawson, EdD and Richard Guare, PhD. (2009). Smart but Scattered. New York, New York: The Guilford Press.

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Scientists that study executive function each represent executive function skills and their relationship to one another in somewhat different ways. Philip Zelazo, a neuroscientist who specializes in the study of executive function at the University of Minnesota, has developed a framework focused on problem-solving that is especially useful for thinking about executive function skills in the context of policies and programs for disadvantaged adults.6 (See Exhibit B.) In this formulation, he breaks executive functions into four key subfunctions that must be completed in a specific sequence:    

Representation: What is the problem I need to solve? What do I need to accomplish? What is preventing me from accomplishing it? Planning: What is my plan for solving the problem? Execution: How will I carry out the plan? What resources/help do I need? Evaluation: Did my plan work? If not, what do I need to change? Did I define the problem correctly? Was my plan realistic? How well did I do at executing it? What can I do differently to get a better result?

Exhibit B Executive functioning skills in a problem-solving structure

Zelazo, Philip David. (2013) “Executive Function and the Developing Brain.” Conference Presentation: Connecting Brain Science to Practice, St. Paul, MN, November 20, 2013.

Philip Zelazo. “What Is Executive Function?” Aboutkidshealth.ca. Accessed from http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/News/Series/ExecutiveFunction/Pages/default.aspx on February 2, 2014. 6

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In a slightly different, but related formulation, Sylvia Bunge, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Berkley, focuses on how executive function skills support goal-directed behavior. Her formulation focuses on three basic skill sets required for setting and achieving long-term goals: planning, self-regulation and monitoring.7 Adele Diamond, a neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, notes that reasoning, problem-solving and planning are all higher-level executive functions that draw on working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility.8 All of these formulations illustrate the interconnectedness of the various executive function skills. They also illustrate how many skills an individual must draw upon to solve a problem or to set and achieve a goal. Deficits in any one of the executive skills can result in failure to achieve the intended outcome. Strengths can be drawn upon to compensate for areas of weakness. All individuals, regardless of their socio-economic status, are stronger in some areas than in others. Thus, interventions to increase individuals’ ability to solve problems or achieve a goal need to consider how to build on strengths and how to make accommodations for or improve areas of weakness. It is important to note that even though executive function skills are critically important in their own right, they are not a replacement for hard skills that could help disadvantaged adults qualify for better paying jobs. It is, however, possible that designing training programs with the important role executive function principles play in adult’s lives in mind could lead to higher rates of participation and completion that could ultimately lead to better outcomes and bigger program impacts. The Relationship between Poverty and Executive Function Research suggests that there are two pathways through which executive function skills may be compromised in disadvantaged adults – through the impact of early life experiences that may compromise the development of executive function skills9 and through the day-to-day struggle of trying to make ends meet with limited financial resources.10 Like all skills, executive function skill levels vary from one individual to the next. What makes executive function skills different is the important role that environment plays in their development – and the length of time over which executive function skills can be influenced by the environment and by interventions. The prefrontal cortex, where executive function skills reside in the brain, matures as late at the mid-20s, providing a very wide window during which the environment can influence the development of executive functions. This is in direct contrast to how other parts of the brain develop. For example, the sensory regions of the brain – the areas that control sights and sounds – are fully developed with in just a few years after birth.11 During the long period in which executive functions develop, there are two distinct periods of Bunge, Sylvia. “Executive Functions: Why Do They Matter, and How Do We Measure Them?” Presentation given at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Meeting on Executive Function. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. February 10, 2014. 8 Adele Diamond. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology. 2013.64:135-168, 2013. 9 Kimberly G. Noble. “Rich Man, Poor Man: Socioeconomic Adversity and Brain Development.” Cerebrum, May 2014. 10 Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. Scarcity: Why Having So Little Matters So Much. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 2013. 11 Bunge, Sylvia. (2014). 7

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significant growth – between the ages of three and five and between the ages of 15 and 25. Although these sensitive periods denote times during which the neural system is maximally sensitive to environmental input, it is not the case that inputs to the system after the end of this period can no longer influence development.12 This is important because it means that it is possible to build executive function skills throughout the life course. This extended period of growth has both positive and negative aspects to it. On the positive side, there are multiple points at which it is possible to intervene to take advantage of the natural growth trajectory of executive function skills and the relative plasticity of the prefrontal cortex. On the negative side, the opportunities for adverse circumstances to negatively impact the development of executive function skills extends over a very long period of time. Over the long-term, chronic stress, inadequate nutrition, prenatal alcoholism, child maltreatment, drug abuse and head trauma all negatively impact the development of executive function skills. On a day-to-day basis, prefrontal function is affected by things like sleep and stress.13 Although it is an area in need of further study, there is some evidence that children who grow up in poor household have weaker executive function skills as adults. In a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging study that looked at the association between brain functioning and poverty, researchers found that being poor at age 9 lefts its imprint on the brain at age 24. The researchers could see differences in the activity of the portion of the brain that controls executive functions. The same differences were not observed based on current family income. The brain patterns observed were the same patterns observed with depression, anxiety disorders, aggression and post-traumatic stress disorder which also influence the part of the brain that controls executive functions.14 While the exact way in which poverty impacts the development of executive function skills in children is not known, one possible explanation that has been offered is that the wide range of stressors that disadvantaged parents face make it difficult for them to provide and/or maintain the kind of well-regulated environment in which healthy development can happen.15 Some of the stressors that these families face include unstable and unsafe housing, employment instability, and exposure to excessive levels of violence. These and other stressors can undermine a parent's ability to engage in more positive interactions with his or her young child on a consistent basis. Recent research on "scarcity" -- the condition of not having enough resources-- provides considerable insight into the relationship between poverty and cognitive capacity, including executive function skills. In their recent book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendil Mallainathan, and Eldar Shafir, experts in behavioral economics, suggest that there is a causal, not merely correlational relationship between poverty and mental function.16 The authors and their colleagues note that the time poor individuals spend trying to make ends meet 12Allyson

P. Mackey et al. “Environmental Influences on Prefrontal Development.” Principles of Frontal Lobe Function, Ed. Donald T. Stuss and Robert T. Knight. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012. 13 Ibid. (2012). 14 Pilyoung Kim et al. “Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood.” PNAS, Volume 110, no. 46, November 12, 2013. 15 Shonkoff and Fisher. (2013). 16 Mullainathan and Shafir. (2013).

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with scarce resources uses up cognitive resources, creating a “bandwidth tax” that leaves them with fewer cognitive resources to succeed in other critical tasks such as parenting, education or work. In their view, the poor are less successful than the non-poor in various aspects of life because living in poverty impedes cognitive capacity, not because those living in poverty are inherently less capable. They liken living in poverty to living perpetually on a missed night of sleep, a sizable impact that could have large consequences. In their words: “The poor must manage sporadic income, juggle expenses, and make difficult tradeoffs. Even when not actually making a financial decision, these preoccupations can be present and distracting. The human cognitive system has limited capacity. Preoccupation with pressing budgetary concerns leaves fewer cognitive resources available to guide choice and action. Just as an air traffic controller focusing on a potential collision course is prone to neglect other planes in the air, the poor, when attending to monetary concerns, lose their capacity to give other problems their full consideration.”17 The researchers note that although poverty impacts cognitive capacity, it does not mean that disadvantaged adults' decision-making processes differ dramatically from the non-poor. In fact, they note that some of the basic decision-making weaknesses adults living in poverty exhibit are similar to those exhibited by individuals from all walks of life – the difference is that in poverty, there are narrow margins for error, and the same behaviors end up manifesting themselves in more pronounced ways and can lead to worse outcomes.18 For example, consider the consequences of staying home from work to care for a sick child. Individuals in higher-paying jobs are likely to have paid sick or vacation days they can use if they don’t have anyone else to care for their child. And, increasingly, they are able to simply work at home. In contrast, a parent in a low-paying job who stays home to care for a sick child will at best lose a full day’s pay and at worst, may get fired for taking the day off. This research on scarcity is important for a number of reasons, but an especially important one is that it suggests that bandwidth is not permanently compromised by poverty. On a day-to-day basis, poverty imposes a “bandwidth tax” that comes from the cognitive demands required to make ends meet, but when income rises, so, too, does cognitive capacity. In addition, public benefit application processes themselves can consume considerable bandwidth – and if those processes can be simplified, that should also free up cognitive resources that individuals can draw upon for other tasks such as parenting and achieving short and long-term goals related to employment and career advancement. To the extent that an individuals’ executive function skills were compromised because of early stressful events, they may experience executive function deficits that remain even when the “bandwidth tax” is removed. Thus, the combination of early and current influences on individuals’ cognitive capacity suggest that both strategies that help to reduce the “bandwidth tax” and strategies that help to build or accommodate executive function deficits and bolster executive function strengths may be necessary to produce the best long-term outcomes for disadvantaged adults and their children.

Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir and Jiaying Zhao. “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” Science, Volume 341, August 30, 2013. 18 Bertrand, Marianne, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir. “Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making Among the Poor.” American Marketing Association, Volume 25 (1), Spring 2006. 17

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Developing Executive-Function Informed Human Service Programs What we know about executive function skills and the important role they play in adult success suggests that it is worth considering how we can use this information to produce better long-term outcomes for low-income families – and especially for the children that live in these families. The available information suggests that adults who grew up in poverty or were exposed to multiple stressful life events may have weaker executive function skills than adults that did not grow up in poverty or otherwise stressful environments. In addition, even if currently poor adults did not grow up poor or were not exposed to significant stress during childhood, it is quite likely that their executive function skills may be weakened because of the very fact that they are currently living in poverty. Redesigning Human Service Programs Using Executive Function Principles There is considerable evidence that executive function skills can be improved in children and there is growing evidence that it is also possible to “remove the brakes” on adult plasticity and improve executive function skills in adults, as well. Thus, it may be possible to redesign workforce, parenting and other social service programs targeted to adults to improve their executive function skills or to take into account potential executive function weaknesses. Coaching individuals to achieve personal goals, creating opportunities for individuals to practice executive function skills, providing incentives and helping adults to develop positive peer groups are all strategies that potentially could help adults to improve their executive function skills. When it is not feasible to redesign programs to improve executive function skills, it is possible that programs could achieve much greater impacts by taking into account potential executive function skill deficits and putting into place accommodations or strategies that can mitigate the impact of weak executive functioning skills. The use of Executive Function principles in designing and delivering services is in its infancy, but some of these early efforts suggest that these principles may have the potential to greatly improve the return on the investments we are already making in social service, mental health and employment programs. I present these three examples below.

Building Nebraska Families. The Building Nebraska Families (BNF) project -- a program that

worked with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients in their homes in rural Nebraska to increase their life skills and job readiness-- provides strong evidence that executive function principles may help to significantly improve employment stability for families facing multiple personal and family challenges.19 Unlike other home visiting projects that are primarily focused on improving health and developmental outcomes for children, this program was focused on improving employment outcomes for parents. Even though the program did not provide employment services directly, it achieved some of the biggest impacts on employment stability we have ever seen for families facing multiple personal and family challenges. (See Exhibit C.)

Alicia Meckstroth, Andrew Burwick, Quinn Moore and Michael Ponza. “Teaching Self-Sufficiency Through Home Visitation and Life Skills Education.” Trends in Family Programs and Policy, Issue Brief #3. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 2009. 19

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Exhibit C Impact of Building Nebraska’s Families on TANF Recipients with Substantial Barriers

The program was evaluated using a random assignment design, providing confidence that the improvements in individuals’ employment outcomes were due to the program. The program group saw significant increases in employment that lasted for at least 12 consecutive months, movement from a lower- to higher-wage job and employment in a job that provided health insurance. In the final six months of the 30-month follow-up period, participants also had significantly higher earnings and were significantly less likely to report health-related hardships, including poor physical health, self-reported depression, and domestic abuse than those not randomly assigned to participate in the program. The program was not cheap, costing an average of about $8,300 for individuals facing multiple personal and family challenges. However, the researchers studying the program estimated that if the program was targeted to individuals with the most limited employment prospects and if the employment impacts observed in the last six months of the follow-up persisted for 1.7 years, the benefits to society would outweigh the costs. There are several features of the program that are consistent with executive function principles that the researchers and program operators believe contributed to its success. First, the program focused on helping families to identify and achieve individual goals in a variety of domains, including such diverse areas as time management, parenting, financial management, coping skills, building selfesteem, and anger and conflict management. Second, the program was designed and delivered as an educational curriculum – it was designed to teach skills that participants could then practice in their daily lives. Third, the program was individualized – the curriculum was flexible and could be 10  Papers

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delivered in any sequence. Fourth, staff were highly skilled and saw their role as helping participants to achieve their goals. Unfortunately, the program ended shortly after TANF rules changed, narrowing the employment activities that could count towards helping that state meet its TANF work participation rate and the program has never been replicated.

Mobility Mentoring created by the Crittenton Women’s Union (CWU) in Boston is a program that is leading the way in using executive function and related principles to dramatically change the way we deliver employment and related services to disadvantaged families.20 At the heart of their program is a goal-setting framework they refer to as “The Bridge to Self-Sufficiency.” This framework includes five pillars: (1) family stability; (2) well-being; (3) education and training; (4) financial management; and (5) employment and career management, with a scaffold for each one. The “Bridge” is used to help participants assess their current circumstances and to set goals for the future. Staff employ coaching techniques to help individuals achieve their goals and they provide incentives when participants reach specified milestones. They also encourage the development of social networks that participants can carry with them beyond their time in the program.

The program has used the Bridge in a variety of different settings, from a drop-in short-term community-based drop-in employment program to an intermediate transitional housing program to a long-term, five-year intensive program for public housing residents who are aiming to move into jobs that pay enough for them to cover the cost of market rate housing as well as all of their other expenses. When they have sufficient time, their goal is to employ techniques that will help participants to strengthen their executive function skills. When that is not possible, they have focused on designing their program to mitigate and accommodate executive function weaknesses and to rely more on participants’ executive function strengths. For example, to ease program access and increase participant retention, CWU has located its programs in neighborhood settings, such as public housing, or in community settings where individuals already receive services. They also use the Bridge to provide services holistically, ensuring that participants are not being asked to do multiple things that compete with one another. Similarly, the program has created “rules and tools” that are provided to participants in writing and are regularly discussed. In order to foster follow through and the development of personal efficacy, participants are engaged from the very beginning in a process of clarifying and stating their own needs, goals, and preferred pathways for achieving their goals.

