Packaging Polices to Meet Multiple Goals

• In Event: 1-182 - Reducing Child Poverty by Half in 10 Years: A National Academies Report

Integrative Statement

This presentation will build on the individual anti-poverty programs presentation and will outline three sets of programmatic options for reducing child poverty and their effects on poor children and their families. The individual programs discussed in presentation 2 will be combined in well-designed packages that show how, in combination with one another, we can achieve the goal of halving child poverty within 10 years.

These packages include options which are designed to expand existing programs which have already been shown to be effective in reducing child poverty as outlined above. The committee examined a variety of options such as refining eligibility guidelines to cover more poor children, adding to new and existing programs and policies designed to increase market work, and providing training opportunities designed to enhance earnings and reduce the cost of going to work. They also considered new ideas from other peer countries.
In all cases, program packages are evaluated according to their effects on SPM poverty, including deep poverty and near poverty (measured at 150% of the SPM line); their effects on key populations such as single parents, the working poor, and minorities; their net effects on economic behavior (especially work related effects); their net public cost, the administration of packages of programs and policies; and programmatic interactions. The end product is to present a set of attractive packages which can efficiently and effectively reach our intended goal of reducing child poverty by half within 10 years.

Authors

• Timothy Smeeding, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author

• Irwin Garfinkel, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hilary Hoynes, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author