One in four young children in the United States lives in an immigrant family. Federal law establishes policies on immigrant eligibility for child care assistance, yet questions regarding eligibility remain at the state and local level. Most child care assistance is funded through the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and the Temporary…

Three classification techniques (Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection [CHAID], Classification and Regression Tree [CART], and discriminant analysis) were tested to determine their accuracy in predicting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program recipients' future employment. Technique evaluation was based on proportion of correctly…

Using a telephone survey, this study examined the experiences of 100 foster mothers who receive aid through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Foster mothers reported numerous difficulties with TANF, including frequent sanctions and case closings, limited work and training opportunities, and pervasive material hardships. Foster…

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) reauthorized the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant and made modifications expected to strengthen work requirements for families receiving cash assistance through state TANF programs. Both the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and states were required to take steps to…

For Lynch View Elementary, a K-5 school in suburban Portland, the school day doesn't end when the bell rings at 2:22 p.m. As one of 64 "community schools" in Multnomah County, the school also provides homework assistance, academic enrichment, free breakfast and dinner for students, a weekly food pantry, a host site for local medical…

More than 12 million American children regularly rely on child care to support their healthy development and school success. Of these, over 1.6 million children receive a child care subsidy from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program each month. In addition, CCDF helps leverage child care investments from the Temporary Assistance for…

New Jersey children and families begin this new decade with the state and nation in an economic downturn that has been marked by widespread job losses, an increased rate of child poverty and a growing number of households without enough to eat. These challenges are reflected in the measurements of child well-being in this report. "New Jersey…

At the beginning of 2009, with the country facing the worst of the economic crisis, the president and Congress understood that Americans needed help paying for child care to get back to work in the recession. As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, they allocated an additional $2 billion for the Child Care and Development Block…

This dissertation consists of three chapters examining issues relevant to current higher education policy debates. In the first chapter, I use surveys, in-depth interviews, and administrative records from a sample of Wisconsin Pell Grant recipients who chose among Wisconsin public colleges and universities to explore whether students' initial…

The authors of this brief examine child poverty rates using decennial census data from 1980, 1990, and 2000, as well as American Community Survey five-year estimates between 2005 and 2009, to identify those counties where child poverty has persisted. They find persistent child poverty in nearly twice as many U.S. counties as those that report high…

In this paper, the authors examine how policy and structural changes states made in response to the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) may influence the level and composition of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) caseload. This paper grew out of a 50-state survey Mathematica Policy Research conducted on diversion programs which…

Context: Prescription opioid abuse has emerged as a public health problem, particularly in rural America. Purpose: To examine temporal and geographic trends in rates of controlled-release oxycodone (OxyContin) prescribing for Kentucky Medicaid recipients. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis was completed in which the state was divided into 3…

In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support paid on their behalf. This policy, which treats welfare…

Baptist Community Ministries asked The Finance Project to examine the expenditure of federal funds for job training and education of New Orleans' disconnected young adults (i.e., persons between ages 16 and 24 who are not in school or work). Four major sources of federal funding for job training and education of this population are available: the…

Using data from the Survey of Adults and Youth, the authors examine the effect of economic status on youths' involvement in both school- and nonschool-related extracurricular activities. Specifically, they assess the association between four alternative measures of economic status--recipiency of food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent…