The Pew Charitable Trusts released an interactive resource that allows users to sort and analyze data related to various fiscal, economic, and demographic trends in the 50 States. Users may browse data related to state revenue, spending, economy and people, long-term costs, and fiscal policy.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service released a report that examines the effects of disabilities on household food security. The research focuses on adults who are unable to work due to their disabilities and adults with disabilities that do not necessarily prevent employment. Results indicated that food insecurity was more prevalent among households with working-age adults with disabilities.

Services to help people find work are a common element of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other programs, but evidence on the effectiveness of different approaches is limited. This report presents options for designing a rigorous evaluation of the impact of job search assistance for low-income workers. It describes several broad designs, using both individual- and group-randomized experimental designs, and concludes with a discussion of the tradeoffs when considering research questions, technical merit, practical merit, and policy relevance. Abt Associates prepared the report. (author abstract)

How can federal programs support low-income and low-skilled individuals find and keep employment? Searching for a job is a universal experience for nearly all Americans, but for some low-income and low-skilled individuals, job search may be especially difficult. To support these individuals as they look for employment, many federal programs offer short-term and relatively low-intensity services, known as job search assistance. This brief describes an overarching framework for thinking about job search assistance programs, including an overview of service delivery methods, key program components, and the steps that make up the job search process. Abt Associates wrote this brief. (author abstract)

In April 2014, the Institute for Research on Poverty released a discussion paper that explores the receipt of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among low-income households. The research is based on data from the first two waves of the Michigan Recession and Recovery Survey (MRRS), a panel survey of working-age adults in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. The study examined how low-income families in the Detroit Metropolitan Area combined SNAP with other forms of public assistance during the Great Recession and analyzed the relationship between the receipt of SNAP assistance and food shopping behaviors.

The Institute for Research on Poverty recently released a short report that provides an overview of the evidence on employment instability in the United States. The report also includes information about some opportunities and challenges facing policymakers and researchers interested in promoting employment stability in the current economic and political context.

This paper reviews the literature on the policy context of the HPOG program and the challenges and opportunities related to developing healthcare occupational training and support programs. It discusses the structure of the healthcare industry and trends in healthcare employment, implications of ACA for entry-level employment in healthcare, and resulting challenges and opportunities for training programs. (author overview)

A substantial proportion of children under the age of 3 are cared for by adults other than their parents. Recent analyses of the 2005 National Household Education Survey (NHES) indicate that 42% of infants under the age of 1, 53% of 1-year-olds, and 73% of 2-year-olds had at least one nonparental care arrangement that occurred on a weekly basis. The large proportion of infants and toddlers in nonparental care reflects, in part, societal trends of increased maternal employment among families of all socioeconomic backgrounds. Labor force participation for mothers with children under the age of 3 increased steadily between 1975 and 2006, from 34% to 60%. As of 2006, 56% of mothers with children under the age of 3 were actively employed.

The use of child care arrangements, especially among low-income working parents, is of key interest to policy makers and others interested in understanding how child care can support employment among low-income families and families who are leaving welfare. Child care use is also of key interest to those interested in child development, since in addition to supporting employment among low-income families, high-quality child care has been linked to positive child outcomes. (author abstract)

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program, established by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, funds training programs in high-demand healthcare professions, targeted to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals. In 2010, the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded 32 HPOG grantees in 23 states with five-year grants. This Annual Report provides an overview of HPOG grantees, characteristics of participants, activities in which participants were engaged, training and employment outcomes, and how grantee programs continued to evolve in the second year of the program. (author abstract)

There is longstanding interest among policy makers and program operators in finding ways to increase the skill levels of low-income individuals, improve their enrollment in and completion of post-secondary education, and improve their economic prospects. The career pathways approach is gaining steady acceptance as a promising strategy to address these challenges and improve post-secondary education and training for low-income and low-skilled adults.

This brief focuses on the Innovative Strategies for Increasing Self-Sufficiency project; a major national effort to evaluate the effectiveness of nine career pathways programs using an experimental design. It summarizes the framework used to describe the career pathways approach and the theory of change that guides the evaluation. It then describes the nine programs in the evaluation, and concludes with the study’s research questions and data sources. Later reports and briefs will present findings from the evaluation and will be posted on the project website. (author abstract)