The New Haven MOMS Partnership is a relatively new endeavor being undertaken by nine

public and private organizations in New Haven, Connecticut. The MOMS Partnership is focused on combatting depression, reducing stress, and building foundational skills that the project hopes will lead to success in multiple dimensions of the participants’ lives, including mental health, parenting and employment. The project has surveyed over 1,000 mothers and has used the information they’ve gathered to design their services and approaches to service delivery. An early indicator of the project’s promise is their success in achieving high levels of participation in one of the key program components – an 8-week cognitive behavioral therapy intervention which the program presents to mothers as a stress reduction program. While the standard for adherence to Elisabeth D. Babcock. Using Brain Science to Design New Pathways Out of Poverty. Boston, MA: Crittenton Women’s Union, 2014. 20

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mental health protocols is usually about 35 percent, the MOMS Partnership has achieved an adherence rate of between 96 and 97 percent.21 Executive function and related principles, which the MOMS Partnership has explicitly considered in the design and delivery of their program, are evident throughout their program. The MOMS Partnership chose to initially focus on delivering a mental health intervention to address the high rates of depression among the mothers they interviewed. Depression impacts many aspects of mothers’ lives, including their ability to parent effectively, find and maintain employment and ensure their kids are ready to succeed in school.22 Research shows impaired executive functions among individuals who are clinically depressed, but it is not known whether depression causes weakness in executive function skills or executive function skill deficits may trigger depression. The program chose to implement a cognitive behavioral therapy intervention, both because it is evidence-based and because it aims to help individuals set and achieve goals, build problem-solving skills and learn stress reduction techniques that they can use throughout their lives. The program refers to their cognitive behavioral therapy program as a stress reduction intervention to reduce the stigma attached to receiving mental health treatment. In an effort to maximize their reach and effectiveness, the MOMS Partnership delivers its services in non-traditional ways. First, they deliver services in places where MOMS conduct their daily activities – in laundromats, banks, neighborhood parks and in the public housing projects where they live. They currently are in the process of building a mental health and workforce center in the neighborhood grocery store. Second, they hired moms from the neighborhood to work as community mental health ambassadors. In their view, these staff bring a unique understanding of the experience, language and culture of mothers in the neighborhood, making it possible for them to conduct culturally appropriate mental health care and outreach. They are the staff that the program participants interact with on a day-to-day basis and they co-lead the cognitive behavioral therapy group with a mental health clinician. Third, they provide incentives to participants at the point of participation. Participants receive a $20 gift card at the end of each cognitive behavioral therapy session and can earn other incentives when they complete special challenges. They also provide diapers and personal hygiene items as incentives. Fourth, they have developed a cellphone application, known as the MOMBA app, to promote healthy behaviors and encourage positive social interactions after the structured 8-week cognitive behavioral therapy intervention ends. Increasing family income Much of what we know about the development of executive functions suggests that one way to maximize individuals’ ability to develop strong executive function skills and maximize their use is by increasing family income. In the short-term, additional income should reduce the “bandwidth tax” that poverty imposes on individuals. In the long-term, additional income could increase the likelihood that parents are able to create home environments that support the development of stronger executive function skills in children that will carry over into adulthood. Two potential Megan Smith, (2014). “The New Haven MOMS Partnership: Combatting Depression, Reducing Stress and Building Foundational Skills for Success.” Webinar presented for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 30, 2014. 22 Research shows that mothers who are depressed are less likely to engage in positive parenting and preventative child health practices. In addition, parental depression is linked to children’s lack of school readiness and early school success, impairments in cognitive and motor function and increased risk for mental illness. Individuals of working age with mental health issues also have an extremely high ‘want to work rate” but even among individuals with relatively common mental health issues such as depression, only about half are employed. 21

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options for increasing family income that are gaining support include: (1) providing subsidized jobs (where the government pays an individuals’ wages) for individuals who are unable to find unsubsidized employment on their own and (2) increasing the minimum wage. While it may be an uphill climb to enact federal policies in these two areas, there may be more possibilities at the state level. Thirteen states increased their minimum wage at the beginning of 2014. Several states, including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Nebraska all have recently started new statewide subsidized jobs programs or are expanding existing programs. Reduce the burdens associated with applying for public benefits Applying for public benefits is all too often an extremely onerous process. Multiple trips to out-ofthe-way offices, long wait times, and seemingly endless requests for the same information all impose a significant burden on applicants. Simplifying these processes could free up cognitive resources that could then be available for other tasks. In addition, a number of public benefits, especially food, housing and child care assistance act much like cash so may have the same positive benefits in the short and long-term as increasing families’ incomes. This is an area where technology improvements have started to play a very significant role. Two recent examples highlight the possibilities. The “express lane eligibility” provisions in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2009 allowed states for the first time to use information from another public agency to determine that a child is eligible for Medicaid or CHIP – even if other programs calculate income differently. This means that if a state has information collected for eligibility for other benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP), the state can use that information to determine eligibility for Medicaid or CHIP, saving the family and the agency time and money. With the advent of the Affordable Care Act and expanded Medicaid options for disadvantaged adults, states can request permission to use SNAP data to automatically enroll SNAP recipients in Medicaid – as long as recipients agree they want to enroll in Medicaid. This strategy has allowed states to enroll tens of thousands of adults in Medicaid without imposing a huge burden on either those applying or the state agency that determines eligibility. For example, West Virginia estimates that this strategy has reduced its uninsured population by 25 percent; by mid-November 2013, they had automatically enrolled 65,000 adults in Medicaid.

Conclusion Over the last several decades, there have been a plethora of rigorous studies of programs designed to improve the life circumstances of disadvantaged adults – especially single mothers, for whom employment often is their only potential source of income. The majority of these evaluations show no or modest impacts on participants’ outcomes. This means there is significant room for improvement in our current approaches to helping disadvantaged adults. This also means that there is little risk to considering new ways of designing and delivering these programs. What we have learned from brain science provides a starting point for beginning to think about new ways of designing and delivering services. The case for doing so is compelling. We are in a political and fiscal environment where we are unlikely to see significant new investments in safety net programs. Thus, it is important that we look for ways to improve the return on the investments we have already made.

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References Babcock, Elisabeth. Using Brain Science to Design New Pathways Out of Poverty. Boston, MA: Crittenton Women’s Union, 2014. Bertrand, Marianne, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir. “Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making Among the Poor.” American Marketing Association, Volume 25 (1), Spring 2006 Bunge, Sylvia. “Executive Functions: Why Do They Matter, and How Do We Measure Them?” Presentation given at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Meeting on Executive Function. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. February 10, 2014. Carlock, Russell. “Executive Functions: A Review of the Literature to Inform Policy and Practice.” Cambridge, MA: Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University. 2011. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control System”: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. Cambridge, MA: Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu Dawson, Peg, and Richard Guare Smart but Scattered. New York, New York: The Guilford Press. 2009. Diamond, Adele. “Want to Optimize Executive Functions and Academic Outcomes? Simple, Just Nourish the Human Spirit.” Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. Developing Cognitive Control Processes: Mechanisms, Implications, and Interventions, Ed. Philip David Zelazo and Maria D. Sera., Minneapolis, MN: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014. Diamond, Adele. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology. 2013.64:135-168, 2013. Kim, Pilyoung et al. “Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood.” PNAS, Volume 110, no. 46, November 12, 2013. Mackey, Allyson P., Rajeev D.S. Raizada, and Sylvia A. Bunge. “Environmental Influences on Prefrontal Development.” Principles of Frontal Lobe Function, Ed. Donald T. Stuss and Robert T. Knight. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012. Mani, Anandi, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir and Jiaying Zhao. “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” Science, Volume 341, August 30, 2013. Meckstroth, Alicia, Andrew Burwick, Quinn Moore and Michael Ponza. “Teaching Self-Sufficiency Through Home Visitation and Life Skills Education.” Trends in Family Programs and Policy, Issue Brief #3. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 2009. Mullainathan, Sendhil and Eldar Shafir. Scarcity: Why Having So Little Matters So Much. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 2013. 14  Papers

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Noble, Kimberly G. “Rich Man, Poor Man: Socioeconomic Adversity and Brain Development.” Cerebrum, May 2014. Shonkoff, Jack P., and Fisher, Philip A. “Rethinking Evidence-Based Practice and Two-Generation Programs to Create the Future of Early Childhood Policy. Development and Psychopathology, 25 (4, part 2), 1635–1653. Copyright Cambridge University Press, 2013. Smith, Megan. “The New Haven MOMS Partnership: Combatting Depression, Reducing Stress and Building Foundational Skills for Success.” Webinar presented for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 30, 2014. Zelazo, Philip and Jacob E. Anderson. “What Is Cognitive Control?” Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. Developing Cognitive Control Processes: Mechanisms, Implications, and Interventions. Ed. Philip David Zelazo and Maria D. Sera. Minneapolis, MN: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014. Zelazo, Philip David. “Executive Function and the Developing Brain.” Conference Presentation: Connecting Brain Science to Practice, St. Paul, MN, November 20, 2013. Zelazo, Philip. “What Is Executive Function?” Aboutkidshealth.ca. Accessed from http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/News/Series/ExecutiveFunction/Pages/default.aspx on February 2, 2014.

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People coming out of the corrections systems (parole, probation, juvenile detention or prison)

Web links to primary reading: Former Prisoners and Disadvantaged Youth: Changing Outlook and Opportunity, Miller https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/files/2014/03/Miller-‐‑Former-‐‑Prisoners-‐‑and-‐‑ Disadvantaged-‐‑Youth.pdf Incarceration and Social Inequality, Western and Pettit http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00019 Selections from Employment-‐‑Focused Programs for Ex-‐‑Prisoners: What have we learned, what are we learning and where should we go from here? Bloom http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/full_87.pdf Improving Prisoner Reentry Through Strategic Policy Innovations, NGA Center for Best Practices http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/0509PRISONERREENTRY.PD F Web links to additional reading: “For Many Ex-‐‑Offenders, Poverty Follows Prison,” NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130647626 “Prison and the Poverty Trap,” New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/science/long-‐‑prison-‐‑terms-‐‑eyed-‐‑as-‐‑ contributing-‐‑to-‐‑poverty.html?_r=0 Evidence-‐‑Based Adult Corrections Programs: What Works and What Does Not, Aos, Miller and Drake; Washington State Institute for Public Policy http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/924

KELLY SMITH

Age 44 Caucasian Unmarried with 2 children ages 2 and 7 Lives in Portland

Kelly Smith remembers very little about his childhood.

He grew up in Gresham, Oregon in a family that struggled to make ends meet. His father was an alcoholic, had trouble holding jobs and was abusive to his mother. Kelly remembers food stamps and lots of macaroni and cheese. When he was eight, his parents divorced and he only saw his father a handful of times after that. By the time he was nine, Kelly was a criminal, and would be in and out of detention and prison for the next 30 years. As adolescents, Kelly and his older brother had little supervision. “I don’t blame my mom, but she had no control. I was running free with older kids, committing crimes. When I was nine years old I got caught stealing a golf cart.” Because his mother worked during the day, Kelly spent his days in a juvenile detention center which is where he went to school. “When I was fifteen my brother and I were arrested for burglary. I was put in McLaren and my brother was in Hillcrest. I remember my Grandpa visited every weekend and he asked that I be moved to Hillcrest with my bother. Mom never came.” On his 18th birthday Kelly left Hillcrest, GED in hand, and went to live with his mother. That lasted eight months. “Her boyfriend asked me to get drugs for him, which I did.” During the eight months he lived with his mother he went on a crime spree to support his meth addiction. He was arrested and sent to prison. Kelly launched into a continuous cycle in and out of prison … in for two years … out … back to prison the same year. Each time after being released, he went right back to committing crimes. During this time Kelly also became a father. His daughter was born in January 2007. Five days later he was arrested and sent to federal prison. “When I got out of prison in 2012, they handed me all my possessions in a little plastic bag and said to me ‘you have a little girl out there -- five years old. You’re responsible for her.”

In prison Kelly learned about the Central City Concern (CCC) Recovery Mentor program; a live-in mentoring, addiction therapy program. Three days after he got out, he met with Doug, a CCC mentor. “It wasn’t like having a guy in a suit show up and tell you they can help. These guys understand where I’m coming from. They’ve been there.” Kelly was ready to make a change but had no experience and “not a clue” how to enter the workforce. On a tip from a friend, he went to interview at the Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute.

“I was honest. I told them I have 43 felony convictions. I have no skills. But I completed 900 hours of computer-aided design in prison and I scored 97% on the interview. The next day I went to sign up at the union hall and they told me to show up for work Monday.” Kelly is half way to completing a four year carpentry apprenticeship. He has a two year old daughter and hopes to get custody of his seven year old. He wants to own a home. His goal is to keep putting distance between what he was, and what he’s become. “It’s not easy. I’m not done yet. If someone had told me two years ago that I’d be where I am today, I’d have said you’re crazy. But it can be done. No excuses.”

EX-OFFENDERS

ABOUT 62,300 OREGONIANS ARE ON PROBATION OR PAROLE OR UNDER POST-PRISON SUPERVISION (FEDERAL AND STATE). CURRENTLY AVAILABLE DATA DO NOT INDICATE POVERTY STATUS FOR THIS GROUP.

TYPES OF SUPERVISION

EMPLOYMENT (FROM MULTI-STATE STUDY)

62% ADULTS ON PROBATION ON PAROLE 36% ADULTS OR POST-PRISON SUPERVISION

ON 2% YOUTH PROBATION

OR PAROLE (OYA)

CHARACTARISTICS OF OREGON INMATES (DOC)

EIGHT MONTHS AFTER RELEASE: OF EX-PRISONERS WERE CURRENTLY EMPLOYED

45% EX-PRISONERS HAD 65% OF BEEN EMPLOYED AT SOME POINT

71%

OF THOSE WHO LOOKED FOR A JOB SAID THEIR CRIMINAL RECORD AFFECTED THEIR JOB SEARCH.

DEMOGRAPHICS OF STATE-LEVEL SUPERVISED POPULATIONS

A SUBSTANCE 79% HAVE ABUSE PROBLEM ARE IN NEED OF MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

50%

23%

PART- OR 38% HAD FULL-TIME

EMPLOYMENT AT THE TIME OF THE OFFENSE

16% FEMALE

77% MALE

84% MALE

ASIAN AMERICAN INDIAN HISPANIC

SCHOOL 52% HIGH DIPLOMA OR G.E.D. THAN A 36% LESS HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA

13%

SOME COLLEGE OR MORE

BLACK WHITE

29%

OYA

FEMALE

OTHER / UNREPORTED

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT OF U.S. INMATES

DOC

0% 1% 2% 6% 7% 83%

OYA

2% 1% 4% 23% 8% 61%

OF OREGON DOC OFFENDERS CONVICTED OF A NEW FELONY WITHIN THREE YEARS OF RELEASE

NOTE: ABOUT 21,400 ADULTS ARE INCARCERATED IN OREGON (69% IN STATE/FEDERAL PRISONS; 31% IN COUNTY JAILS) AND 622 YOUTH ARE IN CLOSE CUSTODY. SOURCES: OREGON DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; OREGON YOUTH AUTHORITY; THE SENTENCING PROJECT; THE URBAN INSTITUTE'S LIFE AFTER PRISON PROJECT; BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS

Innovating to End Urban Poverty March 27 & 28, 2014

Former Prisoners and Disadvantaged Youth: Changing Outlook and Opportunity

Cynthia Miller MDRC

This paper discusses policies to reduce poverty and increase well-being for two groups that are not typically connected to services or benefits: former prisoners and disadvantaged youth. Although separate populations, there is considerable overlap between the groups, since many disadvantaged youth have been involved with the juvenile justice system or will become involved with it at some point. Similarly, while former prisoners face certain distinct barriers to success, such as the mark of a prison record and high rates of mental health problems, both groups have low education levels and lack connections to jobs. A review of the research suggests that a potentially promising strategy for both groups involves changing the incentives and rewards for success while at the same time changing their attitudes and the way they think about these incentives.

FORMER PRISONERS In 1978, there were about 300,000 people in state or federal prisons in the United States. By 2012 that number had increased to 1.5 million. This dramatic growth in the prison population has led to a similarly large increase in the number of people being released from prison each year. In 2012, and in every year since 2000, more than 600,000 people were released from prison.1 Former prisoners face a number of challenges to re-integrating into the community, as evidenced by the fact that nearly half of them are re-arrested within a year of release. By three years out, half of them are back in prison, and many will return to prison multiple times.2 An additional challenge is that former prisoners today are re-entering a very different labor market than their counterparts did thirty years ago. While returns to a college education have increased

1 2

The number of prisoners being released each year has declined somewhat during the past few years. Langan and Levin (2002).

