This brief uses National Health Interview Survey data to identify key employment characteristics of SNAP participants with the goal of informing policymakers and stakeholders to create the best possible programs. Broad trends include lack of higher education, low incomes, and presence of a child in the household. Although most participants work, with employment being more likely for non-citizens, married, and healthy, only 50% report being food secure. Implications of these findings suggest that SNAP does not discourage work, but other barriers may prevent employment or job retention in vulnerable subgroups.

The Ticket to Work program provides individuals with disabilities receiving disability benefits opportunities to return to work, stay employed, and increase earnings. As a result, beneficiaries with disabilities may reduce their dependency on public benefits and become more economically self-sufficient. This webinar (on September 12) focuses on how Ticket to Work operates and the different partnership models now available consistent with the goals of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness provides updated statistics and trend analysis in this briefing, while also using the data to discuss implications for efforts to eliminate homelessness. In 2017, homelessness rose slightly for the first time since 2016, which was driven entirely by more unsheltered homeless individuals without families. The Council links to further resources that detail trends for youth, families, worst case housing needs, and affordable housing throughout the country. Considering all of this data, the Council stresses the need for affordable housing, unsheltered support services, and attention to racial disparities through combined federal and local efforts across agencies, sectors, and lawmakers.

Stable and affordable housing continues to be an issue for low-income families as rental and home prices increase and wages may not rise in accordance. This webinar on September 25 is geared toward SNAP Employment and Training stakeholders to demonstrate ways in which SNAP programs can implement approaches to job training that facilitate housing stability for benefit recipients. Drawing on examples from Massachusetts and Arkansas State SNAP agencies, links between housing and workforce initiatives will be highlighted and their importance emphasized to overcome rent burden and homelessness for vulnerable populations.

In an ongoing project that seeks to improve a home-visiting programs for teenage mothers, preliminary results suggest some improvements in uptake of long-acting reversible contraceptives and lower rates of unprotected sex. Repeated, close-together births have been shown to have negative effects on the health and well-being of mothers and children, but research has begun to show that contraception and support services can decrease these numbers. The two-year Steps to Success program provided more resources around healthy birth spacing, father involvement, and educational and career aspirations than did traditional programs, but has not seen robust improvements above the control in these areas thus far.

An evaluation of a randomized control trial in Boston found significant decreases in criminal charges and arraignments for youth who participate in Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs), particularly for African American and Latino males. These declines may be the result of improved social and emotional skills that the employment programs foster by giving participants a chance to learn healthy conflict and stress management. Youth also reported higher academic and career aspirations, better job skills, and more cognizance of future plans and goals, an effect which was pronounced for younger members and members of color.

This policy brief describes the opportunities for collaboration between SNAP Employment & Training programs and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Because both serve overlapping populations, such as able-bodied adults without dependents, states can implement SNAP E&T through existing workforce training programs to overcome participants’ barriers to employment. The report details the benefits and challenges of cooperation, provides examples of states that are currently uniting the two initiatives, and suggests lessons for integration.

This testimony from an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute was presented to the Subcommittee on Human Resources within the Committee on Ways and Means in the U.S. House of Representatives. The author critiques TANF for not sufficiently reaching children in poverty, spending limited funds outside the original policy goals, and failing to offer training and education for good jobs, among other issues. She recommends TANF improvements such as setting spending floors for core benefits, furthering 21st century skills and education training, and writing in an explicit child poverty reduction goal. These changes, she argues, will help children in poverty and increase parental socioeconomic mobility as TANF originally intended.

A paper from Economic Mobility Pathways discusses the importance of setting high goals and standards when helping families navigate their way out of poverty. Coach-navigator programs that seek to build resiliency and decision making view high expectations as a self-fulfilling prophecy and a crucial step to success for struggling participants. Thus, coaching relationships are most effective when they hold people to ambitious yet achievable standards that participants then willingly work to strive toward.

This brief by the Urban Institute looks at how economic trends and the labor market have changed since the 1970s, when both the labor market and social safety supports were stronger. Because of such changes like fewer work benefits, stagnant wages, and declining labor force participation rates, social safety programs face increasing burdens. Furthermore, the trend toward more outsourced, nonstandard, temporary, and automated work creates further pressures on social safety nets to provide benefits traditionally obtained through stable employment. Some potential solutions include portable benefits for contractors or part-time workers, laws that require minimum benefit levels, state-operated social insurance programs, prorated unemployment benefits, and programs to make the work requirements of safety net programs easier to fulfill.