Miller, Former Prisoners & Disadvantaged Youth DRAFT

Papers ď&#x201A;&#x; 1

Innovating to End Urban Poverty March 27 & 28, 2014

substantially over this period, wages for those without a high school diploma have fallen by 20 percent, a decline concentrated entirely among men.3 The growth of the prison population has led to an increased focus on reentry initiatives and other policies that might help former prisoners successfully transition from prison. While the main impetus behind these efforts is to reduce corrections costs, they might also have notable effects on poverty and well-being, not just for the former prisoners themselves. As Freeman notes, many individuals in low-income communities are connected to former prisoners in some way, as their children, siblings, or parents.4 In fact, more than half of prisoners today are parents of minor children.5

Profile As many others have documented, former prisoners face a number of barriers to successful reentry. Data from surveys of prison inmates administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics help to provide a portrait of reentrants, since most prisoners will be released at some point.6 These data show that prisoners have levels of education considerably below that of the general population, and relatively high rates of mental and physical health problems and substance abuse. For example, more than a third of prisoners report some type of impairment, the most common being a learning disability or vision problems. Rates of mental health problems and drug dependence are also strikingly high. One out of two state prison inmates in 2004 exhibited symptoms of a mental health disorder, covering depression, mania, or psychosis. Compounding these barriers are barriers from the demand side of the labor market. Holzer, Raphel and Stoll document a strong reluctance on the part of many employers to hire former prisoners,7 and ex-felons are legally barred from a range of occupations, depending on state and federal law.8 Data on employment and earnings for former prisoners bear this out. The recent Transitional Jobs Demonstration, which targeted recently released offenders, provides data on 3

Economic Policy Institute (2014). Freeman (2003). 5 Glaze and Maruschak (2008). 6 Wolf Harlow (2003); Harrison and Beck (2004); Maruschak (2008);James and Glaze (2006); and Mumola and Karberg (2006). 7 Holzer, Raphel, and Stoll (2003) 8 Hahn (1991). 4

2 ď&#x201A;&#x; Papers

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quarterly earnings and employment.9 Data for the control group show low and declining employment rates over the two year follow-up period, from 41 percent in the quarter after study entry, to 21 percent in the eighth quarter. Part of the decline in employment reflects reincarceration â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 50 percent of the control group went back to prison at some point during the two years. Average earnings among those who did work during a given quarter were low, at about $3,000 per quarter towards the end of the period.

Framework The economic model of crime provides a convenient framework for considering potential policies to reduce crime and recidivism.10 When deciding whether to commit crime, an individual will consider the benefits and costs of doing so. The benefits and costs include factors such as the likelihood of getting caught, the severity of punishment, and returns to legitimate work, most of which can be affected by policy. Also affecting decisions are the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s preferences or values, which might include or derive from a broad range of cognitive/personality traits, such as moral reasoning, impulsivity, aggression, motivation, conventionality, etc. Thus, two people responding to the same set of incentives and costs will make different decisions depending on their particular sets of traits. While preferences have typically been taken as given in the model, there is a growing recognition across a range of disciplines that many of these factors are changeable and thus may also be affected by policies or programs. Moreover, many in the criminal justice field argue that it makes little sense to change opportunities and incentives without first changing preferences/values.11 Bushway, for example, argues that without a changed outlook, youthful offenders who are embedded in a life of crime are not likely to respond to reasonable changes in either the benefits or costs of criminal activity.12 Evidence The evidence to date gives a mixed picture on the ability of interventions to help former prisoners re-integrate and stay out of prison. Although the research covers a much broader scope of programs, this section focuses on findings from three types of policies. 9

Jacobs (2012). This group is not a random sample of recently released prisoners, but a group who showed up to participate in an employment program. 10 Becker (1968); Freeman (2003); Cook and Ludwig (2003). 11 MacKenzie (2008); Bushway (2003). 12 Bushway (2003).

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Employment and training programs In general, findings from employment and training experiments over the past thirty years suggest that it is difficult to increase the employment and earnings of disadvantaged men, let alone those who are former prisoners13 Consistent and sometimes lasting effects on employment and earnings were typically found for women, with some effects for men, and few effects for youth. Given the difficulty of creating sustained increases in employment and earnings, it is perhaps not surprising that a range of employment and training programs have also not had large effects on recidivism. A meta-analysis by Visher and colleagues of eight randomized control trials concludes that overall the programs had no effects.14 But few of these programs led to notable or sustained effects on employment and earnings. One exception is the National Supported Work Demonstration, which offered four disadvantaged target groups supported work assignments for up to a year. That program led to large increases in employment early on, and lasting effects for AFDC recipients. While the program was found to have no effect on recidivism overall, a reanalysis by Uggen found reductions in recidivism for older former prisoners,15 a finding that Bushway uses to support the idea that changing motivation is key, since older former prisoners are likely to have a different, more mature, take on the benefits and costs of crime.16 Two recent random assignment evaluations of transition jobs programs (targeted specifically to former prisoners), both conducted by MDRC, also led to quite large increases in employment. The CEO evaluation tested the transitional jobs program offered by the Center for Employment Opportunities in New York City.17 The program included former prisoners referred to the program by their parole officers and offered them life skills classes and job placements throughout the city, typically in maintenance, repair, or janitorial positions. Placements in transitional jobs lasted eight weeks, on average. CEO led to substantial increases in employment in Year 1, due entirely to the transitional jobs. In the quarter after study entry, for example, 59 13

LaLonde (2003) Visher et al. (2005). An exception is Lattimore et al. (1999), who report positive effects of a vocational training program for youthful property offenders in North Carolina. 15 Uggen (2000). 16 Bushway (2003). 17 Bloom et al. (2007); Redcross et al. (2009); Redcross et al. (2012). 14

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percent of individuals in the program group worked, compared with 34 percent for the control group. Employment effects faded after year 1. CEO also reduced recidivism in Year 1 and, somewhat surprisingly, in Years 2 and 3, effects that were most pronounced for individuals released from prison within three months prior to starting the program. The more recent Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration (TJRD) studied the effects of transitional jobs offered to recently-released former prisoners in four Midwestern sites.18 Similarly, the program generated substantial increases in employment during the period in which transitional jobs were provided but no effects thereafter. In contrast to findings from CEO, TJRD had no effects on recidivism. The results from both studies raise two key questions. First, why didn’t both programs reduce recidivism, when both had large effects on early employment? The authors posit that the nature of the work assignments in CEO, in small work crews, may have helped to develop a type of mentoring relationship between the work supervisors and the participants. At a minimum, the results suggest that the connection between work and recidivism is not clear cut. Second, why was the transition to unsubsidized work so difficult? The authors raise several possibilities: the jobs did not provide training for specific occupations, but were intended only to develop employability skills; the jobs were too short to demonstrate employability to potential employers; the programs had difficulty finding employers willing to hire former prisoners (especially true in TJRD); and finally, the men themselves faced too many barriers to sustained employment, such as housing problems, substance abuse, mental health problems, etc. The latter point is supported by the fact that only about a third of the people placed into unsubsidized jobs stayed employed during the follow-up period. One implication is that the transitional job placements may need to be longer or that participants need to be able to return to them if they lose an unsubsidized job.19 Qualitative interviews with the TJRD participants indicated that the end of the transitional job was a big letdown for many of the men.20 Those who did manage to stay employed reported that they were able to “reframe” themselves, in their eyes and the eyes of others, and shed their old identities as “former prisoners.” Perhaps a longer transitional job would help in this regard. (Another 18

Redcross et al (2010); Jacobs (2012). One caution around a longer placement is the possibility for substitution out of unsubsidized jobs and in to transitional jobs, an effect observed in two TJRD sites.19 20 Redcross et al. (2010). 19

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interesting, although perhaps obvious, finding from these interviews is that these men had very little knowledge of the local labor markets and the jobs that might be available to them). Another implication is that the jobs need to be more substantive, such that potential employers will value them more, or that vocational training should be provided at the same time. In addition, more work needs to be put into the job development side of the models, which would include efforts to obtain greater employer buy in. This might take the form of subsidies or other incentives. Finally, programs might consider incentives provided to the men to encourage sustained employment, in the form of earnings supplements.21

Earnings supplements (making work pay) An increased return to legitimate work should reduce crime. And research does find an association between wages rates and crime, particularly property crime.22 With the exception of the one TJRD site, there has not been much research on offering these types of incentives for former prisoners. Much of the evidence for “make work pay” policies is for welfare recipients or single mothers but does show increases in employment and reductions in poverty.23 Similarly, studies of the EITC expansions during the 1990s show positive effects on women’s employment rates.24 While men’s labor supply is thought to be less elastic that women’s, the effect of such a policy is ultimately an empirical question. At a minimum, it would increase incomes. As noted earlier from the TJRD program, former prisoners who worked earned on average $3,000 per quarter, which suggests annual earnings of less given the substantial cycling in and out of work for this group. A bonus on top of $10,000 or $12,000 per year could represent a notable increase in income. Beyond that, it may also pull more disadvantaged men into work and reduce their involvement with the criminal justice system. MDRC is currently testing this idea as part of the Paycheck Plus Demonstration in New York City.25 The credit, which phases in at a rate of 30 percent and offers a maximum benefit of $2,000, will be offered to single adults without dependent children, some fraction of whom are former prisoners. 21

One of the sites in the TJRD experiment offered a later cohort of study entrants a bonus for maintained employment in an unsubsidized job. Results, although suggestive only, indicate that the bonus may have increased employment stability and earnings. 22 Grogger (1998); Gould et al. (2002). 23 Berlin (2000); Michalopoulos (2005). 24 Eissa and Hoynes (2006). 25 http://www.mdrc.org/project/paycheckplus.

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Changing values/preferences Over the past decade, a wealth of evidence has accumulated showing that several socialemotional skills measured in childhood predict many adult outcomes, including schooling attainment, earnings, and crime.26 In some cases, the effects of these non-cognitive factors on later outcomes are as large or larger than the effects of typically used cognitive measures, such as IQ. At the same time, there is growing evidence that many of these traits are changeable, particularly for youth and younger adults. A recent survey by Heckman documents a number of programs that appear to have few long-term effects on IQ or achievement, yet lead to lasting reduction in crime. In some cases, these changes in “character” occurred through early interventions targeting improved nutrition and parenting, for example, while in others cases they occurred through work programs or work experience, indicating that they can be changed through a variety of mechanisms.27 In the criminal justice field, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions are seen as a promising strategy for reducing recidivism. The idea is that individuals who engage in crime have distorted thinking or reasoning and that it is learned rather than inherent. CBT curriculums tend to focus on moral reasoning, anger management, interpersonal skills, accountability, impulse control, etc. A meta-analysis conducted by Lipsey et al., found that on average these programs led to substantial reductions in recidivism, with larger effects on former prisoners at highest risk for returning to prison.28 Next steps A common theme throughout the criminal justice literature is that the problem of former prisoners is multi-faceted and complex and must be addressed using a variety of approaches. The findings reviewed suggest that one such approach might combine three potentially promising strategies: 

Transitional jobs program o Longer-term than previously tested o More resources for job development



Cognitive Behavioral Therapy



An earnings supplement to encourage sustained work and reduce poverty

Heckman et al., (2006); Hill et al., (2011). Heckman and Kautz (2013). 28 Lipsey et al. (2007). 27

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Many have argued that it makes little sense to change opportunities facing former prisoners without first changing the way they view these opportunities. Similarly, it would seem to make little sense to change their outlook without also changing their opportunities. Former prisoners with changed outlooks and motivation still have very few supports available to them once in the community. These two strategies would thus reinforce each other. As others have noted, desistance is a long-term process, where success builds on success.29 A longer-term transitional job might help reinforce newly acquired social skills or changed motivations. In addition to providing the former prisoner with immediate income and employment, a transitional job would also seem to be a good platform for providing CBT. Within this platform, programs could also offer other important services, such as help with substance abuse or mental health issues. The earnings supplement, conditioned work, might also reinforce these two strategies. At a minimum, it would increase income and reduce poverty. The findings suggest that this combination of services might be most effective if targeted to the recently released and to younger adults, although there may certainly be effects for other groups. While this paper recommends a specific type of intervention, it does not cover a range of other important policies that have been proposed by experts in the field. Among others, these policies include: 

expunging records after a certain period;30



changes to policies around parole violations;31 and



removing legal barriers to hiring certain former prisoners.32

DISADVANTAGED YOUTH There is a fair amount of overlap between the populations of former prisoners and disadvantaged youth. Many disadvantaged youth have criminal justice histories or will interact with the criminal justice system at some point, with particularly high rates for African Americans. Among a cohort of African American men born in the late 1970s, for example, 68 29

Maruna (2001). Raphael (2008); Blumstein and Nakamura (2009). 31 Bloom, et al. (2012). 32 Holzer, Raphel and Stoll (2003). 30

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percent of those who were high school dropouts had spent some time in prison before they reached the age of 34.33 Beyond the mark of a prison record, high school dropouts face enormous challenges in making a successful transition to adulthood. Along with declining wages for lesseducated workers, the youth labor market has been particularly hard hit in recent years. Between 2000 and 2008, for example, the share of all 16- to 24-year-olds with employment during the summer fell from 65 percent to 58 percent, falling to 49 percent during the recent recession.34 Employment rates are especially low for youth without a high school diploma. Indeed, among young men who were not enrolled in school and did not have a high school diploma or GED, only one in two was employed in 2010.35

Evidence A number of “second-chance” programs for youth have been tested over the years. This review focuses primarily on those that have been evaluated using random assignment designs. The programs typically offered either paid work experience (the National Supported Work Demonstration, the Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects, and the American Conservation and Youth Service Corps) or education or job training (JOBSTART, the National Job Training Partnership Act, New Chance, the Center for Employment and Training (CET), Job Corps, and National Guard Youth ChalleNGe). Overall, the evaluations tell a mixed story. Several of the studies found that young people in the program group were substantially more likely than their control group counterparts to earn a GED or another credential, but many of those same programs did not lead to positive effects on employment or earnings. The CET replication study, for example, found large increases in the receipt of a training certificate after four years (58 percent for the program group versus 37 percent for the control group) but had no effects on employment or earnings. JOBSTART had similar findings, although that program led to increases in GED receipt rather than in vocational certificates.

Western and Pettit (2010). Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Youth employment and unemployment in July 2010.” http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2010/ted_20100903.htm 35 Bureau of Labor Statistics, “College Enrollment and Work Activity of High School Graduates, News Release.” http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.t02.htm 34

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Job Corps is one of the few programs that led to positive effects. Job Corps offered youth education, training, and other services in a residential setting for up to one year. The program was found to have positive effects on employment and earnings, although those effects were only sustained beyond the fourth year for older youth (ages 20-24 at study entry). The evaluators noted that the provision of longer-term services and placement support may be important to producing lasting impacts and that many of the programs began changing in this direction towards the end of the evaluation period.36 One recent program that aims to strengthen the pathway from GED receipt to postsecondary education is the GED-Bridge Program (offered at LaGuardia Community College and evaluated by MDRC).37 The program prepares students for the GED exam using a contextualized curriculum, in which key concepts are taught using content from a specific field of interest (health or business). The program also prepares students for college by structuring the classes like college level classes. Recent data from that evaluation show large increases in GED pass rates and in enrollment rates at community college.38 Finally, the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program offered education and training services in a residential setting for 16- to 18-year old high school dropouts. Run in a quasimilitary style, the core of ChalleNGe is a 20-week residential program, in which youth receive education services (geared towards the receipt of a GED or high school diploma) and a range of other services designed to promote positive youth development (leadership, civic engagement, services, life coping, job skills, etc.). Following the residential phase, participants participate in a one-year mentoring program. The most recent findings from that study show that after three years, ChalleNGE increased GED receipt, college credits received, and employment and earnings.39

Next steps The findings suggest two strategies for improving outcomes among disadvantaged youth. 

Strengthening ties to post-secondary education (GED-Bridge)

Schochet et al. (2006). The full name of the program is “GED Bridge to Health and Business.” 38 Martin and Broadus (2013). 39 Millenky et al.(2011). 37

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While Job Corps’ effects on employment and earnings may have faded for a number of reasons, one possible reason is that the increases in educational attainment it led to were limited to GED receipt and short-term training certificates. The program had no effects on college attendance. It has been well-documented that the GED is not valued much in the labor market. However, research also finds that postsecondary education pays off as much for GED holders as for high school graduates but that only a small minority of GED holders goes on to complete even one year of postsecondary education.40 Programs like GED-Bridge can help to make that transition. Similarly, other youth programs that focus on the GED or short-term training might consider adding services to foster the connection to college. 

Promoting a changed outlook (YouthBuild) Changing an individual’s motivation and outlook is very relevant to programs for youth,

and the research cited in the first section of the paper suggests that it may have important effects. Such changes can occur in a variety of ways, through sustain work, as may have been the case for older youth in Job Corps, or through explicit curricula, which may have occurred with ChalleNGe. In this regard, YouthBuild represents a promising strategy. MDRC is currently conducting a random assignment evaluation of YouthBuild, covering youth at nearly 80 programs around the country. Early findings will be published in 2017. YouthBuild is a non-residential program that provides disadvantaged 16- to 24-year olds construction-related training, educational services, counseling and leadership development opportunities. As part of their training in construction, participants work on renovating or constructing new housing for low-income or homeless people, although in recent years many programs have moved to provide other types of vocational training. Most YouthBuild participants spend from 8-to-12 months full-time in the program receiving a variety of services, including stipends, wages, or living allowances. These services typically include some kind of assessment, a “mental toughness” orientation, educational activities, vocational training, leadership training and community service, counseling, support services, job placement, and follow-up services. Currently, YouthBuild’s more than 200 programs include a mix of programs focused on GED attainment, with some focused on high school diplomas (and some focused on

Tyler (2005).

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both credentials). The program is also increasingly focused on transitions to post-secondary education. The findings reviewed here suggest that this is a move in the right direction On paper, YouthBuild may not look very different from other employment and training programs for youth. What sets it apart, however, is its culture and focus on positive youth development and transformation, which is delivered through its youth leadership component and through its general culture of “respect for the intelligence and potential role of low-income young people in their communities.”41 The programs that fully take on this culture promote a consistent message to youth about making “things go right” in their own lives, in their families, and in their communities. Earlier YouthBuild studies documented a significant transformation among graduates in their aspirations and beliefs. As noted in one study, for example, graduates now had more ability to envision a better life and the sense that they had a right to claim that life.42 An early, nonexperimental study of the program by Ferguson and Snipes documented significant transformation of the youth when they were asked to think about themselves before and after the program. As one participant noted: “I am the person who has changed his way of thinking and his attitude in the last nine months, keeping in touch of what he has to do but not forgetting where he came from and not forgetting to help those who need the help so they can get what I got. There’s more for me to conquer out here…”43 It is not hard to imagine that this change in attitude will help this young person take better advantage of the opportunities he has been given. References Becker, G. S. 1968. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," Journal of Political Economy 76(2). Berlin, G. 2000. Encouraging Work, Reducing Poverty: The Impact of Work Incentive Programs, New York: MDRC. Berlin, G. 2007. “Rewarding the Work of Individuals: A Counterintuitive Approach to Reducing Poverty and Strengthening Families,” The Future of Children 17(2). 41

YouthBuild Program Standards 2013. Hahn, et al. (2004). 43 Ferguson and Snipes (1997). 42

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Bloom, D. 2010. Transitional Jobs: Background, Program Models, and Evaluation Evidence. New York: MDRC. Bloom, D., C. Redcross, J. Zweig, and G. Azurdia. 2007. “Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners: Early Impacts from a Random Assignment Evaluation of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program.” Working Paper. New York: MDRC. Bloom, D. 2006. “Employment-Focused Programs for Ex-Prisoners: What Have We Learned, What Are We Learning, and Where Should We Go from Here?” Working Paper prepared as background for the meeting “Research on Prisoner Reentry: What Do We Know and What Do We Want to Know?” sponsored by the National Poverty Center, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, May 24. New York: MDRC. Bloom, D., E. Jacobs, and C.Redcross. 2012. “Strengthening the Evidence in Prisoner Reentry: Current Status and Directions for the Future,” unpublished paper, MDRC. Blumstein, A., and K. Nakamura. 2009. “‘Redemption’ in an Era of Widespread Criminal Background Checks.” NIJ Journal, No. 263 (June). Bushway, S. 2003. “Reentry and Prison Work Programs.” Reentry Roundtable Discussion Paper. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Cook, P. J., and J. Ludwig. 2011. “Economical Crime Control,” in Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs (eds.) Cook, P., J. Ludwig and J. McCrary, NBER Conference Report, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Economic Policy Institute. 2012. The State of Working America, 12th Edition. Eissa, N., and H. Hoynes. 2006. “Behavioral Responses to Taxes: The Earned Income Tax Credit and Labor Supply” Tax Policy and the Economy, 2006. Ferguson, R., and J. Snipes. 1997. “Adapting Erikson to Understand Stages of Engagement and Identity Development in the YouthBuild Program,” unpublished manuscript. Freeman, R. 2003. “Can We Close the Revolving Door?: Recidivism vs. Employment of Ex-Offenders in the U.S.” Reentry Roundtable Discussion Paper. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Glaze, L.E., and L.M. Maruschak. 2008. Parents in Prison and their Minor Children. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Gould, E., B. Weinberg, and D. Mustard. 2002. “Crime Rates and Local labor Market Opportunities in the United States: 1979-1997,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(1). Grogger, J. 1998. “Market Wages and Youth Crime,’ Journal of Labor Economics, 16(4). Hahn, J. M. 1991. “Pre-Employment Information Services: Employers Beware.” Employee Relations Law Journal 17 (1).

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Hahn, A., T. D. Leavitt, E. McNamara Horvat, and J.E. Davis. Life After YouthBuild: 900 YouthBuild Graduates Reflect on their Lives, Dreams and Experiences (Somerville, MA, 2004). Harrison, P.M., and A.J. Beck. 2004. Prisoners in 2003. Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Heckman, J., and T. Kautz. 2013. “Fostering and Measuring Skills: Interventions that Improve Characteristics and Cognition.” NBER Working Paper No. 19656. Hill, P.L., B.W. Roberts, J.T. Grogger, J. Guryan, and K. Sixkiller. 2011. “Decreasing Delinquency, Criminal Behavior, and Recidivism by Intervening on Psychological Factors Other Than Cognitive Ability: A Review of the Intervention Literature,” in Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs (eds.) Cook, P., J. Ludwig, and J. McCrary. NBER Conference Report, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Holzer, H. J., S. Raphael, and M.A. Stoll. 2003. “Employment Barriers Facing Ex-Offenders.” Reentry Roundtable Discussion Paper. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Jacobs, E. 2012. Returning to Work After Prison: Final Results from the Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration. New York: MDRC. James, D.J., and L.E. Glaze. 2006. Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Lalonde, R. J. 2003. “Employment and Training Programs,” in Means-tested Transfer Programs in the United States, (ed.) R. Moffitt. NBER Conference Report, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Langan, P.A., and D.J. Levin. 2002. Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Lattimore, P., A.D.Witte, and J. Baker. 1999. “Experimental Assessment of the Effect of Vocational Training on Youthful Property Offenders.” Evaluation Review 14(2). Lipsey, M.W., N.A. Landenberger, and S.J. Wilson. 2007. Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Programs for Criminal Offenders. Campbell Systematic Reviews, The Campbell Collaboration. MacKenzie, D. 2008. “Reentry: Examining What Works in Corrections.” Keynote Address, 16th Annual ICCA Research Conference, St. Louis, MO. Martin, V., and J. Broadus. 2013. Enhancing GED Instruction to Prepare Students for College and Careers: Early Success in LaGuardia Community College’s Bridge to Health and Business Program, New York: MDRC. Maruschak, L.M. 2008. Medical Problems of Prisoners. Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Michalopoulos, C. 2005. Does Making Work Pay Still Pay? An Update on the Effects of Four Earnings Supplement Programs on Employment, Earnings, and Income. New York: MDRC. Millenky, M., D. Bloom, S. Muller-Ravett, and J. Broadus. 2011. Staying on Course: Three-Year Results of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe evaluation. New York: MDRC. 14  Papers

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Mumola, C.J., and J.C. Karberg. 2006. Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Raphael, S. 2008. “Boosting the Earnings and Employment of Low-Skilled Workers in the United States: Making Work Pay and Removing Barriers to Employment and Social Mobility,” in Bartik, T. and S. Houseman (eds) A Future of Good Jobs? America's Challenge in the Global Economy, W.E. Upjohn Institute. Raphael, S. 2011. “Improving Employment Prospects for Former Prison Inmates: Challenges and Policy,” in Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs (eds.) Cook, P., J. Ludwig, and J. McCrary. NBER Conference Report, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Redcross, C., D. Bloom, G. Azurdia, J. Zweig, and N. Pindus. 2009. Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners: Implementation, Two-Year Impacts, and Costs of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program. New York: MDRC. Redcross, C., D. Bloom, E. Jacobs, M. Manno, S. Muller-Ravett, K. Seefeldt, J. Yahner, A.A. Young, Jr., and J. Zweig. 2010. Work After Prison: One-Year Findings from the Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration. New York: MDRC. Redcross, C., M. Millenky, T. Rudd, and V. Levshin. 2012. More Than a Job: Final Results of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Transitional Jobs Program. New York: MDRC. Schochet, P., J. Burghardt, and S. McConnell. (2006). National Job Corps Study and Longer-Term Follow-up Study: Impact and Benefit-Cost Findings Using Survey and Summary Earnings Records Data. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc Tyler, J. 2005. “The General Educational Development Credential: History, Current Research and Directions for Policy and Practice,” in Review of Adult Learning and Literacy, volume 5 (Boston: National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy). Uggen, C. 2000. “Work as a Turning Point in the Life Course of Criminals: A Duration Model of Age, Employment, and Recidivism.” American Sociological Review 65, 4: 529-546. Visher, C.A., L. Winterfield, and M.B. Coggeshall. 2005. “Ex-offender employment programs and recidivism: A meta-analysis.” Journal of Experimental Criminology, Vol. 1. Western, B., and B. Pettit. 2010. “Incarceration and Social Inequality,” Daedalus, Summer. Wolf Harlow, C. 2003. Education and Correctional Populations. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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Bruce Western & Becky Pettit Incarceration & social inequality

n the last few decades, the institutional contours of American social inequality have been transformed by the rapid growth in the prison and jail population.1 America’s prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. As an outcast group, the men and women in our penal institutions have little access to the social mobility available to the mainstream. Social and economic disadvantage, crystallizing in penal con½nement, is sustained over the life course and transmitted from one generation to the next. This is a profound institutionalized inequality that has renewed race and class disadvantage. Yet the scale and empirical details tell a story that is largely unknown. Though the rate of incarceration is historically high, perhaps the most important social fact is the inequality in penal con½nement. This inequality produces extraordinary rates of incarceration among young African American men with no more than a high school education. For these young men, born © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Dædalus Summer 2010

since the mid-1970s, serving time in prison has become a normal life event. The influence of the penal system on social and economic disadvantage can be seen in the economic and family lives of the formerly incarcerated. The social inequality produced by mass incarceration is sizable and enduring for three main reasons: it is invisible, it is cumulative, and it is intergenerational. The inequality is invisible in the sense that institutionalized populations commonly lie outside our of½cial accounts of economic well-being. Prisoners, though drawn from the lowest rungs in society, appear in no measures of poverty or unemployment. As a result, the full extent of the disadvantage of groups with high incarceration rates is underestimated. The inequality is cumulative because the social and economic penalties that flow from incarceration are accrued by those who already have the weakest economic opportunities. Mass incarceration thus deepens disadvantage and forecloses mobility for the most marginal in society. Finally, carceral inequalities are intergenerational, affecting not just those who go to prison and jail but their families and children, too.

The scale of incarceration is measured

by a rate that records the fraction of the

population in prison or jail on an average day. From 1980 to 2008, the U.S. incarceration rate climbed from 221 to 762 per 100,000. In the previous ½ve decades, from the 1920s through the mid1970s, the scale of punishment in America had been stable at around 100 per 100,000. Though the incarceration rate is now nearly eight times its historic average, the scale of punishment today gains its social force from its unequal distribution. Like criminal activity, prisons and jails are overwhelmingly a male affair. Men account for 90 percent of the prison population and a similar proportion of those in local jails. The incarceration rate has been growing faster among women in recent decades, but the social impact of mass incarceration lies in the gross asymmetry of community and family attachment. Women remain in their communities raising children, while men confront the possibility of separation through incarceration.2 Age intensi½es these effects: incarceration rates are highest for those in their twenties and early thirties. These are key years in the life course, when most men are establishing a pathway through adulthood by leaving school, getting a job, and starting a family. These years of early adulthood are important not just for a man’s life trajectory, but also for the family and children that he helps support. Age and sex are the staples of demographic analysis, and the relative youth of the largely male incarcerated population foreshadows much about the effects of mass incarceration. Still, it is the profound race and class disparities in incarceration that produce the new class of social outsiders. African Americans have always been incarcerated at higher rates than whites, at least since statistics were available from the late nineteenth centu-

ry. The extent of racial disparity, however, has varied greatly over the past century, following a roughly inverse relationship to the slow incorporation of African Americans as full citizens in American society. In the late nineteenth century, U.S. Census data show that the incarceration rate among African Americans was roughly twice that of whites. The demographic erosion of Jim Crow through the migration of Southern African Americans to the North increased racial disparity in incarceration through the ½rst half of the twentieth century. (Racial disparities in incarceration have always been higher in the North than the South.) By the late 1960s, at the zenith of civil rights activism, the racial disparity had climbed to its contemporary level, leaving African Americans seven times more likely to be in prison or jail than whites. Class inequalities in incarceration are reflected in the very low educational level of those in prison and jail. The legitimate labor market opportunities for men with no more than a high school education have deteriorated as the prison population has grown, and prisoners themselves are drawn overwhelmingly from the least educated. State prisoners average just a tenth grade education, and about 70 percent have no high school diploma.3 Disparities of race, class, gender, and age have produced extraordinary rates of incarceration among young African American men with little schooling. Figure 1 shows prison and jail incarceration rates for men under age thirty-½ve in 1980, at the beginning of the prison boom, and in 2008, after three decades of rising incarceration rates. The ½gure reports incarceration separately for whites, Latinos, and African Americans and separately for three levels of education. Looking at men with a college eduDædalus Summer 2010

Incarceration & social inequality

Figure 1 Bruce Western & Percentage of Men Aged Twenty to Thirty-Four in Prison or Jail, by Race/Ethnicity and EducaBecky Pettit tion, 1980 and 2008 on mass incarceration

Source: Becky Pettit, Bryan Sykes, and Bruce Western, “Technical Report on Revised Population Estimates and nlsy79 Analysis Tables for the Pew Public Safety and Mobility Project” (Harvard University, 2009).

cation, we see that incarceration rates today have barely increased since 1980. Incarceration rates have increased among African Americans and whites who have completed high school. Among young African American men with high school diplomas, about one in ten is in prison or jail. Most of the growth in incarceration rates is concentrated at the very bottom, among young men with very low levels of education. In 1980, around 10 percent of young African American men who dropped out of high school were in prison or jail. By 2008, this incarceration rate had climbed to 37 percent, an astonishing level of institutionalization given that the average incarceration rate in the general population was 0.76 of 1 percent. 10

Dædalus Summer 2010

Even among young white dropouts, the incarceration rate had grown remarkably, with around one in eight behind bars by 2008. The signi½cant growth of incarceration rates among the least educated reflects increasing class inequality in incarceration through the period of the prison boom. These incarceration rates provide only a snapshot at a point in time. We can also examine the lifetime chance of incarceration–that is, the chance that someone will go to prison at some point in his or her life. This cumulative risk of incarceration is important if serving time in prison confers an enduring status that affects life chances after returning to free society. The lifetime risk of imprisonment describes how many

Table 1 Cumulative Risk of Imprisonment by Age Thirty to Thirty-Four for Men Born from 1945 to 1949 and 1975 to 1979, by Educational Attainment and Race/Ethnicity

All

High School Dropouts

High School/ ged*

College

1.4 10.4 2.8

3.8 14.7 4.1

1.5 11.0 2.9

0.4 5.3 1.1

5.4 26.8 12.2

28.0 68.0 19.6

6.2 21.4 9.2

1.2 6.6 3.4

Incarceration & social inequality

1945–1949 cohort White Black Latino

1975–1979 cohort White Black Latino

*Denotes completed high school or equivalency. Source: Becky Pettit, Bryan Sykes, and Bruce Western, “Technical Report on Revised Population Estimates and nlsy79 Analysis Tables for the Pew Public Safety and Mobility Project” (Harvard University, 2009).

people are at risk of these diminished life chances. We calculated the cumulative chance of imprisonment for two birth cohorts, one born just after World War II, from 1945 to 1949, and another born from 1975 to 1979 (Table 1). For each cohort, we calculated the chances of imprisonment, not jail incarceration. Prisons are the deep end of the criminal justice system, now incarcerating people for an average of twenty-eight months for a felony conviction. While there are about ten million admissions to local jails each year– for those awaiting trial or serving short sentences–around seven hundred thousand prisoners are now admitted annually to state and federal facilities. These cumulative chances of imprisonment are calculated up to age thirtyfour. For most of the population, this represents the lifetime likelihood of serving prison time. For the older postwar cohort who reached their mid-thir-

ties at the end of the 1970s, about one in ten African American men served time in prison. For the younger cohort born from 1975 to 1979, the lifetime risk of imprisonment for African American men had increased to one in four. Prison time has become a normal life event for African American men who have dropped out of high school. Fully 68 percent of these men born since the mid-1970s have prison records. The high rate of incarceration has redrawn the pathway through young adulthood. The main sources of upward mobility for African American men–namely, military service and a college degree– are signi½cantly less common than a prison record. For the ½rst generations growing up in the post–civil rights era, the prison now looms as a signi½cant institutional influence on life chances.

The ubiquity of penal con½nement in

the lives of young African American men Dædalus Summer 2010

Bruce Western & Becky Pettit on mass incarceration

with little schooling is historically novel, emerging only in the last decade. However, this new reality is only half the story of understanding the signi½cance of mass incarceration in America. The other half of the story concerns the effects of incarceration on social and economic inequality. The inequalities produced by contemporary patterns of incarceration have three characteristics: the inequalities associated with incarceration are invisible to our usual accounting of the economic well-being of the population; the inequality is cumulative, deepening the disadvantage of the most marginal men in society; and ½nally, the inequality is intergenerational, transmitting the penalties of a prison record from one generation to the next. Because the characteristic inequalities produced by the American prison boom are invisible, cumulative, and intergenerational, they are extremely enduring, sustained over lifetimes and passed through families. Invisible Inequality. The inequality created by incarceration is often invisible to the mainstream of society because incarceration is concentrated and segregative. We have seen that steep racial and class disparities in incarceration have produced a generation of social outliers whose collective experience is wholly different from the rest of American society. The extreme concentration of incarceration rates is compounded by the obviously segregative function of the penal system, which often relocates people to far-flung facilities distant from their communities and families. As a result, people in prison and jail are disconnected from the basic institutions–households and the labor market–that dominate our common understanding and measurement of the population. The segregation and social concentration of incarceration thus help conceal its effects. This fact is particularly imporDædalus Summer 2010

tant for public policy because in assessing the social and economic well-being of the population, the incarcerated fraction is frequently overlooked, and inequality is underestimated as a result. The idea of invisible inequality is illustrated by considering employment rates as they are conventionally measured by the Current Population Survey, the large monthly labor force survey conducted by the Census Bureau. For groups that are weakly attached to the labor market, like young men with little education, economic status is often measured by the employment-to-population ratio. This ½gure, more expansive than the unemployment rate, counts as jobless those who have dropped out of the labor market altogether. The Current Population Survey is drawn on a sample of households, so those who are institutionalized are not included in the surveybased description of the population. Figure 2 shows the employment-topopulation ratio for African American men under age thirty-½ve who have not completed high school. Conventional estimates of the employment rate show that by 2008, around 40 percent of African American male dropouts were employed. These estimates, based on the household survey, fail to count that part of the population in prison or jail. Once prison and jail inmates are included in the population count (and among the jobless), we see that employment among young African American men with little schooling fell to around 25 percent by 2008. Indeed, by 2008 these men were more likely to be locked up than employed. Cumulative Inequality. Serving time in prison or jail diminishes social and economic opportunities. As we have seen, these diminished opportunities are found among those already most socioeconomically disadvantaged. A

Figure 2 Employment to Population Ratio, African American Men Aged Twenty to Thirty-Four with Less than Twelve Years of Schooling, 1980 to 2008

Incarceration & social inequality

burgeoning research literature examining the economic effects of incarceration ½nds that incarceration is associated with reduced earnings and employment.4 We analyzed panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (nlsy), one of the few surveys that follows respondents over a long period of time and that interviews incarcerated respondents in prison. The nlsy began in 1979, when its panel of respondents was aged fourteen to twenty-one; it completed its latest round of interviews in 2006. Matching our population estimates of incarceration, one in ½ve African American male respondents in the nlsy

has been interviewed at some point between 1979 and 2006 while incarcerated, compared to 5 percent of whites and 12 percent of Latino respondents. Analysis of the nlsy showed that serving time in prison was associated with a 40 percent reduction in earnings and with reduced job tenure, reduced hourly wages, and higher unemployment. The negative effects of incarceration, even among men with very poor economic opportunities to begin with, are related to the strong negative perceptions employers have of job seekers with criminal records. Devah Pager’s experimental research has studied these employer perceptions by sending pairs of Dædalus Summer 2010

Bruce Western & Becky Pettit on mass incarceration

fake job seekers to apply for real jobs.5 In each pair, one of the job applicants was randomly assigned a résumé indicating a criminal record (a parole of½cer is listed as a reference), and the “criminal” applicant was instructed to check the box on the job application indicating he had a criminal record. A criminal record was found to reduce callbacks from prospective employers by around 50 percent, an effect that was larger for African Americans than for whites. Incarceration may reduce economic opportunities in several ways. The conditions of imprisonment may promote habits and behaviors that are poorly suited to the routines of regular work. Time in prison means time out of the labor force, depleting the work experience of the incarcerated compared to their nonincarcerated counterparts. The stigma of a criminal conviction may also repel employers who prefer job applicants with clean records. Pager’s audit study offers clear evidence for the negative effects of criminal stigma. Employers, fearing legal liability or even just unreliability, are extremely reluctant to hire workers with criminal convictions. A simple picture of the poor economic opportunities of the formerly incarcerated is given by the earnings mobility of men going to prison compared to other disadvantaged groups. The nlsy data can be used to study earnings mobility over several decades. We calculated the chances that a poor man in the lowest ½fth of the earnings distribution in 1986 would move up and out of the lowest ½fth by 2006. Among low-income men who are not incarcerated, nearly twothirds are upwardly mobile by 2006 (Figure 3). Another group in the nlsy has very low levels of cognitive ability, scoring in the bottom quintile of the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, the standardized test used for military service. Among Dædalus Summer 2010

low-income men with low scores on the test, only 41 percent are upwardly mobile. Upward mobility is even less common among low-income high school dropouts. Still, we observe the least mobility of all among men who were incarcerated at some point between 1986 and 2006. For these men, only one in four rises out of the bottom quintile of the earnings distribution. Intergenerational Inequality. Finally, the effects of the prison boom extend also to the families of those who are incarcerated. Through the prism of research on poverty, scholars ½nd that the family life of the disadvantaged has become dramatically more complex and unstable over the last few decades. Divorce and nonmarital births have contributed signi½cantly to rising rates of single parenthood, and these changes in American family structure are concentrated among low-income mothers. As a consequence, poor children regularly grow up, at least for a time, with a single mother and, at different times, with a variety of adult males in their households. High rates of parental incarceration likely add to the instability of family life among poor children. Over half of all prisoners have children under the age of eighteen, and about 45 percent of those parents were living with their children at the time they were sent to prison. About two-thirds of prisoners stay in regular contact with their children either by phone, mail, or visitation.6 Ethnographer Megan Comfort paints a vivid picture of the effects of men’s incarceration on the women and families in their lives. She quotes a prisoner at San Quentin State Prison in California: Nine times out of ten it’s the woman [maintaining contact with prisoners]. Why? Because your homeboys, or your

Figure 3 Twenty-Year Earnings Mobility among Men in the Bottom Quintile of Earnings Distribution in 1986, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (nlsy) Men

Incarceration & social inequality

afqt stands for Armed Forces Qualifying Test. Source: Becky Pettit, Bryan Sykes, and Bruce Western, “Technical Report on Revised Population Estimates and nlsy79 Analysis Tables for the Pew Public Safety and Mobility Project” (Harvard University, 2009).

friends, if you’re in that lifestyle, most the time they’re gonna be sittin’ right next to your ass in prison. . . . The males, they don’t really participate like a lot of females in the lives of the incarcerated. . . . They don’t deal with it, like ½rst of all they don’t like to bring to reality that you’re in prison; they don’t wanna think about that . . . Or some of ’em just don’t care. So the male’s kinda like wiped out of there, so that puts all the burden on the woman.7

Partly because of the burdens of incarceration on women who are left to raise families in free society, incarceration is strongly associated with divorce and separation. In addition to the forced separation of incarceration, the postrelease effects on economic opportuni-

ties leave formerly incarcerated parents less equipped to provide ½nancially for their children. New research also shows that the children of incarcerated parents, particularly the boys, are at greater risk of developmental delays and behavioral problems.8 Against this evidence for the negative effects of incarceration, we should weigh the gains to public safety obtained by separating violent or otherwise antisocial men from their children and partners. Domestic violence is much more common among the formerly incarcerated compared to other disadvantaged men. Survey data indicate that formerly incarcerated men are about four times more likely to assault their domestic partners than men who have never been incarcerated. Though the relative risk is Dædalus Summer 2010

Bruce Western & Becky Pettit on mass incarceration

very high, around 90 percent of the partners of formerly incarcerated report no domestic violence at all. The scale of the effects of parental incarceration on children can be revealed simply by statistics showing the number of children with a parent in prison or jail. Among white children in 1980, only 0.4 of 1 percent had an incarcerated parent; by 2008 this ½gure had increased to 1.75 percent. Rates of parental incarceration are roughly double among Latino children, with 3.5 percent of children having a parent locked up by 2008. Among African American children, 1.2 million, or about 11 percent, had a parent incarcerated by 2008 (Figure 4).

The spectacular growth in the Ameri-

can penal system over the last three decades was concentrated in a small segment of the population, among young minority men with very low levels of education. By the early 2000s, prison time was a common life event for this group, and today more than two-thirds of African American male dropouts are expected to serve time in state or federal prison. These demographic contours of mass imprisonment have created a new class of social outsiders whose relationship to the state and society is wholly different from the rest of the population. Social marginality is deepened by the inequalities produced by incarceration. Workers with prison records experience signi½cant declines in earnings and employment. Parents in prison are likely to divorce or separate, and through the contagious effects of the institution, their children are in some degree “prisonized,” exposed to the routines of prison life through visitation and the parole supervision of their parents. Yet much of this reality remains hidden from view. In social life, for all but those whose incarceration rates are highest, prisons are exotic

Dædalus Summer 2010

institutions unknown to the social mainstream. Our national data systems, and the social facts they produce, are structured around normative domestic and economic life, systematically excluding prison inmates. Thus we de½ne carceral inequalities as invisible, cumulative, and intergenerational. Because they are so deeply concentrated in a small disadvantaged fraction of the population, the social and economic effects of incarceration create a discrete social group whose collective experience is so distinctive yet unknown that their disadvantage remains largely beyond the apprehension of public policy or public conversation. The redrawing of American social inequality by mass incarceration amounts to a contraction of citizenship–a contraction of that population that enjoys, in T. H. Marshall’s words, “full membership in society.”9 Inequality of this kind threatens to be self-sustaining. Socioeconomic disadvantage, crime, and incarceration in the current generation undermine the stability of family life and material support for children. As adults, these children will be at greater risk of diminished life chances and criminal involvement, and at greater risk of incarceration as a result. Skeptics will respond that these are false issues of social justice: the prison boom substantially reduced crime, and criminals should forfeit their societal membership in any case. The crimereducing effects of incarceration are hotly debated, however. Empirical estimates of the effects of incarceration on crime vary widely, and often they turn on assumptions that are dif½cult to test directly. Researchers have focused on the sharp decline in U.S. crime rates through the 1990s, studying the influence of rising prison populations. Conservative estimates attribute about onetenth of the 1990s crime decline to the

Figure 4 Number of Children under Eighteen with a Parent in Prison or Jail, 1980 to 2008

Incarceration & social inequality

growth in imprisonment rates.10 Though the precise impact of incarceration on crime is uncertain, there is broad agreement that additional imprisonment at high rates of incarceration does little to reduce crime. The possibility of improved public safety through increased incarceration is by now exhausted. Studies of the effects of incarceration on crime also focus only on the short term. Indeed, because of the negative effects of incarceration on economic opportunities and family life, incarceration contributes to crime in the long run by adding to idleness and family breakdown among released prisoners. Scale matters, too. If the negative effects of incarceration were scattered

among a small number of serious criminal offenders, these effects may well be overwhelmed by reduction in crime through incapacitation. Today, however, clear majorities of the young men in poor communities are going to prison and returning home less employable and more detached from their families. In this situation, the institutions charged with public safety have become vitally implicated in the unemployment and the fragile family structure characteristic of high-crime communities. For poorly educated young men in high-incarceration communities, a prison record now carries little stigma; incentives to commit to the labor market and family life have been seriously weakened. Dædalus Summer 2010

Bruce Western & Becky Pettit on mass incarceration

To say that prison reduces crime (perhaps only in the short run) is a spectacularly modest claim for a system that now costs $70 billion annually. Claims for the crime-reducing effects of prison, by themselves, provide little guidance for policy because other approaches may be cheaper. Measures to reduce school dropout, increase human capital, and generally increase employment among young men seem especially promising alternatives. Results for programs for very young children are particularly striking. Evaluations of early childhood educational programs show some of their largest bene½ts decades later in reduced delinquency and crime.11 For adult men now coming out of prison, new evaluations show that jobs programs reduce recidivism and increase employment and earnings.12 The demographic concentration of incarceration accompanies spatial concentration. If some portion of that $70 billion in correctional expenditures were spent on improving skills and reducing unemployment in poor neighborhoods, a sustainable and socially integrative public safety may be produced. Much of the political debate about crime policy ignores the contemporary scale of criminal punishment, its unequal distribution, and its negative social and economic effects. Our analysis of the penal system as an institution of

social strati½cation, rather than crime control, highlights all these neglected outcomes and leaves us pessimistic that widespread incarceration can sustainably reduce crime. The current system is expensive, and it exacerbates the social problems it is charged with controlling. Our perspective, focused on the social and economic inequalities of American life, suggests that social policy improving opportunity and employment, for young men in particular, holds special promise as an instrument for public safety. Our perspective on inequality points to a broader view of public safety that is not produced by punishment alone. Robust public safety grows when people have order and predictability in their daily lives. Crime is just one danger, joining unemployment, poor health, and family instability along a spectrum of threats to an orderly life. Public safety is built as much on the everyday routines of work and family as it is on police and prisons. Any retrenchment of the penal system therefore must recognize how deeply the prison boom is embedded in the structure of American social inequality. Ameliorating these inequalities will be necessary to set us on a path away from mass incarceration and toward a robust, socially integrative public safety.

endnotes 1 We gratefully acknowledge Bryan Sykes, Deirdre Bloome, and Chris Muller, who helped conduct the research reported in this paper. This research was supported in part by a gift from The Elfenworks Foundation. 2 In her essay for this issue, Candace Kruttschnitt shows that women’s incarceration has pronounced effects by separating mothers from their children. The continued growth of women’s incarceration rates threatens to have large effects on family life. 3 Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006); Caroline Wolf Harlow, Education and Correctional Populations (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003).

Dædalus Summer 2010

4 Harry J. Holzer, “Collateral Costs: Effects of Incarceration on Employment and Earnings Among Young Workers,” in Do Prisons Make Us Safer? ed. Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009). 5 Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 6 Christopher Mumola, “Incarcerated Parents and Their Children” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000). 7 Megan Comfort, “In the Tube at San Quentin: The ‘Secondary Prisonization’ of Women Visiting Inmates,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 32 (1) (2003): 82; emphasis original. 8 Christopher Wildeman, “Paternal Incarceration and Children’s Physically Aggressive Behaviors: Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study,” working paper 2008-02-FF (Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing, 2008). 9 T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Concord, Mass.: Pluto Press, 1992).

Incarceration & social inequality

10 Western, Punishment and Inequality in America, chap. 7. 11 Pedro Carneiro and James J. Heckman, “Human Capital Policy,” in James J. Heckman and Alan B. Krueger, Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2003). 12 Cindy Redcross, Dan Bloom, and Gilda Azurdia, “Transitional Jobs for Ex-prisoners: Implementation, Two-Year Impacts, and Costs of the Center for Employment Opportunities (ceo) Prisoner Reentry Program” (mdrc, 2009).

Dædalus Summer 2010

Employment-Focused Programs for Ex-Prisoners What have we learned, what are we learning, and where should we go from here?

Dan Bloom

This paper was prepared as background for the meeting â&#x20AC;&#x153;Research on Prisoner Reentry: What Do We Know and What Do We Want to Know?â&#x20AC;? sponsored by the National Poverty Center, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan May 24, 2006.

July 2006

Overview Each year, more than 600,000 people are released from prison. The obstacles to successful reentry are daunting, starting with the challenge of finding stable work. Indeed, a large proportion of released inmates return to prison within a relatively short time. In recognition of the enormous human and financial toll of recidivism, there is new interest among researchers, community advocates, and public officials in prisoner reentry initiatives, particularly those focused on employment. In May 2006, the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan hosted a meeting — “Research on Prisoner Reentry: What Do We Know and What Do We Want to Know?” — to discuss the state of research on employment-focused prisoner reentry programs. This paper, written as background for the meeting, reviews previous research, describes some planned or ongoing evaluations, and proposes some ideas for future research. There have been few rigorous studies of employment-focused reentry models, and there is a pressing need for more definitive evidence of what works. A meta-analysis of eight random assignment design studies of postrelease community-based programs found that they did not reduce recidivism. There are only a few experimental studies on the effects of in-prison services, and it is hard to draw lessons from the nonexperimental research. Many experts believe that the most promising reentry models provide coordinated services both before and after inmates are released. There have been a few studies of such models to date, including two that used random assignment; the results were only somewhat positive. It is clearly difficult to increase employment and earnings for disadvantaged men. Yet the results described above do not support the view that “nothing works.” Some programs seem to be modestly successful: those for older ex-prisoners, integrated services both before and after release, and perhaps models using financial incentives. Further attention to design and evaluation of prisoner reentry programs may produce useful results, as most of the studies are quite old, and both the economic and criminal justice contexts have changed dramatically in recent years. Some large-scale studies now under way will dramatically expand the knowledge base, but some important gaps will remain. Approaches that might be tested in the future include: earnings supplements and work incentives; employer-focused strategies, such as the federal bonding program and supported placements to give employers incentives to hire ex-prisoners; in-prison vocational training; performance goals for parole officers that emphasize parolees’ employment; and programs that address motivational issues, such as faith-based initiatives, therapeutic models, and those that engage ex-prisoners’ families.

iii

Introduction In May 2006, the National Poverty Center (NPC) at the University of Michigan hosted a meeting to discuss the state of research on employment-focused prisoner reentry programs. This paper, written as background for the meeting, reviews the extent and quality of previous research and the results of key studies, describes several planned or ongoing evaluations that will add to the knowledge base, and proposes some ideas for future research. The NPC meeting reflected the current interest in prisoner reentry on the part of researchers, community advocates, and public officials. This stems from the growing recognition that hundreds of thousands of prisoners jailed during the surge in incarceration of the last two decades are now being released and returned to their communities, particularly to communities of color. Localities, states, and the federal government have begun to design and fund new reentry initiatives. This is obviously good news, but in all the excitement it is easy to overlook the fact that we know very little about what works in improving reentry outcomes. As discussed below, few rigorous evaluations have been completed and even fewer have yielded any positive results. Thus, the key goals of the NPC meeting were: 1) to reach some consensus about what we already know; 2) to understand what we will learn from ongoing or planned studies; 3) to discuss a strategy for synthesizing and disseminating emerging findings; and 4) to consider an agenda for additional research to fill key gaps in the knowledge base. Clearly, any discussion of “what we know” — about anything — hinges on the standard of evidence applied. It is worth noting up front that this paper displays a strong bias in favor of studies that use experimental designs (and not only because the author works for an organization that specializes in such studies). Many experts in the reentry field have argued that motivation plays a critical role in success for both individuals and programs.1 This certainly seems plausible, and probably applies in other fields as well. But, if success is strongly associated with motivation, it is hard to put much stock in studies that attempt to measure program impacts by comparing outcomes for people who choose to participate in employment programs with outcomes for those who don’t. After all, it is easy to control for criminal history, age, or education level, but very difficult to measure or control for motivation. In reading numerous research reviews and meta-analyses of reentry studies, it is notable that the papers with more positive conclusions usually rely more heavily on results from nonexperimental studies.

See, for example, Bushway (2003). 1

That said, it is clear that random assignment experiments are not always feasible, appropriate, or affordable. This paper describes several nonexperimental studies that are widely cited in the field.

The Rationale for Employment-Focused Reentry Programs The audience for the upcoming meeting understands well the magnitude and consequences of the prisoner reentry problem. Suffice it to say that more than 600,000 people are released from incarceration each year, that these individuals are disproportionately returning to a relatively small number of distressed communities, and that the best available evidence indicates that successful transitions are far too rare. The human and financial costs of recidivism are enormous. Although the relationship between crime and employment is complex, most experts seem to agree on a few things. First, a large proportion of former prisoners have low levels of education and work experience, health problems, and other personal characteristics that make them hard to employ, particularly in a labor market that offers fewer and fewer well-paying opportunities for individuals who lack postsecondary education. For example, 40 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons have neither a high school diploma nor a GED, 31 percent of state inmates have a “physical impairment or mental condition,” and 57 percent report that they used drugs in the month before their arrest.2 Second, the increase in incarceration over the past 25 years has disproportionately affected African-American men. One study found that, among black men born between 1965 and 1969, 30 percent of those without a college education and a startling 60 percent of high school dropouts had served time in prison by 1999.3 Several recent studies have documented the labor market struggles of African-American men even during the 1990s boom4 and the persistent discrimination they face in the job market.5 Third, while it is very difficult to isolate the impact of incarceration on labor market outcomes, several studies have found that earnings — and possibly employment as well — are lower for individuals who have spent time in prison than for similar individuals who have not.6

Solomon et al. (2004). Petit and Western (2004). 4 Mincy, Lewis, and Han (2006). 5 Pager and Western (2005). 6 Western, Kling, and Weiman (2001). 3

This is not surprising, since convicted felons are legally barred from certain occupations (including many in fast-growing sectors) and because employers are very reluctant to hire them.7 In sum, many people enter the criminal justice system hard to employ and leave it even harder to employ. Not surprisingly, employment rates for ex-prisoners are typically low. For example, in a survey of male prisoners returning to Chicago, only 44 percent reported that they worked for at least a week in the first four to eight months following their release from prison, and many of those who worked did not work full time.8 A similar survey in Baltimore found that 64 percent worked within six months after their release, but again many worked part time or sporadically.9 An analysis using unemployment insurance data from the State of Florida found that only about 40 percent of former state prisoners were working in a UI-covered job one year after release.10 Of course, the fact that ex-prisoners tend to struggle in the labor market and frequently end up back in prison does not necessarily mean that employment will reduce recidivism. After all, most offenders are employed at the time of their arrest.11 But there are both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to support the notion that crime is linked to unemployment, low earnings, or job instability.12 Legitimate employment may reduce the economic incentive to commit crimes, and also may connect ex-prisoners to more positive social networks and daily routines. Qualitative data also suggest that finding a job is the highest priority for prisoners upon release.13 In short, it is reasonable to hypothesize that interventions that boost employment and earnings among ex-prisoners will also reduce recidivism.

The Quantity and Quality of Previous Research There is a long history of research in the criminal justice field, including many experimental evaluations. For example, a recent review identified 83 random assignment studies between 1982 and 2004 that measured criminal justice outcomes.14 However, there appear to have been few rigorous studies of employment-focused reentry models. For example:

Holzer, Raphael, and Stoll (2003); Pager (2003). Kachnowski (2005). 9 Visher, Kachnowski, La Vigne, and Travis (2004). 10 Tyler and Kling (2004). 11 According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 57 percent and 76 percent of state prison inmates (depending on educational attainment) had wage income in the month before they were incarcerated. Between 48 percent and 70 percent reported that they were working full time. 12 Bernstein and Houston (2000); Urban Institute Justice Policy Center (2006); Sampson and Laub (2005). 13 Nelson, Deess, and Allen (1999). 14 Farrington and Welsh (2005). 8

•

A recent meta-analysis of the effects of “community employment programs on recidivism among persons who have previously been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated” found only eight such studies that used random assignment designs. The authors note that “this systematic review…is hampered by inadequate contemporary research.”15

•

An earlier meta-analysis of evaluations of “corrections-based education, vocation, and work programs for adult offenders” found a total of 33 studies, but only two of them used random assignment designs and a third used what the authors considered to be a strong nonexperimental design. The authors concluded that “the methodological soundness of the…research in this area is poor and limits the ability of this synthesis to draw causal inferences.…”16

•

A third review of “prisoner reentry programs” examined 32 studies and ranked their methodological strength on a scale from 1 to 5. Only two studies were assigned to Level 5, indicating that they used random assignment. (One of the two was excluded from the first review cited above because the authors concluded that the design was “compromised.”) An additional 14 studies were ranked at Level 4, designating a strong nonexperimental design. (Eight of the Level 4 studies focused on drug treatment programs.)

Thus, the first important conclusion is that we don’t know very much for certain, and the second is that there is a pressing need for more definitive evidence. One might look to the welfare system for support for the second conclusion. During the 1980s, a series of welldesigned random assignment studies provided unusually solid evidence that mandatory welfareto-work programs generate modest but policy-relevant increases in employment and some corresponding reductions in welfare receipt.17 Today, no one seriously questions the assumption that it is necessary to invest public funds in employment services for welfare recipients. In recent years, thanks to the work of Jeremy Travis and others,18 policymakers and the public have begun to focus on the prisoner reentry issue, and there is a renewed willingness to spend some money on rehabilitation services. This surge of interest could easily dissipate, however, without solid evidence that these services make a difference. After all, there is significant underlying skepticism about the efficacy of rehabilitation efforts. On the positive side, the reentry field has a built-in advantage over the welfare field: Incarceration costs are so high that even small reductions in recidivism could easily produce budgetary savings that outweigh the cost of services. 15

Visher, Winterfield, and Coggeshall (2005). Wilson, Gallagher, and MacKenzie (2000). 17 See, for example, Gueron and Pauly (1991). 18 Travis (2005). 16

Issue Brief Social, Economic, & Workforce Programs Division Contact: Thomas M. MacLellan, 202/624-5427 September 2005

Improving Prisoner Reentry Through Strategic Policy Innovations Summary An estimated 640,000 inmates will be released from state prisons in 2005.1 Within three years, 67 percent of these individuals will be rearrested, and over half will return to prison. Given the tremendous investment that states are making—an estimated $40.7 billion in corrections cost alone in 20042— policymakers should be concerned about whether or not they are getting the most return for their investment in terms of public safety. Governors and other state policymakers have the opportunity to improve public safety—and potentially reduce corrections costs—by improving the process by which individuals exit prison and reenter society. Research shows that returning prisoners who have access to key supports and services on release commit fewer crimes, maintain employment, and show improved outcomes for health, income, and a broad range of other indicators. Conversely, former prisoners with few supports and services are more likely to continue to commit crimes. There are a number of initial steps that governors and other state policymakers can take to improve the reentry process. These include: •

Raising the profile of prisoner reentry as a public safety issue and not solely a corrections issue.

•

Improving the decision making processes by which individuals are sent to prison.

•

Improving how prisoners are prepared in prison for release.

•

Improving the process by which prisoners exit prisons so that key supports and services are in place during the initial transition.

•

Developing reentry initiatives that build on key social relationships—such as family, friends, and the faith community—and improve access to other community-based supports and services.

•

Targeting and supporting high-risk communities to which the majority of prisoners return.

This Issue Brief describes prisoner reentry issues and challenges and suggests strategies that governors and other state policymakers can use to initiate long-term improvements.3 Its findings build on the work of NGA’s Prisoner Reentry Policy Academy and the Council of State Governments’ (CSG) Report of the ReEntry Policy Council.4

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Why is Reentry so Important to States? States should be concerned about prisoner reentry for three main reasons: the growing prison population and numbers of returning offenders; the impact of returning prisoners on crime rates; and the rising cost of corrections. More individuals than ever are in prison and leaving prison Prisoner reentry will remain a long-term issue as unprecedented numbers of individuals are sent to and released from prison. At midyear 2004, over 1.3 million prisoners were under the jurisdiction of state correctional authorities, a 46 percent increase from 1994 levels.5 Between 2003 and 2004, states added nearly 25,000 prisoners to their rolls.6 The 20-year trend reveals a 215 percent increase between 1984 and 2004. Prison overcrowding also continues to be an issue as most states’ prison systems are at, beyond, or near capacity. In 2003, 22 states reported being at or above highest capacity and 20 more reported being at or above 90 percent of their highest capacity. Along with this growth in prison population is a corresponding rise in the number of individuals being released from prison each year. This is not surprising considering that over 95 percent of all prisoners eventually will be released. In 2005, an estimated 640,000 individuals will be released from state prison—a 37 percent growth from 1995.7 Figure 1 shows the 25-year trend for number of releases from state prisons.8

Figure 1. Number of Releases From State Prisons, 1980–2005 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004

Recently released offenders commit a significant number of crimes. An estimated 67 percent of released offenders will be rearrested for a new offense within three years of release—84 percent of them for a felony and 16 percent for a serious misdemeanor.9 About 35 percent of all felony arrestees were under some type of correctional supervision, such as parole or probation, at the time of arrest.10 Figure 2 shows the most recent data available on recidivism rates among returning offenders. Although these data are somewhat dated, they show that despite significant investments in corrections, reducing recidivism rates and improving other outcomes remains a major issue for states.

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Figure 2. Percent of released prisoners rearrested within 3 years of release, by offense, 1983 and 199411

Corrections costs are large and growing Since 1982, state spending on corrections has grown by 538 percent, representing an average annual growth of 9.9 percent.12 According to the National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2003 State Expenditure Report, states spent $39.4 billion on corrections in 2003 and an estimated $40.7 billion in 2004.13 According to NASBO, “Pressure to control (corrections) expenditures is expected to persist as states continue to deal with structural budget problems, pent-up demands, and growing state prison populations.”14 Compounding the cost of growing prison populations is the increasing length of prison sentences, which result in a growing number of older prisoners who require more costly health care. In fact, health care is fast becoming a major cost driver for correction systems.

It’s All Connected: Impacts of Prisoner Reentry The churning of large numbers of individuals in and out of prisons not only affects the prisoners themselves, but also has a tremendous impact on families and children, public service systems, and communities. Impact on families and children About 46 percent of prisoners reported living with their children before they were incarcerated. This translates into about half of male and two-thirds of female prisoners having children with whom they will want to reconnect after their release. Nationwide, about 1.5 million minor children and 336,300 households have a parent who is incarcerated. Although in some instances—such as an abusive or violent living situation—family reunification may not be desirable, in most cases returning prisoners and their children want to become reconnected. Providing supportive services to families during the transition from prison is essential to ensure the well-being and safety of family members, as well as the returning individual. The 10 percent of mothers and 2 percent of fathers who report having a child in foster care during their incarceration will need even more intensive and specialized services.15

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Impact on public service systems Returning prisoners are large consumers of public services. For example, 80 percent have substance abuse issues, 16 percent have mental illness, and disproportionately high numbers have chronic diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS).16 Many are also homeless, unemployed, and unskilled. These individuals typically do not have adequate support networks or health insurance and will turn to public service providers for assistance. Without adequate access to continued treatment, those returning prisoners with communicable diseases or mental illness pose a potential health and safety threat to the public. Impact on communities Returning prisoners typically are concentrated in specific communities. Nationally, five states account for nearly half of all releases and 16 states for three-quarters. Within these states, most released prisoners return to just a few neighborhoods. For example, in Maryland, 59 percent of prisoners in the entire state return to Baltimore, and most of these return to a handful of poor neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York, one in eight men are sent to prison each year. Such high concentrations place additional demands on communities where resources and services already are scarce.

Challenges to Improving Prisoner Reentry Improving prisoner reentry requires coordinated and often intensive services and supervision. However, developing effective strategies is challenging for a number of reasons including the high risks and high needs of the returning prisoner population; systemic barriers to public services; uncoordinated service systems; an overburdened parole system; and a limited range of sanctions and revocation policies. Risk factors of returning offenders Returning offenders confront a range of personal issues that place them at a significantly greater risk than the overall population for having a serious mental illness, having a chronic illness, being homeless, or being unemployed. These risk factors not only compromise the chances of attaining successful outcomes, but unless adequately addressed, may also increase the likelihood that these individuals will commit more crimes. Risk factors include the following: •

Substance abuse: Eighty percent of returning offenders have a history of substance abuse.

•

Mental illness: Sixteen percent of returning offenders are diagnosed with a mental illness. Prisoners are two to four times more likely than the general population to be schizophrenic, depressed, bipolar, or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Of teens in juvenile detention centers, nearly 66 percent of boys and 75 percent of girls have at least one psychiatric disorder. In addition, 73 percent of mentally ill inmates suffer from a co-occurring substance abuse disorder.

•

Chronic disease: Twenty-five percent of the U.S. population currently living with HIV or AIDS was released from prison within the last year. Overall, 2 percent to 3 percent of the prison population has HIV or AIDS. The rate of state prisoners testing positive for HIV is 5–7 times greater than in the general population. In addition, 18 percent of returning offenders have hepatitis C. The rate of prisoners infected with hepatitis C is 9 to 10 times higher than that of the general public. Seven percent of returning offenders have tuberculosis.

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•

Lack of education: Roughly half of returning offenders are functionally illiterate, and 70 percent are high school dropouts.

•

High unemployment: Employment is cited as an effective strategy for helping returning prisoners succeed, but most returning prisoners do not have jobs before being released and fare poorly in the labor market. For example, a study of California parolees found that only 21 percent had full-time jobs and 70 percent were unemployed. Another study found that employment rates among young men who had been incarcerated were 20 percent to 25 percent lower than those of their peers who had not. Other studies show a 50 percent reduction in job offers for individuals with criminal records and a 64 percent decrease for African-Americans with criminal records.17

•

Homelessness: Many returning offenders formerly were or will become homeless. At least 10 percent of returning prisoners are homeless both before and after incarceration. The rate is twice that—20 percent—for those with mental illness. According to one study, for those prisoners returning to major cities, the rates are substantially higher—30 to 50 percent. A study of the New York prison system found that 11 percent of released prisoners entered a homeless shelter within two years of release.

Systemic and legal barriers to public services18 A number of challenges make it difficult for returning prisoners to gain access to public benefits or services that might assist in their transition back into the community. They include the following: Bans to public assistance. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 includes a lifetime ban on eligibility for food stamps and cash benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program for anyone convicted of a drug-related felony. The law also prohibits states from providing TANF assistance, food stamps, supplemental security income (SSI), and public housing to anyone in violation of parole or probation. This ban is irrespective of whether or not an individual has completed his or her sentence, been employed and was laid off, or earned a “certificate of rehabilitation.” States have the option of passing legislation to limit the ban or eliminate it altogether, but most states restrict at least some people with drug felony convictions from eligibility for federally funded public assistance and food stamps. There are also often long delays in processing applications for benefits for returning prisoners. These delays are significant because returning prisoners are at the highest risk for committing new crimes immediately following their release. Public housing restrictions and limited transitional housing. Returning prisoners often are ineligible for public housing. These restrictions also extend to living with family members in public housing. While there is limited evidence demonstrating the link between homelessness and criminal behavior, there are indications that returning prisoners with more stable housing may be less likely to be rearrested and reincarcerated. Compounding these issues is the fact that transitional housing for returning offenders is also extremely limited. Difficulty obtaining state-issued identification. Many prisoners are released without state-issued identification or the documentation (e.g., a birth certificate or social security card) that would allow them to obtain state-issued identification. Furthermore, many state departments of motor vehicles do not accept prison documents as proof of identification. Without proper forms of identification, returning prisoners may not be able to apply for jobs, benefits, or housing.

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Uncoordinated service systems Because of their multiple needs, many returning prisoners receive services through a number of public agencies simultaneously without appropriate coordination. For example, an individual’s parole requirements may not be coordinated with their mental health or substance treatment needs making it difficult for them to fulfill the conditions of their parole while undergoing treatment. A more coordinated response of post-release supervision and services is needed to effectively address the multiple needs of offenders. Overburdened parole system About 80 percent of all returning prisoners are released to some form of parole supervision.19 However, a recent study shows that the parole system is overburdened and that parole—especially mandatory parole— did little to reduce the rearrest rates of returning prisoners.20 In its report, the Urban Institute raises a number of issues related to the role and function of parole. For example: •

Parole officers manage, on average, a caseload of 70 parolees and typically only meet with parolees for about 15 minutes once or twice a month. This raises the question, does this constitute supervision?

•

Parole officers often are located far from the neighborhoods where the individuals in their caseloads reside. Without knowledge of where parolees are living, parole officers are in less of a position to assist and sanction parolees.

•

Responses to parole violations often are inconsistent and inappropriate for the seriousness of the infraction. Without consistent and intermediate responses to violations, the deterrent effect of supervision is greatly reduced.

•

Parole has markedly shifted toward surveillance as its core function and away from a social supporttype service. Research, however, shows that a “mix of appropriate treatment and surveillance is needed to positively affect offender behavior.”

Lack of a range of alternative sentencing options and sanctions A final challenge confronting states is the lack of a range of graduated and intermediate sentencing options for individuals who are charged with new offenses or fail to meet the conditions of their parole. Without such a range, states lack the discretion to work with offenders in the most appropriate (and least costly) settings based on risk factors and offense history. In other words, without options such as halfway houses and treatment beds, reincarceration may be the state’s only response to violations of release conditions.

Crucial First Steps To Improving Prisoner Reentry Governors and other state policymakers can use a number of strategies to begin to address some of these challenges to improving prisoner reentry. Raise the profile of prisoner reentry as a public safety issue and not solely a corrections issue. Given the impact of prisoner reentry on so many dimensions of society and public service systems, implementing successful strategies will require cross-agency coordination and public will. For too long reentry has been viewed mainly as a corrections issue. In fact, its impact and solutions are much broader than what correction agencies are capable of adequately addressing alone.

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Governors are uniquely situated to garner the necessary support and buy-in by emphasizing the public safety aspects of successful reentry. In particular, there are four ways that governors can implement and promote this type of awareness. Create an interagency governance structure. Governors can create a state-level, interdisciplinary prisoner reentry policy committee to identify barriers to successful reentry and develop and implement strategies that improve coordination across both state and local agencies. For example, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri signed an executive order creating the Governor's Reentry Steering Committee for Released Inmates. Comprised of cabinet-level officials, this committee aims to develop ways to help former inmates successfully transition into Rhode Island communities, with an emphasis on reducing recidivism rates. The committee provides policy direction, helps coordinate statewide reentry programs, and focuses on improving policies or practices that are unnecessary obstacles to successful reentry. Identify overlapping services and populations as they relate to prisoner reentry. Demonstrating the interrelation of public service systems will help to gain buy-in from agency officials, especially as they recognize the shared populations they serve. Many agency officials already recognize this overlap, but by using data that clearly demonstrates the relationship between populations, governors can make successful prisoner reentry a priority for noncriminal justice or corrections agencies. Identifying overlapping populations also assists in developing cross-training programs among agencies. Recognizing these shared populations, Idaho has established at least six memoranda of understanding (MOAs) to improve the coordination of services for current inmates. For example, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation have established an MOA that places counselors in the prison system to qualify eligible offenders prior to release. The Department of Corrections and Boise State University have established an MOA that places an education counselor in the institution. The Departments of Corrections and Health and Welfare have established an MOA so that substance abuse treatment services for returning prisoners can be accessed immediately upon release from the institution. Improve how data and information are used for planning and management. Mapping where prisoners are returning is a powerful way states can demonstrate the impact of reentry on certain geographic areas and across systems. It also is useful for developing strategic plans and allocating resources by showing concentrations of returning offenders and gaps in capacity and services. States including Idaho, Illinois, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia, and Rhode Island have used this type of mapping to aid in their strategic planning.21 States are also beginning to improve the sharing of information across criminal justice and noncriminal justice agencies to improve reentry collaboration. Identify and involve key constituents involved in prisoner reentry. To help develop buy-in for reentry initiatives, states should reach out to key constituent groups including local law enforcement, victims’ groups, legislators and other policymakers, and the media. For example, Virginia has included legislative staff members from appropriations committees on their state prisoner-reentry policy team. Similarly, Michigan’s reentry committee meetings include victims’ advocates, local law enforcement from across the state, and members of the press. Support from such groups can be essential to the success of a state’s initiative, especially if there is a high-profile crime committed by a former prisoner. Improve the decision making processes by which individuals are sent to prison. Part of the challenge confronting states in improving prisoner reentry is the sheer number of individuals in prison, most of whom eventually will be released. By addressing “front end” issues—who is sent to

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prison—in the context of an overall prisoner reentry strategy, states have the opportunity to reduce prison populations and expand effective—and less costly—treatment options. There are three areas to consider. Expand the use of treatment and community-based sanctions. A number of states have expanded the use of community-based treatment options for certain offenders. For example, Arizona, California, Kansas, and Nebraska each have adopted sentencing policies to divert first-time, nonviolent drug offenders into treatment and have realized significant cost savings as a result. States can build on such strategies as a component of an overall reentry framework, using these states as potential models. Improve parole revocation policies. For many states, prison growth is being driven by the reincarceration of parole violators for technical offenses such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment. For example, over 60 percent of prison admissions in California are technical parole violators. Recognizing the impact of reincarcerating large numbers of technical parole violators, states such as Michigan have made great strides in improving parole revocation policies and practices. In fact, Michigan successfully avoided projected major prison overcrowding without building new prisons by amending its revocation policies and expanding its use of community-based sanctions. Examine the role and responsibilities of parole and probation officers in supporting prisoner reentry. Questions have been raised about the efficacy of parole. Of particular concern is the movement toward surveillance as parole’s core function and away from social support. This presents a difficult policy issue as to the function of parole and probation in supporting the goals of reentry, especially as they relate to ensuring linkages to key support services. These issues are also compounded by the fact that many parole and probation functions are often locally controlled. However, it is encouraging to note that states such as Georgia, Massachusetts and New Jersey have included parole board chairs and members as active participants of their states’ reentry policy teams. Improve how prisoners are prepared in prison for release. Ninety-five percent of all prisoners will eventually be released. Without sacrificing the ultimate goal of improved public safety, preparing prisoners to reenter society needs to be a major focus of what occurs in prison. While corrections agencies may not be in a position to address the multitude of issues confronting prisoners, they can take a number of steps to improve what happens in prison to prepare prisoners for release. These steps include the following. Begin reentry planning on intake. What takes place immediately on admission to a correctional facility has an impact on how, when, and what kind of services are delivered before, during, and after reentry. Information about a individual’s risk, needs, and strengths in a variety of areas should be gathered at admission—and reassessed throughout supervision. This information lays the foundation for all the programs, services, and decisions that follow.22 Use validated needs and risk assessment tools. Virtually all states use some form of needs and risk assessment tools. These tools are essential in identifying and managing high-risk inmates and creating service plans for all inmates across a spectrum of issues, including substance abuse, mental health, and education. Although use of these tools has improved, states need to ensure that they are research-based and validated for the target population. Improve access and involvement of local service providers and faith-based organizations. Local service providers and faith-based organizations can play a key role in assisting prisoners in transitioning

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from prison and by providing counseling services, life skills training, transitional jobs, and other programs and services. For that reason, their participation in post-release planning as early and consistently as possible is essential. However, access or “in reach” into prisons for these organizations often is difficult. To encourage the involvement of such supportive organizations, states need to improve the processes for allowing such groups access to institutions and participation in post-release service planning. For example, Massachusetts’s Women in Transition (WIT) program, specifically available to women offenders, offers a wide range of programs inside the facility that are modeled after what is offered in the community. Programs focus specifically on domestic violence, parenting family issues, healthy relationships, medical and women's health issues, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and food and nutrition. Through the program tutors from local community colleges work an offender while incarcerated and help them transition to educational services in the community. WIT has also fostered relationships with North Shore Community College and Northern Essex Community College and offers GED education and scholarships to inmates. Improve the process by which prisoners exit prison Planning and preparation for reentry—if it occurs at all—typically does not occur until the last few weeks or months of an individual’s incarceration.23 States need to improve the steps leading up to and the process by which prisoners exit prisons. This includes improving how release decisions are made; improving when and how prisoners are released from institutions; ensuring that prisoners have a transition plan; ensuring that eligible returning prisoners have applied for or have secured public benefits prior to exiting a facility; and ensuring that returning prisoners have proper identification upon release. To improve the process by which prisoners are prepared for release states can take the following steps. Improve how release decisions are made. There are significant differences across states in how release decisions are made. However, according the Reentry Policy Council, “decisionmakers need information about the progress, risks, needs, and strengths of each reentering individual. Such information should guide decisions even when there will be no period of supervised release after incarceration, and therefore no enforceable conditions of release.”24 Currently, most releases occur automatically and do not necessarily result from individualized assessments. Twenty-five years ago, most prisoners (65 percent) were released after a parole board considered a prisoner to be rehabilitated or had sufficient linkages with the community (e.g., a job, family, and housing). Today, only 24 percent of prisoners are released through a discretionary process. The remaining 76 percent are released under a predetermined mechanism—mandatory release, split sentence, or unconditional release.25 States need to use validated risk-assessment tools and analysis of an individual’s criminal history and behavior in an institution in assessing the risk of certain individuals and in developing an effective transition plan that maximizes public safety. Improve how and when prisoners are released from institutions. How and when a prisoner is released from a correctional facility can affect that individual’s chances of success, especially because the greatest risk for recidivism rates is immediately upon release. Currently, most prisoners are released with little more than a bus ticket and some spending money.26 Reportedly, some have been dropped off in high-crime high drug trafficking areas late at night or in the early morning hours. States can take logistical steps to help ensure a smooth transition out of a facility, such as requiring correction agencies to advise community-based partners about upcoming release dates and releasing prisoners during hours when supportive services are available. For example, in Massachusetts, whether individuals are released on parole or not, the state will transport prisoners to the parole offices and release them from there.

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Ensure that returning prisoners have a detailed and specific transition plan. Good transition plans ensure that the first hours and days immediately following release—the most critical time period—are structured to facilitate a smooth reentry. Most returning prisoners have some type of post-prison supervision plan, but a detailed and specific plan is an essential element for successful reentry. A good example is Michigan’s transition accountability plan (TAP). A core element of Michigan's reentry initiative, the TAP is prepared for each inmate beginning with the intake into the facility, with the goal of ensuring a seamless system of services for the offender for a successful transition. For example, a TAP might include specific referrals to employment, housing, or health service providers, as well as post-release supervision requirements. Ensure that eligible returning prisoners have applied for or secured public benefits, especially health benefits, before exiting prison. According to the Council of State Government’s Reentry Policy Council Report, “Given the broad array of benefits for which a person leaving prison may be eligible, the complexity of that application process, and the need for benefits to start (or re-start) as soon as possible after release, the transition team should prepare the inmate for the benefits application process prior to his or her return to the community.”27 Transition teams also should think broadly about all possible benefits including SSI, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Medicaid, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, TANF, and educational benefits under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA).28 Ensure that released individuals have proper identification. Without proper identification, returning prisoners may be unable to secure employment or housing, or apply for benefits. Coordination between state corrections and other identification-granting agencies would help returning prisoners obtain proper documents more quickly. Two states—Illinois and Montana—have laws requiring the department of motor vehicles to exchange department of corrections-issued identification for state-issued identification. Similarly, Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles is piloting a program at several correctional facilities to make state identification cards and license renewals made on site for inmates before their release.29 Notify victims. For victims, timely notification of an offender’s release date is extremely important in helping them prepare emotionally, take any measures they deem fit for their own safety, or exercise any other legal rights they may have, such as attending parole hearings. Corrections officials should create a systemwide policy establishing how and when information should be communicated to victims. For example, the individuals or teams responsible for reentry planning might notify victims of scheduled releases in person, using trained personnel who understand victims’ issues and can make appropriate referrals to therapists, counselors, and other services.30 Develop reentry initiatives that build on key social relationships and improve access to community-based supports and services. Returning prisoners need the support of communities, families, and public service systems to succeed. States can facilitate their transition back into the community by better coordinating services across systems, focusing on transitional supports, and building on key supportive relationships. In particular, states can help returning prisoners develop an effective social support system by focusing on the following areas. Develop a more open and integrated case management approach. Given the multi-dimensional issues confronting returning prisoners, transition plans that integrate services at both the state and community levels are most likely to support the goals of successful reentry. For example, to improve the

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interdisciplinary coordination of services for returning prisoners, Michigan’s Departments of Corrections, Labor and Economic Growth, Community Health, and Family Independence Agency, teamed up to develop an integrated approach to prisoner reentry. The goal of Michigan’s approach is to implement a seamless system of services for offenders, beginning at the time of entry to prison and continuing through their transition to communities. Ohio’s Reentry Management Teams take another approach that brings together representatives from up to seven program areas to provide prisoners with treatment or services to assist in developing and implementing a multi-disciplinary plan. These program areas include: employment and education; substance abuse; community functioning; attitude; family/marital/personal relationships; personal and emotional; and associates. Other states, such as Missouri and Rhode Island, have developed similar approaches. Help returning prisoners find jobs and ancillary supports. Most returning prisoners are released without a job. Various estimates show that only 14 percent to 50 percent of returning prisoners have secured a job prior to release.31 Job placement and other intermediary organizations can play a pivotal role in helping returning prisoners find transitional and permanent employment. For example, the Center of for Employment Opportunity (CEO) in New York City places returning prisoners in temporary employment while they seek permanent jobs. Similarly, the Safer Foundation in Chicago works with returning prisoners to improve the likelihood that they will secure and maintain a job by providing pre-employment training and then maintaining contact with both the client and the employer for one year after placement to resolve any issues that may arise to threaten continued employment.32 It is important to note that although a job is an important element of a successful reentry strategy, employment needs to be considered in context with other issues, including mental health, housing, and substance abuse. Securing a job may not necessarily be the top priority for each returning prisoner. Provide a continuum of care for prisoners with high-need health, mental health, and substance abuse issues. Returning prisoners with chronic and communicable diseases, mental illness, and substance abuse problems need long-term care strategies in place prior to release. Without an effective continuum of care, treatment gains realized in prison could be lost and other complications could arise. For example, individuals on anti-retroviral treatment for HIV who fail to adhere to treatment regimens may develop drug-resistant viral strains and become more contagious.33 There are similar health complications for individuals being treated for TB who interrupt their treatment. Individuals with substance abuse and mental health issues also confront challenges when treatment is interrupted. Some programs demonstrate that parole and probation officers can play a key role in supporting and enforcing a continuum of care. For example, an outreach program for TB patients who were released from New York City’s Rikers Island showed a dramatic increase in participation in community-based treatment—increasing from 20 percent to 92 percent—when small incentives were used to get returning prisoners to treatment. Other similar studies demonstrate the effectiveness of community supervision in keeping people in treatment for the crucial first 90 days after release.34 Adopt strategies that leverage and build on family and other supportive relationship and social networks. The release of an individual will most likely directly affect family members and other close acquaintances. In fact, according to one study, 71 percent of prisoners expect to live with their families on

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release.35 However, family members are often not notified of or prepared for an individual’s release. Strategies that prepare and build on the strengths of family relationships show great promise in improving outcomes for returning prisoners and their families. For example, a study of La Bodega de Familia, a family-support reentry program in New York City serving parolees with substance abuse problems, found that for families participating in the program, substance abuse and re-arrest rates among returning prisoners were significantly reduced and family well-being improved. The success of the program has been attributed to the combination of informal pressure, motivation, and encouragement of family members as well as program staff.36 Target and support high-risk communities to which the majority of prisoners return. Because the majority of prisoners return to a relatively small number of communities, states should develop strategies tailored to meet the needs of these highly impacted areas. As they help returning prisoners to connect with local employment, health, and social services, states need to target program resources to those communities where the greatest number of prisoners live and develop innovative partnerships to address local issues more comprehensively. Form local partnerships. Partnerships between state agencies and local areas are essential to supporting highly impacted communities and form the core of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Federal Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI). Through SVORI, state agencies—typically corrections departments—have established partnerships with key community agencies with the goal of forming new and innovative strategies. For example, through their SVORI grant, the Indiana Department of Corrections formed a strategic partnership with Fort Wayne, Indiana. Through this partnership, Fort Wayne established and operates a local reentry court that coordinates with the Indiana Department of Corrections and imposes a reintegration plan for returning offenders. In addition to offering a range of support services, including GED classes, substance abuse services, family counseling, employment services, and a transitional job program, Fort Wayne’s reentry court also is responsible for imposing graduated sanctions and providing rewards for individuals under community supervision. Encourage the development of supportive and transitional housing for returning offenders. Homelessness is prevalent among returning prisoners. In fact, in describing their prison system, one state secretary of corrections said that they are “operating the largest homeless shelter in the state.” Without stable housing, any chance for a successful reintegration is seriously compromised, but the supply of transitional and supportive housing for returning prisoners is extremely limited. This is particularly pressing for communities with high numbers of returning prisoners. A number of states are working with local communities to increase the housing options available for returning prisoners. This includes directly funding local service providers, developing “reentry housing” for high-need individuals, and providing incentives for the private and nonprofit sectors to develop housing options for returning prisoners. For example, the Illinois State Department of Corrections directly funds St. Leonard’s Ministries, a local housing and social service provider. By paying St. Leonard’s just under what it costs the department to supervise a parolee, the department provides housing and social services for parolees. The Women’s Prison Association in New York City receives state, local, and federal funds to provide transitional housing for women and their children as well as a range of other social services, including health and mental health care, family reunification assistance, and employment services.

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Engage local law enforcement. Local law enforcement can play an important role in the reentry process through both supervision and support. For example, Lowell Massachusetts Police Department’s Reentry Initiative is designed to provide support to and to improve the surveillance of returning prisoners. Through the program, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections notifies the Lowell Police Department prior to a local inmate’s release. A police officer then meets with the inmate while still in prison to both offer a range of support services available through their program and inform the inmate that the department is aware of the upcoming release and will be informally monitoring his or her conduct in the community.

Conclusion: Changing Corrections Culture to Focus on Reentry The goal of successful prisoner reentry is improved public safety. However, improving prisoner reentry will require a culture shift in corrections and criminal justice philosophy that emphasizes the reentry process and not only containment and control. Such a shift will require a holistic approach that balances public safety with the needs of former prisoners and balances what happens in prison with the goal of successfully reentry. At a minimum, such a shift will require coordination among corrections, public safety, workforce, health, mental health, welfare, child welfare, and education systems at state and local levels. Governors are in a position to lead this change and make prisoner reentry a priority across key agencies. Given the sheer number of individuals in and returning from prison, given how inextricably linked these individuals are to families and communities, given the impact that these individuals will have on public health, welfare, housing, and workforce systems, and given the alternatives to doing nothing—continued growth in corrections budgets and continued high rearrest rates among returning prisoners—successful prisoner reentry needs to be a shared goal for all public agencies.

End Notes 1

Projection calculated by Allen J. Beck, Chief, Corrections Statistics Program, Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data available in Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2004 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).

Total expenditures for all state justice-related activities (including corrections, law enforcement, and judicial) was nearly $63.4 billion in 2001.

NGA’s prisoner reentry policy academy works with interdisciplinary reentry policy teams from seven states comprised of representatives from governors offices and key state agencies, such as corrections, public safety, health and human services, welfare, workforce, and housing. The goal of the academy is to develop statewide, strategic action plans that coordinate services across agencies and improve reentry outcomes along a number of dimensions. The participating states are Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia. For more information on state activities related to prisoner reentry, visit NGA’s prisoner reentry Web page. Funding for the academy was made possible through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (OASPE), Office of Minority Health (OMH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the JEHT Foundation.

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The Council of State Governments’ Reentry Policy Council (RPC), established in 2001, brought together a bipartisan network of over 100 policymakers and practitioners from across the country to identify policy recommendations to improve the likelihood of successful reentry for people leaving prisons and jails. The RPC was divided into three main advisory groups—public safety and restorative activities, supportive health and housing, and workforce development and employment opportunities. This Issue Brief builds on many of the recommendations from the final report of the RPC. Read CSG’s Report of The Reentry Policy Council.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2004 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2003 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004).

Total Sentenced Prisoners Released From State or Federal Jurisdiction, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Prisoner Statistics data series (NPS-1).

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Total Sentenced Prisoners Released From State or Federal Jurisdiction, National Prisoner Statistics data series (NPS-1) and Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2004 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoner Released in 1994 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002.)

Gerard Rainville and Brian Reaves, Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties,2000, (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003) 8. It should be noted that the 35 percent cited here is a conservative figure for crime rates. It excludes recently released prisoners not under supervision and reflects arrests only.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoner Released in 1994, June 2002. Washington: DC.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Justice Expenditure and Employment in the United States, 2001 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004).

This figure does not reflect other criminal justice costs (e.g., police, parole, probation, etc.)

National Association of State Budget Officers, 2003 State Expenditure Report (Washington, DC: National Association of State Budget Officers, 2004) 56.

Christopher Mumola, Incarcerated Parents and Their Children (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000).

Caterina Gouvis Roman and Jeremy Travis, Taking Stock: Housing, Homelessness, and Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2004).

Amy Solomon, Kelly Johnson, Jeremy Travis, and Elizabeth McBride, From Prison to Work: The Employment Dimensions of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2004) 39.

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For more information on barriers to public services, the Legal Action Center’s After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry provides a state-by-state examination of the legal barriers that individuals with criminal records face in each state. Available online at: <www.lac.org/roadblocks.html>.

Amy Solomon, Vera Kachnowski, and Avinash Bhati, Does Parole Work: Analyzing the Impact of Postprison Supervision on Rearrest Outcomes (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2005) 1.

Ibid.

To view these maps visit NGA’s prisoner reentry Web page at <http://www.nga.org/center/divisions/1,1188,C_ISSUE_BRIEF^D_7711,00.html>.

Report of the Reentry Policy Council, 110.

Report of the Reentry Policy Council, 255.

Ibid. 229.

Ibid. 231.

Jeremy Travis, Amy Solomon, and Michelle Waul, From Prisons to Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2001) 19.

Report of the Reentry Policy Council, 337.

Ibid.

Ibid. 337–338.

Ibid. 320–321.

Ibid. 384.

For more information on CEO and Safer Foundation visit: <http://www.ceoworks.org/> and <http://saferfoundation.org/>.

Report of the Reentry Policy Council, 371.

Ibid.

Nancy G. LaVigne, et al., A Portrait of Prisoner Reentry in Maryland (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2003).

For more information on La Bodega de la Familia visit: <http://www.labodegadelafamilia.org/>.